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I loved sitting down again with Whitney Horning, author of Joseph Smith Revealed, A Faithful Telling and Hyrum Smith, A Prophet Unsung. She shares her journey of struggling with the stories of polygamy and working to discover truth, both about polygamy and Joseph Smith.
Enjoy!
Transcript
[00:01] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. This is episode 52, which will be the beginning of our investigation of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. This is actually Topic that I didn’t necessarily want to focus on because as I’ve said in all of the previous episodes, I think the far more important question is whether polygamy is of God, which we will continue to talk about in future episodes, but I also want to start getting into this topic of Joseph’s polygamy. I think it’s so valuable to lay out the information and let people make their own decisions. So we’re going to do a series of interviews and discussions and investigations with different people with different interpretations of this topic to hopefully provide as much information as possible. In this first discussion, I had the opportunity to talk with Whitney Horning, author of Joseph Smith revealed. I thought it was an excellent discussion, so I hope you will find a lot of food for thought. I would love to hear your questions, thoughts, feedback in the comments below, and I hope that you find this discussion valuable. So thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. Welcome to 132 Problems. I am so excited today to have this guest. We have been trying to make this work for months and months, and I think between both of our busy schedules, it’s finally happening now, so I am so happy to be able to introduce you to Whitney Horning. Many of you already know her, so. So to bring to you a discussion with Whitney Horning, Whitney, I think I had started my podcast before I heard of Whitney. I didn’t hear of her until about April or May of this year and people started her name started coming out and um I had The harebrained idea that I wanted to put together sort of a discussion, a debate about Joseph’s polygamy because I was totally like, this is a mess. I can’t figure it out. I want to find the best people. So I reached out to Whitney to see if she would come, and she very kindly agreed and then that ended up not happening. So, um, but I did get the opportunity to talk to Whitney for several hours when my steak did a special. Devotional on polygamy and Whitney and Verne came and came to our house after and sat and talked and listened to me for hours and hours that night. And I just have to say, Whitney, I just, you are a gem, both you and Vern, just those who have I haven’t had the privilege of meeting her. She just exudes goodness and charity and love and gentleness and sincerity and kindness, and I just, Whitney is one of those like marvelous people that you feel so blessed to be able to know. So I’ll give you a quick introduction now that I’m, I’m thoroughly embarrassing her. Whitney, I believe you can correct me if I’m wrong, raised in the gospel generations back, went to BYU. You have the perfect Molly Mormon resume, graduated in, in, um, family development and counseling. Is that I, I have that wrong. You tell me exactly what it was.
[03:22] Whitney Horning: That’s correct.
[03:25] Michelle: Home and family science, that’s what we call it. That’s how we make it sound it sound important. And
[03:29] Whitney Horning: then emphasis in marriage and family counseling. So that’s where you get that from, yeah. So you’re right.
[03:34] Michelle: Perfect. OK. And then just lived your whole life, raised your four children, lived your whole life in the church, and what I loved finding out is how your path was very different from mine because you were so involved in genealogy and family history work and Daughters of the Utah Pioneers doing all of that history. That polygamy became more on your radar, as I understand it, right? And, um, and so I don’t want to um tell your story for you, but I do. Whitney wrote this book. Joseph Smith revealed a faithful telling, which is a gem. This is such an important book. I hope that people will really. Read and consider the things that are in this book. It’s so wonderful. I know that this was just in 2019, so just a little while before I met you. And then, um, recently this year, a second book about Hirum, it’s called Hirum Smith, A Prophet Unsung, and I hate to admit I haven’t read it yet. I’m so excited to read it. So yeah, so I’m really looking forward to that one and um because I think Hirum. Doesn’t get enough attention. He, we love Lord of the Rings. My husband is a Lord of the Rings junkie and just Samwise Gamge is one of my favorite characters, and I can’t help but think of Hiram in that same role, you know,
[04:54] Whitney Horning: like comparison, yeah,
[04:57] Michelle: yeah, and so I’m really excited to see him getting more focused because really he is like so much has been written about Joseph Smith that it’s, it’s wonderful to have more work being done on Hirum. I appreciate that. So anyway, welcome, Whitney. Did, is there anything important that I left out?
[05:13] Whitney Horning: No, just I’m so excited to be here finally doing this with you. And Vern and I feel the same way about you and your husband. Just such good, genuine people. And I, I think that with, um, so much coming out, especially in the last couple of years, about the, uh, truth of our, uh, history and the narrative of our history. But I think it’s just really important that people see that people like you and like me and Mark Curtis and Jeremy Hoops, so we’re we’re just truly, I think good genuinely good people, and we’re just trying to get to truth. You know, we don’t have, we don’t have um nefarious purposes that we just truly love God first and foremost, and then we love the restoration.
[06:04] Michelle: That’s, that’s so true. It’s interesting to me to see how much sort of fear and division there is with just with different people I’ve interviewed over time. There’s been so much pushback and that person is wicked and that and it’s like, wow, that’s so, that’s so interesting to me because that’s not how I approach it. I’m like, let’s talk to people and hear their ideas. I think most people are sincere, and then we can look at the ideas and see how they hold up rather than being I don’t know, rejecting ideas before we even hear them because of association or or whatever it may be. So yes, I love, I love what you’re doing. And I have to say part of how our journeys have been different because for me, I, when I have delved into the Joseph Smith history, it’s just this big tangled, bottomless pit. Uh, that’s how my experience has been, where I just like, I, I feel like my spiritual gifts go more toward the scriptures, and that’s where my study has mainly been. And every time I’ve tried to get into Joseph, it was like, and now there’s this source, and now there’s this source, and these people say this, and these, right? And so I kind of My journey was to sort of, I, I just gave a talk saying I’m anti- shelf, so it wasn’t that I put it on the shelf, but I was able to find peace in either way with, with Joseph. I had a really good conversation with a man who, um, he explained how he kind of started down the road of polygamy and he just says, Isn’t it strange? I didn’t know what was wrong and he expressed how that’s where he lost some of his spiritual protection and Was able to be excommunicated, and that gave me a way to think about Joseph Smith, like, OK, I know that polygamy isn’t of God, that I can know for sure, that I can prove that I have the all the evidence I need. But, um, if Joseph Smith was involved to any degree, maybe he got a, I guess I for a long time thought maybe he started to get a little bit tangled up in it and some, not, not like what happened later, but a little bit, and he lost his spiritual protection. That’s why he was allowed to be killed. I could, I could be there and be OK. And I could also be like, OK, he wasn’t involved at all, and he was taken from the saints because they were, some of them were involved, you know, I like, like I was able to settle in. So for me the focus really was what does God want, what does God teach? That’s what we need to know. But then the natural progression does lead to, and what about Joseph Smith, because it’s such a mess. So sorry, I just talked for way too long. You tell us now you’re how you happened into this.
[08:38] Whitney Horning: So I think very similar. I think for me, I really wanted to know, you know, there’s all these scriptures that tell us that God is no respecter of persons and that we are all of equal worth before him. And as an LDS woman, I didn’t know how those How they equated to polygamy because um Very much. I really enjoyed your podcast last week where you talk about uh The narrative that it is necessary for exaltation, because I very much grew up with that, that we don’t practice it now, but that it will be practiced in the next life, and that if you are um worthy of this celestial kingdom, you will be one wife of many to your very deserving husband. And so that just didn’t make sense to me how because I didn’t see anything. Good in polygamy and you know we we have the stories and then the traditions that, oh well, you know, just. You’ll understand it in the next life, and you’ll be able to live it in the next life, and if you’re truly socially worthy, you’ll, you won’t have any of the jealousies and the contentions and those problems that I saw in the polygamist families in my family history. And so, you know, I’d, I’d try to appease myself with all those um things and thoughts that LDS women are their heads are filled with. I was at Women in Relief Society. If I ever, if I dared to bring up something about how is this really going to look and function in the next life, I would get the, you know, the little pat on my hand, oh sister, just have faith. It’ll all make sense. And so it didn’t really, it really didn’t, and it really bothered me for years and Um, it was, I don’t know, maybe like 8 to 10 years ago, I really, really started wanting to get to the bottom of it and really understand how does God see his daughters and What place do we really have in God’s kingdom? And is me really what we are going to have. And I got to the point, um, before really diving into the scriptures like you did, I got to the point where I knelt down one day and for like a week, every day, I, you know, when the kids would I’d have a minute to myself, I’d kneel down and just pour my heart out to God and I Basically, at the end of that week, I made a pact with God. No, he, he didn’t make the pack back with me. Just like a loving father who just listens, or a loving father and mother, I tend to think of them as a united couple, both, you know, like moms and dads, talk to each other about what their kids are going through. And so I basically said, you know, I don’t see any good in it. I don’t understand how it works. I have tried to envision myself being A polygamous wife and how that would work with with Vern and I’s relationship, and I just don’t want any part of it. So I don’t want to hold him back. I’ll let him go on and he can inherit the such kingdom, but I, I don’t want any part of it. And so when we get to that point, you know, if it’s the judgment bar of God or where Whatever that point is, that that’s, that’s assigned to you or you inherited or whatever, however that looks, I will step aside and I am willing to go to the terreso kingdom so that he can go on and do whatever he needs to do. But I, I don’t want to be part of that kind of a, a family. And so I, and it was hard. Like I cried a lot. Like I really, really, I actually really like my husband a lot.
[12:29] Michelle: Yeah, I wanna pause on that for a minute because. I, I hope people, especially people who are like, oh, you’ll understand later, or, you know, can hear the weight of that. Here you are a faithful, obedient daughter of God in love with your husband, raising your family together, willing to say, I love you, I want to serve you and I will, I’m willing to make this sacrifice. It reminds me of the story I heard growing up about. The siblings and one of the siblings needed a blood transfusion, and they asked the younger sibling if they, if, if they would donate blood and the siblings said yes and then asked when they were going to die. You, you know, like, like we tell that story saying that willing that that’s basically what you said, what you did. Like, I will give Everything, and I do want to ask two questions. This is an OK time to interrupt that. The messages that polygamy will be in the in exaltation in heaven and Zion, were those taught in your family, in your culture, in seminary? Do you remember, was it just everywhere? Do you remember how, because I think a lot of people out of Maybe not growing up where and how we grew up, don’t relate. They’re shocked but when they hear that. So can you kind of tell that and then the other question, and then, well, yeah, answer that, and then I’ll ask the other question.
[13:47] Whitney Horning: I think it’s everywhere. I, I applaud your podcast last week. I mean, I love all of yours, but It really bothers me when people um dismiss our concerns by saying, oh, the church doesn’t teach that. They absolutely do. Um, I’ve got it in seminary, I got it at church, I got it in my family, my family history, um, and then especially the temple. And the temple has just recently, it’s not been too long that they’ve have relaxed their standards on women being sealed to more than one man, but up until just the last couple of years, um, if you like, Vern’s grandmother had been married 3 times and and her young widow, and then a middle aged widow, and then an elderly widow. And um she, because of that, like she wasn’t able to be sealed to those men. Like the policy was she had to die and all the men had to be dead, and then we could, and then then the ideas and she can, you know, choose, but it very much is in the temple, um, a man, we had a man in our ward when Vern and I are first married that would stand up and talk about how he was a, a polygamist with I think like 5 wives. And we’d all be like, what? The first time we met him, he’s like, well, yeah, all of them died. Like he, all of his wives said he had lost several, you know, and then as an elderly man, he would get married to elderly women, they would die and he just was so proud of that. So and very much if people are claimed, I think maybe the youth today, it’s not as emphasized, but You know, I, I, um, challenge any reporter to go ask President Nelson if he’ll be with both of his wives when they’re all deceased, cause he very much believes he will be, and they do too.
[15:46] Michelle: It’s really hard. It’s so, it’s so challenging because even I just got a message today that um from a woman who was reaching out to me. I so appreciate the messages I get, but she told me how her husband, her first husband, they, they, they divorced, but he would like polygamy bothered her so much and he would say things like, well, in the next like I’ll have a wife, in the next life, I’ll have a wife who is good at this, or in the next life, I’ll have a wife like this. So he, he could. Use this idea of polygamy to compare her to these theoretical wives that he would one day have just so destructive, so awful, and then I, I’ve heard, I, you know, I went to hear someone speak a couple of years ago and he talked about how his wife had weaknesses in these certain areas, but that was OK because in Zion, he could marry someone who was strong in these areas and how, you know, just this mindset that it allows for that I think good men. Or, or it just tends to make people not their their best selves, right? Because I don’t sense men being like, oh, in the next life you can have a husband who does this for you and who’s who’s good at fixing things cause I’m not, or you know what I mean like,
[17:03] Whitney Horning: like it’s so strangelip it like I love that right men who are really pro polygamy, I love to say to them, OK, well then I’m gonna have lots of husbands and they get so upset. You know, the site doesn’t
[17:16] Michelle: make
[17:16] Whitney Horning: sense. Yeah, well, and somehow only women need to learn to overcome jealousy. Right. Right.
[17:24] Michelle: And for me it’s not even about,
[17:26] Whitney Horning: it’s very prevalent, I think. And I think that maybe the church is trying to, um, downplay it a little bit, you know, they’ve tried to, because things weren’t quote unquote fair to women and just like that, like a woman who You know, had been sealed or been married more than once, couldn’t be sealed to all of those husbands. Like, so for me in this journey, so as the scriptures, going to the scriptures, I really wanted to know what does God think of his daughters, which oddly enough, I had made that decision to Give up Verne in the next life, but I still was on this quest to know how God felt about his daughters, and so reading scriptures and, and just like you, just going from the very beginning, I remember one day saying to Verne, if polygamy is to raise up seed. Why did Adam only have one wife? Like, wouldn’t the very, very beginning of this world be a really good time to get lots of babies born with lots of wives?
[18:28] Michelle: When that was their explicit commandment,
[18:31] Whitney Horning: yeah, and replenish, yes, and if their explicit commandment is. The two of them just stay together, right, they have no other, you know, to even put away your father and mother and to cleave on to your wife and none else. So.
[18:48] Michelle: And then it goes on from there that they did divide 2 and 2 in the land.
[18:52] Whitney Horning: Like it’s not until what I think like 9 generations later or 7 is. Yeah, who has two wives and did wickedly and spread his abominations.
[19:03] Michelle: The descendant of Cain, who was the following Master Mahan, like it’s, it’s not a good origination story for polygamy, how we How we ignore all of this
[19:14] Whitney Horning: is right? Yeah, so I think for the same thing you’ve done. I went to the very beginning and so as I worked my way through the scriptures, I came away very much knowing that the character of God is different than what the LDS Church teaches, because the LDS Church very much teaches that God has lots of wives.
[19:36] Michelle: Well, I want, I want to push on you on that just a little bit because I think this is my experience. I think that we have had many leaders who were very much opposed to polygamy. I know President Hinckley really, really separated us from polygamy. Um, Elder Cook, really, you know, it’s hard to be a leader of the church because we have so many people with so many ideas and And the old like patriarchs, you know, my grandfather and with these ideas that can’t be easily budged and they’re trying to keep everyone together. I know that there have been many that have really tried to minimize it, downplay it, like, like wished it had never happened. I really have that sense. I think that I think our current leaders are maybe a little bit different because both of them have. Two eternal wives, which another thing I wanted to anyway, I just, I, I wanna be like like I’m still active and faithful in the church and I and I know you’re still a member, and I know we both have a lot of love for the church, and I just, I feel so much sort of sympathy and charity to trying to make this all work because for me what polygamy really hits that is the idea that the prophet can never lead us astray, which ironically grew directly out of polygamy, right? That’s where that came from. And that’s really sort of one of our pet doctrines that that we haven’t yet figured out how to make that work. For me, it works perfectly. For me, we’ve dropped everything else, Brigham Young Tot. We can drop this one too, right? I feel yeah, right, and, and we can recognize how that was said and why and if we, if we could. See that that that idea of prophetic infallibility really was an error that came about because of exceptionally stressful circumstances and stressful times. If we could let that go, it would solve so many problems. I feel like that’s like the church has bled so many members in part because of the false expectation that we were all raised up in of prophetic infallibility. And I think that’s actually one of our more dangerous, most dangerous false traditions.
[21:46] Whitney Horning: Yeah.
[21:48] Michelle: Yeah, and I,
[21:49] Whitney Horning: I think, I think our leaders today, I mean, we have, we have so much compassion because they were raised in the exact same church we were. And they were raised, I mean, we, we tend to think that they’re like all knowing and they’re not, and, and a lot of them don’t know the church history either. I mean, they, they’re businessmen and doctors and doing careers and
[22:13] Michelle: having heavy church callings. They don’t have time to be historians,
[22:17] Whitney Horning: yeah, yeah, and so I have tremendous compassion because I don’t know everything. I don’t know everything about church history or everything, every little doctrine that might have been strangely taught for a while and then disavowed. You know, I know like when you talk about President Hinckley, who was one of my favorites, um, he, I think in an interview they asked him about, you know, Becoming gods and he’s like, you know, that’s not something we really know much about. And I think he was speaking truthfully, you know, you go back to Hiram Smith, and there’s a letter that he’s, he writes to the men of China Creek who are thinking that, you know, they’re, they write to hire him and say, hey, if a man with a certain priest that could have as many wives as he wants. And in that letter he says that’s not taught here, that’s not true, but then he makes a statement that then pro polygamists used to say, oh, he was prevaricating because he said, he says, leave the making of gods alone, those are the mysteries, leave them alone. Well, that’s because Brigham turned in becoming a god turned it into polygamy. But Joseph and Hirum taught that becoming a god was something that Joseph says, that’s what eons beyond passing through the veil. You know, working out your salvation and climbing the lad, Jacob’s ladder is like eons of time and right now, just go be a faithful husband and wife and have one spouse, right? So, We had people that turned teachings into polygamy, and then we now here handed this this muddy morass of information that we’re now trying to figure out like God’s character. And so I love that you’ve gone, OK, let’s go back to the scriptures. Let’s go back to the foundation and figure it out from the scriptures, and that’s exactly what we should all be doing.
[24:12] Michelle: That’s I just read that letter from Hiram this morning actually because I, I know exactly what you mean he’s like because he says leave these things alone. You know, I never told you to teach any of this. People take that to me and see and and I agree with you completely. He was saying, hey, you’re in so far over your head, like, leave it alone, you don’t have a clue. He says, basically you don’t have a clue. None of us have a clue, right? And one thing, even with the change of the, um, sorry, I’m going back to something that you touched on before, because we’ve changed. I didn’t know we had changed the temple policy to allow women to be sealed to more than one spouse before death. I thought
[24:50] Whitney Horning: we still had that. I’m sure that when I was writing my book, the policy still was that she could only be sealed to one until they were all deceased. And then once that’s grandmother had just passed away. And all, you know, obviously all of her husband’s and because she was a 3 times widow, widow, yeah, widow. And, but I think I remember, and I haven’t gone and looked it up because, quite frankly, I have, I’m not in that situation to go worry about if I can be still to more than one man. Um, and so I have, but I’m pretty sure somebody told me that they had softened that.
[25:27] Michelle: OK,
[25:28] Whitney Horning: I’ve heard that people look it up.
[25:30] Michelle: OK, so yeah, that is something maybe someone can respond in the comments and let us know cause I have heard a few cases of that happening, but I thought the policy was still the same. But the thing that I find interesting is people tell me that policy as in, look, it’s OK, we’ve solved it, it’s just fine. And I’m, I’m like, what? OK, the problem with a woman living, having to choose which husband to be sealed to, all we’re saying is, oh good, she can take that problem to the next life. She doesn’t have to choose now, but she will have to choose later. Right? And it’s still choosing, which and, and, and yet men are have this idea of how it works. So I just, I cannot see with how God talks about widows. I did an episode on widows, but how God talks about widows that we would have a policy that would like build up the most powerful men on the backs of widows. It’s so inverted from anything that God does.
[26:24] Whitney Horning: I, so in my journey, so this is what I’m gonna say next is I think the, the most important book if you’re just starting down this journey and you’re trying to understand whether you’re male or female, and you’re trying to understand how LDS women in general, obviously there’s always outliers, but in general, feel about polygamy, you a must read is Carolyn Pearson’s The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. And to read it together, my husband had always jokingly would talk about um he would say, why would I want to do polygamy? I can hardly handle you. And like, you know, I give him a run for his money. I’m a pretty, pretty outspoken wife. And so that was always our joke, but it always still kind of hurt me. And because deep down, I was like, well, I am kind of a little bit of a difficult wife. So is he wishing, you know, for that little soft spoken, you know, sweeter little woman, you know, that, and so, is that what he wants in the next life? You know, he kind of was always there. And so I got that book and read it out loud with him. And he, he had hit so many times when he was crying that he was like, as a, as a man who never has desired lygamy, it’s never, so he’s never been something he’s wanted. He’s always been terrified the church would reintroduce it. Um, for him, he never understood what women really feel like. And so it’s just a beautiful experience to read that together, and for him to come away with just so much more compassion and just the way she writes it in those stories that people send in. I mean, that’s just a, a must read. Um, obviously, the scriptures figured out in the scriptures too, but If you really like because I just have heard so many, like one of the reasons, one of the impetuses for me writing my book, because I’d come, I’ve got I’ve gone through the scriptures, I’d read Carolyn Pearson’s book. I and then I was like, OK, so now I need to grapple with Joseph. Like what does this mean? Because I, I now know God that is not God’s plan. So what does that mean for him? And so then I started doing my deep dive into the historical records with Joseph, and so when I came to the conclusion that Joseph had not practiced it. Um, and wanted to write that, I, because I wanted to free women, especially, um, from this burden. Um, it just, for me, it just kind of came full circle that it isn’t, it was, it was, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on how it came into the restoration, um, but I would just say, I, I just would hear so many men and be like, well, who cares about polygamy? Because they’re men who don’t desire it, and I’m like, because it does affect your wives and it affects your daughters, and it’s there’s, it’s just this underlying current. That even if it’s not taught outright like it was to me in my youth, if it’s not taught that way today, there’s still, I mean, it’s still part of our history, it’s still kind of this underlying like, is it part of us, isn’t it part of this kind of an idea and so. I think it matters to women. It matters to the people who have left the church because they believe Joseph did it, and they have, they and a lot of times those people will leave everything. They will leave God, um, not just Joseph and the restoration, but they’ll also, you know, just shakes them so much. And so it, it, I wish polygamy wasn’t kind of the gateway, but I feel like in a lot of ways it is, it is the millstone around the church’s neck. It is the stumbling block that um affects marriages, it affects um People’s faith in the restoration, it just affects so much. And so one of the beautiful things that I’ve, um, been really grateful for the people who reach out and let me know what the book meant to them. And I’ve had women reach out that say, oh, it’s freed me from this, you know, burden, but I also have had some men reach out, which has been so beautiful to me. Men reach out to me and say, my marriage is better now, and I love my wife more fully and I’m trying to be a better husband. And I, that wasn’t something I was writing it for. And so that’s been, that’s been really beautiful when people let me know that that’s affected them in that way. But I do like, I felt like even me like reading Carolyn Pearson’s book, and Vern and I have really been able to have a really, really open, vulnerable dialogue. about how I felt about it. Um, I’ve, I realized there was a part of me that wasn’t allowing myself to fully trust and love him because I expected him to be giving away his heart to lots of other women in the future. And so it was really, I didn’t realize I’ve been doing that. I thought, oh, we have this great marriage, but it was just something that I didn’t realize was there for me. And so when, so I really, I loved your series with Carolyn Pearson and just applaud her courage, her bravery and bringing and that’s just a really important book. So if you’re just somebody just starting. And you’ve been just listening to Michelle, obviously getting the scriptures like she’s done, but um read Carolyn Pearson’s book, and if your spouse is willing to read it together, I think it just really opens up some really important dialogue between a husband and wife.
[32:07] Michelle: I love, OK, some of what I took, I love everything you just said, but part of what I took from you talking about the approach to marriage and the responses from men because I also, I hear from a lot of men and it’s so gratifying, you know, they, I think it connects with them in a different way than it connects with women, you know, but, um, because with women there’s this desperate, this kind of desperate healing and with men it’s this awakening that’s really, really beautiful. But if you think about. What marriage is and how God established it really polygamy creates. Kind of a heart, an adulterous heart, because when a man is kind of like that man who said to his wife in the next life, I’ll have a wife like this and a wife like this, or if any man is thinking in that way at all, it is an adulterous heart rather than being 100% invested in this. Partnership to make it the very best you can. How can I learn as much as possible from my wife and serve her and be served by her, right? Like, like we have this one precious marriage. How can we make it be the best versus, oh, well, this marriage is lacking that, but that’s OK because I’ve got so many things on the back burner, right? And that’s, that’s, I hadn’t thought of it quite in that way before.
[33:25] Whitney Horning: Well, and what’s what’s been really interesting because I, I have heard a lot of, um, I have heard some men kind of put down other men, like, oh, you know, polygamy just like you said, allows that adulterous heart. And it opens men up to, you know, scoping out other women or, you know, giving it into adultery and, and that maybe their, their, their experience, maybe those men have had that experience in my marriage. It has been single women, and it’s been older single women who even like when we were first married, there was a woman in her 70s who absolutely adored and idolizeder who was always calling him to come over and fix stuff for her at her house, and he was always taking care of the widows in our ward. But like, I wonder I remember saying to him, these women like are mean to me, and they would put me down or they would chastise me and they tell me I wasn’t good enough for him. And I didn’t put it together until I was writing this book, like looking back on our experience, all these other, other times or other single women who would always ask them to come give blessings or, you know, and I realized that because of the teachings of the church, and especially the teaching that nothing will be withheld from righteous single women. They also assume they gotta find a man, so they were looking for a man, and they were like, well, here’s one that has a good marriage. He treats his wife well. Hey, I, this is who I’m gonna make sure to connect with them. So he chooses me in the next life. And so we had times, like, there were even times when he would say, hey, you’ve got to help me, like, we gotta put boundaries of like why I’m really uncomfortable that they’re always asking me to come over and paint something, and they weren’t. Being adulterers themselves, like there was never anything inappropriate um in that in in in a moral sense, but just Asking for him to come do a lot of things, which is fine, but they never wanted me around, or if I came around, they weren’t kind to me and so it was just this weirdness that I’d be like, well, you know, I’m like we’re married.
[35:32] Michelle: So what a strange experience.
[35:35] Whitney Horning: Yeah, so my experience has been that because of this teaching in the church, it really has it, I, I just feel bad like there’s just really desperate women who I feel like, you know, they’re not, they’re not able to get married in this life and so they’ve almost appeased them so well that’s OK. I’m gonna scope out who in the next life I can go tie myself to, you know.
[35:59] Michelle: Oh, that’s so interesting. I’ve I’ve heard a very different perspective from the single women I’ve engaged with being like, excuse me, I don’t need to be a second wife, you know, or a 3rd or 4th, but I can see what you’re saying and what again, what it does is it really destroys the sanctity of marriage because it allows, I hear a lot of defenses of polygamy. I engage quite a bit with defenders of polygamy, and one thing they’ll say is it allows women to marry the man they choose, right? And it’s like, so what you are teaching is that women should see not a couple as God sees, and as God ordained them a couple, let no man put asunder what God hath joined together and Cleveland, you know, your God creates these unions. That’s what a marriage is. It’s the entire community saying we recognize the sanctity of this union. It’s no Longer Whitney. It’s no longer Vern. It’s Whitney and Vern, right? When you talk about your kids, like my oldest son, it’s Christian and Kara. It’s Lincoln and Sadie. It’s not just, you know, and what, what you’re doing is what you’re talking about is like polygamy enables both the man to think of himself not as a married man, as part of the sacred union, right? And it allows women to think of that man as a potential mate and right or and and not have to have any regard for the wife. That’s really like really and that’s just so cool to me to think about cause I mean I’ve thought about this in so many ways, but that’s kind of a new insight of a way that polygamy really does like just demean what God created the the sacredness of marriage.
[37:30] Whitney Horning: Well, I’ve even heard a, a man who’s, cause I also have engaged with some practicing polygamists and some pro polygamists, and one who was trying to convince me of the beauty of polygamy, um, he, he teaches that, um, any woman who’s smart will look for a married man who has a good marriage because that will, they’ll know they’re gonna have a good marriage. Right, and he’s,
[37:59] Michelle: he’s good material. He’s trained,
[38:02] Whitney Horning: yeah, yeah, and just, uh, yeah, but you’re exactly right and It just marriage is so incredibly sacred that I just, I, I understand how Satan comes in, and that’s one of the ways he destroys the unity in marriage is introducing anything, you know, introducing, um, addictions or workaholics or anything that comes between the unity of a husband and wife, but one of one of many ways is the idea of polygamy.
[38:38] Michelle: In a way, as I’ve thought about it, polygamy is, it is diabolically brilliant because you silence and demean all the women, right? You, you put them under a rock, which I think the adversaries has tried to do from the beginning. I think, you know, the, the disappearance of the feminine and divine, the disappearance of women’s voices and communities has been, you know, has not served God’s plan, right? And then, and then at the same time, like it’s not a coincidence to me that Jacob’s sermon and Jacob 2 and 3. It is about pride and then about polygamy because they go hand in hand every time like for a man to think these prideful thoughts of I’m going to be God and I’m going to have endless, you know, the, the women are a means to my end to my glory, like, you know, the, the crown of glory and the women are all the jewels in it. That’s why the prairie dresses with the FLDS, right? That like the pride that comes with that. It, it’s crazy and then when you engage with people, so often when I engage with pro polygamists or polygamists, I rarely get to engage with the women. I almost always engage with the men. The women don’t seem to have much of a voice often. And there is just, and, and this also is the case with like people who defend polygamy in the church. There is this arrogance, sort of this, well, it’s only for the most righteous, so you don’t need to worry about it if you don’t want to. And if it when you are it’s this, the emperor has no. And we don’t even have to talk about that fact because we’re so far above you that we’re able to see what you’re not able to see, right? It’s this like they, they don’t engage on topics, they just save themselves from having to engage through pride, just this deep, blatant pride that then If you do say something that makes them feel threatened, then they start insulting and, you know, there are some people that can be really, really just mean rather than, let’s just talk about the ideas. And I find that those things really do go together. Has that been your experience?
[40:39] Whitney Horning: Yeah, and I, I, you know, when I was getting into really writing this book, I, I kept asking myself, how could the women go along with this? I mean, there’s, there’s, um, if you read through the Nabu Relief Society minutes. There’s a lot of, um, Joseph and Emma would show up and and teach the women, and a lot of people don’t realize, you know, because we talk about the faith, hope and charity, about service, which is all beautiful and good with the relief society. But one of the key components to organizing it was to help bolster the virtue of the women. It was
[41:17] Michelle: because of the Bennetts in town.
[41:19] Whitney Horning: Yes, exactly, exactly, and so that was one of their key components was to bolster the virtue. Well, there’s stories of whenever Emma wasn’t around the women sitting and talking about polygamy and And, you know, discussing it and is it real and who’s doing it and should we do it kind of thing. Well, I would ask myself like, why would a good faithful woman who want to get in, why would anybody want to be a 2nd and 3rd and 4th wife? Be a first wife is hard enough. Like, why would you want to be all the other stuff? And it’s interesting because they used it as the pride. Like there’s there’s letters, um, about Brigham Young and Hebrewy Kimball teaching. Um, young girls, 1516, 17 year old girls that if you, if whoever like this was this secret sacred thing, they were trying to be like Abraham, and whoever the first women were, who were faithful enough to get involved, would have the highest exaltation. And that’s, that right there is purely working on your pride and not trusting that God has a plan and, and, um, for every single one of us, right? It was this this is
[42:36] Michelle: introducing this
[42:37] Whitney Horning: a few little thrones and if you want. That throne, you know, because God isn’t big enough or good enough to have a throne for all of us. Right? Only a few. And so this is supply and demand, you know, hurry and join me and become my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th wife, and then your exaltation will be even greater. And so there was a lot of, um, playing up to the women’s pride that they, oh, you’re more righteous than other women because you’ve been able to accept, they called it the principle. You know, and so it is, it’s a lot of um pride, and I, I think that that, I think though there were also stories I’ve read, there were the other, there were women who just, you know, the adulterous affairs and polygamy made them legitimate. So you, you know, you had the gamut. I mean, not everybody fit each little idea of
[43:27] Michelle: right, right. There were also women who were just faithful and believing and naive, like I was, like I used to be.
[43:33] Whitney Horning: I think I would have been, I would have been if I would have been raised in that community, absolutely, you know, that’s,
[43:39] Michelle: I just wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to serve God so much that I mean, I still do. It’s just, and that’s so interesting because how you talked about them manipulating the girls, introducing competition, scarcity and competition. So it’s both pride and fear, which are like telltale signs of the adversary, right? Whenever there’s scarcity and fear and competition, you know you’re not. You’re not dealing with the true spirit of God, cause that’s the opposite of what Jesus Christ provides for us. It’s fascinating. So, OK, I want to pivot so you can talk about, so um Your research is just astounding. I, I want to ask you a couple of different questions if that’s OK as we go. So to kind of, um, give the devil his due, you know, the polygamist devil, what this is really my feeling on it. I think that there are so many people who are so certain, like, like they can be one way or the other. Like you’re ridiculous to even question that Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. I take a I get a lot of that. But then I also get a lot of, oh, I’m glad you finally see the light, or it’s so obvious. I can’t believe you ever believed Joseph did this. And, and I, I feel like it’s the same side, two sides of the same coin. Like part of the reason that I think you were so aware of polygamy being a problem, whereas all of those men and women just patted you on the, on the hand or patting you on the head. It’s OK, little woman, when you have more faith, you’ll be OK with it. Part of the problem was they were still naive. They hadn’t read what you had read. They didn’t know all of the stories that you knew. I, you know, like naivety, I think there’s there’s a lot of reason that the church for so long didn’t want us to read the Journal of Discourses, didn’t want us to really know our history, right, because it’s easier to believe these things when we have less information. And so, so I think that really it is that I don’t think that God makes the truth about Joseph’s polygamy any more obvious than God makes the truth of the Book of Mormon. Like it really has to come to a personal seeking because you can make a case. Do you know what I mean? And so I guess. So to give the devil his due, I want to know what things for you have been kind of the hardest. Like, like, I know there’s all of the late conspiracy, all of the, everyone saying what Joseph did, but for me, there were some pieces of concurrent evidence that I was like, that doesn’t look good and I can’t just ignore it. Did did you have any like that that you had to work through or figure out?
[46:17] Whitney Horning: Yeah, so one of one of the reasons that I really wanted to study this and get into it, so I had all the years of family history, seeing all the um polygamist marriages that broke up, lots and lots of divorces and they don’t like to talk about, um,
[46:32] Michelle: very few. I have an upcoming episode on how in polygamy divorce is considered a benefit.
[46:38] Whitney Horning: It,
[46:39] Michelle: it, it was, it was hard, but it was OK because divorce was easy. Oh, good. OK, sorry, keep going.
[46:44] Whitney Horning: Oh, you’re exactly right. I mean, just all over the place. And so I kind of, you know, had this sense, and then I would, you know, go to my Daughters of Utah Pioneer meetings and just want to throw up as they were telling these stories of these faithful men who let their wife, oh, sorry, let their wife and their children here running the farm. He’d go off on a mission, come back 3 years later, she’s been destitute. And he pulls up with a 16 year old Norwegian girl who can’t speak a lick of English, and that’s his new wife, right,
[47:19] Michelle: who’s pregnant or has a baby in her arms,
[47:22] Whitney Horning: right? And so I just um I just couldn’t see God in any of this, right? And then at about the same as I’m kind of trying to grapple with this, I, and I’m, you know, reading the scriptures and I’m coming to the conclusion that this is, this is so clear to me in the scriptures that God doesn’t condone it. Um, or command it. I mean, you know, nowhere could I find where Abraham was commanded to take Hagar or Jacob, right? So no commandment, just, just the um philosophies of men or the traditions of their culture or whatever. So At that same time, my kids are my oldest children are starting in their teen years and they’re starting to come home. Quite often telling us of um. Adults who they interact with, um, whether it be through their athletics or their activities or or just different ways, who were leaving the church because Joseph was a pedophile and then whatever. So that is just kind of when some of the gospel topic essays started coming out. And so I went and read some of them, and especially on a polygamy and he’s saying they’re saying, you know, Just drives me crazy to even repeat it, but, you know, Helen Mark Kimball, just shy of her 15th birthday, you know, several months shy, and I’m like, in other words, 14. Like, just call it what it is. She’s 14, right? And so we’ve got all these friends and people we know leaving the church over this.
[49:03] Michelle: Next time your 15 year old steals the car and goes out and drive, you can tell the cop, oh, she’s just shy of her 16th birthday, right? How would that go over? Sorry,
[49:13] Whitney Horning: right,
[49:14] Michelle: no, it’s OK. She’s, she’s not 15, she’s just shy of 16, 4 months away.
[49:20] Whitney Horning: Yeah, no, no big deal. But you know, then you get all the apologetics telling you, well, in that culture 14 was, you know, lots of people got married at 14, so then I started, well, I’m a big family history person and I’m like nobody in my family history has got married at 14.
[49:37] Michelle: Emma Smith was 21. If 14 was normal, 21 would have been an old maid,
[49:41] Whitney Horning: right? And yes, and I think the youngest was my 4th great grandmother in Navu, who was 18, and she was marrying a guy who was 32, his wife had just died and left him with 7 children, and her oldest was 14. So like his oldest is 14, so she’s 18 and now mom to a 14 year old. But still, and then, and I at the time, I have a 14-year-old daughter, and I’m looking at her and thinking, I’ve got to figure this out. Like this is really upsetting to me because if this is true, so you know, a lot of our historians now, um, I think Brian Hays himself. Um, Richard Bushman, there’s a lot of them that came to the conclusion that Joseph married them but didn’t have sexual relations. Again, then he’s breaking his own commandment to raise up seed. I mean, like, this just doesn’t make sense. There’s just so many things that just conflict and they don’t make sense. And, and so for me that that was, I thought it was pretty upsetting. I mean, personally, now where I’m at today. Can I, can I
[50:49] Michelle: interrupt you? I’m sorry. Remember what you’re saying. I just want to point out that it’s so interesting because the assumptions, there is zero evidence of sex one way or the other, but the assumption, I’m, I’m really excited. I’m going to be talking to Todd Compton soon and it’s interesting to hear how he just assumes marriage means sex unless she’s 14. Right, like, like, like that’s so strange to me. And, and so, so when, when Brian Hales or Richard Bushman, all they are like, yeah, probably not sex with the 14 year olds because why, but with all of the other women because why there’s no evidence anywhere, right? So sorry, continue. Yeah,
[51:28] Whitney Horning: there’s actually a lot of evidence that he didn’t uh. When Joseph the 3rd comes out to Utah and is interviewing people, um, there’s a guy who says, yeah, my mom claims she was the wife of Joseph, and people have asked her, the saints in 1850 and 1860 in Utah knew there were no children from Joseph and Hyrum. It was a topic they discussed. Why are there no children? Because Brigham sure having children, he was sure having children. It was a topic they actually discussed, and this young man, so he went and asked his mother. Why are there no children? And she said, because Joseph respected us. So if she was really married to him, she was saying he didn’t have sex with us cause he knew that give us a baby and then and we were um we weren’t legally married. So
[52:24] Michelle: she’s fascinating, right? So
[52:26] Whitney Horning: the saints knew it back then, here we are, you know, 100 and something years later having to use DNA. And
[52:33] Michelle: well it’s because it got so messy.
[52:35] Whitney Horning: Yeah, it’s, it’s, and I, I’m with you where I think. I don’t think it’s clear cut either way. I don’t. I think it is so muddy. I think you can do enough research to come to a conclusion and make a choice for yourself, but I don’t think it’s cut and dried. I think that the people who say, oh, it’s so obvious. And the people who say it’s so obvious the other way, either like you said, the, the same side of this or the two sides of the same coin, I don’t think it’s obvious. I think it is a muddy mess. For me, when I got studying it, I was increasingly upset at how often Joseph spoke out against it. Mhm. I’m OK with a couple times and I’m saying I was lying for the Lord, but over and over and over again, court cases, taking out lawsuits for slander against people, speaking out against it, and writing affidavits in the newspaper. But I finally got to the point where I, I was like, I don’t think I can, and that’s where I was gonna say earlier, the way the apologetics talk about Joseph today. I think to myself, you, I wish the people doing those YouTube’s podcasts, whatever, could step back to being either somebody who’s questioning or somebody who’s not even a member and listen with their ears, because I would want nothing to do with that Joseph Smith. The way they paint him, I would want nothing to do with that type of man. And how could that type of man do anything worthwhile for God? It just doesn’t compute.
[54:18] Michelle: It’s so fascinating to me that the church apologists have the exact same Joseph Smith as the most Joseph Smith hating CES letter reading post-Mormons, right? It’s the exact same story. We just in here, like, like for me, I’m like, OK, I can make sense of the FLDS mindset. I can get in there and go, OK, I understand the talks that they’re listening to and the consistency. I, I can make sense of that. I think that it’s just terribly sadly wrong, but I understand it. I can, I can make sense of the Joseph Smith was a pedophile and a liar and adulterer and a hypocrite, like the all of the people who leave and then hate Joseph Smith. I can make sense of that too. I think it’s also terribly sadly wrong and there are things that are hard to explain in that mindset, like the Book of Mormon, among others, you know, like that’s not an accurate. presentation if you really get into Joseph’s life, but I can understand it. The weakest case of all is the current LDS narrative. It’s the very weakest one that it’s like, it depends on the ignorance of the people. We have to actually lie about what was taught, what was done, and then as it comes out, we try to soft pedal it the best we can, carefully worded denials and just shy of 15 and never said to be required for exaltation reasons were never like all of these, like, like it’s not based in truth there’s no consistency to it. And that’s where what makes me so sad because people go these two directions because there’s nothing here to rely on.
[56:01] Whitney Horning: It’s right. You’re exactly right. And um, I’ve listened to some of those recently, and it’s very frustrating to me because they, there’s even a little book out called I think it’s um let’s talk about polygamy. I mean, they’re introducing even even the saints book, they’re introducing. A new story that has zero factual basis to it, 0 sources to back it up. It’s
[56:31] Michelle: zero scriptural foundation and zero no logical consistency.
[56:35] Whitney Horning: Mhm. Yeah. And so, and like you said, the word assumptions, they’re they’re creating a Narrative based on their assumptions because I don’t even know why. Like, I ask myself all the time, why do they still need to keep supporting the idea that Joseph did polygamy? Like, why can’t, I don’t understand why they can’t just say, you know, he spoke out against it his entire life. He just before he dies, he actually, I mean, I know like Lindsay Hanson Park has a podcast where she has some historians on who say there was a grand jury that was put together in Carthage and we don’t know what they decided. Yes, we do. Joseph spoke about it in general conference. He talked about the grand jury. He talked about the new prophet William Law, who was trying to charge him with adultery and that he could prove them all perjurors. He absolutely spoke about these things. In fact, the basis for DNC 132, the basis for that is a little tiny revelation that Joseph, so he writes it down purportedly on July 12th, and on July 16, 18
[57:46] Michelle: 1844, 1843, right? Let’s clarify that it wasn’t 1831.
[57:54] Whitney Horning: 13, he gets up and he teaches it to the people. And it’s the idea. He’d been pondering. On the scripture, and I think you mentioned this one and maybe your one last week about the, the seven women, that the, the saddus, I think, coming to Christ and trying to trip, trip him up and saying if a woman marry, and then he died, she married the brother, and then he died and then she married until 7 times. Who is is she in the next life? And he says, neither are they married nor given in marriage, but as angels unto God. So that’s the scripture Jose is pondering, trying to understand that when he receives a revelation. That in the beginning with Adam and Eve, God performed that marriage. And that marriage was to last for all eternity, but the man rejected God and his offer of marriage, and so marriage fell outside God’s rule and outside his kingdom, and that men had no authority. In the world to perform marriages. So that’s what God, that’s what Christ is saying to them. It doesn’t matter how many times she’s married, you guys don’t have any authority from God to do the kind of marriage that can last. So you’re just gonna be angels. That was like, that’s what he’s saying to them.
[59:05] Michelle: OK, is that, is that in this book? Do you have, I want to tell people, do you have that revelation in this book? Because this, I’m, I missed it. You must have it,
[59:15] Whitney Horning: but I don’t know if I fully understood it yet at the time. I might touch on it because it’s in his, he and his, um, when he stands up after the expositor in, um, June of 1844, and he stands up at the city council, and he said, Yes, there was a revelation. It had nothing to do with polygamy. I was pondering on this scripture. OK, that’s where it comes from authority. So I write it more. It’s more in my Hirum book. I explain it better on the chapter on
[59:42] Michelle: Hirum gave a talk saying the same thing. This is just about eternity. This is,
[59:46] Whitney Horning: yeah. And it’s basically just saying that all covenants, bonds, obligations entered into in this world and at death. But if you enter into them with somebody an authorized representative of God or God Himself, the Holy Spirit of promise, then they can have the potential to last beyond. And that’s all the revelation was, and you can see a little bit of that in 132. There’s a little tiny bit of that. That’s there. And so Joseph did teach it. He gets up on July 16th, and he does teach the idea that we can’t enter into, um, a covenant or a, a bond or an obligation with our spouses. And so the idea that Hiram and Joseph were teaching the people, is that all, all, we call them ceilings today. It was the, you know, it’s the, the seal in your forehead, the, the seal of Elijah, the seal of Jesus Christ, um, Joseph and Hiram were Holy Spirits of promise, and Hiram, that’s in DNC 124, he’s called the Holy Spirit of promise and told that whatever he um finds on earth will be bound in heaven. So Hiram was going around and telling people if you like each other and you want to keep associating, all it does is lets you continue to basically hang out together, you know, like, like I don’t, you know, like I don’t think we really fully understand it because they weren’t allowed to fully teach it, because the people never got, I think that’s the fullness they would have gotten in the Navi Temple had it ever been completed. It never Was the fullness never was restored. And so we really don’t know what that meant. And I think that, um, Brigham and Heber and their friends took that and turned it into a way for them to marry everyone wanted
[1:01:41] Michelle: to continue what it sounds like they were already doing, right? Like they it
[1:01:46] Whitney Horning: didn’t?
[1:01:48] Michelle: They were able to combine sort
[1:01:50] Whitney Horning: of.
[1:01:51] Michelle: What? Say that again.
[1:01:52] Whitney Horning: I, so it just made them sound smart like they knew what they were doing.
[1:01:56] Michelle: Right, it gave them a spiritual eternal justification for this, the polygamy that was already showing up with John Bennett and others. Yeah, that’s,
[1:02:07] Whitney Horning: but I really don’t think we understand it and I just even, you know, I just, I think it’s something that all we have in the scriptures is to, to get whatever, I think that when whatever we get in the LDS temple, I think is an expectation. I think we’re just given an expectation, just like even a baptism, when hands are laid on your head and you’re told to receive the Holy Ghost. It doesn’t give that to you. It’s giving you the expectation for you to go and get that. And so I think in the even in the LDS Temple, it used to be when Vern and I were married, that it was taught more that way, that this is an expectation, um, and you need to to make your marriage the kind that Christ would. want to honor to continue. Um, but just a few years ago we went to a ceiling, one of the last ones we’ve been to in the LDS um church and The um sealer was a member of the 70, and he stood up and he told this young couple, early 1920, says you’ve made it. You have made it. And I thought they haven’t even had their first fight as a married couple yet. Right? And you tell them, you know, but like Elder Iying understands, he stood up in conference and said he and his wife were still looking forward to having the Holy Spirit of promise seal them. So I think these are, I think there’s truth and there’s so much goodness in The doctrines and teachings of the LDS Church, but I think we absolutely need to take what we think we know and we’ve got to go back to scripture and find out if it’s, if it’s been some philosophies of men have been added to it. Or what how God really taught it and how what God really has in store for his sons and daughters.
[1:04:05] Michelle: OK, I actually, so I wanna, I wanna respond with a couple of things cause I love what you’re saying. I for a long time have tried to understand what ordinances really are, right? And My best explanation a while ago was that they are symbolic invitations into actual events, right? Like showing the pattern and because it’s like you said, it’s like this young couple getting married in the temple and all of a sudden like they got buried in the right building by the right people, so now they get to leapfrog over all those years of learning and development and And I really agree that we understand so much less than we think we understand. I think it’s a tactic that happens just in this life to really simplify, dumb things down, make them very, very small and simple, and then teach it that way and then assume we have full comprehension, right? And um. And I think that that’s what’s happened with polygamy and and eternal marriage and ceilings. And I, and like I want to do another episode on eternal ceilings because comparing what the orig the original polygamist leaders of the church meant by that to what we mean by it now is completely different and I want to trace out how that developed, how that changed. But if anyone’s feeling like threatened or defensive or, you know, I just think. It’s been so good to recognize that before we can learn anything, we have to realize we don’t know it, right? When we already have all of the answers, God can’t teach us anything. So if it feels unsettling to be told, wait, you’re saying, yeah, you know, like I think this idea of, I don’t think we know nearly as much as we know, is actually exciting because it means, look how much there is that we can seek and that we can learn and that we can be taught. Yes, and yes. It should ideally. Yeah, like the same way if we’re so certain that Joseph did this or didn’t do this, it’s hard for us to relate to people who don’t agree with us, but it also means there’s less that we can learn, right? Like I think, well, OK, so can I, one of the things I liked in your book, and, and you know, we’re just having a conversation, so if you want to bring something up, go right ahead. I don’t want to control the discussion, but one thing I love is. How, um, you just continually invite like I it feels to me like you acknowledge the controversy and just say, here’s this source, here’s this source. Who do you think is more valid, right? Like, like it really feels like an invitation to just take it to the Lord step by step. And one thing for me, there have been a couple of different things that were kind of those like. Like just hooks that kept me from being able to be to believe that Joseph wasn’t involved to some extent. I knew he wasn’t doing anything like what Brigham Young was doing. I was teaching. It didn’t, it doesn’t make sense, but I was like, but what, what did happen? Because for me, if there were women sealed as wives in eternity, that’s not OK. That’s a betrayal of Emma, you know, you know, like if this like, like I couldn’t make that OK either. And so it was when I was reading, I was actually on an airplane reading your book and I was reading about the Fannie Alger things and I know there are different ways to say. I grew up my whole life saying Fanny Alger until I think Lindsay Hans Park started saying Alger, so now I think either goes, but I just say, say Alger because that’s what we always have said. Yeah, that’s, that’s what it always was and so um. So with her, you know, the sources are, I, I don’t think that’s the strongest case, but this is just one experience I had where I’m trying to kind of let people know, you know, how to, how we can approach these things. And I, I just was like, OK, Emma was upset about something that seems clear. Oliver was upset about something that seems clear. It’s not clear what it was, right? It’s that, that’s not clear. And so I did. I just like on that airplane just was like, Lord, can I ask about this? Can I, can I ask? Can I understand? Can you tell me? I wasn’t there, you know. And I was told yes, ask. So I, I was like, can you help me understand what the situation was because there was something, and that makes me uncomfortable. You know, if the profit of the restoration. There was something and and it was such an interesting experience just all of a sudden. A scene from my first or 2nd year of college opened up that I didn’t even know I remembered. I haven’t thought about it forever, you know, I, I didn’t even know, but I was in a show. I was a musical music dance theater major. We were doing a show and we had this pianist who was this cute guy and there were like 3 girls or something working on a song and we were all just kind of being flirty and you know, one of them was giving him a back rub. It was we were just kind of having fun and all of a sudden. And it was innocent and didn’t feel, you know, but all of a sudden he like stiffened up and took the hands off of his shoulders and, and we looked and his wife had walked in and it wasn’t even we didn’t even realize that we were flirting or like there was no there was you’re just being fun. We were just having fun, but I, but all of a sudden I was like, oh no, is he gonna be in trouble? Is he, you know, and and. It was, and I’m not saying that’s exactly what was happening with Fannie. I have some thoughts of what it might be, but I can totally see Joseph potentially just trying to be nice. He, she was beautiful. We know she was really beautiful, so I could see that it could and, and my guess is that she was pretty flirtatious from her history, you know, and maybe Joseph was kind of on the one hand a little bit like. Not wanting to be rude, maybe kind of liking the attention and just a conversation, you know, just a little flirtatious innocent thing that you don’t realize till after, oh shoot, and you learn a lesson like I’m sure that pianist wouldn’t be caught in a situation like that again, right? It’s just and like a a a thing that happens. So I don’t know that that but it it just showed me, oh, and then. Emma was so upset by it and so Hiram misunderstood because my understanding is that Hiram was did come to understand that he had misunderstood and he didn’t bring it back up later, right? He didn’t even after he left the church, he didn’t accuse Joseph of of infidelity of, yeah, Oliver did, did I say the wrong name? um. Yeah, yeah, that he, so, so we’ve turned this into like we take these. Joseph was a complete polygamous lenses and anything we find we have these lenses on so we know, well, clearly they were having sex in the barn. That is such a leap. That’s such a huge leap to go there. And that’s what is just everyone knows that, of course. And I wasn’t going there, but I was like, I want to understand and really like just uh the Lord could use that experience I had to open my mind to different ways to see this, right? Of, of different things that could be and it could have been other things as well. It’s possible that she was pregnant and Joseph might have been trying to help her and Yeah, you know, and anyway, I, there could be a million different things, but I, I guess I’m sharing that just to say we can take these things to the Lord and be given a broader view.
[1:11:35] Whitney Horning: Absolutely, absolutely, that’s beautiful. Yeah,
[1:11:39] Michelle: and do you have any experience, oh, go ahead.
[1:11:41] Whitney Horning: I was gonna say you could see that um scenario, and I, I do think that. It does get muddy because then you have, I think it’s Levi Hancocks. The Moses Hancock, the right saying, claiming that his father sealed them, right,
[1:12:00] Michelle: but again,
[1:12:01] Whitney Horning: it is
[1:12:01] Michelle: like that was recorded in the 1870s, right? It was 30 years later, and I do think one thing that I feel bad about is that there’s this lack of understanding of the culture in Utah when all of the explanations and claims were made. That really should make us say not necessarily throw them out, but recognize what their huge motivations were and what they considered to be righteous, just like those 15 year old girls could be manipulated into thinking it was righteous to get their special crown by going along with this. They could also be convinced that it’s righteous to say what we need to for the sake of the church, to build up the kingdom of God, right? This is, this is what God needs you to do that totally. Seems to me to have been the culture. We have a lot of evidence of that.
[1:12:53] Whitney Horning: Yes, we do. And, and I don’t think we give enough credit. Um, I don’t know if that’s the right word. Um, maybe we don’t consider, maybe that’s a better word, consider enough that The, the, um, the US Congress was trying to stop, so here this, the, you know, Brigham Young and those who follow Brigham Young get to Utah and they think, well, now they’re safe from federal government control because they’re now outside of the United States. Well, the federal government. Still wanted their control and so still wanted to have their say with the saints here in, um, you know, the desert territory. And so a senator um says to Brigham Young, well, if you don’t want to be um Punished by the federal government for doing polygamy, you’ve got to prove it’s an original tenet of your faith, and then claim freedom of religion. Well, if Brigham had taken a group of saints and said, like James Strang took and became the Strangites and um some of them went and named them after themselves. Brigham would have said, hey, I, I wanna, you know, take what Joseph did teach us, but then I want to now expand it upon things I believe. And so we’re going to be called the Brighamites. Um, he probably then maybe could have gotten away with polygamy better by saying, well, this is, you know, I had a revelation from God or whatever. But because he was so adamant that everything he was doing was founded by Joseph Smith, then he had to now prove that polygamy came from Joseph Smith to get to try to get that freedom of religion. And so we don’t also consider that pressure enough and that the pressure that they were feeling from the federal government to, um, get in line with the laws of the land. And so that’s also a huge.
[1:14:55] Michelle: Yeah, every time the biggest um pushes of polygamy or the biggest defenses of it came out were because they were facing some sort of outside pressure, the Temple Lot case, the, um, Joseph Smith’s sons coming on missions, the federal government, the anti-polygamist society that was done by good-hearted women wanting to help these suffering sisters that they saw, you know, and so. So it always was in response to pressure from outside. That’s, that’s something we should consider, and that’s where all of our evidence of Joseph’s polygamy comes from. All of it comes from there and then we become and then it gets put in books by historians who don’t do what you do, which shows the controversy and shows where the sources come from and shows the size. It just makes the claim this was a wife, this was a wife, this was a wife, so we inherit that. And then we look back at these little tiny bits of firsthand information like all we have from. Fanny Alger is the dirty nasty filthy scrape slash affair and the and and um Oliver’s hearing, right? That’s like all we have, but then we go, oh, it was a first wife, they were having sex in the barn. The revelation had been given before that it’s such, it’s such, um. Oh, I can’t think of the word of like putting our our already assumptions on the past, on history to make it make sense according to our paradigm, and it’s not good, it’s not good reasoning or investigation.
[1:16:32] Whitney Horning: No, absolutely not. And and it’s interesting. I gave a talk up in Idaho almost a year ago now, and, and then there were some active LPS. People there. And one guy who was like in his late 30s, he came up to me after and he said, I don’t know what to do with, I don’t know what to do with this. And I said, well, help me out a little. What do you mean? He said, I’ve never in my entire life known that Joseph spoke out against it. And I said, go do your research. And I personally, I encourage people to go read the sources themselves, go study the sources, go read what they say, like a great example, um, is Mercy Fielding, so she’s the sister-in-law to Hiram, so her sister Mary Fielding is one who marries Hiram. So Hiram’s first wife dies, and then he remarries and he marries Mary Fielding. And years later, Mercy claimed she had, she was a polygamist wife and then supposedly two other women came out with affidavits, one like in 1904, 1910, something like that, when all of her witnesses were dead. You know, so she had all these witnesses to her event, but they weren’t living. To back it up, right, which is always a little suspicious, but Mercy Fielding is an interesting one because she claims I lived, you know, I, I was still to hire him, um, and lived with him as a wife does. And we’ll hire him, that only could have happened and supposedly it was 1843 that she’s still to him, so it’s only one year till he’s dead. Well you go read her brother Joseph Fielding’s journal, and during that same time, he talks about going to visit Mercy out in her little cabin. And know all about, right, and then Mercy years later claims she writes down that she was the only polygamist wife of Hiram. So you’ve got her claiming to be a polygamist wife and the only one, and then you’ve got these other women claiming, and but they don’t say that until after Mercy’s deceased. So, like, even the women who claim this, um, have stories that don’t match with each other and that, you know, point fingers at each other and that they can’t even get their stories all on the same.
[1:18:53] Michelle: That’s so true. I will say this, that as I, um, When you start, like when I started diving into the polygamy topic, the scriptures, I was shocked at how bad all of the claims were, how they just were like, like, like that God commanded Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s just one example. Yeah, I mean there are like claim after claim after claim made by those who are proponents of polygamy. We’re just they’re they’re like bad. It’s it’s almost fun to dig into them. And the thing that is surprising is the same goes for Joseph’s polygamy, like we have all of these certain things that we know when you actually dig in, it’s so weak, it’s so bad, it’s so contradictory and the people who say, well, what about this, this piece of information or this bit of You can’t get past, like, like there were some of those that, but one by one, for me, the Lord has been like, see this, see this, and given me different, different ways to interpret it. But I’m like, oh my gosh, if I were coming to this fresh, I would interpret it this way. It’s my polygamous lens that makes me interpret it this way. You know, it’s not, it’s not there. But um, But I lost my train of thought, sorry. I can’t remember what I was saying. Oh, but anyway, but the people even who want to hang on to all of those little bits of evidence that they say prove polygamy have to ignore all of the other body of evidence, like all of the denials, like the lack of children, like all of the history of lying we have. We know there was so much lying among the states. That’s a harsh word. I don’t, you know, but. There was so much motivation to try to prove polygamy that they made a lot of claims that we know are not true. And so they ignore a whole body of evidence. It was actually, I, the Lord has been working with me a long time to try to get me to see, um, that, you know, I just, I was like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to go out and tell people things that aren’t not right. I, I want to be certain before I start claiming that Joseph wasn’t a polygamist, and there’s so much. I, I’m not, I’m not as certain about that as I am that it would never come from God, right? That’s been a harder one for me. But um, but as I have delved in more, it’s just been more and more clarified to me. The Lord is like, can you see? Can you see? And it was actually my, my episode on Emma. That I was like, OK, OK. I can’t, you can’t explain these things because when you look at Emma’s life and what she was experiencing while Joseph was supposedly doing all of these things, he would truly have to be the most like pathological, psychopathic, horrible, evil person to Emma is losing a child and Joseph is sleeping with. The first counselor in her like, like she loses two children and her mother while he’s, I, I, you know what I mean like, like it’s not possible. It’s so evil.
[1:22:03] Whitney Horning: Mhm, exactly.
[1:22:05] Michelle: And so, OK, so I do still want to ask, what were some of the things that were hard for you to go, what do I do with this? And then what were some of the things that were the most like, OK, that just shows it. That you know what I mean, like what were some of the hard evidences that you had to deal with that made Joseph look guilty and then what were some of the slam dunks that proved his innocence? Do, does anything come to mind?
[1:22:29] Whitney Horning: So slam dunks to me are um section what became section 101. Um, the law or statement of the the statement or law of the church on marriage, which, um, when Joseph Smith’s walking up and down the street with his scribe in like October of 43, I think, and saying, on this law, God and Joseph forbid it. That’s the law he’s referring to. It’s not the land. He’s referring to God’s law of marriage. So that for me was a slam dunk. Um, when I read that, I thought Well, and then there’s the Elder’s Journal, um, and I think 1837 or 1838, where he says, as we go around the country doing missionary work, we’re confronted with, um, similar questions that just never seem to leave us alone. So here’s the answers. And one of them was, do you believe in having more wives than one? And he said, no, not at the same time. But we do believe that if a spouse has died, then they can, they’re free to remarry. Um, so that was, that started making it feel pretty clear to me. Um, I think his, um, standing up before the city council and talking about how he really got the revelation and then he says it has nothing to do with polygamy. Um, and then I think his court case where he and Emma were suing the Higbe brothers for slander because they were claiming he was a lygamist. So those are some big things that I thought these are pretty big and he keeps putting things in the paper. I mean that court, you know, his court cases in the paper and I just, I feel like, you know, you’ve got, like you said, you got to be pretty diabolical liar, manipulative liar if you’re really speaking out this strongly and this often in public and then doing it in private. Um, for me, the one that was really, really hard to grapple with that said he did do it is 132. You know, it’s in our scriptures canonized in scripture, and, um, You know, it claims to be a revelation from Joseph Smith, and so to me, that was the one. And so I actually remember Vern and I, I went up to um I just was really struggling with that one, really, really struggling, um. And trying to figure that out, and it’s just it’s, it’s actually a really upsetting revelation. If you really read it, it really, women are not thought well of. If that’s really from God, then he does not respect his daughters in the way that that revelation is worded. And so I remember I went up and I asked her I said, hey, you’ve got this pond by your work, and can we go, you know, walk around the pond and just, I’m I was really upset. Like I was just really struggling and so, you know, we took a little walk, we discussed what I’ve been learning. And, and this isn’t just weeks. This is like years of learning and years of study and years of pondering and years of praying for guidance, and so I don’t always think that I, I think it’s um It’s unwise to think that if you listen to this podcast, and this is the first time you’ve been introduced to stuff that you’re gonna kneel down and you’re gonna have all your questions answered. God wants you to go do the work. Michelle has been studying the scriptures. In depth for years, this this is in this podcast came about after you’ve been studying for years. So yes, I think there are times when God can give you quick answers, but usually it’s line upon line, precept upon precept, and he wants to see you put in the work and the effort. So I don’t want you to think that I’ve just been, oh, this happened and this happened and this happened, and I wrote a book. I mean, you know, it’s years of studying and praying and crying and trying to figure it out and trying to be the faithful LDS woman, but secretly dying inside that this is, you know, sort of honestly kind of keeping myself a little bit from God because is that really how he thinks about his daughters and I don’t know if I want a father like that. And so I’m walking around this pond and I’m talking to Verne about everything I’ve been studying and thinking, and I said, what I can’t wrap my mind around is 132. So he said, well, why don’t we sit down and read it out loud together? So we sit down and it’s so hard to read that thing out loud, to read it all. I mean, it just is pretty abhorrent. Um, it really is. And so it’s, it is. And so we’re reading it. It’s like when it gets to the virgins and I’m like, are you, am I reading the Koran all of a sudden? You know, I’m like, what is going on? And so we’re reading it out loud and, and I just in just pure desperation, just hung my head and I cried out to the Lord in my heart. And I was just like, God, I, this does not sound like you. What is this? And an answer so simple that I was like, how have I been so blind? It just came to me, what if it was tampered with? I was like, I, what people would tamper with scripture, you know, and that’s before I’d really studied anything about the Bible and how much that’s been tampered with, how much, and I don’t know if you’re um familiar with Margaret Barker and her work with the um divine feminine in the The Bible. She’s a Methodist minister that’s done incredible work in proving um how much of the divine feminine has been removed through the Bible.
[1:28:28] Michelle: I know I’m not, but I will be. Thank you for telling me about that.
[1:28:31] Whitney Horning: A lot of her stuff. She’s just incredible. And so, um, so yeah, go read Marker Barker’s stuff, but So I knew now I know scriptures tampered with. Like, but at the time, I mean, scriptures are so incredibly sacred to me that I just the thought of somebody legitimately trying to write a revelation and pass it off that a profit or whatever. I, I don’t know how it all went down, have my suspicions now and maybe some theories, but that just really that was the first time that I Felt like I allowed myself permission. To really dive into the, the, um, provenance of 132 and the history of that. And so as I did, I mean, like shock of all shocks to find out, it wasn’t even publicly read till 1852. And then it wasn’t even put in until like 1876 when they took out section 101, which was monogamy, and then they replaced it with this. And so, I mean, there’s
[1:29:35] Michelle: just all. And then it just appeared. It magically appeared out of Brigham Young’s desk drawer. I, I was like, did that desk come across the plains, like, like where, like, like there’s a lot of, you know, you got some splaying to do, right? Like there’s a lot to understand there that that for me like you’re talking about when when you’re like what time after time.
[1:29:58] Whitney Horning: Exactly. And then when you find out that the that the everything for 132 hangs on the word of William Clayton. Right, everything, and I’m, um, for anybody who doesn’t know who John Hayzek is, they look up his, um,
[1:30:14] Michelle: he’s gonna come out and talk to me
[1:30:15] Whitney Horning: too, so I’ll have him
[1:30:17] Michelle: on mhm.
[1:30:18] Whitney Horning: He does such a great explanation of the problems with William Clayton’s journals, and so I, you know, started studying that and it just like for me, so you have this book in your hands, Michelle, that took me 9 months, which is just beautiful. I, I was standing in my dad’s graveside. And they have, you know, obviously crying and mourning, but my dad was just wonderful. He was my hero. So we’re standing there and he, he died younger than I felt like he should have. So I’m dealing with that and dealing with all this, you know, other stuff in my head. And the thought comes, you need to write a book to free other women from the burden of polygamy and to help those who rejected Joseph come back to the restoration. I’ve never really written. I’d written a little book for my daughters to help them understand women’s place in God’s kingdom. I’d written a little book for them, gave it to them as a gift. But I was like, what? OK. So I started, and, and when the, the night that it got submitted to publishing, I even tried to find a publisher, and they, you know, LDS publishers didn’t want to do it. And Christian publishers, I it was so cute. I had this um woman who was like, oh this, of course I wanna publish. this is wonderful, and I said, but you work for a Christian publisher. She’s like, well, so, and I said, well, if you, I, well, I don’t think they’re gonna approve the project because it’s Joseph Smith. She’s like, oh, no, no, no. She called me the next week, so sad. She’s like, I really wanted to do your project, but as soon as I said it’s about Joseph Smith, it was an absolute no, I didn’t want to hear anything about it. So I tried to go through some publishers, and I got rejected and I thought, well, I, this is really for my children and my grandchildren, so they know the truth about Joseph Smith. I didn’t expect anyone else to ever buy it or read it, so I thought I’ll just go on Amazon, so I submit publish, and I’m climbing into bed that night, and I had the thought, and I felt like I was really terrifying to push publish. I like pretty much had like almost like a and anxiety, panic attack, nervous breakdown. And I, I remember having the thought, I feel like a mother who’s given birth to this precious child and is gonna send him out into the big cruel world to get mocked and made fun of and, you know, damaged by the world. So, I had that thought. I finally overcome my fears. I push, publish, I go get into bed and I have the thought, you should count how many weeks that took you to write that. And I was like, OK, well that’s whatever, weird, but OK, so I get on an account and it was 40 weeks to the day. And I was just like
[1:33:05] Michelle: OK, for all of
[1:33:06] Whitney Horning: our
[1:33:07] Michelle: listeners who don’t know, that is a gestational period. A pregnancy is 40 weeks, but just clarify that in case they’re already. Not yet moms or dads listening. Right,
[1:33:17] Whitney Horning: right, and I just like God has such a great sense of humor that he knew. I felt like I was giving birth to this child and, and he, and it was the 40 weeks of gestation, so I thought that was pretty funny. Like little things like that that you’re just like God’s got a sense of humor and he’s he’s with you in the, you know,
[1:33:38] Michelle: and I have to clarify because I know we both, I know we agree on this, but I’m like God’s got a sense of humor. She is teaching us important lessons because this is such a feminine, right? Like it’s pronouns are so hard in our world, but really like, like it’s, it’s this, this divine mothering is so necessary as well, and I kind of love that. Some of the, the women are being also put in the forefront of this. You know, I love that you and I have received this calling and it is so connected to birth in some really beautiful and profound ways for each of us that I, I don’t know, I just see some Like, like, cause we are redeeming both men and women from the ground up, right? All the way up ideally to the divine feminine. It’s all connected. We have to understand the identity of heavenly Father and heavenly mother and able to, you know, I know that God the Father isn’t up shopping around celestial broads to start a new kingdom. Like we’ve just got a. You know, we have to understand the incredible divinity of the divine feminine as well, the glory of. Of our heavenly mother who doesn’t need to be protected from her children, who does isn’t one of a harem, who is, you know, it’s really this is all like I love how uh Valerie, I won’t think of her last name but how she said the universe is pregnant with it, and that is so apt, isn’t that wonderful? Like truly womanhood is coming back to help us understand both men and women because we need both together.
[1:35:16] Whitney Horning: Well, and I think when you talk about pronouns, I think I, I wish, and I, I do it a little tiny bit in this Joseph book and actually received a lot of criticism from non-LDS for, um, how dare you think that there’s a she in the God relationship. Cause I think a better pronoun is they, they, they are the Elohim means male and female, and they are very much a couple who care about their children. And so I love that you are open to that and that, you know, you believe that because I just So, you know, Margaret Barker, she talks about, so the mother is all throughout scripture, um, but she’s called wisdom. Her role is wisdom, um, the fathers is knowledge, and the two work together. And so, um, I love that Margaret Barker talks about how the mother is the great weaver. You know, we weave children as Inside our womb when we, when, when we, um, get pregnant, we are, we are the only ones who work with God in creating a new life. Like, you know, our, our husbands, obviously we need their seat also, but we weave and knit them together in our womb and the mother is a great weaver. And so when I was writing this book and having my panic attacks and I, I’ve never done this before, and why am I even doing this for so many books on Joseph Smith, like, am I just an idiot and a fool, and I would just have this quiet thought like just weave the facts together. You can do it. You can weave things together, and I just, I very much felt. The feminine presence throughout and came to learn that Um, Men who were called as Joseph and Hyrum were, as Abraham was, as Isaac, as Jacob, um Lehi, Nephi. They, there, it was the mother’s right to give the birthright. The mother chooses. She watches how her sons treat her daughters. And then she chooses men she knows can be trusted with their daughters. And when I came to understand that, and part of that was reading the Legends of the Jews, where they talk about the story of um Rebecca telling Jacob to put on the, you know, to put on the lamb’s wool to pretend to be his brother Esau. And Rebecca says to him, if your father finds out and he curses you, the curse will be upon me because Rebecca knew it was her right as the mother. It was her divine right to choose the heir for her husband, and her husband was choosing wrong. Her husband was going with the standard oldest son, which our world just always loves to be oldest son, and Rebecca was choosing the righteous son. And so it’s the mother’s right to do that. And so once I started seeing all of that, that also helped me with writing this book, because I started seeing that if that is true, then the mother would never choose a man who treats women as one of many or as a Um, sex object or as um a way to satisfy his lust and his passions and his desires, she is going to choose men who honor the sanctity of womanhood and the sanctity of motherhood.
[1:39:02] Michelle: That’s really interesting. OK, that’s giving me a lot to think about. I always, my brain has to argue every side of it, so I’m gonna have to think, you know, like, like, I mean, I mean, I love what you’re saying about.
[1:39:14] Whitney Horning: It’s very different. I mean, it’s not, it’s not um. Widely believed or accepted or taught.
[1:39:21] Michelle: No, what I love the most about it is the idea of God the mother saying, is this person trustworthy with God the Father and God the mother taking into consideration how the, the least of these will be treated, the weak, the children, the women, how will they be treated by the people we call, that’s that’s an amazing insight. I love that. That’s so. So profound, yeah, and I do think, I think that we have done a disservice like. I think we have underestimated women being called as well. Like I really, as I dug in with Emma, I learned she was every bit as called as Joseph. She was called and ordained just as much as he was by God to fulfill her role and she wasn’t interchangeable. And then we have, well, and then also, you know, she was told. That she would um expound and exhort, she would expound the scriptures and exhort the church and that she would be ordained, which directly, I’m sorry, I’m repeating this. I’ve said it a couple of times, but it directly contradicted the New Testament. Joseph Smith was correcting errors in the New Testament that said that women shouldn’t be, shouldn’t speak, shouldn’t be heard, right? Like I wish that we could link those scriptures up in our scriptures and go, oh, this was fixed. Joseph Smith received further light and knowledge and I think it’s so interesting to think that when you look at how polygamist men. And how polygamist cultures treat women, they really do silence them. They’re not like Brigham Young, the first thing he did was end the relief society, and it wasn’t until, um, you know, he had use of them to fight against to to argue in favor of polygamy that he allowed them to start to speak and write again. And here we have Joseph Smith, if it was true like that. You know, that people say that she was disobedient and she was fighting against God, and she was, well, he ordained her as the relief society president. He elevated her. He stood beside her as she fulfilled that prophetic calling to expound and Exhort using mainly 101, the revelation on marriage or the article on marriage, right? She was doing all of that side by side with him. No other, no polygamist man has ever or would ever do that to elevate the wife that’s fighting against polygamy, right? Like, why would he possibly do that? There that just is so illogical of any. Anybody and and he wouldn’t have to keep Emma that happy if we believe all of the stories where she was screaming at him, so he slapped her to silence her, and she shoved Eliza down the stairs and she tried to poison him. Why would he elevate her to that calling and stand beside her as she exhorted and expounded and why, right, like, like it’s, there’s so much evidence. People want to point out the pieces of evidence on this side I’m like, but. Let’s look at all of this too, like even the fact of the only thing practically that we have written in Joseph’s own hand, there might be some others, but the main things I know of are his letters to Emma. He did almost everything through scribes except his letters to Emma, and we ignore all of those letters. We ignore the fact that she was pregnant at the time of his death and was the only woman who ever was pregnant by him, right? How would that be happening if this other side were like, like it just, it’s so illogical that you know, those are the things that really I guess they’re in my brain right now because they were where I was like, OK, we’ve ignored all of this and no one’s talking about it in large part because The the Joseph as a polygamist narrative is in everyone’s interest. Every, everyone who is from the Brigham Chur the Brighamite Church, you know, the LDS Church, we have to protect our doctrine of the, the leaders can’t do anything wrong, so we have to prove that Joseph was a polygamist no matter what. The FLDS are continuing on with that. That’s, you know, that became the central and only doctrine. And then everyone who leaves and wants to hate all of the anti-Mormons, all of the Christian, like the one thing we have against Joseph Smith big time is polygamy. So everyone wants to prove, prove like it’s, it’s really hard to win a case with that kind of motivation against you. Go ahead, you were gonna say something.
[1:43:48] Whitney Horning: Oh no, I, I love exactly everything you’re saying. I absolutely agree with it. You know, Emma is called an elect lady by the Lord.
[1:43:58] Michelle: Right.
[1:44:00] Whitney Horning: When, when you get into reading Margaret Barker has a beautiful um Talk or or something she writes about Mary the elect lady. And so when you start understanding what a luck lady means, it makes sense. It’s weird, we, we’re we’re people are interesting because we want heroes. But we want, we want people we can look up to, but we want them to have a flaw so we don’t feel bad, that we’re not. But we want them to have that Achilles heel
[1:44:33] Michelle: or so we can at least relate to them. Yeah,
[1:44:36] Whitney Horning: yeah, yeah. So we take like, so it makes sense because you look throughout history, what have we done to marry the mother of Jesus? I mean, people have denigrated her and they tried to bring her down. So, so instead of us trying to rise up. And elevate ourselves and become better people so we can become more like they they are heroes we have. And so we want to pull them down because that’s easier.
[1:45:03] Michelle: Oh that’s Mary Magdalene, the founding fathers, the like it’s, yeah, we really do. We also do it because we don’t want to have to believe what they taught anymore. The best way to undermine what someone like, like, really, if the Book of Mormon weren’t tied to all of this polygamy and like, like all of the mistakes of Mormonism, what good could it have done, right? It’s like, like it was diabolically brilliant to get it tied in with polygamy and and just Make it so muddled and fuzzy and dark when it’s so beautiful.
[1:45:42] Whitney Horning: Yeah. Even in fact, like you mentioned the CDS letter earlier, um, I even look at that and I think how much of that is based on the Utah Mormon history and the Utah Mormon teachings. Because one thing I, when people reach out to me and ask, you know, where, where should they start or what should they do now? I encourage them to go back and actually get to know the real Joseph because what we’ve been handed and what we’re taught today is a caricature of the man. I like, um, he had and Cook, they have a they have a book called The Words of Joseph Smith. It’s out of print, but you can find a PDF online. Um, I wouldn’t read the footnotes because again, we want to take everything Joseph did and turn it into ly me. And turn it into what we think the doctrine actually is today, which is based on polygamy. So I just but I but go start reading Joseph’s sermons, go, um, go to the Joseph Smith papers and read the original sources for yourself. Like, don’t take my word for it. You can get my book and you can go look just just if all you do is to get it just to get to the original sources, go look at all the footnotes and go read them for yourself. Like go, I’m
[1:47:01] Michelle: gonna have. Yeah, another slam dunk that’s huge for people is seeing the altered journal page when Joseph said upon this law, right? And then it’s crossed out and changed and added to. No man may have more than one wife. Unless Joseph says, for he’s the only one that holds the power, right?
[1:47:22] Whitney Horning: Like that’s that’s a huge one, profit, the prophet, the prophet, right? Like if he gives you permission, like one of the things I’ve come away with is where did our free agency go? Yeah, we’re taught that we fought this war in a war in heaven to have our agency, but then we get down here we’re born into a church, we convert to a church and now it’s only the prophet’s way or the highway.
[1:47:49] Michelle: Oh, that’s really interesting. And remember that, you know, you could be beheaded by an angel with a sword flaming or not if if you don’t betray your wife, and where was Emma’s agency, where was she allowed to choose whether or not to be a polygamist if these things are true, like it doesn’t work.
[1:48:09] Whitney Horning: It’s so ridiculous. Like I know with the, I met with somebody a few months ago who had read my book and all she wanted to know was Our ceilings legit. And I said, and I think it’s always wise when you’re busy with anyone. Like what you’re doing tonight, ask questions because you start, you know, you got to kind of drill down to what’s really, really at the heart of somebody. Well, so finally I got to the heart of the matter was that she had a mother, very elderly mother who By all accounts and purposes should have died 10 years ago. But has been hanging out because she despises her husband to such an extent. And, and I know some of what he did to the family. And I can understand why that word is used by her. Um, that she doesn’t want to die because they were sealed. And I said, I said, where did your agency go? You got sealed in 1920, 34 years old, and somehow now you have no agency, and God’s going to make you force you against your agency to be with each other for.
[1:49:25] Michelle: He’s not gonna be in heaven if, if that’s what, if that’s who he is, he’s not gonna be in heaven.
[1:49:32] Whitney Horning: I but, but she had gone to a priesthood leader. And it asked, without telling the priest leader any the history of her husband and the family had just asked that question, oh, what does my ceiling mean? Oh, we’ll be together no matter what, no matter what you do. Oh yeah, sure that he’s in this, so you know, just because she didn’t get the whole story, so now she had, but I’m just like, where did your agency go? We fought a war to have our agency. You really think a loving father is going to force us, because we made a choice about any life experience. And then force us forever. I mean he’s a loving God. He loves it. That sounds more like Satan’s plan, right? Like forcing us to do stuff and so. I actually think that it, unfortunately, I’ve actually heard from quite a few people that that That this whole idea of ceilings, they just, you know. Like we just, I, I just wanna say we don’t understand and we have a loving God and we have agency.
[1:50:39] Michelle: I, I, so I will, I will echo that that we, I, I get troubled when we kind of use that. We have a loving God. He’ll do what we want when to, to kind of do that. Don’t worry about it, little sister. It’ll all work out little lady, it’ll all work out OK because what I think.
[1:50:55] Whitney Horning: Little Michelle.
[1:50:56] Michelle: Right, right. Like, like I, I’ve spoken about this a little bit before, but after losing my first daughter, when I had, and then we had the whole nightmarish things happening in the world and, um, and when I had people using my connection to my daughter as a means to tell me that I better get in line with what the church was doing. Like, like, um, it, it, it has the ability to become, it can be this comforting, pretty beautiful doctrine if you just have a family and and your parents die and you get to see them again, right? But it can turn really toxic really fast with things like spouses dying and what does that mean about polygamy or a widow that’s going to have to choose, or when you lose a loved one and there’s this manipulative claim that we have control over whether or not you get your child again. That’s, that’s really diabolical. That’s really dark, especially when it’s you have to do these things that your soul knows are wrong, or you can’t speak out against them at least, because, you know, you know, like, like the idea that um, you know, Brian Hailes and others, I have people, you know, I’ve had people contact my leaders and it’s happened more than once to to try to threaten me and the idea that They have the power to sever me from my children who I I have seen and experienced and know and knew before one of, you know, one of like my 13th, I knew before she was born that she was always meant to be mine and that you, you know, like and all of a sudden. I like, like that, we need to be careful because we, again, pride, we can be so blind to how we, how these things can be twisted, but the humility to go, we don’t understand as much as we think we understand. I think it’s so essential. It’s gorgeous what Joseph Smith was teaching, what, you know, what that original, what you’re describing is that revelation. It was stunning to me to read 132 and recognize that actually everything that talks about eternal marriage. Is monogamist purely and unalterably monogamist. Until we get to the parts that women are just a pen, not even a pen, they’re like currency. They’re like, here’s your prize, they’re the party prides, right? They’re the like here, you were really good boy at the party. Here’s another woman and another 10, and that’s a virgin too, when and how none of it makes sense with anything that anybody was doing, right? Like I, I, I mentioned it was me, for me it was reading 132 next to Jacob 2. That that was kind of like this is not the same author, this is not the same God, period. That it’s not the same God, you know, to see and uh the other thing I was gonna say, sorry, I’m doing a little bit of a monologue for a second then I’ll let you talk again, but also with regard to women, we tend to ignore Holda in the scriptures and Deborah, who were Prophetesses and judges in Israel and leaders of the army and you know like we don’t know, we don’t understand. Emma was called to exhort and expound and where could that have gone if we had been able to shake off those shackles that I think Joseph was trying Joseph and Emma were trying to shake off the demeaning of women was not what Joseph and Emma were about in any way. It was what Brigham was about his wife, um. Mary Anne Angel, you’re better with the history and remembering names. She had an abusive father. She was very timid and shy and was used to being put down and held back in a corner. She wasn’t a member of the relief Society like that is a mindset that Brigham had, is that men do the thinking, men do the talking, men do the leading. There’s so many quotes from him about if I ever needed a woman’s advice, then. You know, I, I like that was not who Joseph was at all, and you can’t make that fit with both of them. Yeah,
[1:55:09] Whitney Horning: even I was thinking when I was listening to your podcast that you did last week about or some Pratt. And when you read the ear, it is so upsetting because basically he and Brigham. So like women, the only thing a woman, if she wasn’t married, the only thing she had left to do is to become a prostitute. Right, like that’s all our choices. Marriage, whether that’s 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th life, or prostitution, there’s no in between. There’s nothing else for you. And men
[1:55:44] Michelle: at the
[1:55:45] Whitney Horning: same time,
[1:55:45] Michelle: men either will be polygamists or will be visiting prostitutes that those were the choices for men too.
[1:55:52] Whitney Horning: And I remember when I read that and then right after that I went and read um the King Fala discourse where Joseph saying. Basically like elevate yourselves, like there’s so much more in sor and I thought it was just so clear to me this is they denigrated men and women, and Joseph thought better of us. He, he had a loftier, more holier view of what we could become.
[1:56:20] Michelle: He was actively elevating women. He he was actively doing that consistently. Mhm. OK, OK, I’m gonna ask you about one thing just to let you, like one thing that people, um, you know, everyone has their different kind of, but what about this, but what about this, but what about this? This one’s kind of, I don’t want to say a fun one, but it’s interesting, right? Um, so tell me if you and if you don’t have it right on the top of your head, that’s OK, we can get it later, but tell me about Nancy Rigdon and the happiness letter. What’s your take on that? Because that’s one that gets thrown around a lot as kind of the trump card, the happiness letter, and I will acknowledge, I will acknowledge that our church leaders have quoted it in conference because it goes. Because remember, the narrative is the same for those for the LDS Church and those who hate Joseph Smith. So we’re proposing something different. So will you, will you dispel us of concern about the happiness letter? Yes,
[1:57:15] Whitney Horning: so first of all, I say go read it. Just go read it, like actually read the entire letter and ask yourself, does it have anything to do with polygamy? There is nothing in there about polygamy, nothing. So that,
[1:57:31] Michelle: so do you believe Joseph wrote it? Do you think Joseph wrote it?
[1:57:34] Whitney Horning: Oh, OK, OK, for a minute I was like, if you don’t want to get into the debate, Joseph or I just go read it and ask yourself,
[1:57:44] Michelle: does it try to take your polygamy lenses off long enough to to actually read what. Words are not what polygamy lenses say the words are.
[1:57:52] Whitney Horning: So if you do go research what about it and like this provenance and who wrote it and who it went to, Joseph actually was accused of writing it and sending it to Nancy Rigdon, and he actually testified he did not. And then, so he said he didn’t. Sydney Rigdon says, I was believing Joseph did, but now I’m convinced he didn’t send it. And then the then the theory became that it was John C. Bennett and Nancy were having an having an affair and wrote it to try and um get evidence against Joseph. So Joseph didn’t write it, but even if he did, it has nothing to do with polygamy, so I don’t understand why I, I really honestly, I think. How can you turn that into polygamy? I think it’s because there’s one line about, you know, basically, the idea is sometimes you have to disobey or break the law to do what God wants to do, and then that’s true happiness kind of thing. So
[1:58:53] Michelle: that’s really a diabolical teaching though. I will say
[1:58:56] Whitney Horning: even what anything Joseph would teach or write at all. And so again, If you, if you want to know who Joseph was, it’s the same idea as getting to know who God is by reading scripture. Go read what Joseph actually wrote, like what he wrote, not what people say he wrote, people say he meant. The other one, since we’re talking about letters, the other big one that they use is the one to the Whitney’s. When Joseph’s in hiding and he writes, Dear brother and sister, Whitney at all. Well, again, you gotta go back and you gotta understand the culture of the time at all just meant to you. I, it was like everyone wrote at all of the beginning of their letters. So to take that and mean that he was talking about Sarah and that he’s now saying this is his secret way of telling the parents to bring their young daughter so he can have sexual relations with her. I’m like,
[1:59:56] Michelle: And also, well, and when you understand this like that looked damning. I, that was another one that I struggled with. I was like, OK, that’s right there. I had the polygamy lenses on, right? But then when you actually understand he’s in hiding, the police are or the Marshals, whatever they are, are trailing Emma, and that’s why he says if Emma’s not there, it’s safe to turn that into Emma’s gonna, I mean it’s so convoluted and then the last thing is when I suddenly was like, wait. Who writes to the parents of a teenager for like, do you know like I’m sorry, like I wanna have a booty call with your daughter. Would you please bring her to me? That’d be great. Oh, and by the way, I’m staying in this one little room in this family home kind of in this or in the outbuilding, so we’ll all be in there together cause there’s not really a lot of space, right? There’s no electricity, there’s like, so you’ll either be in there with us or you’ll be waiting outside. I wanna see all of you and it’s just because I really, I, I mean. Like the logic of it falls, it, it’s as bad as the logic of polygamy in a lot of ways, reading the scriptures and going, how are people not seeing this? Reading those because yeah, that is another kind of damning one. I mean,
[2:01:16] Whitney Horning: or it’s typically taken um sections of it are taken it so they don’t ever typically print the entire letter so you really need to entire letter. First of all, and then it might be helpful to know that Sarah Anne Whitney was actually secretly um in a relationship with Hubrey Campbell at the time.
[2:01:39] Michelle: And I didn’t know that.
[2:01:40] Whitney Horning: She plays into a lot of the letters between Hebrew and the late, and she’s best friends with Helen Martin. So it makes sense that later then the story has to be, well we got to put it on Joseph, and so we’ll turn this letter that was really to her parents into something that’s about her and, you know, so
[2:02:03] Michelle: that
[2:02:03] Whitney Horning: proof
[2:02:03] Michelle: that’s proof of a teenage wife. And of course the burnness is because he’s hiding his polygamy, not because he’s in a hiding, not wanting anyone to know where his location is or who’s visit. Visiting him, like that’s what the like the polygamy lenses are bizarre. They twist everyone’s thinking. So I think the main thing I wanna say is I can understand like there are things that we bring our polygamy lenses to, right? And that we have to deal with. Um, William Marks is another one that I had to deal with cause he, he wasn’t motivated, but I, for me he misunderstood things just like Oliver Cowdery did, you, you know,
[2:02:42] Whitney Horning: think about, think about, you know, we’re, we’re a big church now. But even then they were pretty big. I mean, not really as well like 20 25,000 people. I mean, I, I live in a city of 20 to 25,000 people. If someone came to me tomorrow and said, did you know our mayors doing XYZ? And, and they, and they were, and then another person came and another person came. I mean, I could start seeing that I’d be like, oh my goodness, maybe he is doing all that. And then, you know, so really, this is a great lesson in life for all of us. We’re, we’re making the history for tomorrow. Like in 100 years, what we’re doing and living today is the history that our grandchildren, great grandchildren are reading about. So this is just a great example of go to the source. So here’s William Marks hearing through the grapevine, you know, Joseph’s teaching this, Joseph’s teaching us, Joseph’s doing this, and you go to the source and ask Joseph, are you really doing this? I’m hearing all this. Are you doing it? That’s what their conversation ends up being, you know, but even then. I can see even that conversation that supposedly Joseph has with William Marks a few weeks before his death, and he says, you know, you didn’t accept polygamy and I’m grateful and help me get these people out of the church. And William Marks later says, I think Joseph didn’t do it, but maybe he did do like maybe he was telling me he had been deceived in polygamy, or maybe he was telling me he was deceived by the people who are in polygamy. So I have a lot of compassion for both sides of the argument because I think I think it’s, it’s messy. I think there’s a lot of um And there’s a lot of information out there. And for me, I think if I had one little bit of advice. First of all, if you’re gonna spend your time doing anything, spend it reading the scriptures. I mean, I think of anyone to figure out the truth about his God, you know, learn who God is and get a relationship with him or them. You know, really come to know God, but On top of that, if you want to, if it’s really upsetting to you. To want to believe in the Book of Mormon the restoration because of what you think Joseph was, then that would be worth your time, because if you’re going to discard the Book of Mormon doc the the the true parts of the doctrine commons that really are from Joseph because there were additions and and deletions and it was kind of messed with with men. Um, but if you want it, you know, you can get back and read the original revelations in the Joseph Smith papers and go read those, but get to know who Joseph was so that you can have confidence in the teachings of the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon does give us a better understanding of the correct character of God, um. And so if you’re gonna spend your time on things, let’s say if you’re gonna do a deep dive on things, do it in the scriptures first and foremost, but if you then have some time or want to spend some time getting into church history. Um, you’re not going to be able to totally get an understanding with just one voice. So like I was saying earlier with Mercy Fielding, I had what Hiram said, I had what Mercy said, and then I found what her brother said, and then I found what some other people said, and then I was able to put together a picture. So it is helpful, it is helpful to weigh both sides of the argument. It is helpful to read those who claim Joseph did do it. And give their reasonings, their sources, their, um, proof, just as it’s helpful to then read what Joseph and Emma and others said. And so try to, to get more viewpoints in just one, because that will help you come to a better understanding of what was going on. Because something was going on, things were going on, but just what were they exactly and what were the real teachings, and ultimately, it only matters because Joseph claimed he knew God. And I want to know God, and if Joseph actually knew the real God and can help me get to know that God, then, then Joseph matters to me and what he taught matters.
[2:07:21] Michelle: OK, I really like that. I think I, I, I, I, well, first of all, I want to say I’m so thankful that you know you have and others, the prices and others have started to compile this because it is really hard to take all of the time for everyone to go do the information. But one thing that I have learned over the past couple of, well, several years, it’s so easy to read a quote from one of our church leaders. And just assume it’s clear it’s, it’s, you know, like um it’s so important to do a couple of things, find out the provenance of the quote, where does it come from, who, right, do that, do that investment to find out how certain are we of this? Well, and then find the context, like I want to do a um episode on Some of the teachings of the presidents of the church, the Brigham Young book, because they’re so taken out of context to make it look like this just a little quote when really what it’s saying is sometimes quite awful or very different than how we’re presenting it. So it’s so important to at least do that because it is true that a a historian writes something in a book and then that becomes the new fact, and then the next historian just quotes the previous historian. Right, and that’s how we come up with false traditions and do recognize that the Book of Mormon teaches us, warns us of our false traditions and tells us what to do about them. And so having the open, the willingness to come with A humility and a repentant spirit cause there is, you have to step down in, you know, when we think we know an answer, right, you’ll relate to this to be able to go, oh, I don’t know that. Oh, you know, and kind of start from scratch, being willing to do that. Are aren’t you so glad you were willing to do that with me? Like,
[2:09:15] Whitney Horning: well, and it’s not easy, as you know, you know, you get a lot of um criticism, a lot of um. Discipline from people that you admire, but besides that, it kind of can rock your world a little bit, you know, when you, when you’ve been so certain that something is true, and then you find out it’s not, and that means you have to also then grapple with why were you taught it was true when it wasn’t, and what does that all mean? And it can be really upsetting and I was really worried about that when I wrote this book. I was really worried about um pulling the rug out from other people, so to speak, that the history that we’ve grown up with is inaccurate. And I was really concerned like I didn’t want to just leave people. Falling. And so I really try to kind of write an end chapter that kind of is to give hope and to give us like why, why does this matter? and what does it matter? And ultimately, God has made promises to his people beginning even back with Enoch. And then again with Noah, he made promises that when a people are repentant enough and look upward, then Zion can look downward, and the earth will shake and tremble with joy. God has made promises that he intends to fulfill, and so all of this matters. Because he is doing the work, and we can either get on board with that work, and we can get one with God, or we can continue to be led astray or blinded by false traditions or wandering in strange paths that we think are taking us to the tree of life, but really aren’t because God’s standing by the tree of life and, and we’re going in a different path because of the traditions we’ve been given. And so it matters to figure out, is God at work? Is he doing a work? And I repent of my false traditions and my false beliefs and my false ideas and really come to know him. And, and so peeling those blinders off, um, waking up, however you want to describe what you’re doing and going through. For many people, some people can feel liberated. For me, I was terrified and I, it was really hard and I got to, I even had a, a, a, a moment that was maybe months long of not trusting anyone, but God, not trusting my husband, my children, my Boss, like anyone, like I was just like, is everybody lying to me? Is everything a lie, you know, and so don’t give up. Like anybody out there who’s gone through those same same things, um, don’t give up your struggle, don’t give up your wrestle. Um, kind to yourself, but, you know, be kind to each other. Like Michelle, I just wanna, I really wanna tell you thank you for your interview with Brian Hailes because the way you handled yourself was so incredibly inspiring and beautiful and gracious, but you still held firm and you still asked difficult questions. But I felt like I came away because, you know, Brian’s attacked me in a in a video of his, and I was like, he doesn’t know who I am, you know, but OK. But when I,
[2:13:03] Michelle: and I just wanna say I wanna do an episode on that video because it’s not good. I mean, I mean it wasn’t just if anyone is interested in the Brian Hill’s attack on Whitney. Study it out, see where the logic is, see where the truth is. OK, continue. I’m sorry.
[2:13:21] Whitney Horning: It’s just I feel like for me, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know him and I’ve never met him, but I came away with such a greater understanding of his position and a greater, um, compassion and charity for why he believes the way he does. And so I’m so I mean that. Like I had no hard feelings towards him whatsoever. I didn’t before, but I just, I felt like watching that and even him, like he became kinder and gentler and more of a discussion. That will benefit all of us, if all of us can learn to be how you handled yourself in that interview, because it started off as an attack on you, but Just the grace and the beauty of it to me. I just want to thank you for that because that’s what we’re all trying to figure it out. Whatever it is, whatever that it is, we’re trying to figure it out, and the only one who knows all truth about it is God. And so let’s be kind to each other. Let’s have, we can ask tough questions. We can ask people to think, we can Ask them to challenge themselves, but we can do it in a gracious and loving way. And I just, I want to thank you for that publicly because if you, people haven’t watched that yet, anyone watching this haven’t watched that yet, it is worth watching to learn how we can talk with our family, our friends, our loved ones about subjects that can be very difficult.
[2:14:54] Michelle: Thank you, Whitney. I appreciate that. That’s, that’s thank you. That is, it is, I did, I did say in my talk recently that, you know, just kindness like I, I get frustrated and I hear this on both sides where it’s like you’re an idiot to believe that it’s kind of the message that can be. You, you know, like, I
[2:15:13] Whitney Horning: can’t like that. I mean we’ve had people tell us that, right?
[2:15:18] Michelle: How
[2:15:18] Whitney Horning: many times
[2:15:19] Michelle: and I never, never want to, I mean, I will, I will go after the ideas and try to make people explain, you know, how they make sense, but yeah, to ever be like, I can’t believe you would say that and or you know, I think that there is so much um more power in just Invitation and kindness and and I was so thankful that Brian was willing to come on and talk to me, you know, I love that people will come on and so I’m so thankful that you came on and talked to me. I really am just so thankful for the work that you’re doing. I, this was a, I was slower to get on the Joseph is innocent boat just because there is um enough on both sides that you have to, I don’t know, for me, I’m like I. I like it when people work through all of the difficult questions rather than just like, well, this is what I believe, you know, and I feel like you are one who’s done that. Like you’ve looked at it and considered it. And really, I, I didn’t set out with the intention of saying, oh, I don’t like polygamy, I’m proving it’s false, you know, and you really set out with like, OK, I want to find truth here. You didn’t start out with an agenda and in a lot of ways, that’s not the case for some of the people that disagree with us, right? They kind of already hate Joseph or they already need to prove the truthfulness of the, you know, so the agendas are still at play. And I really want us to just look at the information and that’s why if you guys haven’t gotten this book, it’s such a good resource. I think I did also want to ask, is there anything that you were like, oh shoot, I wish I had known that and included it in the book. Is there anything that you have learned since, or should we just get your book on Hirum to continue the journey?
[2:17:06] Whitney Horning: So yes, so yes, Hirum, um, Hirum is a different book. It’s, it’s set up. In a way, um, to help us understand how we can all come to know God. So it’s laid out very intentionally. Using Hiram’s life because he was a perfect disciple and student of Joseph Smith in learning and absorbing everything Joseph was teaching to go get it himself. He wasn’t just rely on the prophet brother, he wanted to have his own relationship with God. And so I laid it out that way, but in that, it did need addressing that Hiram has been accused of polygamy and so there is a chapter that does, that I did find out more information, quite a bit more about the origins of it in the restoration that are included in that book.
[2:18:02] Michelle: OK. I love it. Your description of that book reminds me of the Book of Mormon. I think that’s what the Book of Mormon is a series of people who came into the presence of God, right? That sounds like that’s what you wrote about Hiram as well. So, OK, I am so thankful. I just, I, I hope we can do this again. I could talk to you all day. I think you are just brilliant and wonderful and so inspired. And
[2:18:26] Whitney Horning: thank you for thank you for having me on, and I look forward to more podcasts from you. So thank you for your work. Good.
[2:18:34] Michelle: Thank you, Whitney. Have a wonderful night and we’ll do it again.
[2:18:38] Whitney Horning: OK, take care.
[2:18:40] Michelle: You too. Isn’t Whitney great? I hope you love her as much as I do, and I want to again, thank you, Whitney, for coming on and talking to me. And all of you listeners, please give us any thoughts, comments, pushback, feedback, insights you had, so that we can continue the discussion. Next week. I will be able to sit down with Todd Compton, author of In Sacred Loneliness, so he can present his perspective on why the evidence is solid that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. So I look forward to seeing you next time and we will continue on from there.
