88: False Advocacy – Women Respond to Lindsay Hansen Park on Mormon Stories

A round table discussion on a recent Mormon Stories podcast with Lindsay Hansen Park and Bryan Buchanan.

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Joseph Smith Revealed: A Faithful Telling – Exploring an Alternate Polygamy Narrative, by Whitney Horning
Hyrum Smith: A Prophet Unsung, by Whitney Horning

Mormon Stories, Ep. 1815 – Polygamy Under Joseph Smith w/ Lindsay Hansen Park & Bryan Buchanan

[1:24:50] Doctrine and Covenants 101 – Marriage (1835 version)
[1:25:50] 132 Problems Episode 5 – Doctrine & Covenants Teachings on Marriage
132 Problems Episode 68 – The Fruits of Polygamy, with Flora Jessop
[1:35:50] – TRANSCRIPT OF MISSING AUDIO
Bryan Buchanan: “The problem is we don’t always know the dates, and so – as the Louisa Beaman case, and our – a lot of these questions would only be really well answered if we had more data.”

[2:34:40] Doctrine and Covenants 101:46-54 (current version)
[2:50:30] Doctrine and Covenants 132
[2:51:10] The Book of Mormon, Jacob 2
[3:07:30] Discourse by Brigham Young, September 21, 1856.
[3:24:45] The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 3:12

Transcript:

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 100 32 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for plural marriage. I always recommend listening to these episodes in order, starting at the beginning for anyone who’s new here, that’s where we cover the scriptural um discussion and those really important parts for those who are new here. Welcome. Feel free to listen to this episode. I just wanted you to please look over the other titles that we’ve done and engage in the conversation that way because I think there’s a lot to learn. I am so excited for this episode. I get to, I got to sit down with Brianna Wright Gwendolyn Wine, Carly Lyman and Whitney Horning to respond to the episode that Mormon stories did on Polygamy Deniers, I guess is what they were trying to respond to. But I think you will see in the episode that they might want to really consider joining our team because we seem to be on the mo on the same page on most things. I hope that there are some new listeners here who will find this discussion to be a useful invitation and maybe um an opportunity to reconsider some of the narrative that you’ve believed in up until now. I think it’s really useful to look at the new evidence and to consider how the narrative impacts people still today. As always, I want to so sincerely thank those who have been so generous and donated to this podcast. And um I welcome anyone else who feels so inclined and able to please also donate. It would be very much appreciated. So, thank you so much for being here as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon Polygamy. Welcome to this episode of 132 Problems. I’m actually really excited to be here with this group of amazing women who I get to spend the next couple of hours talking about polygamy with. So this is really exciting. So um I first want to give just a quick um explanation and introduction of what this episode is and then I will introduce all of these awesome humans and then I’ll let them talk about themselves and then we’ll get going so a little while ago. Um Mormon stories, that’s John De Lin did an episode similar to the Mormonism live episode that I responded to with um um with Lindsay Hanson Park and Brian Buchanan about um polygamy and I found it to be interesting and somewhat troubling and I’ve been sitting on it for a while thinking, oh, do I want to respond? Do I not? And I finally had the inspiration. I will gather a panel of women and we will talk about it together because there are some real issues for women that I feel came up in this episode that I think are important to discuss. And I want very much to let women’s voices be heard on these topics that so deeply affect women, but who have an extremely different perspective on these things. Then the woman who was kind of setting herself up to be our, our spokesperson, you know. And so I wanted to be able to talk about that and break a little bit of it down. So that’s what we’re gonna do. We have uh this panel of women to kind of do somewhat of a response video to many of the things that were said in that episode. So with that being said, I want to introduce this panel. So I’ll just go across in the order that we are seated on the screen. So first we have Brianna Wright, who I just kind of had the thought I wanted to invite on because she makes like Brianna is kind of a Facebook warrior is how I think of you Brianna. She just has amazing insights, so much passion, so much integrity and it’s just so articulate and profound in her thinking. So I really am excited to have her here. I’m gonna go through all of you and then I’ll let you guys say something about yourself and then many of you will recognize and remember Gwendolyn Wine who has an amazing youtube channel that I hope everybody is watching. I love having brilliant women working on these topics and coming up with different profound insights. And so Gwendolyn, I’m so excited to have you back. I think it’s just Gwendolyn Wine. But you’re doing a series called Polygamy and Enemy have done this, which is also a beautiful title. So, and then we have Carly Lyman and this is Carly’s first time on this channel as well. Carly has joined the conversation on tiktok, which I think is great. I love that we’re covering the different platforms. Your channel is Carly Searches and praise and I love the way that you are breaking it down into smaller chunks, so thoughtful. So just hitting right at it in the most uplifting and impactful way. So I really appreciate what Carly is doing as well and her voice in this. And then of course, everyone will recognize Whitney Horning. I think Whitney, is this your third or fourth time here? I don’t even know. But, uh, we have more episodes planned that, that Whitney is gonna come on and do with me. But Whitney is our print diva, she’s the one who literally wrote the book on Joseph Smith’s non polygamy. And then, and then Hiram Smith’s non polygamy. I know it’s much more than that with me. But, um, I just feel like between this group, we’ve got kind of all the area, all the avenues covered and a lot of just feminine wisdom here to share. So did I get everyone’s introduction? Ok. Did I leave off anything that I need to? Whitney? Your book is called Joseph Smith Revealed. Is that correct? The first one? And then the second one is Hiram Smith prophet, a prophet unsung and I cannot recommend them both highly enough. So did I get those right? Ok. Ok. So, and, and of course, we’ll have everything linked links below the best we can sometimes I forget to put the links that people have to remind me, but I will remember. So, ok, so these women have all made the enormous sacrifice of watching this entire episode maybe multiple times and carefully and taking notes. I know that that is definitely what I have done. I have all of my notes here and there’s a lot to talk about and it was kind of, well, I guess first, just like, can we really take a quick second and everyone just give anything I left off of your introduction and then just give your first impressions of this video, the feelings you have from it, what you think of it and kind of, you know what we’re doing here, just go ahead and get fill us in people, just go and order and start Brianna, then Gwendolyn and Carly, then Whitney. Um

[06:28] Breeana: I, so I’ll just say that she did say Lindsay said something at the end that, um, she said we don’t like to speculate. Um, we just tell you the stories as they are. And I thought, well, I think there was a lot of speculation that went on in that episode. So that was kind of my, one of my biggest things was ok, you don’t like to speculate, but there was a lot of speculation in there and we all speculate to some degree. but still, um, that was something I thought maybe I would respond to a little bit eventually.

[07:03] Michelle: Perfect. OK. All right. And I’m sure, and maybe this is premature to do this because we’ve got all the clips. But like, yeah, like some something that kind of sums it up for you. So, thank you, Brianna Gwendolyn.

[07:16] Gwendolyn: Um I would just add that I’m a former librarian. And so I bring that, um, literary, uh, love and interest into my work. And one of the things that I felt, um watching that podcast with Lindsay and Brian, I, um, I appreciate that they’re truth seeking and that’s what they say that they are truth seeking. I felt so much darkness watching it and, and as I, um, just had that throughout my day, I just felt a lot of darkness around me. And when I read the book of Mormon and I read about the light of Christ, I feel a lot of light. So to me that’s an important contrast. And, um, I’m sad that they have rejected the book of Mormon as a book of scripture because of polygamy.

[08:01] Michelle: Oh, great insight. Thank you, Carly, your thoughts.

[08:06] Karli: Um So my first thoughts, goodness. Um Well, II I like this. Um Lindsay had just mentioned at the beginning that she was a liberated woman and she was wearing her tank top. And so I wanted to say showing that I, I think that we are all liberated women and like, I of course, am wearing a tank top as well. But I just wanted to say that it’s this information that she called dangerous that liberated me. Like understanding that Joseph didn’t teach polygamy was so liberating and completely changed my relationship with God for the better. Um It, it’s baffling to me that she called that dangerous information. Um And Brian also even mentioned that he, he knows that a lot of the later accounts were they, they had a motive behind them. So I’m like, OK, well, why can’t we focus a little bit more on why they had a motive?

[09:02] Michelle: Yeah, we will have, we have all of these clips that you’ve mentioned so far. So I’m excited to get into them. Thank you, Carly. I That’s beautiful. Thank you Whitney.

[09:11] Whitney: So, uh my thoughts echoed a lot of what um they’ve already shared. I felt like Lindsay is very well read. She’s very knowledgeable. She had a lot of history at her fingertips. Um And, and I used to agree not necessarily with her conclusions about what kind of a man Joseph was. But I used to also believe that polygamy had been instituted by Joseph. And I, for me, what liberated me was realizing there’s a third option. So often growing up in a church that um stresses that they’re the only true church. So often we feel like we have two choices and two choices only. We have the choice to believe and thereby be saved by that church and the belief in membership in that church or if we disagree with anything that church teaches, then the only other option is that then we’re going to, you know, burn in hell. And for me, what liberated me was realizing there’s a third option. And that third option is that I can believe in all of the beautiful, true things about Mormonism and the restoration and the things that are from God. And I can separate out the things that were introduced by man. And I found it fascinating that Lindsay um makes a comment that she wishes she could put ply me on Brigham Young. And I think, well, you can, and we’ve done a lot of research and if you would open your mind and heart to the research we have done, you can squarely lay this on Brigham’s shoulders and believe in the beautiful things that Joseph revealed and taught about God and, and our eternal nature

[11:08] Michelle: that OK, I’m excited to get into this I love all of your insights and it’s fun. Every clip you mentioned is one I have. So we’ll see how many we can get through because there are some that are really important. But so, so some of my initial thoughts as well is I really, I should have probably introduced Lindsay at the beginning as well. And Brian Buchanan there, you know, so Lindsay did a podcast called Year of polygamy. She had been a blogger on feminist Mormon housewife. So she’s a self proclaimed feminist, which is one of the things that I want to talk about because I know the word feminist is really loaded. I don’t necessarily claim that word, but I do definitely claim to be an advocate for women and I care deeply about women and that’s part of what really troubles me in this, in this episode as well. But I really appreciate that Lindsay did her podcast and brought attention to polygamy that was not talked about enough. I had already gone on my journey. I just looked over the dates again and I think that the blog post that my husband read came out in 2010. So that’s when I first was like, OK, this is not, this is not of God, you know, and then the more I engaged on it, the more I learned how not of God it is. But um but still I didn’t have any conclusions about Joseph Smith. But it’s interesting to see how the timing was because I think when I didn’t learn about year of ply me until she was quite a way into it. But she did, the first one I listened to was her episode on The Relief Society. And that’s the first time I learned that Brigham Young had shut down the Relief Society, which is a shocking thing for people to learn. Right. And, and then I went back and started to listen to her podcast and was like, glad she was doing it. But it was so I, I was too busy with kids to be doing something at that time. And I was so disappointed in it in a way. It was like, we need better than this, you know, but I am glad that she brought attention to it. So I will say a couple of things when she introduces herself, she tells us that she, what she’s up to and she’s now she’s been running sandstone for a while, which I find very interesting that, you know, that that’s taken a turn and been very different with her at the helm. And then yes.

[13:08] Breeana: Um for us, non Utah people, could you maybe give a quick brief description of Sunstone? Like I have an idea, but I’m not 100% sure.

[13:17] Michelle: Yeah, it’s just basically, it’s been around a long time. It’s kind of like the Mormon think tank, like a place non correlated Mormon ideas to be shared. Do you have a better description. Whitney is that? And so um they, they do magazine presenters I presented there on Lot’s wife in, I think, 2015 or something like that. And that’s the only time I presented there. So you can, you can submit papers and they have a symposium and they publish a magazine and you know, it, it’s anyway, it’s, it’s nice to have venues like that. It’s very different now, it’s interesting. And then also the thing that I found a little bit more concerning is that she is now the Hollywood connection for Mormonism. So I don’t know who watched, um what was it called under the banner of Heaven. And I, yeah, and my

[14:05] Gwendolyn: husband and I, we just Michelle when we watched it, we both were like, please tell me that none of our friends and neighbors watched this and think that this is how we are because there were, there were even these like all the little things, there was this one part where the sheriff said, made a piece of Heavenly Father be with you. And we were like, who says that? We don’t say that?

[14:28] Michelle: Well, that I grew up in Utah in the eighties. And I felt like, like the one thing I said to my husband was, I feel like someone said, anywhere that a normal person would say God change it for Heavenly Father. So it was like, oh my Heavenly Father, I’m like, what, what is this like I was actually really disappointed in Andrew Garfield going, why don’t you learn about the people you’re portraying? So you don’t make a fool of yourself. And so when I learned, did you want to say something Whitney?

[14:57] Whitney: Well, I was just going to say that is the point that Vern and I stopped watching it. We were just like, no, we just can’t.

[15:06] Michelle: Right. And so that’s just the cultural piece not even getting in which, which it’s like, oh, they did have a Mormon advisor. Oh, how unfortunate, you know, and then beyond that, the historical representations in that, that were so skewed and biased and ungrounded and good records and good evidence. So, so anyway, so that’s one thing that I’m like, ok, we all need to be aware that she now and she said that she is consulting on many more shows that are upcoming. So we all need to be aware that like the only reason I can assume that film producers are using her is because they hate Mormonism and want to portray it negatively because I feel like she has deep disdain for Mormons and Mormonism. That’s what comes across to me very strongly. And so that’s one thing I also wanted to speak about is um yeah, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to address this. So we can give a better, more balanced perspective, right? And, and say, hey, Hollywood, there are lots of people you could talk to like get a more nuanced balanced view. But anyway, let me go to this first clip if that’s all right and see if we can make this work.

[16:14] Lindsay Hansen Park: It’s almost like people are learning how to have fun together. It’s really important for me to have conversations with people that I disagree with. And Sandstone is that so that means we have conversations with people all over the spectrum.

[16:28] Michelle: OK. So I wanted to include that little clip because I know for a fact that Whitney has polygamists come, she has anti Mormons come. She has still faithful Mormons come. There is one group that Whitney that Lindsay, oh my gosh. That Lindsay, maybe it’s because I’m looking at you that Lindsay is vehemently opposed to and does not have come and that’s us, right? Have any of you had interactions along these lines when

[16:59] Gwendolyn: Michelle I sent her naively because I didn’t know this. I sent her my paper that I wrote, um I wrote a paper called Polygamy or the an enemy has done this, the seed and weeds of polygamy. And I sent it to her. Um No response, total silence. And I was like, that’s weird because she’s the lady who did the year of polygamy. You’d think she’d be interested in like getting to the bottom of this and really wrestling it and uh hey, if we can pin it on, not God, then that would be great. Right? So I was really surprised that she didn’t have any interest in engaging with me and, and, uh, especially now hearing that recording that she does have a desire to interact with people of all different beliefs. So, I’m not sure why.

[17:42] Michelle: Ok, that’s what I was hoping. Who was talking?

[17:46] Karli: Go ahead. Oh, sorry. Yeah, it was interesting because she said the point of Sunstone is just to kind of say that there’s more than one way to Mormon and, I mean, we are Mormon in a certain way and it’s a growing movement, you know. Um So yeah, it’s very interesting that she doesn’t want to give any light to our perspective.

[18:11] Michelle: Right. That’s what I find so fascinating. It’s like I’m hoping that by playing these clips, I’m hoping that maybe she’ll watch this and, and have some self awareness and go. Oh, that’s true. I, I am not allowing this way to Mormon and I think that that’s a mistake with, like you said, partly how fast it is growing and if they, well I’ll go on and play some more clips where they talk about not wanting this to, they’re wanting to combat it. If you want to combat it, you have to address it and you have to address the things we’re talking about. You have to address it and address it better that so, so anyway, I’ll go on to the next clip.

[18:43] Lindsay Hansen Park: So this history is really, really important to me. Not only because it’s changed my life professionally.

[18:49] Michelle: I’m gonna pause on the way through this as we go. And I think that that is a lot right there. Like she’s, has gotten a new profession, an entire new, new platform, a career in Hollywood now, as well as being the head of Sunstone through polygamy. And I do have to wonder if that really changes her into her perspective and shuts down her ability to look at things. You know, I, I wonder, like she’s, she claims to be advocating for communities that she, that we care about. But I wonder if she’s advocating more for herself than for those communities. And that’s something I find concerning.

[19:22] Karli: Yeah, I think that it can be hard to recognize our own biases because she has put so much time and effort into so much research that she has done. And I think that are evidence that shows that some of the points that she spent so much time on might not be right. It’s not her fault. It, it’s, that’s the sources that she had at the time, but information threatening those conclusions. Could that threaten her profession?

[19:52] Michelle: Yeah, it’s really interesting. It’s kind of that same idea of Mormonism like I like to talk about. Secondly, I 28 and 29 when, when you’re on a sandy foundation, you tremble lest you shall fall. So you fight against more information because you’re defending the spot you’re on. And it’s interesting to see that possibly showing up in different areas because I do feel like, you know what, even if she has this profession, if she can bring more truth into it, she’ll be even better at it. It doesn’t need to be threatening truth. Shouldn’t ever be threatening to where you have to shut it down and not consider it. So, ok, I’ll continue.

[20:22] Lindsay Hansen Park: But it’s, you know, my heritage, it’s my ancestors, a lot of my friends are now, you know, coming from leaving fundamentalist groups, I have current friends who are polygamists because the podcast led me to that. And so it’s a history that is misunderstood. It’s really important to me. And there’s this upswing in conspiracy theories and Joseph Smith polygamy denial that’s really taking off. And I would say in a concerning way, the, the arguments are compelling, they are really good at weaving together certain facts to uh frame a narrative that protects the reputation of Joseph Smith so that, you know, we can deny that Joseph Smith practice POY, put a on Brigham Young and believe you me, I wanna blame everything on Brigham Young. But uh I think that that is a dangerous, a dangerous uh approach to our heritage. And if we continue to allow that sort of thinking to get oxygen, it’s gonna have real world consequences to um our communities that we care about. And so it’s really important to me to get this history out there. So thank you for allowing us to do that

[21:33] Michelle: OK, there was so much there. Yeah, Brianna.

[21:36] Breeana: So I, I mean, I just wrote my thoughts down after she said that I was kind of like, so the reason she’s coming against polygamy Deniers is that the current narrative is really important to her. She says, um and to our heritage, but I, I just have questions for her. Like if I could sit down with her, my question, you know, to you Lindsay, if you’re watching is basically like, which is it? Did you, did you leave the church? Because you found out about all of this, your heritage? That was so um that’s so disgusting to you and that you denounced, you know, but now you’re like, oh, this is really important that we hang on to this because it’s our heritage. I don’t know, it felt, it felt a little double standard is, you know, um I thought, why don’t, why if, if you are pro polygamy and pro this narrative so much and, and our heritage and our history, like I, I mean, I didn’t mean this unkindly but I thought, well, why not? You know, why, why fight against it so much? Why not be pro FL Ds or I don’t know, I just thought, but then later,

[22:45] Michelle: go ahead, you finish. No, go ahead. You finish in a way. That’s what’s so strange is she is like, we’ll talk about that more as we go forward. But she’s saying I have friends that are L DS. And she’s been in the forefront of saying the FL DS are the real Mormons. They’re like, she’s really working hard and has been for years to validate polygamists living polygamy, which is so troubling and strange and we’ll talk about that a little bit more a week. So

[23:12] Breeana: it’s contradictory because she’s saying Ky was so awful and everything that she says about it the rest of the 3.5 hours, but she’s basically promoting it anyway.

[23:22] Michelle: Go ahead. Yep. And I want to ask Whitney really quickly. And then Whitney when she said that about, um, well, there are so many things I want to deposit on all the way through, but when she said I would love to blame it on Brigham Young. I, I feel like I, I guess I want all of your thoughts on this but Whitney, like, I don’t feel like that’s true. I feel like there is a deep investment that is not based on evidence that is just deter they accuse us of like being motivated by wanting to, by our love for Joseph Smith and wanting to redeem Joseph Smith. That’s not the truth. We are looking at the evidence. I feel like they are motivated by a deep need to hate Joseph Smith. I want to know if that feels like, why, why do you say I would love to blame it on Brigham Young. But no, there is a deep need to protect this narrative of bad Joseph.

[24:10] Whitney: Yeah, I agree. I, I felt the same. Um This is the same impression I’ve received when I hear this. Um I pondered on this a lot probably over the last four or five years. And this is often a comment I receive when people have read the book, they, they don’t want to. It is very fascinating to me that there that even apologetics and active mormons are OK with polygamy resting on Joseph’s shoulders, but it’s very upsetting to them to move it onto Brigham’s. And this has been a very fascinating thing for me and I think for those who have left the church. Um and, and one of the um I saw Lindsay, oh, a few months ago, I think on Bill real on his show and she kind of made a comment that almost felt like it came from the bottom of her soul like this gut wrenching comment that basically how dare the polygamy deniers do what they’re doing because they’re giving people hope. And I thought, I think that’s what it is. I think people who have rejected Joseph Smith rejected Mormonism and the restoration, a lot of them end up rejecting God and what they’re really rejecting is a hope in a better world, a hope that all of what we’re doing matters. And so I think that ultimately, there’s some deep seeded um pain that if Joseph is innocent of this, that they need to then reconsider what Joseph taught what he did, who he was in God’s plan for us. And ultimately reconsider God. And I think maybe for some people that is just far too painful, it, it, they then need to deal with some really serious pain that this dredges up.

[26:18] Michelle: Mm. So, already having dealt with the massive cognitive dissonance and faith crisis in a way, it would require them to re-enter painful, cognitive dissonance and a second faith crisis. That, that, that’s an important thing to realize. Thank you. Thank you. Um Carly, you had wanted to say something.

[26:37] Karli: Oh, yeah, it was just along those lines. Um I think that it, it’s much simpler to uh I mean, she, she said that we’re cons conspiracy theorists, right? And either way you look at it, there’s conspiracy. You can say that Brigham was a conspiracy conspiracy theorist or it was Joseph and it’s easier to denounce the whole church if everything lays on Joseph’s shoulders, you know, he taught plumy, he taught all these false doctrines. Everything he did was wrong and, and horrible and he’s a lunatic and so we can just completely throw him out. But if we try to consider that something was wrong in his organization and he was also a victim to another conspiracy, then yeah, we have to reconsider why was he targeted? And what maybe did he teach? That was true. And that, that is definitely hard to reconsider once you’ve completely thrown him out already.

[27:38] Michelle: Thank you. And for all of us iii I wanna ask and then, yeah, just let me ask this quickly, Gwendolyn, if that’s all right. Just um for me, I, this is one thing that drives me a little bit crazy because we get it all the time that we are just based on motivated reasoning. We just need to defend Joseph Smith and, and I want to know if anyone if does that resonate with any of you? Yeah. So OK, because for me, it very much was like, I learned this and it makes you reconsider your perspective of Joe, it’s actually the opposite. And I feel like, so I know it’s easy for both sides to accuse the other. But I feel like throughout this entire episode, there was so much projection and this is one of the areas I feel like they, they did see the evidence they saw at that time. And so now they are very needing to have, they, they are very motivated to have Joseph be this awful guy, they think he is. And so they’re refusing to look at further evidence, which is, which is fascinating because that’s what they’re accusing us of doing, but it’s what they’re actually doing. And so, and on a light note, then I’ll come to you, we like I did like that. She said this concerning upswing in polygamy denial, like despite themselves, they’re having to acknowledge and they’re having to acknowledge that we have very compelling arguments. But then she, you know, and the other thing that I think that we will notice throughout this entire discussion is they don’t address us at all. They, they’re like incapable of actually talking to or about us, which I find fascinating. So, ok, Gwendolyn, then we’ll come back.

[29:03] Gwendolyn: Um, one of the things I think this does serve to, um, serves to fulfill God’s purposes is that it, it has caused a lot of people to let go of Joseph to let go of their faith in Joseph. And for those who are willing, they have had to just redirect their faith to God. Um So as much as it causes that, that’s good, right? Because we don’t want to have faith in Joseph, we want to have faith in God. Um But I do, I do think we have very good evidence that Joseph was actually like a good representative for God’s Word. Um But I wanted to tell a quick story because when I was writing or I was almost done with the paper that I wrote um about polygamy saying that this is not of God and isn’t that great news and we can reject this doctrine and hold on to the doctrine of Jesus Christ. I was put in touch with a very well known. Um It’s a man I’m sure this won’t be a shocker once you hear the story. Um He was an author, institute teacher featured speaker at various church conferences and he very kindly sacrificed his time to talk with me about um my paper before I publish it. And when he heard, he hadn’t read it, but when he heard what my hypo hypothesis was that I, that I was saying that polygamy is not of God. He and how I interpreted Jacob 230 he told me you are treading on dangerous ground. Don’t write this, don’t publish it. Don’t go on any podcast or say anything about it. Just put it on a shelf, forget about it. You care about this too much. And um with that, with my personality that pretty much ensured that I would write it. Publish it. Go on podcast. I remember just being like, wow, thank you for that. Um But I think it’s amazing that, that this, this man who was trying to do good and Lindsay, who, who seems like she believes that she’s trying to do good. They’re singing the same song that it’s dangerous to think outside of their narrative. They don’t want us to think beyond what they say is true. And I would love for Lindsay and this man to answer what are the real world consequences that you don’t want to see manifested if I breathe this right. Lindsay says she doesn’t want to give it oxygen, which means she wants to kill it. What are you afraid will happen in the real world? What are you afraid will happen? In the real world, if people, as Whitney said, have hope that God is real and loves us and is ultimately good.

[31:33] Karli: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting how our thinking that polygamy is not of God. And also Joseph didn’t teach it is dangerous. But, but in other ways, she’s supporting the FL DS. Like, as if, what they’re actually actively doing is, is not dangerous.

[31:53] Michelle: Right. That’s, I guess what I was like, OK, so, so we know that she threw your plug me by saying that that the fundamentalists are the real Mormons. She really has buddy up with them. She and oh Christina Rosetti, I believe is her name. Um That’s a Catholic professor at UU. They were the as, as far as I understand it, like really two of the main voices pushing through the decriminalization of polygamy. And as I’ve talked ST this more, I just had a couple of really, like, I just adore Tanya Toole who has been on the podcast and I’m hoping we will come on again to talk about some things, but she’s in there in the like trying to get this done. And she was really vilified during that debate, like both, both of these women really vilified Tanya, which I just find so heartbreaking and, you know, and this idea that um I guess it’s kind of like, yes, we need to be loving and kind. I would never, you know, I have, I do have friends who are polygamous and they not anymore. They don’t like me anymore. But, um, but I don’t want to be cruel, but at the same time it’s kind of like if you have friends from the Middle East who have slaves, do you know what I mean? Should we like, buddy up and advocate for them and say, hey, it’s just another way to be a person. It’s just another way to mourn it. Like, should we like, like that’s what I guess I, I feel like polygamy is dangerous for people. Polygamy is dangerous for communities. It’s what harms people. Well, when we validate it, when we validate it, we make it, we empower for the people who are doing it right? We say they’re the real Mormons, they’re the real fatal ones we buy into that narrative. And then we put down like Tanya told me that one of the best things like she’s not going to take a side on the Joseph Smith debate. She’s not L DS and she’s certainly not an L DS historian. And you know, she’s like, I’m not going to touch that, but she did say that if um people, if this could be, if this movement can grow and it can be verified that this didn’t begin with Joseph, that would be one of the most profoundly impactful things on polygamist communities. And so that’s where I feel some real concern about Lindsay and her position. I’m like, is it dangerous to them or is it dangerous to you? That’s something that I think really needs to be considered. So, Brianna, sorry, I interrupted you.

[34:14] Breeana: No. And I think I’m just saying what you just said, but basically she was saying it doesn’t matter, even if there’s, I mean, she talked about sex a lot but even if there’s no sex, polygamy is just sex or not, polygamy is just bad and damaging and, you know, tell that to the people, you know that I’ve talked to that I have been harmed by this. But then she’s like, but of course, then back to the beginning. Well, this is a part of our heritage and a lot of people practice this and it’s part of their religion anyway. Yes. Go.

[34:40] spk_6: Yeah.

[34:41] Michelle: And I’m going to have them come present at sandstone and share their theology and I’m going to validate it and treat it like, like this needs to be held in the same category as slavery. If they really are the twin relics of barbarism, why is it OK? To validate one? If not the other? Yeah, Carly.

[34:58] Karli: Um So I don’t know if you have this clip from later on at the end. She says she doesn’t, she said that Eliza R snow drives her crazy. Do you have a clip about that?

[35:06] Michelle: I didn’t say the clip. So go ahead and talk about it now because I know which one you’re talking about.

[35:10] Karli: So when we were talking just earlier and I didn’t know that Lindsay Hansen Park had been vocal about supporting the bill to decriminalize polygamy. Um I went and looked it up and I read an article that was posted in the Salt Lake Tribune that she had written. Um and she actually talks about how we shouldn’t compare polygamy to slavery. Um And that, and, and she’s like, oh, we all want the easy, the easy out to maybe just decriminalize or to criminalize it so that it can be prosecuted. But she was suspicious of making such a easy con like conclusion. I was like, that’s suspicious that you don’t want to just criminalize, like make it illegal, keep it illegal so that we can help those victims because decriminalizing it, make it harder to help those victims.

[36:04] Gwendolyn: Can I add something here? So, one of the books that I love pointing to in my podcast is um was a 2018 book. It’s a social science book. And so this is our most current data. This is not a faithful book. This is actually based on studies that have been done and it’s called The Evils of polygyny. Evidence of its harm to men, to women, men and society. It’s by Rose mcdermott and it represents uh long term data right on this and it’s a very stunning title because nothing in, in uh in sociology is like evil, right? But she said it’s because it was an unequivocal harm there was no evidence of it being good in any way, by any metric, all evidence of good was anecdotal and they could not prove it. And so to me, it’s really surprising that, that they’re not willing to acknowledge or consider that, that this is actually proven to be a bad thing. Um I would think that that would actually be something you’d want to lean into if you were opposed to it. So there is this question of like, if you’re opposed to it, why are you promoting it? And if you’re promoting it, you couldn’t be opposed to it because it’s not just another lifestyle, it’s literally a harm.

[37:21] Karli: Yeah. And she mentioned that I forgot, actually say what she said about Eliza Arsal. She said Eliza Arsenal drove her crazy because she used her position of power in the system to hurt other women and to stop other women. And so she, that’s women of power and any of us with voices to create any sort of change, shouldn’t we be vocal and advocating to help these women out of the system or stop this system as a whole?

[37:54] spk_6: Which I just,

[37:55] Breeana: I agreed with her on that point and she’s like, it kind of drives me crazy how we like, you know, put Eliza r snow on a pedestal. I was like, I actually agree with you, Lindsay. I agree about that. I think

[38:05] Michelle: there’s a lot, there’s a lot we agree on with them as we go through a lot of the clips I grabbed are, are things I’m like, yep, let’s team up. But that was a brilliant point because I do feel like in a way Lindsay has built her kingdom on polygamy. And my concern is that to some extent, it may be on the backs of the polygamist, women and Children and men suffering in polygamy because she needs to sleep. That’s what I’m concerned about. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to do this response. So in talk to um Tanya who’s been very involved with this and um and some other people as well. So the decriminalization has actually been horrible. I want to, you know, give it its due. I understand the idea behind it was if people are afraid that they’re going to be arrested, then they can’t come and get help if they need it, if there’s abuse or if there’s rape. But, but built into polygamy is secrecy. It’s been that way from the beginning. It’s every abuser has to isolate and has to convince you that they’re out to get you every abusive sy, every abuser does that and every abusive system does that. So that wasn’t ever going to work. And one of the points Tanya made so well is that we have to first get better at prosecuting the actual crimes that are actually happening in polygamy before we talk about decriminalization until we get better at knowing how to deal with things like underage marriage and statutory rape and the um, child trafficking and all, you know, like, like she did say, I mean, well, there’s a lot of data that, that still needs to come in but I do know a couple of things, the suicide rate among polygamists is like off the charts. It’s, it’s the highest I know of. And um I’m going to do an episode on blood atonement because I have similar quotes with Brigham Young and Warren Jeffs talking about all the people coming and begging to be killed, right? Like it is a suicidal doctrine. It creates suicidality profoundly. And then you have to choose between polygamy or I mean, your family or like the, the, the shun and then you’re not at all prepared for life, right? And so what it does to humans is something we have to take seriously, right? And then, and then since it’s been decriminalized, it’s again, just validated the very worst of the polygamist. It’s given them a free pass, it’s empowered them. And from everything I have heard, things have gotten far, far, far worse. We have all of these FL DS women whose Children are being kidnapped, they’re being stolen from them and there’s talk of blood atonement. We don’t know where the kids are, we don’t know if they’re being killed. We don’t know. And there’s like, like things have gotten so much worse since it was decriminalized and I need to hear the people are leading that battle leading that charge say, hey, we need to fix this. If like, I’m really frustrated about hearing women claim to be anyone, anyone, not just women, hearing people claim to be advocates for women and Children and call out wrongs that they see while not acknowledging their part in contributing to it. That’s part of what I find so deeply, deeply troubling that we all need to look at honestly. And I guess I’m begging the people who were involved to look honestly at what, what they contributed to. And if that’s, you know, because I do again, I love, I don’t want to alienate anybody. I want to be inclusive and kind to polygamist, but we have to call out the system for what it is. And I think slavery is about the best comparison. We have to really name it for what it is. So anything else or should we move on to the next clip? Well, I was just,

[41:40] Whitney: I was just going to add that about a year and a half ago, a woman who is kind of a matriarch down in the polygamous community. I reached out to me and, and pleaded for help. She said that it, it’s just these last couple of years. It’s just getting just horrific for the people in the community. And she has, and I, and I can see, you know, so many things that we try to do in life are a double edged sword. I can see where perhaps the idea behind decriminalizing it was that sometimes when something is labeled as a crime, those involved, it’s even harder to come forward. Um You know, it’s kind of like branding you with the scarlet letter. And so perhaps the thinking was if we decriminalize this, then they will, we’re not going to be adding more shame and guilt to what their um participating in it and going through. But, you know, then we’ve just seen that the reverse of that is that it’s just becoming even more horrific with the abuse and the um victimization that’s going on. And so the human trafficking, you know, they, they want the women in particular, the women and the Children. I worked with a woman last year who had gone out of a polygamous marriage and her Children all were taken and are being hidden and she hasn’t seen them for over a year. And so there’s just horrific things going on, just, just tragedy on top of tragedy. And, and I, I agree, I don’t, I don’t understand how I guess for me, right? One of the motives, one of the main motives for writing my book was thinking of the good people who are trying to be faithful to the Lord and they believe that being faithful as a Mormon means getting back to the quote unquote fundamentals that they believe Joseph Smith taught. And so good people go and enter into this, um, polygamous lifestyle of marriage. And I guess for me, I thought if I could free them from that and help them separate and realize Joseph wasn’t the author of that, that it could keep, um, people today from entering into that and, and, um, I don’t know, I just prevent a lot of pain. Yeah. Exactly. And, and so I guess for me that part of what Lindsay said just, I don’t understand, I don’t understand her thinking that she can believe that what we are trying to do is dangerous for that community. To me. I see. I mean, I do think if you have a good marriage and good f good family structure, you should keep families together, Children suffer when there’s divorce. But how can teaching especially the Children a better way of life and a better future. How can that be dangerous? II, I just do not understand that comment at all.

[45:04] Michelle: That’s the only way I could make sense of it is it’s dangerous for her, not for the

[45:09] Karli: people. And isn’t it interesting that the L DS historian? Was it? Who told Gwendolyn that her line of thinking was dangerous? And also it

[45:19] Gwendolyn: was just a, just a faithful, faithful, well known influencer?

[45:24] Karli: Yeah. So how can I make? It

[45:26] Whitney: just makes no sense. So you’re saying the one that told you was an active LDS member? So I sense an apologetic for, oh, yeah.

[45:37] Gwendolyn: Well, I would say I would say, generally as a church, faithful church members believe that polygamy. It doesn’t make sense now. But it’s a, you know, we don’t, we don’t reject it as a church. And so if you are a faithful church member, especially if you’re older, right. I think there’s an older generation maybe who hasn’t, um, wanted to question these things so much.

[46:06] Michelle: Can I say that one of my just women I love in my ward is older. She raised, she’s very similar to me, had 13 and raised 11 Children and is she’s brilliant and we have the best conversations and she is just, she has been a, she was born a spunky woman who cared about women’s issues way before her time. And so anyway, I just, and my mom is, is almost 89. Like there are people waking up like crazy and it’s really easy and sometimes that older generation are some of the best of them and the younger ones are not.

[46:44] Gwendolyn: And actually, actually, as you say that, as you say that, like, I want to apologize to the amazing people who I do interact with on my podcast because many of the people who see this the most clearly are older and wiser than me. And they’ve seen enough to know like I completely acknowledge that. Um I, I think maybe as you get older, you either become more entrenched or more open. Maybe that’s maybe that’s what this is. So, but Yeah, I guess there’s a lot of fear. I think there’s fear and because people, um, people who love the structure and the hierarchy and the organization, they’re, they’re scared and they consider it dangerous because they think if you take this out, you take out everything and, and it’s like, you know what, if we take it out and it’s not of God, then we’re left with what God gave us. So it looks

[47:35] Michelle: like people, I keep trying to tell people like we’ve already done that with every other doctrine I taught, like we’ve already taken every single one of them out and we’re still here. Your faith wasn’t destroyed when you know, like, and we’re all glad, I think we’re all thrilled that we are no longer teaching. So like God, God, God is a racist and I think we’re thrilled that we’re no longer teaching blood atonement. And right. Wouldn’t we be thrilled if we were also teaching that God loves women? And like that would be amazing, right? And just, and move on that.

[48:13] Whitney: Actually, God is not a liar when he says

[48:17] Breeana: all the

[48:20] Michelle: right that God doesn’t ask you to, doesn’t, doesn’t give you terrible tests just to see what you’ll do. And you know, I like it has so distorted the nature of God into a lie, right? The truth of God has been turned to a lie. And so it, it’s not, it does not need to threaten Mormons to get rid of this act of me. Like, I guess members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, sorry. It doesn’t need to threaten us to get rid of this. And it also doesn’t need to threaten anti Mormons. It shouldn’t like whatever negative experiences you didn’t, you had in the church or whatever you don’t like about the church. It’s still valid because it is the church that Brigham Young established that does, you know, so, so it’s all valid. We can just look for the truth without being afraid.

[49:05] Karli: Right. Exactly. And because the church, we believe in continuous revelation in modern revelation. And all of us, we have, we’ve been taught this by the spirit like line upon line and we came to understand this through revelation. And so and lots and lots more people are understanding it the revelation. And so why can’t we just accept it as another modern revelation and right? Like, ok, like Brigham was wrong. So we put like leave it alone. Yeah, just

[49:39] Michelle: like everything else. It doesn’t have to. And it’s funny to me that we have Lindsay saying this is dangerous. We have Gwendolyn’s friends saying this is dangerous. We have Brian Hales saying like, told me that what I’m doing is dangerous because it causes confusion. I’m causing confusion. Polygamy is not causing confusion. 132 me talking about it is causing I’m like, can I just tell you how much more clarity I have? And like, and it’s, it is, it’s by study and by faith, right? It’s, but it’s mainly for study and then the confirming things and it’s like so clear, there’s no confusion

[50:13] spk_6: now, so

[50:14] Breeana: simple, so beautiful, so life giving. Yes,

[50:20] Whitney: I want to say something that Carly mentioned about conspiracies. You know, it just that, I think that’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me when, when these people who don’t like our message call us conspiracy theorists. And the main reason they do that is because then it shuts down anybody wanting to listen to us. Like it’s just a really easy way to just, oh, they’re nutty, they’re cuckoo, they’re out there, they’re conspiracy theorists as if conspiracies don’t exist. They’ve existed since Cain and

[50:50] Gwendolyn: Abel in the book of Mormon calls them secret combinations.

[50:54] Whitney: So a good friend of mine, Matt Loyer. He was on Glenn Becca a few months ago and he, and, and he’s been charged with that. Oh, he’s a conspiracy theorist. And he says, you know, Glen, I consider myself a conspiracy analyst. And so I love that we are just analyzing the conspiracies that do exist to find what’s true and what’s not true as

[51:19] Breeana: was Lindsay and John in their episode, we were analyzing heresies.

[51:25] Michelle: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. OK. So, so one thing that also was in that last clip that was, that was probably the biggest clip that we have to talk about. But one thing is she stated a couple of things. Well, first of all, it was Lindsay that asked John Delyn to have her on so that she could prevent polygamy, the polygamy denial movement from getting oxygen. Right. So she reached out and asked to be on and so ostensibly their whole reason was to respond to the polygamy denial movement. Right? So I found that to be so interesting as I listened because all like they didn’t respond to us at all. All they did was go on to harp on the very worst accusations of Joseph Smith, whatever. And, and now that I’ve researched more and I know, oh, that’s Joseph Jackson that said that really, you’re going that source. Oh, that’s, you know, you can point and you like, oh that’s from that book. Like you start to get a sense of what they are considering good, well, at least good enough evidence to assume is true and to share as factual truth. That was interesting to me. I kept so I, I think I saved every clip where they actually did respond to us at all. But that was amazing to me. I’m like, if you’re going to ask to come on a podcast because there’s a growing movement that you find concerning and you want to respond to it, well, then respond to it. You know, it was like, like I felt, I felt like the what this could successfully do is, is take the completely uninformed and skew their perspective Right. Like, like anyone who has studied all comments. Right. But, but it was just, it was just crazy. So that’s, that’s one thing I thought was interesting is apparently this was to offer a rebuttal to the polygamy Deniers. And I’m like, oh, did you fail massively fail at that? So I’m hoping that people who watch that will also watch this. Well, and we engage with some of our material that we’ve got so they can see the actual evidence that we’re not the delusional ones here. We’re not the ones just so. Anyway. Ok,

[53:35] Gwendolyn: we’ll go on to Michelle. Can I, can I add in one more thing? So I think also they, they don’t really define polygamy deniers. Um They or they do and they just say, they say Joseph didn’t do it. And it’s like that’s not what polygamy deniers are. Polygamy. Deniers are. People who say this is bad when we

[53:53] Michelle: say God didn’t do it. That’s why it’s not even about Joseph. It’s about God. We’re just, we’re talking about Joseph because of the facts. But for my whole, you guys know that my whole first year of my podcast and my whole 10 plus years of study was about, is this of God, I didn’t care about Joseph actually for a long time. So when we’re polygamy Deniers, we are denying that polygamy is, is Godly right?

[54:16] Gwendolyn: Exactly. It,

[54:17] Breeana: which you agree on, I would think, right? They agree with us. We agree with them. Let’s start there.

[54:23] Gwendolyn: And then how sure are we, that we want to pin this on Joseph knowing that it’s bad. And that’s, that’s kind of where our, our church, um, current, conventional thinking is a little bit different because currently we’re like, no, it was good because everybody said it was good. And it’s like, let’s just let’s identify what’s true doctrine of Christ and what’s not Christ. Right.

[54:43] Michelle: That would be a great place to be united. We’re united. So Whitney and Carly each had something to say, oh, I

[54:48] Whitney: was just going to say so as Michelle knows, my journey started the same way, I wanted to know if it was from God and I came to the conclusion it was not. And therefore, then I went through that cognitive dissonance of, well, then what does that mean about Joseph Smith? And I decided that meant he was a fallen prophet and then I had to work through that. And so I’m not, I mean, Don Bradley to me, gave me a compliment on Ward radio the other day when he said, well, there’s this author Whitney Horning and she even says in the beginning of her book, I chose to believe Joseph’s public denials as if that literally was all I did just one day said I’m going to believe Joseph and therefore he didn’t do it. You know, like that just counts years of research, years of struggling with this issue. You know, most of my life I’ve struggled with the idea of polygamy being from God and, and mostly for me when I was younger it was how, how can God tell me I am equal if he’s going to do this to me? Because I’m a woman. And so for me it was very much my relationship with God and could I trust him because I didn’t feel like that meant I was equal. And so there’s just to me when they throw out these, you know, oh, you’re a polygamy denier. Oh, you’re just somebody who chose to believe Joseph. You know, it just discounts how much intellect and reasoning and searching and pondering has gone into for each of us and for everyone I know out there who is on this journey, it is a journey and it is painful and it is difficult and it is a whole lot more to it. And then I was just going to say really quickly, my husband and I met Rick Bennett at an event about a year or so ago

[56:42] Michelle: has a podcast called The Gospel Tangents. And he’s pretty hard on polygamy deniers.

[56:48] Whitney: He is. And I almost feel like he might be the one who coined the term polygamy deniers. But we are sitting in front of him and um my husband during the break turned around to him and said, you know, introduced himself and Rick said, oh, your wife’s Whitney Horning and burn said, yes, and I just want you to know we don’t deny polygamy. We know Brigham did it. I love her. That’s great.

[57:21] spk_6: Ok,

[57:22] Michelle: I had one thing I was going to say the car that up

[57:24] Karli: I had first. So well, I just wanted to mention because you two talked about how that started your journey. Like you really wanted to get to the bottom of if polygamy was from God. And I just want to mention for anyone listening, my journey started six months before I ever thought of polygamy. Um I think growing up, I just didn’t even think about polygamy like I was taught it and heaven will be polygamists and you don’t really have to be, I mean, some people said you have to be, some people said you don’t. But I think I just intuitively shoved it to the back of my mind because I’m like, intuitively, I knew God is not going to force anyone into polygamy like that is just not something God would do. Um But my journey actually started because God just told me one day, you know, some of your church leaders say to put your questions on a shelf or doubt your doubts, any question you have just ask me. And I was like, OK, and I didn’t even have a question on my mind at that time. But I was like, and I just started, it started with like, I would pray and search the scriptures and, and I was so very devout. At that time, I had never looked at anything outside of church literature. And so I, I would pray about a doctrine or like something kind of weird that I thought was taught in church. And I only search the scriptures and in church literature in the library, in the gospel library app. And I found evidence and the answers that I got from God that false doctrines were being taught. And I got answers for about six months, about a couple of different doctrines that God showed me were false doctrines that, you know, got introduced into the church. And six months later, I got introduced into the evidence that Brigham altered the history. And Joseph wasn’t aist like, wow, my journey, it was not motivated recently at all to just say like it’s like Joseph didn’t do it because I’m trying to hold on to something. But if I in faith, God will show us the truth to everything.

[59:30] Michelle: I love that. OK? And I have to, I have to mention one thing, I love what you guys. I love that Carly. Thank you. And so John Delyn because he’s, he’s Mormon stories. He’s, he’s, he’s who had um Lindsay on and that we’re going to talk about. And Brian, he did his doctoral dissertation, I believe on the question of why Mormons leave because it was so offensive to all of the post Mormons to have the tropes of. They just wanted to sin. They never were really, they never were converted, they were, you know, whatever the excuses are. So he did an actual study to show what the reasons really were. That, that Mormons leave, right? And which we understand they studied the history for a lot of people, right? And I guess I’m asking like John, you did that work and you understand the importance of understanding people and not misrepresenting them. Please apply it to us and listen to what we’re saying, the more that like painting us as just motivated reason, we just need to, we can’t deal with the cognitive distance. We need to have Joseph on a pedestal. Whatever it is is exactly the same as the tropes that they just wanted to send and they never had a testimony to begin with. I’m hoping I’ve, I’ve tried in every way I know to help people hear that on this other side. So I’m gonna try again and hope people can apply this. I understand how important it is to not misrepresent and belittle people who leave the church do the same for us that have come through hard study, hard faith, hard cognitive dissonance, hard faith crises, right? To understand through our study, to have come to the conclusion that Joe, that polygamy wasn’t of God was the first time we had to do that, right? And then Joseph wasn’t a polygamist. So and, and just like Whitney, I had made peace with Joseph being a polygamist. That’s why he lost his spiritual protection, was able to be killed. Ok. You know, until I was like, oh my gosh, there’s way more, way more to this story that I didn’t know. So, ok, now I’m gonna move on to the next. But

[1:01:27] John Dehlin: you really get mixed messages about like how bumbling and ignorant and uneducated they were versus potentially, you know, having some education in the, in the family and some status. How do you guys make sense of that?

[1:01:42] Bryan Buchanan: Well, part of that goes to a larger point that we’ll we’ll talk about several times a day is the the lack of contemporary records for early Mormonism. And so many of these are reminiscent accounts. And so they will later be used as tools in the, the battle over history. And how do we tell that? And so you’ll see that sometimes people will, will specifically portray them as uneducated for a purpose. But then on the other hand, you’ll have other people that are like, no, actually they were better educated than you think for a purpose. And so the reminiscent accounts and memory and the nature of how history is written is going to be a theme that will go throughout our discussion. So

[1:02:21] John Dehlin: agenda really drives historical tidbits people tend to highlight.

[1:02:28] Michelle: OK. Was that not rich? Do you guys get like? Right, let’s be on the same team we’re saying exactly the same things. There are not good historical counts. Reminiscences have problems and gender drives narrative, right? Does anyone have anything else to

[1:02:47] Breeana: say? I was going to say one thing that Lindsay said closer to the end is she’s like, oh, some people want to call their experience in Mormonism, a cult and some don’t. And we want to let people speak for themselves and let people speak to their own experiences. And I thought, why aren’t you letting Joseph speak for himself Or Hiram or Emma? Emma was speaking for herself and they’re like, oh, Emma was a part of it. Emma lied. You know, Emma was guilty too and, and, and she was part of the, you know, person bringing in girls. And I’m like, but Emma spoke for herself and so did Joseph and, you know, and so did Hiram again and again, and those words are just stuffed and snuffed and thrown under the rug. But let’s let everybody else except those three speak for themselves. That didn’t, yeah, that didn’t make sense to me.

[1:03:38] Michelle: Absolutely. Believe all women except Emma and Sarah Lawrence and anyone else who thinks that it’s not true.

[1:03:44] Karli: I just have to say, I think that what we’re doing, definitely not motivated reasoning in our research. But I like to call it investigative research where it’s like true crime because there’s a hidden agenda, there’s motive, like there’s a lot of conspiracy going on. And so I think that their whole narrative and perspective on Emma is so twisted because, yeah, usually they say she mentions from within the first year of their marriage, Joseph was cheating on her with her friend and she told a neighbor that she made a mistake marrying him. And then later they say that she tried to poison him and then she wanted a divorce and she was stuck in this horrible abuse of marriage with Joseph. And then he passed away and she, like, validated his name and protected his character even after he died. Like that does not mean

[1:04:39] spk_6: a lot of opposition, right?

[1:04:41] Karli: That’s like if she’s free, hallelujah, she’s free from this horrible person. Wouldn’t she want to pray? Like, thank goodness and talk about her horrible atrocities that she experienced and tell more about why she wanted to poison him or why she wanted to divorce him. You know, like if she had been in that horrible horrible marriage that they painted as like a victim in that position, especially with the, the pedestal, like in the position she had to speak publicly, wouldn’t she talk about that?

[1:05:15] Michelle: Right. Well, there are a million things, polygamous men don’t elevate their wives, they’re disobedient wives and put them on pedal. There are a million different ways to approach this one thing that I find so found so interesting. Like I think one of them said in this interview and I know if they’ve said it before, like the Mormon Church lies about everything. Like they consider that bri they know, they say all of them were just liars, liars, liars. Oh, except on this topic and then everything they said was right. That’s what’s so bizarre like they are acknowledging. Yeah. These are all reminiscent accounts and people are motivated except on polygamy. And then every single thing they said about Joseph is true. Right. And then,

[1:05:51] Breeana: yeah. Yeah. And to say, well, Emma, you know, some people would say, and maybe Lindsay would respond this way or Brian or John, I don’t know that. Well, she was brainwashed, she drank the kool aid, right? So of course she kept defending his name. But why aren’t we applying that same possibility to all these later reminiscences that are married, most of them to Brigham and Heber years after Joseph’s death. Like why don’t we apply that same logic that they could have been put under pressure or, you know, while their husbands, their abusive polygamous husbands were still alive

[1:06:23] Karli: because at the point of their reminiscent accounts, they were under that system of oppression. 100

[1:06:29] Michelle: percent. And one thing I’ve said often is everything that could be forged was forged, right? We have all of the changed records, the change of the false testimonies, anything that is hard evidence that couldn’t be forged doesn’t exist. There’s no child, there’s no letter, there’s no journal entry legitimate, there’s no um request for finances. There’s no like if we look at any of the other polygamists starting with Brigham and Hebrew and William Clayton in England in like 1840 we have all kinds of evidence and then we have Children and like we have this, it leaves a trail, right. And so it’s like there is no evidence there that couldn’t be faked. Everything that could be faked. We have anything that couldn’t be faked. We don’t have, why don’t we look at that honestly, like we’re, we’re all, that’s what I love is all throughout this several times. I have several clips of them acknowledging the problems with the evidence and, and we’ll play some more of them and it’s like you’re right, we have exactly the same evidence and I think we are looking at it way more objectively than they are. But why can’t they at least acknowledge that they don’t have a done deal? It’s not like they shouldn’t just be calling us names and writing us off. We should go, oh, you interpret that this way? Interesting. I interpret it this way. That’s a conversation that can be had, but they don’t want to have it because the only way for them to deal with us is to hope no one listens to us is it’s based, it’s the exact same thing as don’t look at anti Mormon literature, right? That the church was doing forever. They’re basically saying, don’t look at anti polygamy litera, that’s what’s happening here, right?

[1:08:05] Karli: And

[1:08:05] Whitney: so I just have to say really quick that I struggled with the whole thing. But this clip you just played in particular because Brian, um, you know, is the owner of Benchmark books and they sell my books and a reader contacted me a couple of weeks ago and told me that he went in and he took my Joseph Smith book up to Brian and just curious what his opinion would be and said, hey, so you know, what can you tell me about this book? And he said, oh, that book’s been debunked. Oh,

[1:08:42] spk_6: that’s what they say about the Brian.

[1:08:44] Whitney: Listens to this. That is not a good way to sell books.

[1:08:51] Karli: Go

[1:08:51] spk_6: to your store.

[1:08:53] Michelle: Well, and please, Brian, will you send us the debunking Whitney? Have you ever seen the debunking? I’ve never seen the debunking. I keep hearing about the debunking of your book and about the prices books. And I, I would like, will someone please send me those debunking? I’m, I’m very interested in seeing that. Sorry.

[1:09:09] Karli: It’s just like Michael Scott saying I declare bankruptcy.

[1:09:13] spk_9: I declare bankruptcy. Hey, he said, hey, I just wanted you to know that you can’t just say the word bankruptcy and expect anything to happen. I didn’t say

[1:09:30] Gwendolyn: it. I declared it, I have, I have a recommendation for benchmark if they want to sell more books. So the best thing you can do is create a banned book shelf. And so Whitney, yours would be prime, prime real estate, banned books. Whitney Horning. Absolutely. And then they turn

[1:09:46] Michelle: over if, if Sandstone wants to have their best um attended conference ever or any of these other historical conferences have a panel, have a panel of us and have a panel with us and some of your best polygamy proponents. And let’s, let’s, let’s talk like you, you keep saying this is like at some point, you have to realize you can’t just keep trying to ignore it and suffocate it because I’m sorry, as much as you’d like to suffocate us, we’re still breathing and we’re, it’s going to keep going.

[1:10:18] Karli: So, ok, so I want to point out to Brian’s, he recognizes and he admits that a lot of the later accounts are have a motive to them. They want to paint them in a certain light at certain times and it, and it changes. And so I did a video on this just recently talking about how we do our research, right? And I even found it, it, it’s like when you’re on a jury on a trial, they train you on how to tell if, if the witnesses are credible. And, and so this is from Cornell Law, it says is the witness how to determine if they’re cuddle inconsistent statements, reputation for untruthfulness, defects and perception, prior convictions that show dishonesty and bias, right? And so we can see all of those things in the Utah accounts, especially from the leaders and the oppression of the women that they were under. Um And and of course, like everybody knows that the dishonesty and the manipulation applies to Brigham Young and, and the other leaders. And so why do we believe anything they say? Um, and then what’s really important is it even says this is from a different law website, but in training a jury, it says it’s not important how many witnesses there are. What’s important is if they’re believable and credible, it doesn’t matter how many there are, it matters if they’re true

[1:11:42] Breeana: and none of them are contemporaneous, none of

[1:11:45] spk_6: them. And a lot

[1:11:46] Karli: of their stories contradict the contemporaneous record. This goes into the

[1:11:52] Gwendolyn: Temple case. This goes into the Temple Lot case where the judge was like, you’re not credible. This isn’t Joseph.

[1:12:03] Michelle: That’s the funny thing. This actually has been tried in a court of law. They already have so OK, I’ll go on to the next my

[1:12:11] Breeana: mind, by the way, as a normal person, I never even knew that.

[1:12:16] Michelle: Say that again. Sorry, Brianna

[1:12:18] Breeana: again. Nothing. I’m just saying as a lifelong member, I never knew about the Temple Lot case. And so when I did learn about that, like, whoa, this was tried in a US court of law like bringing it all to the judge and they lost anyway. That was amazing.

[1:12:32] Michelle: And

[1:12:32] Gwendolyn: they have, they had the living witnesses too. We don’t even have them. Now. They had the living witnesses with all every fiber of their being testimony.

[1:12:43] Michelle: I have episodes coming up on that because if you want to have fun. Well, Whitney can tell us this. Reading the Temple lot. Testimonies is fun. It’s, it’s, it’s like hysterically fun. So, ok, not, I mean, like, it’s, it’s fun to watch people squirm when they’re caught in their bad lies. Right. So, um, ok, so the next one I think, oh, so they go on, I’m, I’m skipping over, like I said, a bunch of the Joseph Smith because really all they’re doing is, hey, we’re going to debunk the polygamy deniers. So let us just spread all the worst things that anyone ever said about Joseph Smith. That’s what a lot of it sounded like to me. With. No. Um Yeah. Yeah. Right. With terrible. They don’t provide any sources and, and if you happen to know what they are like, Whitney, were you impressed with the source with their um talking points? Ok. So here, here comes this,

[1:13:34] Lindsay Hansen Park: Joseph Smith has a reputation for a lot of his life um for disorderly conduct, I guess. And that includes women. He has an issue with women. Um His early journals are filled with confessions to God. Uh Lots of guilt, lots of, I’m a sinner stuff and some, you know, historians will say, well, that was just common for the time which it was. But so was men visiting brothels that was quite common, especially frontier people. And we gotta understand Joseph was a, was a frontier kid. Have you hung out with really, really rural kids. Like I don’t care if they go to church. They, they’ve got a morality, a lot of folks do that sort of doesn’t always match up with the Bible. You go to church on Sunday and whatever. So the, the that accusation that Joseph Smith liked young ladies is so scandalous to people. But it, to me it makes them very human.

[1:14:28] Michelle: Ok. I wanted to play that clip cause I thought it was a good sample of the level of scholarship here like rural kids. They’re a problem. Joseph was a rural, rural kid. He was a pro like, first of all, I think anyone who grew up in a rural setting should be so highly offended by this.

[1:14:47] Karli: Um I just moved to rural Tennessee and these are the most pure like Christ like kind people I have ever met. Like these are like true believing, like Bible believing Christians. Like these are really moral people here like their statement,

[1:15:06] spk_6: right? Like

[1:15:07] Breeana: what a weird blanket statement. I, I don’t know why you would blanket a whole uh category of people as like no morality even if they go to church. Like what I mean?

[1:15:21] Michelle: I’m sorry. So we have a record in Joseph’s journal of him repenting of having a broken heart and a contrite spirit therefore and oh and and back in the day men went to brothels, therefore, Joseph’s oh and he was a rural kid and rural kids are really immoral. So, since Joseph was a rural kid back in the day when they went to brothels and he repented, we know he loved the ladies. That’s what it looked like was the case there to me. And that’s about the level of scholarship I felt was represented in this. But I also wanted to just say, like reading through the scriptures, like, like again to understand who Joseph Smith is. I and I know that here I will put us back on the screen. I know that um all of you are aware of this. But for me, my journey was in the scriptures, right? And I think that’s the case for a lot of us and Joseph Smith’s scriptures, the book of Mormon and the doctrine of covenants are the most anti polygamist scriptures. We have far more so than the Bible. So just for anyone who’s not familiar with this, like making these claims about Joseph Smith, right? We have Jacob one through three, specifically Jacob chapters two through three, they get into the twisted version which I don’t think they even understand, read that actually read Jacob two and three. We have Mosiah 11, right? I mean, every single that’s King Noah, right? Every single example it says they did. He did not keep the commandments of God, but he would walk after the desires of his own heart. And he had many wives and concubines same in Ether 10 5 with replication. And it came to pass that reps did not do that, which was right in the side the Lord for he didn’t have many wives and concubines. And then we have Mosiah 2117, which is how they cared for the widows. Now, there were a great number of women more than there was the men. Therefore, Kingdom High commanded that every man should and part of the subs of the substance of the widows and to the widows and their Children that they might not perish with hunger, right? The way we care for widows is by sharing with them, not by forcing them into basic prostitution, right? You have to be my wife. If you don’t want to starve to death, we have fourth Nephi 110 which talks about procreate, I mean about multiplying if that’s what they want to make it about. And now behold, it came to pass that the people of Nephi did wax strong and did multiply exceedingly fast and they were married like inside the book of Mormon itself. It breaks down any possibility to want to claim that Joseph Smith was promoting polygamy, right? So on the one hand, they want to have Joseph be the sex obsessed, really power hungry guy who’s making up scripture and yet he’s making up scripture fighting against, right? And then we can go on to the doctrine and covenants. I won’t, I have a whole list here, but I’ll just do 4222 thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart and shall cleave unto her and none else. And he look at after a woman to lust after her. Anyway, it goes like it could not be more clear. There is no wiggle room for polygamy anywhere in any of Joseph’s scriptures.

[1:18:20] Gwendolyn: And Michelle don’t forget to add in the Joseph Smith’s inspired version of the Bible where he corrected

[1:18:27] Michelle: the verses. Right.

[1:18:29] Gwendolyn: Right. So he corrected the verses in the Bible which talked about David as walking right before the Lord Joseph corrected those that he did not walk, right. His heart was not right. So everything that came from Joseph’s hands condemns it 100% consistency including

[1:18:48] Breeana: section 101 which they brought up and then

[1:18:51] spk_6: you

[1:18:53] Karli: OK, I just want to mention, yeah, like she said, like, oh, well, he wrote, you know, like Jacob two at the time when he was trying to appease somebody, you know, whatever. And it was like, OK, he wrote that years ago but years like up until his death, like he was preaching against it so many different sermons, the voice of innocence, so many things. And I just wanna like, I, I thought I have like, I think at the end they try to compare him to another cult leader like David Koresh or something. And it’s just common sense, nobody becomes that influential and powerful if their actions aren’t in line with their own theology. Right. Right. You’re trying to seduce women and talk to their husbands or fathers and secretly course them into this, but publicly denouncing it every single day in public. Like, that’s not convincing. That’s not how you keep a following. And he had a huge following. People completely believed him and loved him. And that would not be possible if he was actually, like, if his actions weren’t in line with his teachings,

[1:20:01] Michelle: now we’re going to get into the public versus private denials in a minute because that’s the wrong, that’s the wrong measurement. But I will say if you look at any of these other cult leaders that they continually bring up, you’re exactly right, Carly, they practice what they preach every single one of them. It’s like, look at Brigham Young, it’s hard to keep that system of totalitarianism going, right. They have to preach it constantly. So you could not possibly have this polygamous control with. I mean, like, like you look at every single polygamous leader, including Brigham Young, right? And compare them to Joseph Smith and it does not match, it doesn’t work. You’re exactly

[1:20:41] spk_6: right. I

[1:20:42] Breeana: do want, I do want to be devil’s advocate just for this little point right here and say that cult leaders though, you guys are all, you’re right. I agree. But also cult leaders are huge hypocrites. They live, they will hold their people to standards that they won’t hold themselves to. So there’s also that

[1:21:00] spk_6: little

[1:21:01] Karli: Yeah, I understand. They oftentimes will be doing things behind the scenes that they’re, they’re not teaching to the other people. And like David Crush would teach celibacy. But he was the one sleeping with all the women. Like that was a huge hypocrite. But, you know, he was teaching celibate and then secretly sleeping with the women and they caught on to it. They all knew

[1:21:23] Michelle: he was teaching that he was the bearer. But I want to say, oh, go ahead, go ahead Whitney.

[1:21:29] Whitney: Oh I was just going to say that it’s fascinating to me that Joseph can just never win with Lindsay. So if you read my journal and I’ve, and I’ve hurt someone’s feelings or I’ve done something that I’m like, oh God, you know, I’m such a sinner and please forgive me. Then, then I need to worry that in 200 years someone’s going to get a hold of that journal and assume that I was just out sleeping with every Tom Dick or Harry. Right? And so because I, because I often get accused of being, you know, naive and simple enough to believe Joseph’s own words. I want to read what he said about his sinful nature. So in Joseph Smith’s history, 128 to 29 he talks about how between the time of when he saw, you know, had the first vision and then 1823 when the angel comes to him at night and teaches him throughout the night, he said I was left to all kinds of temptations and mingling with society. I frequently fell into many foolish errors and displayed the weakness of youth and the foibles of human nature in making this confession. No one need suppose me guilty of any great or malignant sin, a disposition to commit such was never in my nature, but I was guilty of levity. So he had a jovial personality and was a kid. And I just personally am extremely offended on Joseph’s behalf that him being open and honest about not being, you know, what we would consider like somebody who is perfect and never did anything wrong. That, that that has been turned into him being a lascivious man who was just out sleeping with the ladies. I don’t know, I very offended at that.

[1:23:26] Michelle: I could not agree more. And I also want to say Brianna that you’re right about the hypocrisy but honest. And I know people will look at this and say, oh, but as I have looked at Joseph’s life, I can’t find that you do not find hypocrisy in his life, in his actions and in

[1:23:42] Breeana: his, I I agree, I just meant in general, if he really was a cool, he would be probably playing all the sides. But we can’t find

[1:23:51] spk_6: evidence of that either. So

[1:23:53] Michelle: yeah,

[1:23:54] Gwendolyn: I just want to mention what, what Christ taught. We’re supposed to judge a profit by their fruits. That’s how you’re able to know. And so when I look at the fruits of Jo, so if I can see, you know, clearly the physical progeny just with Emma and then the scriptures that come from him, they’re full of light. And I don’t see that light coming out of um the polygamous leaders, but I do see that coming from Joseph’s hand.

[1:24:19] Michelle: Yes, I love it. I agree. And you know what, Brianna, we should talk about 101 here. Let’s because I don’t know if, I mean, we’re not going to be able to get to all of the clips. So Dr Kevin is 101. They did talk about it. Kind of, I thought it was interesting. It was actually if I’m remembering, right? Wasn’t it John Delyn that had to bring it up? Like

[1:24:36] Karli: neither. And

[1:24:39] Michelle: what, what did you

[1:24:40] Karli: say? I feel like oftentimes he’ll bring it up like a devil’s advocate or he’ll bring up a document like supporting evidence. But this time he seemed to bring it up like actually questioning like wait, wasn’t that at the same time of DNC 101?

[1:24:54] Michelle: Right? And the thing that’s interesting is I felt like he knew way more about it than they did. None of them knew the section title, none of them knew anything about it. John had to get a note to be able to know what it was and what it said. But Lindsay and Brian couldn’t tell you the first thing about Section 101. Right. And so that it’s like if you don’t even know that you can’t speak on this topic. No. Right. And so, and so I again, looked, I did an episode where I talked about the doctrine and covenants evidence of polygamy and in the beginning where I hope people will go back and listen to those scripture episodes because I think that’s where the real meat of the discussion is. But Section 101. So the way that the church now explains it away like Brian Hills and some of the really pro polygamy church members is they claim that Oliver Cowdrey did it without Joseph’s permission and that Joseph wasn’t there when it was put into the doctrine of covenants. And I have to say, please go watch my episode on Doctrine and covenants. None of that is true. Zero. It’s not true. Jo though that is Joseph’s doctrine. Joseph’s massive stamp of approval. No, I don’t know who was the penman because I don’t know who was the penman on the lectures of faith. But are you going to proclaim that Joseph didn’t support those like? Right. And,

[1:26:11] Karli: and it was printed in the 1830 3d NC, right?

[1:26:14] spk_6: And reprinted

[1:26:15] Michelle: in the 1844.

[1:26:17] Gwendolyn: And it’s got Joseph’s name on the title page.

[1:26:22] Michelle: He was the head of the committee for both of those printings. And believe me, if Oliver Cowdery had done something that like Joseph, let people know when they did things they weren’t supposed to do. Right. Oliver Cowy ended up getting excommunicated. Which, oh, we have to skip over that. But that’s something that they talk about. So erroneously. I was gonna let Whitney go off and tell us about like, oh, it’s just so, it’s like, oh, it’s all, uh, sorry, it’s really frustrating to know this history and hear how they twist it while they’re accusing us of twisting things. So yes. Section 101 absolutely forbids polygamy in no uncertain terms. And oh, we are going to get to it in a minute. I’ll play a clip of John talking about. I actually kind of liked John Delyn the best in this episode because he’s the most honest, right? So I I’m gonna go to the next to the next clip and then um here it comes.

[1:27:17] John Dehlin: So when you mentioned rumors in the early church, what, what are we talking about there? There’s rumors of polygamy.

[1:27:23] Bryan Buchanan: Yeah. And, and this is another one of those great cases where the lack of contemporary records makes it more difficult. But the Eliza winters is one that, that occasionally gets mentioned but not very often. And that it’s, it is such a fascinating case because if you connect some of the accounts, it does seem like there was a friendship there. And so again, as we move into Kirtland into Navoo, these women that were friends with Emma Eliza Snow does seem to be a pattern that is there. So there’s that one you have, um, there’s, there’s this down the scale a little bit, there’s a woman that was living in Pennsylvania that was thought Joseph Smith came through and some sort of relationship and then he gets run out of town, but we only have a single reference from like 65 years later. And so in all these cases, we have to sort of weigh evidence and how much weight do we give to this and that’s history ends up becoming just as much an art form as it does. Science. OK.

[1:28:25] Michelle: I just love how they’re making our case for us. Right. Whitney, I don’t know if you want to take time to talk about Eliza winters. I, we don’t have to go into it. I just feel like they are casting these aspersions wherever they can by saying, well, there is this so there and there is this and it’s 65 years later, but it does point to a pattern, right? While acknowledging we have no evidence and we just have to choose what to believe. So I have, I’ll play the next. Oh, you go ahead Whitney. Then I, I was just gonna say

[1:28:57] Whitney: really quick that I feel like I’ve watched enough of these over the last year or so. And, and, and it does make me really, really happy that our belief is a growing, is growing and is catching on and I just find it so fascinating though that, that they take our, some of our, some of our arguments and then they just throw them out in blanket ways. And so like they did with this, like John Delyn saying, well, there were rumors and then Brian saying, yeah, there were rumors and then John will later talk about 101 that it says because this church has been charged with the crime of plague. We always see they were doing it, you know, and it’s just to me, it’s just so frustrating that they’re smart enough to know why there were rumors at the time, they’re smart enough to know. So they throw out the, oh, there was the Oneida group and there was the cocker kites and really, that’s why the church was charged with plumy. Yes, exactly. Because there was a growing movement in New England. It was, it was called the Garden of Eden movement. And people there were people all over trying to establish churches and get back to this idea of this Garden of Eden and this innocence in this, this pure form of religion. Um And it all of those inevitably ended up going into polygamy. Um because they all started into this belief of all things in common meant my wife is your wife and your husband’s my husband. And it just, you know, because it’s the fastest way for Satan to destroy anything good is to introduce um sexual immorality and it destroys all trust in a group. And so it is frustrating to me that they, that’s how they try to stop our narrative is by kind of like throwing out to their audiences, what they know our arguments will be and what our proof will be. So that then when they hear it, they can just discount it and say, oh yeah. Well, John Dylan talked about that and oh yeah. You know, and it’s just frustrating because there is truth in the fact that there were other groups practicing polygamy and practicing um John Noyce’s group, theirs was called complex marriage. And it really out there. And so yes, there were these other groups. And so Joseph in the elders journal in like I think it’s like 1832 or 33 he lists the top questions that the missionaries were receiving and one of them was you guys share all things in common. Does that include your wives? You know, do you believe in polygamy? And he said no. And so he’s trying to to me section 101 is trying to set the record straight like like we are not like these other groups, we do not do it, we believe in monogamy and then you know, lays that out. And so he’s trying, I I feel like in that section, the Lord is trying to set his law of marriage for his people. If you want to be my people, this is the law you will obey in marriage.

[1:32:10] Michelle: Thank you for spelling that out. I completely agree with you. It’s ridiculous. It’s like his journals. He repents in his journals. Therefore, he’s a womanizer, right? And he says, hey, we don’t do polygamy. Therefore they do polygamy. Like, like what is he supposed to do? Ok. Yeah, they’ll go to the next one.

[1:32:29] Gwendolyn: I want to piggyback on what Whitney is saying here, there’s a, there’s a great book written by Sarah Marshall or Sarah Pearsall called Polygamy in Early American History. And you know, this is an academic scholarly book and one of the quotes she says in there was while everyone knows the Mormons instigated Polygamy in America, this was patently not the case. There was plenty of polygamy before that and there was even more imagining thinking and writing about polygamy in the early modern era. So this is something that should be known by us. Um But we, but we haven’t really like grasped that because um we’ve got these like competing factions within the within and without the church who like the narrative that Joseph started polygamy, but it’s very easy to see. It didn’t come from Joseph. And then I just want to point out even in our own doctrine and covenants, the Lord tells us what’s about to happen in section 38 of the doctrine and covenants which um the Lord says that he’s going to tell the saints to go to Ohio. Um and he says, I show unto you in verse 13, I show unto you a mystery, a thing which is had in secret chambers to bring to pass even your destruction in process of time. And you knew it not. And the Lord then tells them, go to Ohio where, where I’ll give you my law and then the law that’s given Michelle you read it is cleave to your wife and none else. It’s super clear. And I wanna point out the date this revelation was given was January 2nd 1831 that should obliterate all of our polygamy doctrinal. Um make believe that we have because right now we say in the heading of section 132 there’s evidence that the prophet knew about some of these principles as early as 1831. Well, he had to have known it January like 1st 1831 because on the second, the Lord tells him no, we’re not doing that. You’re gonna go to Ohio and get this law of monogamy.

[1:34:30] Michelle: That’s, that’s so, I love this discussion because I feel like it’s so important to understand the broader context. And it’s also so if you’re going to be a scholar and a historian about Joseph Smith, you have to include Joseph Smith’s words, right? You have to understand the scriptures he wrote and the, and even if you don’t think that they’re of God and you think he’s a fraud still he wrote them and you have to explain that. So yes.

[1:34:55] Karli: And I just realized in the quote that everyone likes to use about William Marks, uh Joseph saying that he was deceived. Um They just use that one line. I was deceived. But at the end of it, he said that the church was going to be destroyed because of this damnable heresy. And I didn’t know before. I used to read that as hearsay um because it’s the old type script, but it’s heresy, which means it’s a teaching that goes against the orthodox doctrine of a church. And it says that he’s going to try those men by the laws of the church. And it’s so clear, it’s against the laws of the church and it’s a heresy, it goes against their doctrine of his own.

[1:35:37] Michelle: Awesome. And William Marks later clarified his statement multiple times saying Joseph was saying he was deceived in the brethren, not deceived in the doctrine. So, yeah, OK. Here’s, here’s the next clip. This is a short one. So that’s just along the same lines. Them acknowledging we have no data. Yes, Carly.

[1:36:10] spk_6: OK.

[1:36:11] Karli: This just reminded me of a book I really like. It’s a historical fiction called Becoming Mrs Lewis. And it’s based on the letters, love letters written between uh an American author and a poet rests. Her name is Joy Davidman. And she started writing letters to CS Lewis and they started corresponding and they fell in love. She moved to England and they got married and it’s a historical fiction book based on their love letters. And so that’s what they’re trying to do is create this narrative and paint the picture of what Joseph’s polygamy looked like. Except there are no letters, there’s nothing in the world. The only matters we have is between Joseph and Emma and we can tell how in love they are. And I was just reading Eliza Snow’s journal because I had found one day that when he was in hiding in 1842 Emma had visited him all day on August 14th. And I had the thought like who was watching the kids, you know, and then I went and read Eliza’s journal and she said on August 14th, Emma called for me to stay with them. Oh, Eliza was um and then a couple months later because he’s in and out of hiding. A couple of months later, she’s still there. Eliza is still staying in their home, but he goes back into hiding. And at that time, Emma was sick. Um And let’s see. So he went back into hiding and this is the one letter that I could find that Eliza wrote Joseph. And she said, sir, for your conso consolation, permit me to tell your Emma is better. She soon will be well. And it’s like, is that how you talk to somebody who you later say was your beloved husband? The choice of your heart? And crown of your life. So remember to tell you that Emma’s doing better. Like that’s not a love letter. Like it’s not how you speak to your beloved husband.

[1:38:14] Michelle: Right? It’s so silly and, and the old trope of, but it had to be kept secret gets just it dies. It’s like, well Clayton wrote it. I mean, we have everything of everyone else and a note to Joseph about Emma didn’t have to be burned, right? So OK, thank you for sharing that. This next clip is response is, is starting out about the claim by WW Phelps decades later. Again, that Joseph told the men that they would be marrying indigenous women to raise up seed, right? And, and it’s so bad and even they acknowledge that it’s bad, but I just want to read this little part of it.

[1:38:53] Lindsay Hansen Park: So this is the joke I was making earlier. It’s funny because a lot of, a lot of faithful apologists will use this uh date to say no, no, no. All the fanny, er, all of it is a marriage. It’s not an affair because of this 1831 revelation. But uh you give anyone else outside the church an account that’s given 30 years later and they don’t count it this one. For some reason we count we don’t have an accident document of it. We just have William Winne Phelps recording it years later.

[1:39:23] Michelle: Ok. So again, I want to be like, hey, do you guys want to come join our side because you’re making our arguments for us, right? There is no reason for the only reason they reject the will the WW Phelps like the church, Brian Hales likes the WW Phelps document because it allows him to say that Fannie Alger was a wife because he already obviously had the doctrine because it was before that, right. That’s really the only reason that Lindsay doesn’t like it. Do, do you get what I’m saying?

[1:39:55] Gwendolyn: Well, and all that contradicts and that just contradicts Joseph’s own scriptures that he wrote that he let’s say, what is the cover page, the title page of the Doctrine. And covenant said carefully selected from the revelations of God and compiled by Joseph Smith junior. So that just contradicts his own revelations, which again, it just doesn’t make sense. And Brian and sorry and, and John mentions that, are you going to play one of the clips where John tries to make sense of it?

[1:40:23] Michelle: Yes, I am. Yes. Those

[1:40:25] Gwendolyn: are my favorite.

[1:40:27] Michelle: I’m sharing this little screen right now just because I think it’s worthwhile. So, here we go. Ok. I just want to make the point because it’s always been Alger until year of polygamy when Lindsay, I believe mispronounced Alger, which it’s ok. Everyone mispronounces things, but then everyone started to say Alger and then um I’m trying to figure out why I can’t shut this down now. And then um Da Bradley said that it was, um, er, because someone said, well, they say it differently. France too, so I just want to set the record straight. It’s always been Alger. It is Alger A G before an E phonetically is a soft G, right? It’s Fanny Alger. Can we just have it be Fanny? I guess I can always

[1:41:19] Gwendolyn: be.

[1:41:21] Michelle: Right. Ok. Ok.

[1:41:23] Breeana: For me as much as it is for Lindsay. So I guess I’m with Lindsay on this like, thank you, Michelle.

[1:41:29] Michelle: Yes. Well, I’ve been in this, I’ve been in this a little bit longer. So that’s why I was like, what is this new word? Right. Whitney. We, we, we’re the old school, like I taught a lot of kids to read in my homeschooling days. I care about phonetics. So, anyway, ok, now the next clip I know that was a little. So the next step I think is about Fanny Alger. If I’m remembering the right one,

[1:41:51] Lindsay Hansen Park: it’s really sketchy. What we know what we do know is a sexual relationship happened. Joseph Smith never that as Richard Bushman points out, he never denies it, but he wants to make it very clear that it was not an affair.

[1:42:03] Michelle: Ok. So you catch that. We have no evidence but Joseph Smith didn’t say somewhere I never had sex with Fanny Alger and therefore it happened. We know it because he never denied it. And that’s, and we have no evidence for it, but we know it. Well,

[1:42:19] Gwendolyn: he did, he did actually deny quite a bit that he had any extramarital relations with any women. But I guess because he, I guess because he didn’t say the name Fannie Al

[1:42:35] Michelle: I have thought. But Whitney, what did you want to say?

[1:42:37] Whitney: Just what Gwendolyn saying? He denied over and over again that he had no one but Emma, he wasn’t guilty of any gross or malignant sin. How can that be any more clear?

[1:42:53] Karli: No. And he explained it in the High Council meeting. I mean, we don’t know exactly what he said, but he said he explained the girl business, whatever happened and they tried to twist that like, oh, well, I mean, he told them that it was a spiritual life thing. And so they just believed him and they didn’t judge him or whatever. But it’s like that happened years before there was any talk of any spiritual life doctrine. The High Council wouldn’t have exonerated him or understood that because that wasn’t a thought,

[1:43:21] Michelle: right? So they claim and this is all complete in complete contradiction to the historical record. They claim that that Oliver was excommunicated because he accused Joseph of adultery. That’s not, that’s not why Oliver was excommunicated. That’s not true at all. And then they say that Joseph surrounded himself by yes men. And so this high council was just all made up of yes men. So they all did his bidding, excuse me. Like do you know how many people on the High Council? Was it? Who was, who was the guy that left right after that because of the milk stripping and started fighting against them. I’m forgetting his name. So I feel like I’m, I know, but I, I know his name. Someone, someone look it up quickly because that’s embarrassing. But, um, also, I mean, there were, there were many in that high council who left immediately and started to persecute Joseph’s entire life. He was never surrounded by yes men ever. His first two in a row, two in a row of his counselors and his first presidency were the worst of all, John Bennett and William lot. Like they just ignore all of the factual history to try to claim things. So anyway, I just thought that that was lovely. It was like

[1:44:29] Gwendolyn: the milk stripping is Thomas B Marsh.

[1:44:32] Michelle: Thomas B Marsh. Thank you. Forgive me. That was terrible that I drew that like, but it’s so I love that clip because it was like we have no evidence and yet we know this, right? And so,

[1:44:42] Gwendolyn: well, we we also have this, this is sort of our defense too, as we say, well, he never denied celestial plural marriage. So that’s what that’s what he was doing. And it’s like, I’m sorry, how many things do I have to like creatively come up with the name for? So that people know after I died that I wasn’t engaged in these crazy things. Like, like nobody called it that

[1:45:05] Michelle: I’ve asked everyone to show me where he ever called it celestial thorough marriage. He did his best to lump it all in together and I have found 66 excerpts, whatever of Brigham Young, referring to spiritual wifey in, in the 18 forties and fifties before they made the change. We also have it was it Elizabeth, I mean, um Emily um Partridge referring to it that way. So, so like they, they’re making these distinctions. So I, I feel like again, there’s so much common ground we could have with these people. We both agree that the church narrative is silly. The only problem is they only agree that half of the they, they agree with most of the church narrative, right on polygamy. So OK, I’ll go on to this next clip.

[1:45:49] John Dehlin: The fact that section 101 used to be there while polygamy is being practiced and then it was removed and replaced the DNC 132. That seems like one of those really important pieces of information that everyone should know.

[1:46:02] Michelle: Can I get a hallelujah. Is that not exactly what we’re all doing? Like trying to make as many people as possible know these things. And so why are we dangerous? Why are they depriving, trying to deprive us of oxygen instead of engaging us when we have so much common ground? OK. And so um now, let’s see. Oh, this is another one. These are just clips where I really liked John Delyn in

[1:46:33] John Dehlin: this. It’s a house of chaos that, that would say that any of that was from God to me it seems, I don’t know

[1:46:42] Michelle: again. Right.

[1:46:45] spk_6: Yeah, I

[1:46:47] Karli: agree with you completely.

[1:46:50] Michelle: We’re on the same page 100%

[1:46:52] Gwendolyn: I would say to John John, the fastest way that we can make sense of this is to stop believing everything that polygamist said as if it’s true and that will make sense of it like that, right? You just have to stop believing people who didn’t, who told lies, then you can figure it out. But if you believe people who lied, then it will never make sense.

[1:47:14] Michelle: Right? And the idea, I always, I love the analogy. If you think that polygamists couldn’t lie, then look at the FL Ds, look at the yearning for Zion Ranch. Look at like the fact that we don’t understand that polygamy and lying are like always go together and pride. Even Jacob puts those together. OK. Here’s another clip along the same lines.

[1:47:33] John Dehlin: Well, just the fact that DNC 135 or DNC 101 pro prohibited. It uh seems to just, and, and that Joseph was denying polygamy all the way through. It’s just hard to swallow that Fannie was a legitimate of God sealed, you know, first polygamous wife to Joseph Smith. It just, it’s hard for me to swallow that

[1:47:57] Michelle: again. Right. We all we agree with you completely. This is why it’s so silly that they’re painting us as like we are looking at the evidence and we agree. Yeah. OK. So this next one, this is wild. Um So this is the under the banner of under the banner of heaven story. I think. So let me um let me see what I wanted to say about this. Um Well, I’ll go ahead and play the clip because I can’t remember what I wanted to say about

[1:48:29] Lindsay Hansen Park: it. Was it Marinda? Maybe not because I think the date would have placed her at 12 years old.

[1:48:34] Michelle: Yes. So this is the allegations at the when um Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith were um tarred feathered, beaten, left for dead, right? And the allegations that they did it because Joseph was trying to be inappropriate with the girls there, which again, there is no good evidence for what she’s kind of go going to acknowledge a little bit. So the story is that she included in under the abandon of heaven is that there was a doctor there to castrate Joseph as part of the mobbing again, very late account, listen to her explanation about it.

[1:49:06] Lindsay Hansen Park: Um It could he have been, you know, um inappropriate with a 12 year old. Of course, there’s nothing to say that he wa wasn’t, but the date is remembered wrong. I think the reminiscences have her as 16 at the time. I think regardless of the actual details. It there was probably a doctor there and he was probably threatened with castration.

[1:49:29] Michelle: Again, the level of scholarship, I think what, regardless of the details, this probably happened, Brianna, you haven’t heard from you for a minute. So tell me what you think of that.

[1:49:39] Breeana: Uh Nothing. So for me, I haven’t written a book and I don’t have a blog, you know. So um for me, as I was watching a lot of this episode, my thoughts were I would really like to see sources. I, I even went to the description of the episode, you know, the box, like hoping that John or whoever would link all these claims because I’m like, I actually genuinely, I’m, I’m a researcher and I’m a seeker of truth. So as she’s saying all these things like Joseph Smith senior was a drunk and all these things like I’m like, can I please see where you’re getting this? You obviously got it from somewhere. That’s great. That’s fine. And you agree with it. But I would like to see it as a, as a researcher and a seeker. Can you point me in this direction because I haven’t seen or heard that and I’m willing to look at it, I’m willing to, to, to peak and actually digest and consider that maybe I’m wrong. I’ve learned that I’ve been wrong enough in my life to be like to keep the stance of this is where I’m at at the moment, but I could be wrong. I could get more information. I could get more re you know, more knowledge, more research, whatever. And I could be mistaken and I live in that like, please Lord correct me if I’m incorrect in anything and I am so open. So, yeah, those are my thoughts as she’s making all these claims of. Can you, can you point us little people in a direction of where you’re getting that so I can look and determine,

[1:51:09] Michelle: OK, I I just think that what Brianna said probably resonates so much with all of us being like I just want truth. I’m totally, I just want the information, whatever it is, right? Does that, how does that speak for all of you? Because I think that’s where we all are that are in this, in this journey, right? And so yes. So I will say if anyone wants to get this low down on Joseph Smith, she’s basically um it’s the Grant Palmer narrative, right? And so, um so Grant Palmer, I think is the main, the main source for anyone who wants to investigate these claims. And I would recommend looking at the evidence and seeing if you consider it to be

[1:51:46] spk_6: valid. So

[1:51:48] Breeana: I do remember them saying that. Ok. Awesome.

[1:51:51] Michelle: Yeah, and she’s talked about it before. He’s the one that claims that Joseph was visiting brothels as a little boy. Well, you know, he was an eight year old drunk kid going to brothels. But I mean, I’m sure I’m exaggerating a bit. But, you know, it’s important to look, but this is the problem. People read those books as if they are factual instead of where you should be spending most of your time is in the footnotes, right? It’s like, what is the source for that? And then, and then you need to have a broad enough spectrum to know what they’re leaving out of the narrative, right? Just like the faithful narrative leaves out any of those sources. Their narrative leaves out so many sources that are much more valid. So, hey,

[1:52:29] Gwendolyn: Michelle tonight, can I share a quick book of Mormon Scripture here? One of my friends, Jana sent this to me because we were, we were discussing this like the records and how do you know who’s to believe? And she pointed it out and I thought, oh, this is such a beautiful verse to have in the book of Mormon. It’s in third five chapter eight verse one it says, and we know our record to be true for behold, it was a just man who did keep the record for. He truly did many miracles in the name of Jesus. And there was not any man who could do a miracle in the name of Jesus save he were cleansed every wit from his iniquity. So people who do the works of Jesus leave true records and that’s a great, I think that’s a great metric to measure by

[1:53:11] Michelle: I like that. And do you know what in this same Johnson farm? One of the reasons that Joseph and Emma were staying at the Johnson’s farm is because Joseph healed the mother of the farm from her rheum rheumatism. She had a very painful, paralyzed arm and he healed her. He did a miracle, right? So that plays into that too. But of course, they, they don’t tell us that part of the story. They just say that there were later claims that he was hitting on the 16 year old daughter. Oh, she happened to be 12, but it still probably happened, right? So anyway, ok, so this next one. So they’re saying there’s not good evidence to um to trust those sources, right? We don’t have good evidence for it, but it probably happened. And this is John’s response that I find really interesting.

[1:53:56] John Dehlin: Let’s just put it this way. There’s no less credibility with that story than with Joseph Smith’s own first vision in terms of all the different accounts.

[1:54:06] Michelle: Ok. I wanted to bring that one up just because they’re comparing Joseph Smith’s vision, the the, the support for that with this other problematic account. Right? Here’s the thing they reject Joseph Smith Smith’s first vision and they constantly use the the historical conflict about it as reason to reject it. In addition, Joseph Smith’s first vision isn’t a historical question, right? It’s a faith question. Not a anyway, I just thought that was so ironic that they’re saying there’s no better support for Joseph Smith for the, for Joseph Smith’s vision than there is for this. But we’re going to reject that, but believe this, ok, so I guess it is so selective, right? And we’ll get a little bit more of that information like, ok, so now, so I’m going to skip over, they talk a lot about Louisa Beaman and it’s really interesting. I, I’m looking forward to having John Bradley come on because that entire narrative is so fraught and problematic and actually kind of amusing. So I’ll skip over that part for now unless anyone has something they want to add. But let me go on to just another clip that I couldn’t agree more with what they are saying here.

[1:55:21] John Dehlin: Well, I’ve got so many questions about that just because if, if you know, if you, if you believe Joseph Smith or the DNC, when he says God’s house is a house of order, then you’re like, why is Joseph practicing polygamy? I mean, at least it’s after the ceiling power was given, but it’s still before DNC 132 was written and, you know, and he’s still denying it the whole time. So it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t seem legitimately from God given those facts and DNC 101 at the time is still prohibiting it, by the way

[1:55:54] Michelle: again, like, shouldn’t he just come and join our panel?

[1:56:01] spk_6: Common

[1:56:02] Breeana: sense. John. Yes. Yeah,

[1:56:04] Gwendolyn: you got it, John.

[1:56:05] Karli: Come on your show,

[1:56:07] Michelle: right? He figured it out like maybe I in

[1:56:09] spk_6: him on Whitney

[1:56:11] Breeana: or Gwendolyn on your show.

[1:56:14] Karli: And with what he just said, like your episode Michelle on section 128 where you finally got the confirmation that Joseph was not a polygamist because 128 about the ceiling power says nothing about marriage. It’s about keeping and baptism, baptism for the dead,

[1:56:33] Michelle: right? And when people ask me about records, the fact is there is a record of Joseph and Emma’s marriage, right? Those records were already made. So we do have those records. And so yeah, like, like I just think John, you’re already on our team just like like come and have a conversation, any of us will have a conversation any time. It will be a great conversation, right? I think he’s talking to the wrong people about this topic. So, ok, here comes the next clip. Let’s see if I need to set it up, we’ll just go for it.

[1:57:05] John Dehlin: But let’s just say in Joseph’s mind, he felt like he was doing God’s will. Do either of you have an opinion and need to be speculating about how pre revelation Joseph would have sort of flipped that bit to say. All right. Well, now I know that polygamy is God’s will and so it’s time to take on my first plural wife. Do we do either of you have a way to speculate as to what might have been going on in Joseph’s mind or was it just he was he was a drug to do her and he was trying to find some way to justify it? Not really thinking about scripture or authority or revelation or the church? How do we make sense of it?

[1:57:44] Michelle: So, what I loved about this, my quick answer is of how would we make sense of it is you read? Um but Brigham Young’s and Hebrew C Kimball’s England journals, you read William Clayton’s mission journal, you read these other records to under and it, you get a very clear picture of how it came into being, right?

[1:58:11] Karli: You

[1:58:11] Breeana: can, that’s what helped me make sense of all of this. The most was reading um the, the documents of where Brigham Young served his mission and for how long and the dates of where he was and then Hebrew C Kimball and then calling all of the 12 to Seo Maine where the Cochran kites were and all of this coming about because they keep saying, so Lindsay keeps saying that this was during the Missouri time frame, kind of like, you know, this is while Joseph was alive kind of a thing and this is during the Missouri time frame. They mentioned that a lot and you know, I went and relooked up the dates for when was Heber and Brigham and many of the 12 in Seo Maine multiple times and England coming, you know, they coming home with mistresses and you know, second wives and having babies, two babies born before, you know, uh the supposed revelation came on polygamy and spirituality. Anyway, that was, yeah,

[1:59:08] Michelle: is huge. And then he comes back with Augusta Cobb, another man’s wife who just happens to have a child named Brigham. That, that baby dies. But like it’s not like like really John’s question is exactly spot on. How does this make sense? How can we make sense of this? You can’t, if you only look at Joseph, if you look at these other people, you absolutely can including John Bennett. Like if you look at John Bennett’s history, it totally makes sense. And

[1:59:36] Karli: so all three of like Brigham Hebert and Willard Richards, all in England at the same time,

[1:59:43] spk_6: Clayton.

[1:59:45] Karli: Oh yeah, that’s what I meant. And Willard Richards is he’s cousin

[1:59:51] Gwendolyn: and Willard are cousins.

[1:59:53] Karli: And so they, they’re very much all connected. Yeah. And Taylor started

[1:59:59] Breeana: and it makes sense to me. Um I’ve been lied about before and so that like to get in the head of Brigham Young is not hard for me, sadly. But um and he’s my direct ancestor, ha ha anyway. But um he um you know, it, it makes sense to me that he was walking around teaching, telling people, you know, hey, Joseph said because Joseph was the one with the credibility. And so it makes sense that the rumors were going around, I guess Joseph is teaching this, I guess Joseph says this. And so it makes sense, you know, that, that this was being talked about what didn’t come from Joseph, you know, and then eventually he said I will prove them all perjurers and then suddenly he and Hiram and William are all dead, you know, conveniently anyway.

[2:00:50] Michelle: Right. Whitney, have we left anything out that I feel like Whitney is kind of our historical expert.

[2:00:55] Whitney: So not as much as you, you’re, you’re putting to shame now,

[2:01:01] Michelle: is there. So have we covered that? Like, like that’s, that’s what I feel like is how you make sense of it.

[2:01:08] Gwendolyn: Whitney Michelle can I add in Whitney? I know you could add this in. But Brigham, of course, we know at the end of his life when there was a great deal of safety for him, he was, he, he was not in any threat toward the end of his life. He testified publicly. He said, I want you to know that I knew about this. And I have I had a testimony of this in England before Joseph. You ever said a word of it? And so it’s, it’s like this is really well documented and they said it themselves and this was printed in their newspapers in, in our own, you know, local Utah newspapers during their life. So it’s not, it’s not, this is Ockham’s Razor. This is actually the simplest explanation of all they believe. We have a

[2:01:52] Michelle: collection of people, we have a collection of people who come to Utah. And Brigham told them it was his doctrine and they, they reported that Skyler Koufax is one example and Catherine Lewis and we have, we have several examples of not Catherine Lewis. I’m getting the name wrong is Catherine someone else who wrote a book. But um I anyway, we have many people who bring him, He was in such a tough spot because he needed Joseph to be the author of it. But it also just killed him that he couldn’t get credit, you know. And so, and

[2:02:20] Breeana: he believed

[2:02:21] Gwendolyn: it, he believed it was good. He believed it was from God and he was wrong, you know. So it’s like, OK, you believed it was from God and you, you had all these reasons for telling people that it was from Joseph because you thought you were serving the higher good. But we can see from the results that this didn’t serve the higher good.

[2:02:41] Karli: I have

[2:02:42] Michelle: a dark, there’s a dark spirit of polygamy that convinces people and it’s something people need to be aware of. Go ahead. Currently,

[2:02:49] Karli: I think at first he had to pin it on Joseph because in the early Utah days, everyone still had strong faith in Joseph and Brigham was their brave new leader. And so he had to introduce it as Joseph’s doctrine. And then about a decade later, this was where was it? 1869 he got a little more confident and he’s trying to put himself on the pedestal more. And he says, as to our institutions, we know we are right and polygamy which you object to was not originally a part of our system, but was adopted by us as a necessity. After we came here to Utah,

[2:03:25] Michelle: that’s what goes on. And he says it more and more. He says it many times. So speaking of people potentially lying, let me play this next clip.

[2:03:35] Lindsay Hansen Park: I think it’s a question that we discuss all the time because again, with the history, when, when we’re acting with just a historian brain, all we know is the documentation and documentation is limited. Uh you know, documentary history is sort of the orthodoxy that we all stand by, but it’s problematic too and we need to remember that that what people write down doesn’t make it true, right? People lie and what they write down there. We’re missing a lot of context for what we write down. OK.

[2:04:01] Michelle: Again, would you like to come join our side? Like it’s fascinating to hear them say exactly what we’re saying as they like to cry us for saying we agree

[2:04:14] Karli: on that.

[2:04:17] Gwendolyn: And when we, when we say when she says that the documentation is the orthodoxy, that’s not entirely true. Physical evidence is also very important to historians and everyone, if there was a child by any of these women, then of course, the game over there would be no discussion about it. And so um like that is

[2:04:38] Michelle: important. I feel there’s a, there’s a hierarchy, right? Hard physical evidence should be the highest. Then we have contemporaneous firsthand evidence is the second, right? Then we go downhill from there. So everything in those top tiers points to the truth that Joseph had one life and we have to get clear down to 2nd and 3rd hand, decades, late, motivated evidence to have is the first time we get anything to refute that. And so people should pay attention. And so this is going along those lines as well as how we can weigh evidence.

[2:05:13] Lindsay Hansen Park: So it’s problematic, but I think about it often and I think that there are several, several theories that you can come up with.

[2:05:24] Michelle: So again, you can come up with several different theories again. Exactly. So you can’t decry our side, right? And if they looked at our evidence, right, we can, we are coming up with a theory that we are analyzing just like they are doing and ours and the fact here’s, here’s a fact, all of their evidence we have looked at, we’ve looked at it inside, outside, upside down all of our evidence. They are clueless about. They don’t have the

[2:05:56] Karli: first idea like if they were to actually go look at the documents that say like like Rob farthing and does a great job of putting the documents on the screen and he says this is where this was edited, this is why this is fishy and stuff. Like if they were to say, just go look at the Whitney Revelation video, like I think he just definitively proves that the Whitney revelation was a perjury by Hebrew C Kimball. And so if they even just look at that one piece of evidence, then all the stories about Whitney and just start to fall apart. And so if that falls apart, what else falls apart.

[2:06:29] Michelle: Right. Right. We have this pattern of deception that is so easy to trace and it does start very early and it continues on. They, they need to look at our evidence. And so, OK,

[2:06:41] Gwendolyn: let me, I wanna, I wanna give a little bit of, I want, I want to give a little bit of grace to what kind of the signs Lindsay is representing because it’s the historians and all those who have come to the narrative that she’s defending have come to it with blood sweat and tears like it was so much work over decades and decades and decades to unearth the records that they weren’t able to unearth and they went through, you know, paid a ton of money to get phd. Si Mean, there was just so much that went in to getting this out into the open and then, you know, when the church does the gospel topics, essays, it’s kind of like a crowning achievement in many ways. It’s like finally we’ve admitted it, but it doesn’t ring true, right? It doesn’t ring true. You read those gospel topics, essays and you’re like, this isn’t beautiful. Like this doesn’t come from God. There is very dissonant and so kind of the grace I want to

[2:07:40] Michelle: give that apologetics cannot be confirmed by the intellect or the spirit,

[2:07:45] Gwendolyn: right? But kind of the grace I want to give is that they can’t like what we’re asking for is for is for this level of humility that is like total a basement, right? Where you really give away all of the phd scholarship, scholarship, scholarly work, you give all these things away and you’re like we were wrong, we were deceived and that is I, I can’t, that’s a, that’s a mountain to move.

[2:08:11] Michelle: Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. But I actually think so in the eighties when we were getting all this from D Michael Quinn and this new information was coming out, you should have believed Joseph was a polygamist, right? That was like we had fon brody, like all of the evidence pointed toward Joseph being a polygamist. It made sense. And so that’s fine. Like that’s what everyone believes. The problem is we have a lot more evidence now, a ton more evidence now that wasn’t available. So I don’t think it’s about there where like like if you are a phd or anyone, if you’re a learner, you should always be looking at the evidence.

[2:08:47] Gwendolyn: Phd S don’t, they don’t want to get scooped by youtube. They don’t want to get scooped by a homeschool mom like that.

[2:08:55] Michelle: This is the problem. They stopped, they stopped practicing history, they stopped doing it. They stopped and if you’re gonna stop, you’re done. Right. And so they should have kept going. They should have kept researching and not just said, hey, Todd Compton wrote this book. We know everything enough of the word of God. We have enough of the word of God and we need no more of the word of God for we know that their wisdom become foolishness and a prophet had them nothing like really let’s testify the truthfulness of the book of Mormon in this episode because it’s true. So OK. Yes, here we go. He’s

[2:09:27] Bryan Buchanan: denying it publicly, that’s for sure. And that’s, that’s again, this, he’s

[2:09:32] Michelle: saying that he denied it publicly. So this is where I want to talk about the public private dichotomy and a few other

[2:09:36] Bryan Buchanan: things this, this recent spike in, in denying Joseph Smith’s involvement with it points to these public denials alone and that’s not good history. And also it just doesn’t mesh with how reality works. If you only believe public statements from anyone, you’re gonna get yourself in trouble real fast because that’s not how the world works.

[2:09:59] Michelle: Ok? This one’s fun. So who here got here just like Whitney, right? Whitney, you got here because you just chose to only believe Joseph Smith’s public statements and close your ears to everything else. Does that resonate with any of you? Thankful? Ok. So

[2:10:21] Karli: sorry. Well, one of the strongest evidences of rig changing the history is the October 5th journal entry. It is where he says he’s walking through the streets with his scribe, trying people who are practicing the, the doctrine of polygamy for I am the only one on this law or on this law. You know, you can only have one wife unless God says otherwise. And so, and you can see the edit marks and everything clearly. But even if like the editing aside, that is neither a public denial or teaching in private, he was walking through the streets teaching this allegedly. And so that that is completely contradictory. If he only taught it in private, why is he walking through the streets telling everyone?

[2:11:13] Michelle: That’s a really good point. That’s a really good point. Yeah. And the funny thing is none of them I would guess know about the journal entry because the conversation I had with John Hamer, he didn’t know about the journal entry. Don Bradley recently learned about the journal entry when one of us told him, right? Like they don’t even know that little bit of factual information. That’s

[2:11:35] Karli: why on my tiktok where I just, I try to condense these really long youtube videos of all the history. I condense it to a short little 5 to 10 minute video, I have that one pinned because that’s such a strong evidence like you see that first and you instantly start wondering,

[2:11:53] Michelle: right? And when you know that that happens repeatedly, we found more and more and more of those because we’re having to do the work to find them. Right? And so there is a massive pattern and yeah, anyway, and, and the point I wanted to make that was along the lines, Carly, like they’re saying public and private, that’s not what it is at all. It’s the things Joseph said in his public discourse, in his private discourse, in his journal, in his letters, in his sermons, in his scriptures, the things we know he said versus the decades later, 2nd and 3rd hand motivated accounts of what he said. So they keep painting it as public and private. It’s not public and private. It’s Joseph Smith’s contemporary words versus brigands and companies much later. Um accusations, false, false reports.

[2:12:46] Gwendolyn: And Joseph invited the women to come forward in one of his last um sermons. He, when he said ever since, you know, I I wasn’t married before people started accusing me of having seven wives, but I can only find one and he said, come, come forward, right? All you accusers. And so he was asking for people who, who could show evidence to come forward and no one ever did. Um Right. So it’s like we’re not, we’re not like I, I just don’t see the evidence that he actually did this. But I do want to say that, that I know so many people who, um, you know, members of the church who believe he did it because they just don’t quite, they just don’t quite know. And I would say, um, if you still aren’t sure because of the historical murks as you call it Michelle, it’s our Christian duty to believe someone, right? If we believe in the golden rule, then we would want to be believed, right? Since there is no actual evidence, like a child or like letters or a marriage record, right? During his life, we would want to be believed. So it’s our Christian duty to believe him. Um If we, if we claim to follow Christ,

[2:14:04] Michelle: oh, that’s interesting. I think that that one because, because criminals do lie, right? But I do think that where we have, I, I think the evidence is strong.

[2:14:14] Gwendolyn: It’s the, it’s not like if we wouldn’t believe him, if there was a child because then there would be a child. But like you can’t find any reason to not believe him except what other people say and you have to then choose who are you going to believe? Well, I would want someone to believe me if there was no actual evidence.

[2:14:33] Michelle: And I want to say, I know that there are people saying there were other reports, like for example, the novel Expositor. Well, I’m in the middle of a four part series on that. If people will look at the actual evidence, it falls apart. Leonard Sobe, I’m gonna handle in the, in the fourth part that I have upcoming on that. There are things that people you need to know about. Like all of it all, it just dissolves in your hands as soon as you start looking at it. Like, yeah, there’s a lot of it, there’s a, you know, there’s a lot of, there were a lot of lies told, but pick up any one of the individual lies and they just melt. There’s nothing there. OK? Yeah, they just, they just dissolve.

[2:15:12] Lindsay Hansen Park: I’m trying to throw a bone to faithful believers because I actually want to be respect. I believe in pluralism. I believe I was a believer too. I understand this feeling. However, I want you to know and I’ve seen it firsthand and I feel very, very strongly about this. Um I have sat in rooms with eight year olds who have been molested by church leaders in fundamentalist communities that use these same arguments that you were using to defend Joseph Smith. If you use these arguments to defend Joseph Smith and his behavior, oh, he was just experimenting with the doctrine. Oh, it was new. He didn’t know he was reluctant. Oh, he had to keep it secret, all of these things, an angel, all of those then ergo apply to Warren Jeffs. They apply to uh Samuel Schafer and the Knights of the crystal blade, the guy that locked the little girls up in barrels, this is what you are empowering. And I’m sorry that, that doesn’t sound pretty. But when we make defenses for these guys, we have whole groups, thousands of people today that use these arguments to justify their behavior and of course they would because they’re following the profit. Why

[2:16:23] Breeana: are we, um, decriminalizing polygamy in Utah? Lindsay?

[2:16:29] Gwendolyn: I totally agree with Lindsay here like 100%. And that’s why we need to deal with the doctrine because it doesn’t matter who it comes from, it gives it, it puts forth bad fruit. Like it’s terrible.

[2:16:42] Karli: Whoever did it. It’s terrible. It didn’t come from, from the prophet.

[2:16:47] Michelle: That’s what makes me upset about this clip though is that we are the ones saying to all of the people. Let’s get into the scriptural record. This is not of God. Oh, and guess what else? It’s not of Joseph Smith based on the historical record. We are the ones invalidating the claims that justify polygamist abuse. We are working our tails off. We’re the only one to do that I think. And a huge, well, those of us in the, those the polygamy deniers, a huge part of the mo of the motivation like Whitney said is to help people to try to save people. I think Gwendolyn too, like, like I feel like more and more people as we’re getting kind of into this last day’s energy and people feel uncertain, more and more people are feeling like we need to start living the fullness of the gospel, right? And so our efforts to try to help people see the truth about polygamy would be profoundly impactful. And Lindsay is fighting against us. She is saying that we are dangerous. We are hurting the people, we are hurting the communities while she is dang it advocating for it. She’s bringing them into sandstone. She’s letting them share their doctrine saying they are the real Mormons. Like it’s like her anti Mormons overrides her recognition of people needing that, that truth would help people be saved from these terrible situations. So for me, that was so hypocritical. So now I’ll open it to the

[2:18:19] Gwendolyn: floor. I want to say, I think a part of this is maybe could be credited to Lindsay’s um like her, her morality shifts a little bit. Um I’m not, I’m not trying to criticize. I’m just saying what she, she left the church and um in the interview, I don’t, I don’t think you’ve got that clip, but she talked about she’s a mystic now and she uses tarot cards and things like that. And it’s like, OK, so you’re telling us that you use commercial products to access the divine, which is like, not that far off because in polygamy you’re like, yeah, the more wives I can acquire, I can, I can get hired to heaven. It’s just like, it’s all about acquisition and being able to buy and it’s like Christ doctrine is you, you come and you get, you know, without, without money and without price, right? But she also mentions in other parts that, um, you know, she’s fine with polygamy between consenting adults and like, like, ok, but if you don’t have like a very clear morality, then it’s very hard, um, it’s very hard to decide what’s good and bad. And so she, I think just as you said, Michelle, she’s leaning into the perhaps her like desire for, for payback, right? Like she’s mad that the church did this and she wants, she wants it to pay and she’s gonna pay, make it pay by showing like, hey, this is what the church actually is deep down at its root. And we’re trying to say the gospel of Jesus Christ deep down in its root is not this. So if this got into the church, then, then how did that happen? Let’s deal with it.

[2:19:51] Michelle: And it’s really interesting how it aligns so well with Jacob five, which interestingly comes right after the discourse on polygamy with the roots and the branches and the branches overcoming the roots, right? Like, like there are, if we can help anyway, that’s, that’s I really am pleading with Lindsay and all of her listeners to consider that the best thing that could happen to help free people from the mind prison of polygamy is to understand the evidence that we are bringing forward. And so I hope that if she truly does care about, if this is the question, is she just protecting her own platform, which she thinks is built on the necessity to blame Joseph for ply me or does she really care about the people? Right. That’s the question that for, I think for everyone, even the people who are so dedicated to hating Joseph Smith. Ok. But consider this evidence. And I’m not, I it’s not motivated reason. I’m not saying you need to believe this because it would help people. I’m saying, look at this evidence because it is compelling and it is very, very hard to ignore. It is going to keep growing and because it’s true, it will help people.

[2:21:04] Karli: And that’s right. I think that it’s hard for people, especially in the fundamentalist church to try to shift their mindset on that because the church has taught that Jacob 230 gives that loophole and that it is not so like for anyone listening, who hasn’t yet go back and watch Michelle’s episode on Jacob 230 because the very

[2:21:26] spk_6: first ones,

[2:21:28] Karli: yeah, like, like you actually study it and you study every time it says these things that you study the structure of the chasms or Chiasmus and you can understand the doctrine is not taught by Joseph Smith or in the book of Mormon. And I have an article on it too. I have it in my link tree. I wrote like you did your podcast. I wrote an article on it and several people have because

[2:21:54] Michelle: there’s so much information,

[2:21:56] Karli: revelation to understand how that chapter, how those verses are actually written. It so abundantly clear. There is no loophole.

[2:22:08] Michelle: Yeah. So OK, that, that, that’s so, thank you. Thank you for this conversation. I just feel like it’s so important. Um So we’re gonna skip over the next section because it’s the, it’s the no babies section

[2:22:21] Gwendolyn: and I, you debunked it.

[2:22:24] Michelle: Well, I’m so disappointed I’m like, if she would have watched my episode on that. Yes. Yes, I did the two parts on and it’s like, you know what if you want, if you want to talk to me about that, if you want to show me where IIII I bring the receipts. So let’s talk about it if you have some other receipts to bring, but like watch the episode, my word. And um and then she made a new claim in this one. And also again for a feminist, I said this in that episode but for a feminist to continually to refer to people as stupid yokels who aren’t smart enough to take care of their bodies. Saying this about women, even a woman who got pregnant today, unintentionally, I would not want her spoken about this way. But these were women, you might as well say stupid yokels who couldn’t, didn’t have electricity and couldn’t fly in airplanes. The technology didn’t exist. So anyway, so, yeah, that, and then she added to this one, a new one that was, that Joseph might have had syphilis. And she claimed that because a man with syphilis, his, he can get women pregnant but the babies don’t live. Hey, first of all, where is she getting this? Like, just read for 10 minutes with a baby.

[2:23:43] Karli: Like,

[2:23:44] Michelle: like please show me the article the the the like journal that you are getting this from the medical journal. I

[2:23:50] Gwendolyn: did look up, I looked up the symptoms because I was like, where, what syphilis? And I looked at the the symptoms and like, you know, there are symptoms and we don’t have any record of Joseph exhibiting these symptoms,

[2:24:03] Michelle: right? And also if a baby dies, it’s because the mother has syphilis, not the father, right? And that’s where the infant mortality would come from. Emma lived to be 74 no signs or symptoms of syphilis. So like these and, and a lot of these claims are like that. She’ll just be like, well, I don’t know, but and she’ll just throw it out, throw it out. It’s like just throwing all of this mud mud slinging constantly with. No, that’s why I, I

[2:24:34] Breeana: do. People need to give this a chance because like what you all have been doing with your channels and your book and Tik Tok, you are literally showing up with like, you said the receipts, whereas her narrative is kind of a popular one and it’s kind of a wildly accepted one. And I’m not saying she hasn’t done some studying because obviously she has. But yeah, it, it seems like because, um it’s just wildly basically accepted by most and it’s the easiest way to go. Yeah, she’s, there’s this, um, she can throw things out and nobody seems to be really questioning it that much, you know, kind of when I, the comments that I saw, I just was wondering like, is anybody like asking questions about these or is anybody wanting sources? Like I am and I didn’t see that everyone was just like, oh this is the best thing for my deconstructing this right here. Everyone should watch it and I was like um OK, I,

[2:25:27] Michelle: I don’t know. Right. I, I have to say I do think John might be um or his team um filtering content comments because only the positive ones are showing up. So there might be a little more push back. One thing that I find tragic is that most of John’s listeners now are what does he call them? Never mos people who have never been Mormon and know very little about it. And that’s really tragic because it’s he does. He, he like John started out, I think being a sincere seeker like we all are genuinely wanting truth II, I hope that that’s still what he’s interested in because I feel like he is spreading things that aren’t true and, and like, like, yeah, Lindsay is allowed to be kind of like you were saying Brianna, she’s allowed to be really lazy and sloppy and those are harsh words, but that’s really what it is. I can just throw out all kinds of stuff and, you know, and I feel like we have to be extremely careful and thoughtful and, you know, which I’m glad that we are doing that, but I do think that we should have a discussion with receipts, right? We shouldn’t just throw out aspersions and like throw things out. And so, ok, here, this next clip felt to me like massive, massive projection. So again, I do want to give the devil his due that we, the church has its problems, undoubtedly, like we could have done without the whole Hinckley era focused on pornography. For example, we could have done with the whole Packer era focused on um on masturbation, right? Like, like we do have our problems, but this clip was wild to me

[2:26:59] John Dehlin: and, and also about the sex. It’s like, and, and maybe then that means since we don’t have a lot of evidence of sexual polyandry that maybe it means polygamy. Wasn’t you Lizzie? You’re already said

[2:27:11] Lindsay Hansen Park: sex argument. Ok. I’m sorry, I wanna hear Julia’s defense. I do, I just have to go on a spiel about this like Mormons. We’re so obsessed with sex. It’s like our repression just seeps out everywhere in the doctor. And like we, we want Joseph Smith to have a TK smoothie. We don’t want him to, to have sex at all. We don’t want to think about sex. And yet all of our theology is about building internal increase. Look in the book of Mormon, how many times we talk about seed? It’s everywhere and

[2:27:41] John Dehlin: that’s code word for sperm.

[2:27:43] Lindsay Hansen Park: Yes. And everything is coded. It’s so Victorian still to this day, everything. Even the things about not having sex are about sex and most of Mormonism now is about not having sex, which is about sex. We are sex obsessed.

[2:28:01] Michelle: OK? Any comments I have many but I’ll let some of you speak

[2:28:05] Karli: first just that he said that seed is code for sperm. Like did Jesus also use it? I’m talking about seeds and branches a lot too,

[2:28:19] Michelle: right? And so, so one thing I hadn’t heard the term TK smoothie. It’s actually kind of funny. Did you guys know? So it means cholesterol, it means celestial kingdom smoothie. And like, I guess Joseph Fielding Smith taught that that if you’re not celestial, you won’t be resurrected with, with sexual organs. So it’s like a Ken doll. So that’s why they call it a TK smoothie, I guess, which that’s like and this is part of why I think it’s useful again, like let’s not put profits on pedestals like this. Let’s recognize that leaders say a lot of really goofy stuff. Right. And not be bound by it. That’s another part where we can agree. But anyway, this, like the story of Adam and Eve, it’s been in the Bible forever and it’s completely 100% about sex. Right. Like this, like, this is where the disdain for Mormonism comes out. It’s basically like any people who still believe in marriage, like sex within a marriage are all of a sudden all about sex. I mean, how many like God tells Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth God tells Noah and they save the animals so that they can have sex. And like the fact is human beings are about sex, right? And there have to be structures built to contain that overarching sexual drive. So we’re in this massively over sexualized culture where everything is about sex. We in this pornography culture where you can barely turn on like now the pornography is so big. It’s filtered into all of the movies. You can barely get away from this overt sexuality. And she’s saying we’re all about sex. I’m, I’m like

[2:30:12] Gwendolyn: one of their, one of their weaknesses. I think in this discussion is that they do not have a good scriptural foundation, um which is evidenced by the Jacob 230 they were just, you know, brushed it off, but even just now I just pulled up, um Abdi is talking to King Noah who also had a bit of a polygamy problem and Abed is telling King Noah about seed. And he’s basically saying seed is not impregnating a bunch of women. He says, all those who have hearkened unto the words of the prophets and believe that the Lord would redeem his people and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins. I say unto you that these are his seed or they are the heirs of the kingdom of God. So the scriptures define what seed is and it’s not right in this morning. Occasionally it is,

[2:31:04] Breeana: I just read that very chapter this morning with my kids in our home school. I love that you brought that

[2:31:10] Michelle: up. Well, like the wheat and the tears. There’s right. And I mean, it talks about seeds so much by their fruits, you shall know them and you will know if it’s a good seed, if you plant it in your heart, like seed is everywhere and it talks about the, the, well, I, and I even think the things that we think are about procreation are about something completely different. I think it’s about developing, you know, growing in the gospel, growing into the presence of God. That’s what it really is, right? So the seed is what you plant and the fruits are what it bears anyway. So this idea and this is part of what makes me really nervous about her being the Hollywood connection. She has so much disdain for Mormonism and so much projection and so much just judgment and ignorance you can’t be, you can’t tell someone how to portray a people that you have disdain for. You have to come from a place first of all, of love and empathy and understanding, right? And so I thought that was interesting. And then this, it goes on interestingly again to where she’s, I think that this sex argument, this sex obsessed argument again is self serving. As we will see as we go on to these next couple of clips that I actually found the most troubling of the entire thing and were part of my reason for wanting to do this.

[2:32:27] Lindsay Hansen Park: And so when we’re talking about these ideas, it just drives me crazy when people are like, did Joseph Smith have sex with his 14 year old wife? Did you have sex with his polyandrous wife? Does it matter?

[2:32:42] Michelle: Ok. So we’re gonna go on to a lot more of this because I don’t want to misrepresent what she’s saying. But what are your thoughts on what she just said right there? Like, does it matter if an adult man had sex with a 14 year old? Should that be a relevant point to

[2:33:02] spk_6: that

[2:33:02] Karli: matters today with all of the FL DS controversy that we see. And so if we’re talking about the foundation of the religion, it absolutely should matter to discover truth to see if that really did happen or not.

[2:33:18] Michelle: I, I guess, yeah, that’s, I’m like she’s sitting here saying that we’re dangerous, right? And then she’s saying that if you justify Joseph Smith’s ideas or if you, you know, behaviors, these, these claims we make about his polygamy, you’re justifying it for these other religious leaders. And now she’s saying, does it really matter if, if, if he had sex with a 14 year old, like, should that be an important question in this? Not the damages? I find

[2:33:44] Karli: that, yes, it matters.

[2:33:47] Michelle: I find that deeply troubling.

[2:33:49] Karli: Yeah, it matters.

[2:33:53] Gwendolyn: Well. And I think what she, I think she takes issue with the doctrine, right? Because she’s heard so much of our apologetics about it. And so that also frustrates me because I’m like, Lindsay, I totally agree with you. Like this is all about power and this is wrong and in some ways it doesn’t even matter because if you’re telling a woman, she’s your wife and she’s only yours and, and you’re her head and she’s, you know, you’re one of many and you know, there’s a lot of uh it’s just, it’s a terror doctrine. It’s a tear, it got in and it’s a tear. Ok, let’s get it out. But it’s like she keeps, she’s bringing it back to like this is all it is, right? And we’re trying to say this isn’t all it is. It’s not all about polygamy. In fact, polygamy wasn’t part of this initial restoration it got in and the scriptures also tell us that in doctrine and covenant section 101, our current 101, it the Lord gives the parable for the redemption of Zion. And in that parable, he says the enemy came in while they were yet laying the foundation. So God saw it. God told us it would happen and God has given us instructions for overcoming it and, and coming out of it. But, but I feel like Lindsay is like not really scripturally literate. And so she wants to stay in this, this anger and condemnation of what terrible thing happened.

[2:35:14] Michelle: Let me go

[2:35:17] Breeana: ahead. Sorry, Michelle. It’s also Matthew 13. That’s one that really helped me learn and process the polygamy. You know, the same exact um the parable Christ gives of, you know, an enemy has done this come and planted tears in the night. And to, I always took that as wheat and tears are people, but it can also mean beliefs or teachings or doctrines. So true doctrine could have come along and then simple, beautiful and then a bunch of terror

[2:35:45] Karli: doctrines got added in like, and, and that’s another reference to seeds like you plant the seed. Exactly. And see if it’s a good fruit or bad. And, and I

[2:35:55] Michelle: 100% think that that is about ideas and doctrines, not people. I think it’s terrible to interpret that as people continue.

[2:36:03] Karli: Car No. Exactly. It’s an idea. Ok. You’re wondering if this idea is good or not. Or if this doctrine is of God or not, you plant the seed, you do all of the work spiritually and in the scriptures to understand it, to see if it was good or not. And then if its not like Jacob two verses 23 all the way to 35 talk about the damages of plug me sleeping with young women and breaking the hearts of your mother or your wives and Children. Of course, it matters. It completely destroys women,

[2:36:39] Michelle: right? So let me go on to this next clip that builds on it because I understand the point she’s making John helps her out to make her point. I think John makes it for her. But here’s this next clip

[2:36:49] Lindsay Hansen Park: to me, it’s about power and control, which is what assault and rape and coercion is about power and control. Whether he touched someone below the belt doesn’t change the fact that he altered the course of their life. He took ownership of them, of their spirituality and their eternal life. And so this idea where we’re like, did he or didn’t he? It doesn’t matter. The doctrine says he’s going to eventually if he doesn’t now. And so you’re

[2:37:19] John Dehlin: saying it’s awful with or without sex, it’s

[2:37:21] Lindsay Hansen Park: awful with or without sex.

[2:37:25] Michelle: Ok? So, you know, and she really gets twisted up here and like it, I I didn’t play the clips because she just gets confused and, and it’s, it, it turns into a bit of a mess if you remember this section. So I will 100% agree with her that it is awful with or without sex and the desire to dumb it down and say, oh, he didn’t have sex with them. Therefore, it wasn’t as bad as we think it was, is not a good impulse, right? However, I do think it’s fair because I think that when we say as a church, Joseph, that these things are good and are of God and Joseph did these things. And then we combine the historical piece with it and we start seeing these affidavits saying she was 14, she was 15 and this is what happened to them, right? And we are reading it through our lens, not how they were meaning it to come across the people writing the testimonies, but we’re reading it through our lens. I think it is valid to go wait, that’s too horrible. Is there a way to make it a little bit less horrible? Right. So I understand the L DS impulse to want to do that. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s erroneous. But what I really object to here is minimizing sexual assault is saying power is the only thing that matters. So power without sexual assault is exactly the same as power with sexual assault. I find that to be one of the most anti feminist ideas, feminine ideas to say it doesn’t matter. And she keeps minimizing and belittling if he touched him below the belt. It’s just because you Mormons are so sex obsessed, then you’re concerned about whether a 14 year old was sexually assaulted. That’s the part I object to. I want to know.

[2:39:13] Breeana: Can I just say, um, as someone that’s also been sexually abused before, on, on this part, I was actually less alarmed and I actually felt, um, empathy and compassion for Lindsay and I thought I, I do know the point she’s making that um it’s often about power and many times it is and um power and control and um uh that the dynamic of a controller and an abuser versus someone they want to have power over and that does play into sexual abuse, but also all kinds of abuse. I don’t know, for me, I guess I saw all of that as instead of it being triggering for me. I thought, I think she’s speaking from her own um experiences and was trying to say it’s wrong no matter how you abused a young woman, whether he had sex or not, he was still dominating her, you know, is, is her belief and, and that’s wrong and it’s all wrong. And so I guess um I agree with your um with the assessment too that we absolutely need to. It does matter if someone had sex or not. But I’m just saying for me, I just felt like I could have just, you know, looked in Lindsay’s eyes and been like, you know, it, like you’re speaking from experience and I’m so sorry that, that you’ve had a horrible,

[2:40:40] spk_6: that’s,

[2:40:41] Breeana: that’s deplorable.

[2:40:43] Michelle: And I’m so glad I’m so glad you brought that up. I think the part where it loses the handle for me is it is absolutely about power and sexual abuse is one of the most profound and destructive ways to exert power over somebody. So you can’t take it away from it. I, I do not understand the point she’s trying to make saying it’s about power, right? We all agree. Sexual assault is about power and the sex is the way that, that power is exerted in the most destructive way. So like a couple of examples I use, go ahead.

[2:41:20] spk_6: Well, she should

[2:41:20] Karli: notice if she’s that close to the FL DS community because we’ve seen so many women come forward saying they were a young teenage girl sort of rebellious and then they get married off to get pregnant and then they’re stuck in the system.

[2:41:35] Michelle: Right. Right. And when you have, that’s exactly right. Like when they have a young rebellious girl, they know impregnate her and, and tame her that way, you know, ensnare her that way. Like these are a couple of examples for people who don’t understand the point that I find so damaging here. A father who sends his 14 year old daughter to her room is exerting power over her. Right? But all of us would be like, yeah, that happens sometimes if he then follows her down the hall into her room and has sex with her, that’s a very, very, very different thing. And it does matter, right? We can all agree that slavery is very, very wrong. You’re literally owning another human being. It’s exponentially worse if the master is at the same time raping his slaves, if he’s having concubines as 132 would allow for. Right? So that’s what I find here is like she’s spending a lot of energy talking about how we can’t justify these polygamous ideas because it validates the abusers while she’s saying and, and I have another clip as well where she it it to me it feels very much like she is minimizing the importance and impact of sex on Children and unwilling participants. Right? That’s the point I’m making. There are lots of ways to exert power over people and exerting power isn’t good. You cannot say, well, since sexual assault is about power, the sex piece doesn’t matter. It matters. If my child was abducted, I would much rather have them be abducted by someone who wanted to use them as a slave, not by someone who wanted to rape them. I don’t want them abducted, period. But do you know what I’m saying? Like, like doesn’t it matter? Does it matter? Yes, it matters. Right. So I’m gonna play, sorry, this is the part I got I hated about because I I do care about people and these messages we’re sending and here’s, here’s the next piece of it

[2:43:36] Lindsay Hansen Park: to say that, did they, or didn’t they have sex? It was still about power and control. It was still about power and control. And it just makes me so mad that, you know, Mormons faithful. Mormons will argue. Well, if he had sex then it was bad. No, that’s not what makes it bad. It’s, it’s the power and the coercion and the lying that makes that makes it bad. If it were sex between consenting adults, then it’s great, then it’s not our business, but that’s not what this is.

[2:44:07] Michelle: Ok. So Gwendolyn, that’s part of what you had

[2:44:09] Gwendolyn: brought up. Yeah, there’s those shifting morals, I would say that consenting adults have done horrific things. And so you can’t just have consent between people 18 and above. Be your only value you and your only morality. And in fact, we def we define adults now as 18, but like they haven’t always been. And that’s something the polygamist use too. That’s very fluid. Um, maturity in adulthood has been defined very differently throughout time. And that’s what actually puts women and girls into these horrific situations because people will say in, in times of old, they’ll say, well, once they hit puberty, they are now an adult and you can now be married off. And if the girl is young, I mean, how many of us at age 1213, 14 consented to things that as middle aged women, we would be like no way you are not going to do that to my daughter. Right? That’s why women, that’s why girls need strong mothers. That’s why girls need strong fathers. So I just, I, I think you, you cannot have this sort of shifting morality of consenting adults is your highest value and, and have that work out well, it doesn’t work out well. You need something higher. You, I would say you need Christ

[2:45:27] Michelle: gospel. I, I will agree with her 100% on the idea that if you didn’t have sex, it’s all good. And if you like, I agree with her on making that an important point that matters somehow, right? But I disagree with her approach to it, to like, and, and yeah, the, the idea that, well, I guess this is what I think marriage was given to mankind by God for the sake of the men, but mainly for the women and the Children, right? Marriage is what protects women. I believe that so strongly like the sexual liberation, we have so many women now who are heartbroken and childless, right? Because they never were able to get married because it doesn’t incentivize marriage anyway. It’s a whole big discussion. But I do agree that like, they’re walking a really wobbly line of values and women trying to say this is ok and this isn’t ok. And my concern is that in her desire to impart explain away Joseph not having Children. She’s so desperate to do that, that she minimizes the impact of sexual assault is how it sounds to me. And that’s highly concerning. There’s another clip that I’ll play along these lines.

[2:46:46] Gwendolyn: I just think she’s, I think she’s leaning into the ghost of eternal polygamy, which I probably all of us experienced at some point. And so I think she might be just saying like, hey, even if the actual physical act doesn’t happen again, so you’ve got this thing behind you always, you know that this is your future, you know, this is going to happen because they have control over you. That said um I do agree that that actually having physically, like having that happen to you physically is exponentially worse than believing that it, that it will

[2:47:18] Michelle: let me ask this question. We have Abraham and Hagar, right? So Hagar was a handmaid. She was a slave, she was picked up and she was a slave that they acquired in Egypt, right? Was it worse that she was a slave? Or was it worse that she became a concubine? And that her very body and the fruit of her womb was theirs for the taking, right? It does matter. It doesn’t make it OK to have people in bondage without sex. But you can’t use that to say that sex doesn’t matter. So here’s this next clip. It’s also super

[2:47:52] John Dehlin: problematic. It makes no sense to say. Well, Joseph didn’t have sex with his polygamous wives when we know they’re bringing me on John Taylor WW, with Lorenzo Snow, Joseph Heber. J Robert Smith and all the other polygamist from Joseph to the end of polygamy were having sex with all their wives. Why would we want to give Joseph a pass and say he didn’t have sex?

[2:48:14] Michelle: I actually love that clip.

[2:48:16] Karli: Just true

[2:48:18] Michelle: again. Come on our team. You’ve got

[2:48:21] spk_6: a common sense there.

[2:48:24] Whitney: Like I said, we’ve never denied that those other men practiced it.

[2:48:28] Michelle: Right. And what they did was horrific. It was horrible. And yes, Brigham Young didn’t have sex with all of his wives. Right? And it’s still horrible when, when it’s this, this level of patriarchy is horrible that they were existing. And I just shared an episode I was telling, I mean, I shared the story, my last episode about the 15 year old girl that was sent from Scotland without her parents and married off within two months to a 49 year old man. The entire thing is horrible and it’s not horrible. Like that’s why if we can help more and more people understand that Joseph didn’t do it. That will remove the argument of whether he had sex or not. That’s not where the argument should be. For the L Ds side or for Lindsay Hanson Park and her side, right? Like it’s forced her into this position. So, hey, a couple more clips. I hope I don’t beat this part too much, but I have a couple more clips. The

[2:49:24] Bryan Buchanan: impulse to take the sexual dynamic out of it is so odd because both the book of Mormon, the Jacob Passage and then section the Revelation that becomes section 132 explicitly authorize increase. So to argue that that wasn’t a thing is weird because that’s not the scriptural text telling you that. That’s you telling yourself

[2:49:45] John Dehlin: that. And both the book of Mormon passage and the DNC 132 passage make it about sex. It’s about seed. It’s about posterity. That’s the whole point of polygamy is to create a righteous posterity.

[2:49:58] Bryan Buchanan: So arguing that that was not even in Joseph Smith’s mind, what was he doing is weird because clearly it was

[2:50:05] Michelle: OK. So can you guys remind me how many polygamous Children did Joseph Smith have? I like? Right. And, and wasn’t he intentionally preventing Children because he didn’t want to get caught? Like, do you see what I mean? How they’re tied up in knots and circles? So to clarify our position, we reject the twisted or reading of Jacob 2:30 that would make it about sex. That is not true. Read it in context and we reject Section 132 at least the portions about polygamy as a legitimate revelation. Come on to our side. We agree. What you can’t do is on the one hand, say he had sex with all of them, of course he did except the ones he didn’t have sex with and you shouldn’t care if he had sex or not. And he didn’t have Children because he was, he was trying to prevent it and they were using birth control. And according to John Hamer doing other things and then on the other hand say, oh, but we know it was all about sex because they were trying to have increase because the scriptures say that like, like they need a consistent through line here.

[2:51:08] Gwendolyn: Um If they watch this and they’re like, hey, I don’t want to watch all these other videos about Jacob 2:30. Let’s just make it clear the, the part of the things that people will hearken to if the Lord doesn’t issue command are the abominable things that David and Solomon did, right? So when you think of

[2:51:25] Michelle: that refers to the things that David and Solomon did and, and it is teaching his people. So it, it very clear to twist it. You need to, I don’t have

[2:51:37] Gwendolyn: to be taught by the traditions of your fathers. That’s the only way you can read it that way. If you just give it to someone and have them read it, they would never come to that conclusion because it’s not part of the text, you have to read it into the

[2:51:49] Karli: text, not only read 30. I, the Lord will command my people otherwise they will harken unto these things that makes no sense. You need the context. So the Lord will command his people otherwise they will harken unto these things. What are these things in the verses? Every single time? It says things. It’s talking about the abomination of poly. So if they don’t hearken to the Lord’s command, then they will do poly.

[2:52:17] Breeana: I’m sorry, Whitney. You haven’t talked in a while. Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. OK. I was gonna say like John is partially right here though. Once again, like I agree with him when he says 132 I don’t believe that Jacob two is about sex, but he says 132 is about sex. And yeah, all the parts added by Brigham. It’s totally about sex. So I agree with him there like he does portray a lot of common sense throughout this

[2:52:41] spk_6: episode, I think. So he just,

[2:52:44] Whitney: he just needs to flip his switch a little more. He’s like it’s almost there. I just wanted to say that Brian makes the point that he’s trying to make the point that Jacob 230 DNC 132 are about raising up a righteous seed. So I would just like to counter that with the first real polygamous story we have in the Bible, Abraham and Hagar as Michelle just pointed out the war between those brothers is still going on today. There

[2:53:21] Karli: were thousands of years later, so unrighteous that they tried to kill their brother.

[2:53:30] Whitney: There’s no right. And so it’s hard enough to raise righteous seed when you have a mother and father. Then let’s just complicate that by adding more women, more Children. And, and so it just doesn’t work. It polygamy doesn’t raise a righteous now. Not that some might be, but overall, it’s just hard to raise righteous Children, period.

[2:53:57] Gwendolyn: And, and Whitney, as you know, the first polygamy in the Bible, of course, isn’t Abraham. That’s the first example of someone who ends up becoming righteous and getting ensnared. But of course, the first polygamist is Lamic Cain’s descendant who covenants and our book of Scripture is the one who says that about him. So we’ve got it. It’s right here in our scriptures. We’ve got it

[2:54:25] Michelle: and we can so easily connect. Oh I just go crazy. So all we have to get through. I want to talk about all of these clips. So, but we can so easily connect Brigham’s doctrine. He and his cohorts, the polygamist pals were teaching constantly that you basically your wives give birth to your kingdom, to the glory, all of those souls that will worship you are the ones that you create, right? Like I mean, I sorry, I’m starting, I’m I’m starting to want to say words I shouldn’t be saying because it just makes me so mad. But we completely agree like John, yes, we completely agree with you on how horrific this is and we can bring, we can help you. We can show you where Brigham taught these things, we can show you how he came up with that and what he taught, you cannot find anything anywhere akin to it in anything Joseph ever taught at all. It’s a completely, completely different thing, a different gospel entirely. So, so, ok, I think I have another clip. Maybe along these lines. I’ve lost track. So let me play this one. Then I’ll tell you what it is after.

[2:55:34] Lindsay Hansen Park: Did Joseph Smith have sex with Helen Marr? I don’t know. But I, what I do know is that Helen Marr for years, for years and she was faithful, complained that her autonomy was taken away. She was depressed, she couldn’t go to dances with her friends, she couldn’t flirt with boys. She liked that part of herself was robbed and whether she spent two minutes in the bedroom with some adult man doesn’t like seriously though, like, like give women some credit, we can endure a lot of stuff. But the thing that changes it is the power, not the, not the situation, it’s, it’s the person that’s using you and manipulating you. And that’s what happened to Helen Mar, whether she slept with him or not.

[2:56:20] Michelle: Ok. Again, that was the most dramatic case to me of minimizing. She says who cares about that? Two minutes? Women can deal with a lot like, like it doesn’t matter if, if she was in that bedroom with two for two minutes with an adult male, whatever. It’s about the power. What in the world is she talking about? Right? Like, can we stop minimizing sexual assault when we talking about polygamy with polygamists? While she’s saying that their doctrines are being validated and their behaviors when she goes and says women can endure a lot. Women can overcome a lot. What does that say to every would be assailant? Like, oh women can deal with it. That’s what I have a problem with. This is major to me like, like so anti woman in my book, anyone else? It just

[2:57:16] Breeana: feels flippant, you know, kind of like flippant like we saw what,

[2:57:19] Michelle: two minutes? It’s two minutes

[2:57:22] Breeana: instead of like really thinking about that. Like, yeah, I don’t know

[2:57:26] Michelle: because the fact is they’re, they’re right. I don’t believe Joseph Smith did this but I know who did I know what leaders did? And would she say the same things? Who cares? It doesn’t matter if, when it’s happening now with the Kingstons and the Jeffs and the other groups, who cares? It’s two minutes. It’s the power. That’s the problem. Not the no, the ultimate manifestation of power is sexual assault. It’s the most intrusive form of power in every possible way and you don’t get to minimize it. You do not get to minimize it.

[2:58:00] Karli: I mean, people go through years of therapy based off of a short incident, a small incident from child

[2:58:08] Michelle: and, and then John just laughs at the funny. I thought that he would only take two minutes. Like I just, I’m, I this whole thing, I’m like, how are people not seeing this and raising every alarm bell at how, how dramatically destructive and this is what’s dangerous when you basically say sexual assault doesn’t matter, you can assault someone and it doesn’t matter as long as you’re not exerting power over them. Like, like what does that even mean? Whitney and Gwendolyn? Did? You both want to say something? I thought you had,

[2:58:40] Whitney: well, I was, I’ve been thinking that Lindsay started down this path about it being about power a few years ago when this idea that Joseph hadn’t done it started gaining some traction. And I think it’s her way of, I think she had enough people come to her saying, but he didn’t have sex that she had to make up a reason. He was still a bad guy. And so I think if she could, she could disassociate herself from herself and listen with the ears that we’re hearing and listen. Um, in that way, I think maybe she would, I, I think she’d maybe be best served if she came up with a different argument to, to us because it is incredibly damaging to men and women who have been sexually assaulted to minimize it down to. It’s, you go have sex with whoever you want, just don’t have power over people and then you’re ok you know, it really does a lot of damage.

[2:59:48] Breeana: She also used the term, um she also said that, that Emma had, um enjoyed her soft power. She used the word soft power um in making up things about Emma theories about Emma. But interesting, interesting.

[3:00:06] Gwendolyn: I want to read a little historical tidbit about Hebrew C Kimball who’s Helen Mar Kimball’s father. So when we, when we listen to her story given after a many decades of indoctrination, this is her father and who he became, right? So these things in the household where she lives. Hebrew C Kimball married 43 wives and had 65 Children and 300 grandchildren at least. And in Utah, he amassed land, cattle and property and was worth more than $100,000 at the time of his death. And if you flip that to 2023 language, that would be in the millions. So it’s like she, she was in the polygamous system and she was led to believe that this came from Joseph, but it, he didn’t, he didn’t like there might have been a sealing ceremony where he was sealed. That’s kind of what this is all about, right is that we’re later they say why was Joseph sealed to men as like what was it? His sons and women were not daughters or men as brothers. And it’s like, yeah, that’s what he was doing. He wasn’t sealing women as wives.

[3:01:20] Michelle: Yeah. And we’re going to get into that later to, to another part of this claim about because she also was speaking on behalf of Helen very incorrectly if you understand what Helen was actually claiming and what she was actually writing, right? So I’m glad you guys can see that because I do feel like it’s incredibly important to not Whitney. I was going to say, I, I thought that she started to say this argument more as the um evidence of Joseph not having Children came out as well. She started to say, well, it’s not about sex. So that’s my concern is that II, I really like Lindsay, if you’re happy to listen to this, you know, II I don’t want to make an enemy or anything, but I hope you can listen to yourself. I hope she can hear that in her need to vilify Joseph Smith. She’s taking it so far and she’s so desperate to do that to the point of minimizing sexual assault and minimizing the experience of victims and throwing it away by saying things like who cares about two minutes. And women are women can deal with stuff that is incredibly destructive, especially when we are talking about these polygamous communities which are leading at least like like human trafficking. I think polygamists might be leading the charge at this point, right? With all of these kidnappings and all of these and when you have a child that has been raised, being taught that you are their ticket to Exaltation. And so at 14 and 15, how do you decide if they’re consenting or not? They’ve been indoctrinated. They are being controlled, which is why we need legislation to keep, to prohibit this, to fight against it and why we cannot ever minimize the um the incredible impact of sexual assault. It’s not, it is about power and it’s the most abusive form of power of using power over others. So thank you for letting me go into that because I found it very deeply problematic. So here’s the next claim about Helen.

[3:03:18] Lindsay Hansen Park: But what I’m saying is in this context, this is about power and we need to look at it. So when we try to argue whether he had or didn’t have sex with Helen Marr, I say it doesn’t matter. He took her life away. And for years, Helen Marr, struggled with deep, deep depression and deep resentment of plumy until the day she died.

[3:03:38] Michelle: OK. So I don’t, do you guys, I’ll speak to that unless someone else has

[3:03:44] Gwendolyn: something I want to jump in. This is, this is what I was trying to, I was trying to make that point by reading that about Hebrew C Kimball. She’s putting it on Joseph, but this was the result of her father’s belief in a doctrine of many wives and concubines. That’s what this doctrine does. And when you believe in it and you force people into it, that’s the sort of life they have. And we’re saying we don’t, we don’t see the evidence that this came from Joseph. We do see really good evidence that Hebrew was one of the guys that initiated

[3:04:13] Michelle: this. Yeah, by every claim Hebrew was a very domineering husband and father. And it’s interesting to me that they ignore the things written by the anti polygamist league, the women in Utah who were fighting against polygamy at the time, giving us reports of what was happening. Just like the L DS church historians ignore that the anti Mormons ignore that. Why, why wouldn’t they be talking about what Hebrew was doing? And one thing I really want to point out is that Helen, I don’t know why she calls her Helen Marr Whitney is that isn’t her name? Just Helen Mar is her middle name, is her middle name. But I mean, like it’s interesting that she always calls her Helen Marr. I didn’t know if there was a reason for it, but she actually, she married her choice. Horace Whitney. He was like, she was 18 and he was 22 or 24 or something and they were monogamous most of their lives, right? She actually didn’t really live this polygamous lifestyle and it was when she was an older woman that Emmeline Wells maybe. Is that who it was? You can correct me. Whitney came to her and said, hey, will you write your polygamous reminiscences? And she had been living in this system. And she gained so much importance and authority and a platform and validation and who knows what else by writing these things. And she was writing, I wish I could help people understand this. The culture of this day was you gained validity as a woman by how much you sacrificed and suffered for polygamy. Because that was the teaching, the more you suffer, the more glorious your next you know, like, like it was kind of a how much can you take type? I mean, that’s what, so she was not in her mind trying to say anything bad about Joseph Smith. She was trying to maximize the sacrifice she made for this divine doctrine does like, and I feel like that’s completely lost on them that they make it sound like Helen, I like Helen hated polygamy. She barely even lived it at all. She was trying to promote herself and promote the system that she was in like so many of these other women. So I’m taking this poem that she wrote and these, they take little snippets and like try to frame her life that way. It’s so inaccurate and so dishonest. Does anyone else have a thought? A thought on that? Ok. Anyway, if, if it’s wrong to say that Helen hated polygamy, I think that she probably did because I think all of the women probably did if you listen to the speeches at the great indignation meeting, but they did not say that because they couldn’t have a platform if they said that. Right? So, well,

[3:06:54] Gwendolyn: we also have a lot of records from the men’s speeches, right in the 18 fifties. You start to hear Brigham saying, I don’t want any of the more of this scratching and fighting around me. You know, everyone’s gonna have to, you’ve got two weeks to accept it or, or there’s the door frontier Utah in October, good luck to you. You know, bow down

[3:07:15] Michelle: before this. Like we were saying, polygamous leaders have to talk about it a lot. It’s hard to be a total totalitarian leader and you can’t do it duplicitous that way.

[3:07:26] Gwendolyn: And the women, the women’s complaints filtered up and you can read the women’s complaints in the men’s condemnation of all the complaining

[3:07:35] Karli: that incessant whining.

[3:07:37] Michelle: There it is. Yes. My wife tells me she hasn’t had a happy day and since I took a second, yeah, that they’re so annoyed by the unhappy women. It’s an annoyance to them. And that’s, that is, I think that so many of these men would have been good men, good husbands and fathers. If they hadn’t been so twisted by this abomination, it really is. It’s the terror. That’s bad. It’s the idea that the doctrine, it turns what these would have been good women and these would have been good men. And so we can agree with them fully on that. Oh,

[3:08:12] Gwendolyn: sorry. There, there’s a quote that it says that polygamy turns good men, bad and bad men worse. I mean, it was, this was known.

[3:08:19] Michelle: Yeah. And I think it does the same to women. It just twists. I know there are a lot of very good women who came through polygamy but there, it just twists so much. Like if people haven’t listened to my Flora Jessup episode, please do.

[3:08:32] Breeana: I was just going to bring that up. That was I

[3:08:38] Michelle: Yeah. So here is, this is a short clip that I just wanna address quickly.

[3:08:43] Bryan Buchanan: One of the most interesting connections is in Brigham Young’s journal, which is generally very boring and crappy. He has these two entries on the same page and they’re in a Masonic cipher. And the top one says I was admitted to the lodge today. And then the second one is this very cryptic entry where J Smith either saw or was Agnes. And from later counts. Brigham Young is the one that performs the ceremony, sealing Agnes Coolbrith, his brother’s widow to Joseph. And so the thought is that this is some sort of acronym for wetted and sealed or sealed and wetted.

[3:09:23] Michelle: OK. Again, it’s fascinating to me how both sides use the exact same playbook because this is right out of Brian Hales and it right like and so anyway, I don’t know if the rest of you have studied this. I just, I’m ignoring most of the Masonic stuff and I, we skipped over all of the Emma Smith stuff too because I just found it so awful the, the sources that they choose, chose to rely on for Emma were horrible and completely, yeah. Awful

[3:09:56] Gwendolyn: awful. Emma spoke for herself when she was alive. She spoke for herself.

[3:10:02] Michelle: So. Right. And so they, again, she’s claiming to be a feminist while doing this to the primary woman involved in this situation and actually vilifying her, you know, to try to make sense of it. But um this is what’s interesting was capital was they’ve just come up with wetted and sealed. And so, so I’ll just tell my little bit of research on this. First of all, the only term we get, the only place we get that term is from the affidavits that Joseph F Smith fills out and has the women sign and they say wedded or sealed, not wedded and sealed and you don’t capitalize an a in an acronym, right? You don’t include uh and for a, right? So it’s so silly and I um I always was like, this is so weird. Why do we say it says that? And I was reading a book and I can’t remember what, which Apostle, one of the original apostles was talking about the temple and he said, washed anointed and sanctified and I was like, oh, was washed, anointed and sanctified. And then guess what I found, which is not a find because we all have it memorized. Exodus 4012, which most of you will be very familiar with and thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation and wash them with water and thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments and anoint him and sanctify him that he may minister in the priest’s office right there. The scripture that we quote in the only ceremony they would have been doing in the upper floor of the red brick store and it’s washed anointed and sanctified. And we again through our polygamy lenses have to say, wetted and sealed as if that’s even a thing like have any of you ever said? Oh, I was wetted and sealed on this day and like it’s so stupid. So, right. So anyway, I

[3:11:59] Karli: just, they don’t use that term anywhere else. It’s never one source

[3:12:05] Michelle: I have searched through the um Abra, I mean, the complete discourses of Brigham Young and the journal of discourses, there’s no wedded and sealed, there’s no sealed and wedded. There is washed, anointed and sanctified. That is a term and it’s right out of the scripture that is quote in the ceremony that they’re talking about. So they ignore that and like, like, tell me how wedded and sealed is better than washed, anointed and sanctified.

[3:12:34] Gwendolyn: That’s that scriptural illiteracy. You got to know your scriptures,

[3:12:39] Michelle: right? And so I know that we did skip over all of the Emma things and all of the um Mason, I think by the end of it we were all just like, which is maybe how people are feeling, listening to this. But I think this has been awesome. So I only have 11 clip left and then we can just talk about a couple of other things. So I’ll, I’ll go ahead and play this last clip.

[3:13:01] John Dehlin: Well, I think it’s time for DNC 132. Is that yours, Brian?

[3:13:07] Bryan Buchanan: And that’s our best written source outside William Clayton’s journals for Nabu Polygamy because it lays out all the rationale that was in his, his head and that we hate to give air to it. But this is another one where denying Joseph Smith’s involvement with it, every argument you can think of to argue that this is not legitimate and it’s actually better documented than really any other revelation we have. Because if William Clayton writing in his journal, this am received a revelation of 10 pages on the order of marriage, then we have a copy of it. Well, it’s not the original. We don’t have originals of any of Joseph Smith’s revelations. So it’s legitimate. There’s absolutely no reason to deny it.

[3:13:47] Michelle: So again, this is one of, I think only two times that they actually address us at all. Right. And so OK, who wants to go? I’ll just open the floor and who wants to respond first to that clip? Anyone?

[3:14:08] Gwendolyn: Yeah.

[3:14:10] Breeana: Um I was gonna say, I know we kind of already talked about section 101. But, um, you know, you guys mentioned how it was printed in the Times and Seasons. Am I right? And that, um, and then of course, you know, like he published and on top of that, we also have the meeting minutes, right? The the minutes of the meeting where was read aloud, talked about, discussed and read aloud. So we actually have multiple contemporaneous evidences of section 101 and we have zero for 132. We have a, he said, she said, he said it came in a drawer in my desk, you know, across the plains and years later, Voila here it is. Isn’t that convenient? I mean, anyway, so I just had to point that out that they’re like we have no reason to deny 132 but 01, I don’t think that was real. I think Joseph was out of town. So that’s what they say about the two sections.

[3:15:04] Michelle: Yeah. The fact that he completely fails to mention that it appeared magically out of Brigham’s hat. I mean, Brigham’s drawer in um in 1852 8 years after Joseph’s death. He doesn’t mention that that’s kind of important information, right?

[3:15:24] Karli: And they say it had, it had to stay a secret until then. But then all their stories say, well, they had the document in Navoo and they were showing it to everybody and everybody’s making copies. So why did it all of a sudden become a secret after they died.

[3:15:38] Michelle: Yeah. Right. And good point. Go ahead, Whitney.

[3:15:41] Whitney: Well, I was just going to say, I also loved how Brian said, oh, this is a fact, like we have evidence, just like William Clay’s journals. William Clayton wrote about this. I’m like, hm, who’s the common denominator

[3:15:55] spk_6: here?

[3:15:56] Karli: Yes.

[3:15:57] Michelle: Also his claim, his claim that, um, that our problem with it is that it’s not in Joseph’s handwriting. Raise your hand if that’s your reason to doubt. Oh, if it were in Joseph’s handwriting, pulled out of Brigham’s desk eight years. Like that’s, that’s our problem like this straw manning and the misrepresentation. Like he can’t even take the time to understand and why we are calling BS on 132 actually. And it’s all. And so if people haven’t watched my second part, I think it is on the novel Expositor. Is it where I talk about William Clayton’s claims even that day, what was going on, like, and, and there’s more and more coming out all the time. I just want to go off for an hour on why this is not valid. And you’re right when he had complaints, depends entirely on William Clayton. So they’re so, he’s so either ignorant or dishonest in how they talk about 132 and the reasons to doubt it. You, so Joseph Smith’s revelations were published in multiple locations during his lifetime, right? We have the times and seasons. We have other newspapers and then we have the actual doctrine and covenants. And if anything else, all of the other things that were added in 76 8. So 132 pulled out of Brigham’s drawer in 1852. Ta da. None of you knew we had this Wink Wink, but we had it. And then we have all of the claims that the RL DS people had of people in Utah, claiming that they contributed to it or that they wrote it that they were involved in the manufacture of it. We have this in higher pattern of Brigham Young and his team falsifying evidence, changing journals coming up with things out of the blue, editing things that didn’t go along with what they said, this fits right in with what they did right there, the doctrines that I mean, it does not match Joseph’s style at all, the factual errors in it, the inconsistencies throughout it on and on and on. We have dozens and dozens of reasons to doubt the legitimacy of 132 and he is not doing himself any favors by not acknowledging the problems more accurately.

[3:18:13] Gwendolyn: We also have Joseph’s own words about the doctrine, right? Because there was something floating around, there was definitely something floating around, which they say the fact that something was floating around and that, that whatever was floating around in the novel Expositor ended up in 132 as evidence that 132 came from Joseph and it’s like, well, we also have what Joseph said about it. I just pulled it up. Um This again, thank you Joseph Smith papers project. Joseph Smith read from the expositor. And then he said, where the truth of God was transformed into a lie. And so Joseph said, this is not what I taught, this is not what I said about marriage. This is not the revelation on marriage. We really have good evidence. I

[3:18:59] Michelle: wish I had all of his speech right in front of me where he said, like he damned people to hell who were teaching this and pursuing it. Hey, Carly

[3:19:07] Gwendolyn: Hiram, Hiram really went off.

[3:19:09] Karli: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think that just looking at the logistics of like, like we have documented that he received a revelation on marriage on July 12th, right? And then he taught it publicly four days later. And like I loved your second part um on the expositor because it’s, it’s documented. All four of his scribes wrote that the revelation on marriage was an answer about love marriage in loop 20. And it said that marriage can be eternal if it’s done in the view of eternity. And that’s documented all over. And then they claim that that’s this 1 to 32 was that same revelation. But 132 says nothing about love marriage. That’s not the question that was asked that tipped off that brought the revelation. And what was the later William Law. He like in his interview, years later, he’s like, it didn’t have that theological introduction. Well, the introduction that they added in later says that the question they asked was about, you know, Abraham Isaac and all the, all of the biblical polygamists, that was the question that sparked the revelation. But in all of the July 12th documentation says that Leverett Marriage was the question that they asked. And so it just doesn’t line up as

[3:20:29] Michelle: well as Rob Fathering has excellent work on the JST which Gwendolyn brought up. That proves that Joseph would have never asked the question of how they were justified in their polygamy. Not to mention the fact that Isaac is a

[3:20:42] spk_6: nega

[3:20:45] Michelle: like just the basic like verse one and it’s also justifying concubines. What in the

[3:20:52] Karli: world? Oh my gosh. Like, do you know what a concubine knife? I never know what a concubine was. But if you look it up, oh my goodness.

[3:21:00] Michelle: No, it full on gave slave owners permission to have sex with their slaves, which we’ve already established is worse than just having a slave. Having slaves is atrocious, raping your slaves is worse. OK, Whitney, you were gonna say something I think.

[3:21:17] Whitney: Well, I just wanted to mention really quick before we go to the next clip that something that I felt was um dishonest. And there were many things but one that really stood out to me that Lindsay and Brian both did is they both said that a couple of times they quote, I’ve seen William Clayton’s journals and that unless Lindsay has some in with the church history library that will not let anyone see those journals, I feel like that’s very dishonest like she’s seen parts of them. And so I just, to me, they say that because then that kills any counter narrative we can give about Clayton’s journals and that’s just completely dishonest. They have not seen the full Clayton journals.

[3:22:13] spk_6: That’s like the

[3:22:14] Michelle: claim. It’s, it’s like the claim that new LK Whitney, the Whitney revelation was in Newell K Whitney’s own hand and yet it doesn’t exist and nobody has seen it, but they all just talk about it factually as if they’ve seen it, right and saying, I, I completely missed that. They said that they had seen those, but they do. I, I think the thing, my biggest takeaway is like they accuse us of motivated reasoning when that is absolutely what they are doing with no curiosity, no openness and no integrity to find out if what they’re teaching is true. I get it. It’s weird to go wait, this total conspiracy theory. I’m supposed to look into it and take it seriously. I can’t just call them idiots. Yeah. And especially the fact that you are saying, seeing how fast it’s growing to the point that you need to respond to it. You have the obligation to respond well, and you have the obligation to pursue truth and, and, and be informed on things you’re going to speak on. These people are setting themselves up as experts to speak factually when they are massively massively

[3:23:21] Karli: ignorant. No, Lindsay likes to have conversations with people who disagree and then she has this rebuttal, but she never listened in the first place. You have to look at the evidence we’re presenting to be able to refute it.

[3:23:35] Michelle: Right. And so anyway, is there anything we left off the table before we kind of start wrapping it up that you guys wanted to mention. There

[3:23:44] Gwendolyn: was one part where Brian mentioned, um if you have a belief in the Bible plus a natural sexual drive, then all bets are off the table. And it was kind of talking about how, how off the rails things can get. And I was like, is he implying that it’s not safe to believe in the Bible? Because generally speaking, all people have a sexual drive. So if you have a sexual drive, which everybody does and you believe in the Bible, watch out that’s dangerous. It’s, it’s quite a, it’s quite a statement to make. And so the only conclusion I can come to, you know, with Lindsay doing tarot and Brian telling us if you believe in the Bible, if you have a sex drive and you believe in the Bible, you’re dangerous is that they really want to destroy faith. And, and that’s so sad. Right. And I think that’s where a lot of the darkness in watching this interview came from. And I just wanna give another shout out for the book of Mormon in verse Nephi chapter three, verse 12, we read the purpose of the book of Mormon to grow with the Bible. That those two works will those two that which is written will grow together under the confounding of false doctrines and laying down of contentions and establishing peace among the fruit of thy loins, which which does talk about Children um and bringing them to the knowledge of their fathers in the latter days and also to the knowledge of my covenants. And it’s like, hey, if we just pay attention to what the book of Mormon says, we’re going to be able to wrap this up really simple because the Bible gives us some confusing doctrine on polygamy. But the Book of Mormon brings it into absolute clarity and you add in Christ’s words and it’s done, it’s done. It’s dead like it is deprived of oxygen when you believe that the book of Mormon is a work of scripture. So I just wanna make a, an appeal to anyone who’s um considering like believing Lindsay and Brian’s uh interpretation is that it sounds like their, their belief is without, without any actual faith. Um And so I, I don’t think that’s a, I don’t think that’s a recipe for a really joyful life.

[3:25:57] Michelle: That’s interesting. I have a couple of things I want to respond to like, yeah, it’s such a mis attribution to say the problem in the world is people believing in the Bible. I would say that belief in marriage is a very good thing for societies. And that is proven out by every sta every statistical analysis, every study, every history, every society, right? When we break down sexual norms of, of marriage, of any sort, when we break down the traditional marriage and families, we destroy societies. There just is truth to that. And there was another point you said that I wanted to respond to, oh, I love how you said, isn’t it interesting from the very beginning that Lindsay wants to deprive our movement of oxygen but doesn’t want to deprive belief and polygamy of oxygen. Isn’t that the thing? Like, I guess that’s what I’m trying to do is say, hey, let’s, let’s expose how bad all of this is so that it can stop happening. And I wish

[3:26:58] Karli: II I see a pattern like I don’t wanna make any assumptions about her or, but, you know, Gwendolyn talked about like the shift in morality. Um And it seems like the opposite end of the spectrum of morality is that it is these people saying, oh, it’s OK to teach kids about sex and these very intimate adult things in early childhood, you know, and, and maybe that’s what is kind of pushing this like dismissal of child sex abuse like, oh, we can’t really talk bad about childhood sexual interactions because it’s ok for them to learn about that. That’s what a lot of people are pushing now is it’s to teach Children and have them do that. There has to be a boundary, there has to be some morality.

[3:27:51] Michelle: There’s definitely a ton of critical thinking, a critical theory in Lindsay’s thinking, that’s how this impression I get and she just kind of uses it without consistency. And that is a really interesting connection you made Carly how the two sides kind of meet. She’s so decrying the FL Ds with eight year olds or the fundamentalists, sexual abusing Children while at the same time, not like kind of softening the, you know, minimizing the

[3:28:21] Karli: harm interactions as a young child won’t be detrimental. It’s fine.

[3:28:25] Michelle: Right. There’s, it’s weird. So, anyway, I think, ok, so I hope that people found this interesting. There’s so much more we could talk about in this video and I, I guess again, like to beat the dead horse, but really the evidence is she said it herself, the evidence is compelling. The evidence is massively compelling and we’re not the ones having to ignore it and twist it in circles and tie it in knots. We are handling every single part of this discussion very effectively. It’s to the point where when you learn something that you haven’t investigated yet, it’s exciting and fun because you’re pretty sure what you’re gonna find it’s gonna melt, right? Because it happens again and again and again. So I hope that maybe Lindsay John Brian will, well, I hope they listened to this and made it all the way through. I hope they will consider at the very least. This is what I always say to people. If you want to keep believing Joseph was the originator of polygamy. Fine. But you at least need to know the research, you at least need to do it honestly to be effective and to maintain any degree of credibility. I have always, I thought, think that John really started out with a truth seeker. I hope he will continue to do that. I hope he will get curious instead of just biased. That’s what I’m really hoping for. I think that it’s true that the biggest sandstone they would have is a panel with some of us on it, either by ourselves or with some of those who disagree with us. I think that would be incredibly exciting people and well attended and, and we’ll see what people’s real motives are. If they’re really, if they just like the church, what was it? Is it Bh Roberts? Maybe someone else who said if we have truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed. Ok. There you go. Why are you doing this cover up thing? Um John Delin and Lindsay Hanson Park and Brian and anyone else involved in this? Where are you? Like, we’re not going to give it any air time. We’re going to it, we’re going to deprive it of oxygen instead of engaging, engage with us, engage with our ideas and let the truth win. If you have truth, it can’t be harmed by anything we say. If you don’t have truth, maybe you ought to consider some different narratives and some different evidence. Anything else anyone else want to say on the way out? Well, I wanna thank you all for the incredible work you’re doing. Thank you for staying up so late and, and engaging in this conversation. I thought it was great fun. I hope people will like it but so much. A wonderful night. Keep up the good work. Thank you. I’ll

[3:31:01] spk_6: talk again. Yeah. Thanks bye.

[3:31:07] Michelle: Another huge. Thank you to Brianna Gwendolyn Carly and Whitney for sitting down with me. It was such a fun discussion, I think and such an important discussion. I just value each of their insights so much and I so appreciate the work that they’re doing. I know that I talk too much. I apologize. This is my first time doing a panel discussion. Hopefully I’ll get better at it before we do the next one. But these women were so awesome to come and sit down with me. I hope that the discussion will continue in the comments. Let us know your thoughts on every side of this issue. What things you think we left out, what insights you have, what things you must be especially appreciated so we can keep moving this conversation forward. There are the future episodes coming. There’s so much still to cover. So thank you so much for being here and I will see you next time.