First, the leaders of the LDS Church need to repudiate this doctrine and permanently strike it from their canonized scripture. This will cast Joseph Smith in an unfavorable light, but this will be the honest thing to do ...
Mormon-based polygamy contains within it the insidious practice of taking underage girls as polygamous wives. If this isn’t child sexual abuse, what is? Troy, board post 3rd May 2003, ‘Daniel Peterson, Apologise This – Child Brides’
I have told you that the prophet Joseph used to frequent houses of ill-fame. Mrs White, a very pretty and attractive woman, once confessed to me that she made a business of it to be hospitable to the captains of the Mississippi steamboats. She told me that Joseph had made her acquaintance very soon after his arrival in Nauvoo, and that he had visited her dozens of times.
My husband (Apostle Orson Pratt) could not be induced to believe such things of his prophet. Seeing his obstinate incredulity, Mrs White proposed to Mr Pratt and myself to put us in a position where we could observe what was going on between herself and Joseph the prophet. We, however, declined this proposition.
Next door to my house was a house of bad reputation. One single woman lived there, not very attractive. She used to be visited by people from Carthage whenever they came to Nauvoo. Joseph used to come on horseback, ride up to the house and tie his horse to a tree, many of which stood before the house. Then he would enter the house of the woman from the back. I have seen him do this repeatedly.
Joseph Smith, the son of the prophet, and president of the re-organized Mormon church, paid me a visit, and I had a long talk with him. I saw that he was not inclined to believe the truth about his father, so I said to him: ‘You pretend to have revelations from the Lord. Why don’t you ask the Lord to tell you what kind of a man your father really was?’ He answered: ‘If my father had so many connections with women, where is the progeny?’ I said to him: ‘Your father had mostly intercourse with married women, and as to single ones, Dr Bennett was always on hand, when anything happened.’ Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven
All these blessings, together with all the blessings appertaining unto the New and Everlasting Covenant, I seal upon you by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, through your faithfulness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony
[I]t is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles. W W Phelps, thirty-year-old recollection of Joseph’s revelation
They may break us up, and rout us from place to another, but by and by we shall come to a point where we shall have all the women, and they will have none. You may think I am joking about this, but I can bring you the truth of God to demonstrate it to you I have not advanced anything I have not got an abundance of backing for. There is more truth than poetry in this as sure as you live. Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses II:83
If I should undertake to drive a woman, I should have to drive her before me. Jebediah Grant, Journal of Discourses IV:15
... every ….. man’s wives to take a course to please their husband … Women were never placed to lead. ibid.
No woman will get into the celestial kingdom, except her husband receives her, if she is worthy to have a husband; and if not, somebody will receive her as a servant. Erastus Snow, Journal of Discourses V:291
In order to attempt to get the male somewhere near even, the Heavenly Father gave him the Priesthood, or directing authority for the Church and home. Without this bequeath, the male would be so far below the female in power and influence that there would be little or no purpose for his existence. In fact, [he] would probably be eaten by the female as is the case with the black widow Spider. Hartman Rector junior, letter to Teddie Wood 29th August 1978, cited Maxine Hanks ‘Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood’ and cited Sonia Johnson ‘Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church’
Men at the head of the Church are strong and the patriarchs have for millennia crushed those women who escaped from their mind-bindings.
... These rulings – which have seriously harmed women’s self-esteem, lowered our status, made us bootlickers and toadies to the men of the Church and destroyed what little freedom of choice we had – those rulings reveal the depth of the Brethren’s fear of independent, non-permission-asking women, the kind of women which are emerging from the women’s movement.
... Their Church experience is making them sick. Sonia Johnson, ‘Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church – How Women Have Been Made Bootlickers and Toadies to the Men of the Church’
[At age 12 in 1831] [Smith] told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife ... In 1834 he was commanded to take me for a Wife ... [In 1842 age 23] I went forward and was sealed to him. Brigham Young performed the sealing ... for time, and all Eternity. I did just as Joseph told me to do. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner
Joseph Smith preached polygamy and he not only preached it, but he practiced it. I am a living witness to it. It was given to him before he gave it to the Church. An angel came to him and the last time he came with a drawn sword in his hand and told Joseph if he did not go into that principle, he would slay him. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, address Brigham Young University 14th April 1905
Just previous to my father’s starting up his last mission but one to the Eastern States, he taught me the principle of Celestial marriage, and having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet's own mouth. My father had but one lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter: how cruel this seemed to the mother whose heartstrings were already stretched until they were ready to snap asunder for he had taken Sarah Noon to wife and she thought she had made sufficient sacrifice but the Lord required more. I will pass over the temptations which I had during the twenty four hours after my father introduced to me the principle and asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph who came next morning and with my parents I heard him teach and explain the principle of Celestial marriage – after which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that … of your fathers household and all of your kindred.’ I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God and angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart, when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied, ‘If Helen is willing, I have nothing more to say.’ Helen Mar Kimball Whitney autobiography; viz also Newell & Avery ‘Mormon Enigma – Emma Hale Smith’ p146
I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney to friend, viz Wagoner’s Mormon Polygamy: A History p53
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. William Law, interview Salt Lake Tribune 31st July 1887
Oliver Cowdery was considered more than just an apostle. He was second in authority in the Church, as well as a witness. He was also one of the three who had authority to select the Twelve Apostles ... Yet, after he served as a prominent leader for nine years in the LDS Church, he was excommunicated because of nine offenses, of which six were sustained.
… [P]ersecuting the brethren by urging on vexatious lawsuits against them and thus distressing the innocent; [S]eeking to destroy the character of President Joseph Smith junior by falsely insinuating that he was guilty of adultery; [T]reating the Church with contempt by not attending meetings; [L]eaving his calling to which God had appointed him by revelation, for the sake of filthy lucre and turning to the practice of law; [D]isgracing the Church by being connected in the bogus business, as common report says; [D]ishonestly retaining notes after they had been paid; leaving and forsaking the cause of God, and returning to the beggarly elements of the world, and neglecting his high and holy calling, according to his profession. Don Smith, ‘How the Mormon Church Created the Cowdery Myth’, cited Benson board post January 2012
In May 1843, Joseph Smith took his twenty-sixth bride, a fourteen-year-old girl named Helen Mar Kimball. At the time, Smith was thirty-seven and had been married for sixteen years to Emma (since January 1827). Unbeknownst to Emma, Smith had been busily wedding and bedding twenty-four other women, illegally, since 1833. Apparently, Heber and Vilate Kimball, Helen’s parents, were fully aware that Emma had no idea that he had begun this practice of polygamy. mrwright, board post 14th February 2006, ‘The Role of Women in Mormonism’
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.’ Angus M Cannon
In October of 1841, Zina received a written message from Joseph Smith that an angel from God had appeared to him with a drawn sword and told Joseph that he would lose ‘his position and his life’ if he did not establish polygamy and marry Zina. Thus, Zina, after sincere prayer, finally acquiesced to marry the prophet Joseph Smith on 27th October 1841, despite the fact that she was seven months pregnant with Henry Jacob’s child. X-Man, board post 30th October 2006, ‘Consider the Sad Story of Early Mormon Convert, Henry Jacobs, and How Polygamy Affected His Life’