RfM contributor "Deconstructor" on his own website asks--thenanswers--the question: "Was it normal to marry 14 year-old girls in Joseph Smith's time?"
To set the stage, he first quotes from Smith's Mormon scriptural justification for polygamous sex as a general principle required for Mormon exaltation (the same scriptures, by the way, faithfully cited and espoused by Warren Jeffs, as well):
"And I will bless Joseph Smith and multiply him and give unto him an hundredfold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds."
"And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified."
"But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused [to Joseph Smith], shall be with another man, she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto Joseph Smith to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified." ("Doctrine and Covenants Section" 132:55, 62-63)
Now, for the evidence that Smith, like Jeffs, had sex with his own underage child victims:
"Many LDS Church leaders and historians suggest that sexual relations and the marriage of Joseph Smith and his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, 14 at the time, was 'approaching eligibility.'
"There is no documentation to support the idea that marriage at fourteen was 'approaching eligibility.' Actually, marriages even two years later, at the age of 16, occurred occasionally but infrequently in Helen Mar's culture. Thus, girls marrying at 14, even 15, were very much out of the ordinary. 16 was comparatively rare but not unheard of. American women began to marry in their late teens; around different parts of the United States the average age of marriage varied from 19 to 23.
"In the United States the average age of menarche (first menstruation) dropped from 16.5 in 1840 to 12.9 in 1950. More recent figures indicate that it now occurs on average at 12.8 years of age. The mean age of first marriages in colonial America was between 19.8 years to 23.7, most women were married during the age period of peak fecundity (fertility).
"Mean pubertal age has declined by some 3.7 years from the 1840’s.
"The psychological sexual maturity of Helen Mar Kimball in today’s average age of menarche (first menstruation) would put her psychological age of sexual maturity at the time of the marriage of Joseph Smith at 9.1 years old. (16.5 years-12.8 years = 3.7 years) (12.8 years-3.7 years = 9.1 years)
"The fact is Helen Mar Kimball's sexual development was still far from complete. Her psychological sexual maturity was not competent for procreation. The coming of puberty is regarded as the termination of childhood; in fact the term 'child' is usually defined as the human being from the time of birth to the on-coming of puberty. Puberty [is] the point of time at which the sexual development is completed. In young women, from the date of the first menstruation to the time at which she has become fitted for marriage, the average lapse of time is assumed by researchers to be two years.
"Age of eligibility for women in Joseph Smith’s time-frame would start at a minimum of 19-and-a-half years old.
"This would suggest that Joseph Smith had sexual relations and married several women before the age of eligibility, and some very close to the age of eligibility including:
"Fanny Alger, 16
"Sarah Ann Whitney, 17
"Lucy Walker, 17
"Flora Ann Woodworth, 16
"Emily Dow Partridge, 19
"Sarah Lawrence, 17
"Maria Lawrence, 19
"Helen Mar Kimball, 14
"Melissa Lott, 19
"Nancy M. Winchester, [14?]
"And then we have these testimonies:
"'Joseph was very free in his talk about his women. He told me one day of a certain girl and remarked that she had given him more pleasure than any girl he had ever enjoyed. I told him it was horrible to talk like this.' (Joseph Smith's close confidant and LDS Church First Councilor, William Law, interview in 'Salt Lake Tribune,' 31 July 1887)
"'When Heber C. Kimball asked Sister Eliza R. Snow the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith, she replied, "I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that."'
(Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives)"
"Short Bios of Smith's wives:
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org"Did Smith have sex with his wives?:
http://www.i4m.com/think/history/joseph_smith_sex.htm"Whatever the average age of menarche might have been in the mid-19th-century, the average age of marriage was around 20 for women and 22 for men. And a gap of 15 to 20 years or more between partners was very unusual, not typical. Whatever biology might have to say, according to the morals of his time, several of Joseph Smith's wives were still inappropriately young for him.
"It is a pure myth that 19th-century American girls married at age 12-14.
"For example, Laura Ingalls Wilder, from 'Little House on the Prairie' fame, was born in 1867, which puts her later than Joseph Smith but still in the 1800s. She tells of hearing of the marriage of a 13-year-old girl, and being shocked. She also notes that the girl's mother 'takes in laundry' and is sloppy and unkempt--implying that "nice" people don't marry off their teenaged daughters. Laura herself became engaged at 17--but her parents asked her to wait until she was 18 to marry.
"You merely need to go to your local courthouse and ask to see the old 19th century marriage books. Take a look at and pay attention to the age at marriage. Sure, a very few did but it was far from the norm. The vast majority of women married after the age of 20.
"In fact, look up the marriage ages in the Smith family before polygamy. You'll find that one of the Smith girls was 19. The rest of them, and their sisters-in-law, were in their early 20s when they married. The Smith boys' first wives were in their 20s. The same pattern was true for . . . the rest of American society at the time.
"On the extremely rare occasions women younger than 17 married, it was to men close to their same age, not 15 to 20 years older.
"The case is even true in pioneer Utah among first marriages. Mormon men in their 20s started out marrying someone their own age. Then later, these older men married girls under 20 to be their plural wives. But the first wives were the age of the husband and married over the age of 20. This is still the case is the rural Utah polygamist communities.
"References:
"Coale and Zelnik assume a mean age of marriage for white women of 20 (1963: 37). Sanderson's assumptions are consistent with a mean of 19.8 years (Sanderson 1979: 343). The Massachusetts family reconstitutions revealed somewhat higher mean ages. For Hingham, Smith reports an age at first marriage of 23.7 at the end of the 18th century (1972: Table 3, p. 177). For Sturbridge, the age for a comparable group was 22.46 years (Osterud and Fulton 1976: Table 2, p. 484), and in Franklin County it was 23.3 years (Temkin-Greener, H., and A.C. Swedlund). 1978. 'Fertility Transition in the Connecticut Valley:1740-1850m' 'Population Studies' 32, March 1978, 27-41.: Table 6, p. 34.
"Jack Larkin, 'The Reshaping of Everyday Life,' 1790-1840 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 63; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 'Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750' [NY: Oxford University Press, 1980], 6; Nancy F. Cott, 'Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England,' 'Feminist Studies' 3 [1975] 16; Dr. Dorothy V. Whipple, 'Dynamics of Development: Euthenic Pediatrics' [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966]"
("Was It Normal to Marry 14 year-old Girls in Joseph Smith's Time?," by "Deconstructor," at:
http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/teen_polygamy.htm_____
--More Data from Joseph Smith's Time Linking Him to Sexual Abuse of Young Girls
RfM poster "TLC," in observations entitled "Joseph Smith, Menses, Pedophilia, Etc.," writes:
". . . In our efforts to sort through the wasteland that is Mormon history (fact vs. fiction), it's worthwhile . . . to have some context within which to make our judgments.
". . . The statistics are very clear [on] the notion that the age of sexual maturity among women has changed or is still changing. . . . The age of menarche is dropping in virtually all areas of the world. More on that below.
"[A] claim being disputed is that Joseph Smith was a pedophile. While it's easy to throw that word around in light of today's problems with child abusing priests in the Catholic clergy, the fact remains that 'pedophilia' is defined as '[t]he act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children.'
"Furthermore, the pathology of pedophilia is understood to be an attraction or activity that is limited to pre-pubescent children. It's been well-established that true pedophiles lose interest almost immediately when a boy or girl exhibits the first signs of sexual maturity.
" . . . [A] quick Googling of the word 'pedophilia' will take you to the professional community's definitions. They are very clear as to what does and what doesn't constitute pedophilia.
"By today's definitions, when it comes to the pathology of pedophilia, Joseph Smith would probably not be considered a true pedophile. [It] doesn't mean however, that he wasn't a lecherous scumbag who would stop at nothing to bed any young woman who captured his fancy.
"More on sexual maturity among women.
"As closely as I can tell from investigating the median age of menarche (first menses) in Joseph Smith's time, it is possible that one or two of the girls he married and/or had relations with might not have been sexually mature. All of the research I've been able to find . . . indicates that the average age of menarche in the mid-1800s was 17.
"What that might tell us about a girl who was 14 or 15 back then is hard to determine because of the nature of averages. In any event, it does make it clear that Joseph Smith was treading a very fine fine when it came to the sexual maturity of the girls he courted and/or married.
"There is a lot of research in this arena because of the alarming shift in menarchal age from the 1800s to present day where the median onset of menarche has now dropped to age 12:
"' . . . In 1840, the average young woman in Europe and the United States menstruated for the first time at the age of 17; her modern counterpart reaches the age of menstruation at about 12. Well known to biological anthropologists as the "secular trend," this crash in the age of sexual maturity has proceeded at the rate of four months per decade and, in most populations, continues. . . .'
"'Boys and girls now experience puberty at younger ages than previous generations. In general, girls enter puberty between ages 8 and 13 and reach menarche (first menstruation) several years later, while boys enter puberty between ages 9 and 14 . . . . The reasons for earlier menarche in girls are not well understood. Most of the change is attributed to better health and nutrition. . . . In North America age at menarche decreased by three to four months each decade after 1850; in 1988 the median age at menarche was 12.5 years among U.S. girls. . . . In some developing countries age at menarche appears to be decreasing even faster. For example, in Kenya average age at menarche fell from 14.4 in the late 1970s to 12.9 in the 1980s . . . .'
"So, . . . it helps to understand the context from within which we assess the lecherous scumbag known as Joseph Smith. We don't know if he had sex with pre-pubescent children, therefore we don't know if he was truly a pedophile. We don't know if the teenaged girls he married and/or had sex with were sexually mature or not.
"But regardless of whether they were sexually mature or not, something in us is sickened by the thoughts of them being coerced into any kind of relationship with this lecher who was pretending to use God as his motivator.
"Joseph Smith was not the first--nor will he be the last--to prey upon young girls for sexual gratification. And that in no way justifies his actions. But in aiming for accuracy in trying to describe Joseph Smith, there are a lot of words other than 'pedophile' that do the job more saliently and succinctly. . . .
"What one of us as fathers here today would hesitate for a second to deck [someone] like [Joseph Smith] if he so much as glanced in any of our daughters' directions? I know that my response would be visceral and swift.
"Makes you wonder what kind of men Smith had around him that they would so willingly hand over their young daughters to him. Therein lies the true pathology of Mormonism."
("Joseph Smith, Menses, Pedophilia, Etc.," by "TLC," on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 9 August 2003, at:
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon253.htm)
Deconstructor concurs with the above assessment, declaring its findings to be "absolutely correct."
("TLC Is Absolutely Correct; Here's a Repost on This Subject," by "Deconstructor," on "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 9 August 2003, at:
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon253.htm)
Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2011 01:05AM by steve benson.