The End of Polygamy
A Foundation for the LDS Church's LGBTQ journey (pt. 4)
As many LGBTQ people in the church know, the laws of eternal marriage are some of the most passionately defended traditions we have. It seems like the church will do anything and everything to defend them. This has been the case since the beginning, and has at times been the cause of great trials. This was especially the case in the early days of the church in the west while saints were still practicing polygamy. In 1852 under the presidency of Brigham Young, the church publicly announced for the first time that it was practicing polygamy. This made a lot of Americans really upset. During the 1856 presidential race, the newly-formed Republican party said that polygamy and slavery were the “twin relics of barbarism.” It also didn’t help that Brigham Young was making public statements about repentance sometimes requiring “the shedding of blood.” Eventually, the reputation of the church and Brigham Young got so bad that U.S. President James Buchanan sent military troops to Utah to replace Brigham Young as governor. This caused so much tension in Utah that violence began breaking out, culminating in the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre. The government continued taking action against the church by passing the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862, which imposed fines and prison time for the practice. That wasn’t enough, so they tried giving women in Utah the right to vote in 1870, because they believed there would be enough women against polygamy to overturn it in Utah. That backfired, because most of the women in Utah chose to vote in support of polygamy. The Poland Act in 1874 gave even more legal teeth to prosecute for polygamy.
This was all getting very problematic and expensive by the time John Taylor became the prophet. John Taylor and other church leaders had to spend much of their time in hiding. As outside pressure became more intense, leaders and saints started to question whether holding onto polygamy was worth the trouble. John Taylor however, was determined to cling to polygamy at all costs. In 1886, he wrote a letter to his son that reads as follows: “You have asked me concerning the New and Everlasting Covenant and how far it is binding upon my people. Thus saith the Lord: all commandments that I give must be obeyed by those calling themselves by my name unless they are revoked by me, or by my authority, and how can I revoke an everlasting covenant? For I the Lord am everlasting and my everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated, nor done away with, but they stand forever. Have I not given my word in great plainness on this subject? … I the Lord do not change and my word and my covenants and my law do not. And as I have heretofore said by my servant Joseph: all those who would enter into my glory must and shall obey my law and have I not commanded men, that if they were Abraham’s seed and would enter into my glory, they must do the works of Abraham? I have not revoked this law, nor will I, for it is everlasting and those who will enter into my glory must obey the conditions thereof, even so. Amen.” Despite the “Thus saith the Lord” language of this letter, it was never presented to the church as binding. But as we’ll see later, it would come back to be a major issue. Having read this letter from John Taylor, it’s easy to see how determined he was to cling to the church’s tradition of polygamy. That makes sense given just how many saints and leaders viewed polygamy as essential for exaltation. They likely saw statements like D&C 131 and 132 as proof that the “new and everlasting covenant” (polygamy) must be followed at all costs. Today, many church leaders are just as determined to keep marriage as only between a man and a woman.
After the death of John Taylor in 1887, the government continued to take action against the church. The passing of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1890, led to the imprisonment of many saints and the threat of the government seizing church property. Just 5 months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Wilford Woodruff issued the First Manifesto, which publicly advised saints against entering into further plural marriages. In the years after the First Manifesto was published, the church got back its seized assets and Utah became a state in 1896. And while the government stopped pursuing the church over polygamy, church members were still practicing polygamy with the knowledge of church leaders. Remember that the saints were still convinced that polygamy was necessary for exaltation, so it still had to be done, just now by winks and nods instead of out in the open.
This continued until 1903, when the church was forced into the national spotlight. An apostle named Reed Smoot had been elected as a U.S. Senator for Utah, which many Americans saw as problematic. While Reed Smoot himself was only married to one wife, a long list of post-1890 plural marriages of members was publicly available. The controversy prompted the publication of the Second Manifesto by the prophet Joseph F. Smith in 1904, which publicly stated that anyone entering into plural marriages would be excommunicated. While this statement appeared to put a hard and fast stop to polygamy, it took church leaders several years to actually act on it. Apostles John W. Taylor (son of John Taylor) and Matthias F. Cowley, staunch advocates for polygamy, were part of those excommunications in 1911. Now let’s go back to that revelation received by John Taylor in 1886 which stated the “new and everlasting covenant” would never be done away with. During this time of hiding for John Taylor and others, there was a mail courier for the men in hiding named Lorin C. Woolley. In 1912, Woolley began publishing accounts of John Taylor receiving the revelation in 1886. Woolley and the 1886 revelation became sort of a banner for many saints to gather under, saints who refused to part with the “new and everlasting covenant” of polygamy. This group became what we know today as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS church for short. The group’s existence has been highly problematic for the LDS church, which aggressively tried to distance itself from the FLDS church. Remember that the United States people and government made polygamy very expensive for the saints to hold onto, so the church had to present itself as respectable and American. More details about this will be covered in the next article, which covers the apostle J. Reuben Clark. And so polygamy for time and eternity lives on in the FLDS church. In the LDS church, only eternal polygamy lives on, as shown by the fact that leaders like Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks are both sealed to 2 different women.
The end of official polygamy in the church, drawn out over decades, is telling for where the church is today. It was widely understood from the early days of the church that polygamy was an essential part of exaltation. But there came a point where the church needed to move into the 20th century and cross a threshold of respectability if it was to survive. That transition, slow and painful, caused a lot of confusion and even a schism that resulted in a break-off group. I believe the church is in a similar position today as it’s being forced to move into the 21st century. Same-sex marriage and LGBTQ people are becoming more commonplace in the world, and discrimination against them is becoming more and more unrespectable. The church however, has done a lot of legal maneuvering with the help of Dallin H. Oaks to try and keep the law on their side. It’s understandable that the church can’t suddenly change its mind about LGBTQ people right now, because it would create a major schism and cause many people to leave, and it would likely have serious consequences in the United States and other countries. But as the years pass and the generational window slowly shifts, the church is likely to have another manifesto moment. And all this can happen, regardless of how many times church leaders claim that things will never change.
Further Reading: