Transcription
Fair is a popular and influential group of LDS apologists. I've been an admirer of some of their work, especially their spirited defense of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith against the straw men, red herrings, and other logical fallacies of the anti-Mormons.
So, I was quite disappointed when in a recent blog post, senior fair researcher Sarah Allen delivered a fallacy written response to a user submitted question about Joseph Smith's alleged polygamy. The question reads, "My dear friend shared with me some information suggesting Joseph Smith's involvement in plural marriage was doctorred in after the fact by Brigham Young and his associates, especially William Clayton. To support this, they refer to public speeches by Joseph and Hyram Smith denying participation in plural marriage. So much of what we know depends on what is in the William Clayton diaries, which they say is possibly revised history." I also noted that it was announced that the William Clayton diaries would be made available a few years back but haven't been yet. Do you know of any further information on that?
Alan divides her response into sections and the first is was evidence altered to suggest Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage. Well, there are several clear and obvious examples of this. So, let's see how she answers. There is no EV. Well, so much for honesty. There is no evidence whatsoever that Brigham Young and William Clayton colluded to doctor official records to implicate Joseph Smith in plural marriage or that Clayton's journals were revised after their initial recording. We might charitably assume that Miss Allen is being technically honest by specifying that there's no evidence of Young specifically colluding with Clayton to alter the history, but there is a lot of good evidence that church history was revised and altered by Young and that it was altered to make it seem that Joseph supported polygamy. There's the official church history itself which states that on 1 April 1845, Bergam Young started his revision of church history. Then there's Wilfr Woodruff's 11 July 1856 journal entry where he records that Young explicitly told him to omit items from the history. There's the deliberate changing of Joseph's journals from an explicit condemnation of polygamy to approval of it and a claim that he holds the keys of polygamous power. Don't forget the sermon Hyram gave on 8th April 1844 where he declared that a man should have one wife and no concubines. That having many wives was an abomination and explained that the rumors that he had multiple wives was a misunderstanding of him being sealed to his dead wife. This sermon was first edited to try to make it seem like Hyram was endorsing polygamy and then it was deleted from the history altogether. That's some pretty good evidence that LDS history regarding polygamy was altered. better evidence incidentally than the evidence that Joseph was a polygamist.
Miss Allen continues, "Joseph Smith instituted plural marriage and no serious credentialed historian agrees with the claims that he didn't." This is a combination of the logical fallacies of argument by assertion and argument from authority along with a dose of rank hypocrisy. For fair often reminds people that the opinions of non-Mormon serious credentialed historians on topics such as the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, and Meso American archaeology do not represent the final word in the matter and are affected by their bias. But apparently that only applies when academics disagree with fair, a crying shame, for indeed historians are not the arbittors of truth, and they should not be the arbittors of what you think.
There is a wealth of evidence, Allan continues, from journal entries, letters, affidavit, and sworn witness testimony, all backing that up. Finally, we have a source, but it just leads to a review of a volume of the Joseph Smith papers, which discusses a document from Joseph Smith described as one of the rare evidences of his plural marriages, although it does not mention any kind of marriage at all. The referenced volume also contains the infamous section 132, the provenence of which is deeply suspect and in fact is weaker than ever since the recent work of Jerry Hoop and Rob Fatheringham, which indicate that the purportedly oldest version allegedly copied in 1843 by Joseph Kingsbury is in fact a product of multiple drafts made in the 1850s.
Allan claims there are recorded minutes of Hyram introducing a revelation that sounds remarkably like DNC 132 before the Nauvoo High Council a few months before his death. The novel exposed or summarized and quoted excerpts from it, showing that it was known by at least some people outside of Joseph's inner circle in June 1844. It's difficult to believe that someone with the august title of senior researcher from an organization claiming to provide informed responses could write two sentences of such convoluted macity. The link to the recorded minutes of Hyram introducing a revelation do not take you to recorded minutes of Hyram introducing a revelation, but to a newspaper which includes minutes of a meeting of the city council to determine what to do about the novel expositor. In these minutes, Joseph and Hyram both protest that the revelation, which has caused so much talk about a plurality of wives, had no reference to the present time. That the substance of the revelation was that men in this life must marry in view of eternity, a doctrine which unlike polygamy is reflected in contemporary sermons of Joseph and Hyram, and that Joseph had preached this revelation multiple times in public, but never in private. All of which contradicts the LDS church's narrative of Joseph Smith's polygamy. Incidentally, there are minutes of the day when Hyram allegedly read a revelation to the High Council. But instead of Allen's claim that it shows Hyram introducing a revelation, which sounds remarkably like DNC 132, the minutes simply state no business before the council teaching by presidents Hyram Smith and William Marx.
Despite Allen's previous reference being replete with claims from Joseph and Hyram Smith that the novel expositor is lying about Joseph having multiple wives, Alan next presents the expositor as evidence of Joseph's polygamy. She claims that the novel expositor summarized and quoted excerpts from the alleged polygamy revelation and infers untenably that therefore a polygamy revelation must have existed and that Joseph must have written it. But the expositor did not publish summaries nor excerpts, but affidavit of what Joseph's bitter enemies claimed to have heard and read almost 10 months prior. There are similarities between what they wrote and the current wording of DNC 132, but that does not mean that Hyram read 132 to the council. The afants could have heard that language elsewhere and then assigned it to Joseph. Or they could have made it up themselves and then it was later incorporated into what became DNC 132, a document which did not indisputably appear until a decade later in Utah. There is nothing contemporary to connect it to Joseph and Hyram except the expositor. And is Allen prepared to accept the expositor's other claims as fact that Joseph coerced sexual favors from young orphan and immigrant girls? something that the expositor authors themselves were accused of multiple times about Joseph plotting to be a political dictator about him defrauding people of their property. Again, something the expositor authors were accused of and in the last source that Allan used. Surely she would not accept that. But it seems that the novel expositor is an excellent source when it suits Allen's narrative, even if it blatantly contradicts the last source she used. and Allan offers not even an acknowledgement, let alone an explanation of the contradictions.
Allan then gives the tired refrain that many of his wives and friends signed affidavit and gave deposition testimony under oath, etc. She does not mention that those affidavit and testimony were given decades after Joseph's death by powerful polygamous Mormon leaders and their plural wives who are spiritually and physically dependent on them. or that there are many contradictions within and among the affidavits and testimonies, or that most of them were collected with the deliberate intent to assign blame for polygamy to Joseph Smith, or that many of them were written by LDS Apostle Joseph F. Smith and then simply signed or in some cases not signed by the Afiance, or that a federal judge found the affidavit and testimonies unconvincing. I covered just a fraction of this in some of my other videos.
In this next section, Allan again gives a combined straw man and authoritarian argument, claiming that Clayton's practice of making notes and writing his journal entries from them later is why uneducated non-historians claim that Clayton's journals are not contemporaneous. Something that Allan assures us with no evidence that no credible historian, how is that defined, I wonder, would ever claim. I can't speak for all monogamy affirmers, but I have never claimed that because Clayton's journals were not always written on the day they happened, they were not contemporaneous. The concerns about Clayton's diaries have always been multiffold. That Clayton himself was a man of questionable character who was intimately involved with multiple women while a missionary in England, allegedly before he learned about polygamy. that he may have incorporated significant bias into the original writing of his journals and that the journals may have been revised by Clayton later, possibly years later, and then presented as original. This is far from unheard of. For example, we can show that credible historians have passed off George Laav's memoirs as a journal, a boots on the ground view of the early church, although the memoirs were written years after most of the events described and decades after that were rewritten with additions to support Brigham Young. The same is the case with the journal of Joseph Robinson, which is often taken to be contemporary evidence of Joseph Smith's polygamy, but is actually an autobiography, which was clearly written after Lee was established as a polygamist in Utah. Returning to the concern about Clayton, the fact is that his missionary journal has been heavily redacted and the church has suppressed Clayton's Nauvoo Journal for years, a policy that continues at the time of this recording. If intelligent people are not allowed to form their own opinions, how can you expect them to respect your alleged credibility?
Allan continues with another naked appeal to authority. Clayton's journal will be published by Yale University Press, which meets professional and scholarly standards, so there's no need to worry about its validity. It will have an introduction and historical explanations and everything. Alan's source for this, she believes it if she's not mistaken. I wish I was joking. Let's assume, however, that Allan is correct and the journal is published by Yale. Does it then logically follow that Clayton is telling the truth? Allan asserts that the journal cannot be revised history because modern academic and peerreview processes were followed, although I assume she means will be followed since the journal still isn't published. But not only are such processes no guarantee of veracity, the primary contention of monogamy affirmers is with the source material itself, not with any modern academic tampering of it. We don't want to see an academically curated transcript of Clayton's Nauvoo journal. We want to see highquality images of the journal itself, something that the church has done with hundreds of thousands of documents of less importance.
Allan concludes her article with another fact-free section about Joseph and Hyram's denials of polygamy. Allan follows Brian Hail's carefully worded denials theory, claiming that Joseph and Hyram very carefully differentiated between celestial plural marriage, polygamy, adultery, and spiritual wifery. I defy Allen and anyone else to find any quote from Joseph or Hyram where they make that differentiation. Did Hyram make a careful differentiation when he declared publicly that it is lawful for a man to marry a wife? But it is unlawful to have more and God has not commanded anyone to have more. Did Joseph when he heard of people teaching a plurality of wives and said that Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof, no man shall have but one wife. Where was Hyram's careful differentiation when he thundered? There were many that had a great deal to say about the ancient order of things, as Solomon and David having many wives and concubines, but it's an abomination in the sight of God. If an angel from heaven should come and preach such doctrine, you would be sure to see his cloven foot and cloud of blackness over his head, though his garments might shine as white as snow. A man might have one wife. Concubines he should have none. It seems that the ones who are giving carefully worded denials are Allen and the other monogamy deniers. It's ironic that Miss Allen and Fair, who usually defend Joseph Smith so aly from the halftruths and fallacies of the anti-Mormons, turn on him with that same deceitful vitupiveness when it comes to polygamy. I'm disappointed but not surprised because the job of Allen and Fair is not to defend the truth but to defend the LDS church. A church whose validity rests on Brigham Young who pinned polygamy on Joseph Smith. Thus, when Brigham Young edits the history, Allan says he didn't. When Joseph says the expositor is lying, Allan believes the expositor. When Joseph says he had only one wife, Allan believes anyone who says otherwise. When Joseph explicitly forbids a plurality of wives and commands monogamy, Allan claims that he actually exempted celestial plural marriage, a term Joseph never used.
I'm not conceited enough to think that Miss Allen or her friends at Fair will pay any attention to this video, but I'm not really putting this into the ether for them. It's for you, dear viewer. Because even though Sarah Allen and the people at Fair LDS clearly do not believe Joseph, I hope that my videos can give you a reason to do so.
"What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery and having seven wives when I can only find one. I am the same man and as innocent as I was 14 years ago, and I can prove them all perjurers." Joseph Smith, 26th May, 1844.