Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Page	Claim	Response	Author's sources
325	After Joseph's death, Rhoda Richards was sealed to "her cousin Brigham Young."		No source provided. [See p. 205 above.]
327 "Orson Hyde reported seeing a 'wonderful lustful spirit' on his visit to the polygamous Cochranite community….In 1834 he acquired his own lustful spirit in Marinda Johnson…." G. D. Smith is apparently trying to be cute. What G. D. Smith does not tell us is that Hyde’s attitude to the Cochranites’ free love was wholly negative, as his source for the journal indicates. Wonderful is here not being used in the sense of “excit[ing] . . . admiration” but, rather, “strange; astonishing.” Elsewhere anxious that we not misunderstand Victorian idiom, G. D. Smith here provides the reader no help (pp. 41–42). It is not clear that Hyde would have agreed that his marriage partook of the same “lustful spirit.” [See also p. 532.] None
333 Parley P. Pratt's "last wife, Eleanor McComb McLean…was sealed to him without divorcing her legal husband, who fatally shot Parley near Van Buren, Arkansas…." G.D. Smith again relies on presentism. Practices regarding marriage and divorce differed substantially from the 20th or 21st century. Smith also tells us nothing about McComb's tyrannical and abusive husband, making him appear the wronged party. GLS FARMS paper None
333	The murder of Parley P. Pratt was "the proximate cause of the Mountain Meadows Massacre."		There were many causes of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, not just something that can be labelled "the proximate cause." (Smith gives links to various treatments on pp. 298–299, n.107—this is a refreshing, if rare, example of him providing links to the relevant literature which advocate different views.) While Pratt's murder doubtless increased the LDS sense of alienation, President Brigham Young counselled peace and patience, and Pratt's murder was "old news" before the Fancher train arrival (it went unmentioned, for example, in accounts of the Mormons receiving news of the approaching federal army). Far from being the proximate cause, Pratt's murder was a minor factor which played little role in the tragedy of Mountain Meadows. G.D. Smith's attempt to make a murder related to polygamy into the proximate cause of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is ahistorical. Scott F. and Maurine J. Proctor, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (1874; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000), 586-99.
334	Parley P. Pratt engaged in "theological philanderings."	Loaded language, prejudicial	No source provided.
345	"though she [Louisa Chapin Rising] was not divorced from her legal husband, she agreed to marry [Edwin Woolley]" in polygamy.	Presentism	No source provided. See GLS FARMS paper Maybe wiki marriage and divorce in 19th century? [See also flyleaf.] — Flyleaf "Bishop Edwin Woolley…convinced [his future plural wife] to marry him. She did so without first divorcing her legal husband." Presentism GLS FARMS paper Maybe wiki marriage and divorce in 19th century? [See also p. 345.]
351	Ezra Taft Benson was "a correspondent of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover…."		No source provided. It is not clear what relevance this has to Benson, plural marriage, or anything else, save perhaps that it associates the church president with a figure now regarded as repressive, megalomaniacal, and something of a sexual deviant.