Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Entering into plural marriage

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Entering into plural marriage

Topics

Entering into plural marriage

Why was Joseph sealed to young women?

Summary: Critics argue that Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages to young women are evidence that he was immoral, perhaps even a pedophile.

Fanny Alger and William McLellin

Summary: With a lone exception, there is no account after Joseph’s death of Emma admitting Joseph’s plural marriages in any source. The reported exception is recorded in a newspaper article and two letters written by excommunicated Latter-day Saint apostle William E. McLellin. The former apostle claimed to have visited Emma in 1847 and to have discussed Joseph’s relationship with Fanny Alger. McLellin also reported a tale he had heard about Joseph and Fanny Alger in which they were allegedly observed by Emma together in the barn.

Women locked in a room

Summary: Were women locked in a room while Joseph attempted to persuade them?

Did Joseph Smith coerce women to marry him?

Summary: Some have claimed that Joseph applied significant pressure on women to be married to him.

Did women turn Joseph down?

Summary: Some have claimed that significant pressure was put on women to practice plural marriage in Nauvoo. Did any of these women resist or refuse? What were the consequences of doing so?

Does the fact that Joseph Smith did not "multiply and replenish the earth" through his plural wives contradict a commandment given in Doctrine and Covenants 132:63?

Summary: Joseph Smith does not appear to have produced any children by his plural wives, except for Emma, yet, Doctrine and Covenants 132:63 states, "But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him 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." Why did Joseph practice polygamy, if it was not for the purpose of multiplying and replenishing the earth?