Reinventing its polygamous history, the LDS Church is ushering deceased excommunicated Mormon fundamentalists – such as Rulon Clark Allred; Rulon Timpson Jeffs; and members of the LeBaron clan, including notorious killer, Ervil Morell LeBaron – back into the LDS fold.
The LDS temple system is systematically validating the plural marriages of many deceased Mormon fundamentalists who, when they were alive, were excommunicated from the LDS Church because of polygamy. Some of these polygamists have been posthumously sealed in LDS temples to plural wives they married – after the LDS Church officially suspended polygamy.
Why does the LDS Church condemn the practice of polygamy – including the polygamy of Mormon fundamentalists – as the LDS temple system consistently validates deceased Mormon fundamentalists and many of their plural marriages? Helen Radkey, board post 2nd June 2009, ‘The Mormon Church and Polygamy: A Double Standard’
Three living Mormon Apostles are polygamists.
Dallin H Oaks, Russell M Nelson and L Tom Perry are all married under the ‘New and everlasting covenant’ to two women. All three were sealed in a Mormon temple using the Mormon temple ceremony of Marriage Sealing. All three are ‘celestial polygamists’.
This means that while all three have one living wife, all three have two spiritual wives. And while Valerie Hudson stated at a recent FAIR conference that the Mormon ‘new and everlasting covenant’ is ‘a monogamous relationship between one man and one woman’, Dallin, Russell and Tom have proven that it is not.
So when Mormons tell you that they are not polygamists they are not being completely truthful. They may not be temporally polygamists, but they are celestial polygamists. In Mormon heaven they can and will have more than one wife. Infymus, board post 18th August 2011, ‘Modern Day Mormon Polygamy – Don’t Let Them Fool You Into Believing They No Longer Practise It’
I can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy. Mitt Romney, 60 MINUTES interview Mike Wallace 13 May 2007
When our people came west they permitted it on a restricted scale ... The figures I have are from between 2% and 5% of our people were involved in it. It was a very limited practice. Gordon B Hinckley, Larry King Live interview 1998
I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. ibid.
Let me state clearly that no polygamist group, including those calling themselves Fundamentalist Mormons or other derivatives of our name have any affiliation whatsoever with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. M Russell Ballard, general conference October 2011
President Hinckley affirmed the eternal nature of the marriage between Sister [Inis] Hunter and the former church president, whose first wife, Claire Jeffs, died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and is now buried beside him in the Salt Lake Cemetery. Inis Hunter ‘will now be laid to rest on the other side,’ he said. ‘They were sealed under the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood for time and for all eternity,’ he said, recalling the marriage ceremony he performed for them in the Salt Lake Temple in April 1990. Deseret News 22nd October 2007, ‘Sister Hunter's Humor and Cheerfulness Remembered as She is Laid to Rest’
May 2006: Cult leader Warren Jeffs is named as one of America’s ten most wanted. His crime as leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, a polygamous cult – Warren Jeffs stands of the rape and imprisonment of children. But even with their leader on the run from the law, the members of Jeffs’ cult see themselves as faithful followers of God, not a band of criminals. One man’s cult is another man’s religion. Cults: Dangerous Devotion, 2007
For one man a fertile corner of north-west Canada has produced a bumper harvest of children. So-called spiritual leader Winston Blackmore has fathered at least 121 children from at least 25 wives. Many were just teenagers when they gave birth. Man with 121 Children and 24 Wives, National Geographic 2010
According to fundamentalist Mormon beliefs it’s not just wives but multiple children that gets believers to the highest levels of heavenly paradise. ibid.
They used to be part of a secretive cult community – the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS run from this temple compound in Texas. The FLDS was led by a self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs. ibid.
Wives ten and eleven married their spiritual leader on the same day. ibid.
Its notorious prophet Warren Jeffs allegedly ordered the blood atonement or murder of a teenage girl who fled one of his arranged marriages. ibid.
Winston Blackmore wasn’t blood atoned. He was ostracised from the FLDS. Followers in Canada had to choose sides. Divisions were so serious some of Winston Blackmore’s wives and children left the family. For those Fundamentalist Mormon followers who stayed faithful to their Prophet Warren Jeffs another scandal would test their faith. And rock the foundations of their church. After a series of alleged sex abuses their beloved prophet Warren Jeffs, believed to be a descendant of Jesus Christ, became one of the FBI’s ten most wanted. ibid.
The girl in this photo is one of Warren Jeff’s alleged underage brides – she was just twelve years old. ibid.
Of at least twenty-five wives, four were under sixteen and six were under eighteen when they married Winston Blackmore. ibid.
He says it was his refusal to cooperate in the planned execution of a girl who fled an arranged marriage that caused him and his followers to split from the FDLS cult in 2002. ibid.
The notion of polygamy as a sacred right or duty was started by the founder of the mainstream Mormon Church. Joseph Smith claimed that God revealed a divine commandment to practise plural marriage in 1831. But he only told people about it when he was allegedly caught cheating on his wife more than a decade later. Was it really a sacred commandment or just an elaborate excuse? ibid.
Winston Blackmore was arrested for practising polygamy in January 2009 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. ibid.
Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious ... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Russian Ambassador: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor. Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb 1963 starring Peter Sellers & George C Scott & Sterling Haydenn & Keenan Wynn & Slim Pickens & Peter Bull & James Earl Jones & Tracy Reed & Shane Rimmer et al, director Stanley Kubric
Polygamy has appeared in many very different parts of the animal kingdom. David Attenborough, The Trials of Life XI: Courting
The life of a plural wife, she’d found, was a life lived under constant comparison, a life spent wondering. Sitting across from her sister-wives at Sunday dinner, the platters and serving dishes floating past like hovercraft, the questions were almost inescapable; Who of us is the most happy? Which of us is his one true love? Who does he desire the most? Brady Udall
One of Himmler’s ideas concerned polygamy. The only way which he could breed the master race ever faster was by instituting the practice whereby SS men would be able to take more than one wife. Dr Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Oxford University
For the first time a community has opened its doors. They’re here for one reason: to practise what they believe. Meet the Polygamists s1e1
Arthur lives with three wives and has over twenty children. ibid.
Women receive divine inspiration. Men are supposed to wait. But not everyone follows the rules. Meet the Polygamists s1e2
And he [Jacob] rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two woman servants, and his eleven sons ... Genesis 32:22
Marry those women who are lawful for you; up to two, three or four but if your fear you cannot be equitable, then only one. Koran 4:3
Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none. Book of Mormon: Jacob 2:24&27
Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, to prepare and organize yourselves by a bond or everlasting covenant that cannot be broken. Doctrine & Covenants 78:11
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines?
David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.
David's wives and concubines were given unto him of me ...
If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then he is justified; he cannot commit adultery with that that belonged unto him and to no one else. Doctrine & Covenants 132:1&38&39 &63