content; I got the sense that none of the adults featured in the show were being forced to live in a polygamous situation, but rather they all seemed to enjoy living a life that was spiritually rich and full of communal and (extensive) family ties.
The part of the episode that is most seared into my memory is when Stossel sits down with about five or six of the Mormon men to talk to them about how they manage life with so many wives and children. One man says that it’s quite stressful being the head of such households, full of responsibility. But then Stossel politely challenges him, asking what’s so stressful about it. After all, the women take care of all the kids’ needs, the women do all the cooking and cleaning, and the men get to have sex with three, four, or five different women, as per their desire. But the women don’t get to have sex with any other husbands. It seems unfair. It seems like it’s all for the men. When Stossel pushes this matter of gender inequality, one of the men offers an earnest rebuttal: “I didn’t make the law, God did.”
“Amen,” the other men resoundingly affirm in confident, almost gleeful support.
And there you have it: men enjoying an unequal, imbalanced domestic situation. But, hey, they didn’t make the law—God did. They’re just obediently living in accordance with the Lord’s will, and if it happens to benefit them, what can they do? How can they be to blame? They are ethically obliged to follow the laws of their Heavenly Father—end of story.
I am not personally opposed to polygamy. I think consenting adults should be able to live in whatever kind of domestic unions they choose. And I recognize that polygamy can even have potential benefits for some women; Martha Hughes Cannon (1857–1932), a Mormon wife in a polygamous marriage, was the first female state senator ever elected in the United States, and she was able not only to pursue politics but also to get a medical degree largely because she had numerous “sister wives” to help her, support her, and take care of her children in her absence.
But most Mormon men today are not polygamous because of what it can do for their wives’ careers. In fact, Mormon women are significantly less likely to work outside the home full-time than non-Mormon women,1 and Mormon theology is pretty clear that a woman’s primary role is that of homemaker and baby-raiser. And they are definitely not to have more than one husband. Why not? Well, as their husbands can readily explain: God said so. Such is the ultimate bottom line as to why these Mormon men don’t change diapers, do dishes, cook casseroles, or let their wives sleep with other blokes. How unabashedly convenient for these fellas. How utterly self-serving. And—above all—how deeply typical of traditionally religious approaches to morality and ethics.
One Wife or Fifty-Five?
The polygamous Mormon men profiled on that 20/20 episode are actually on some rock-solid theological footing. They believe that the founder of their religion, Joseph Smith (1805–1844), was a prophet of God and that God directly communicated with Smith, outlining very clearly what he wills for humanity in the sacred, holy text of the Mormon religion, Doctrines and Covenants, which is a collection of God’s direct messages to Smith concerning various aspects of how life ought to be lived here on Earth. Among the plethora of prescriptions and proscriptions in Doctrines and Covenants, we find some very direct words concerning the structure of marriage; in Chapter 132, God declares the following:
For behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant, and if ye abide not that covenant, then ye are damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory . . . [then lots of stuff about marriage, stuff about Abraham and David, stuff about Joseph Smith’s wife, etc.] . . . if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins . . . then he is justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him . . . and if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him; therefore he is justified. But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed.2
Pretty clear, right? Men can have up to ten wives, so long as they are virgins, but if a woman is with a man other than her husband, she shall be—um—destroyed. How brutally murderous, baldly immoral, heinously unethical. Gross inequality is woven into the marital relationship. But again, let’s not forget—Joseph Smith didn’t make the law, God did. And despite the fact that none of the men on that 20/20 show were filmed advocating for the murderous destruction of any women, they were clear that, in their decision to live in polygamous marriages, they were simply following the moral commandments of God as most plainly revealed.
Or were they?
According to the current leaders of the Mormon religion based in Salt Lake City—officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—this passage from Doctrines and Covenants is actually not what the Lord requires of his flock. At least not anymore. Polygamy is no longer divinely supported, and according to the current Mormon president and the Twelve Apostles—God’s present spokespeople on planet Earth—monogamy is what the Lord now requires: one man and one woman. Any other marital arrangement is sinful.
The twisting story of polygamy in Mormonism has been well-told elsewhere,3 but here’s a very brief sketch: at the height of his charismatic heyday, back in the late 1830s, Joseph Smith, who was able to convince tens of thousands of people that he was the prophet of God, started taking additional wives. He eventually received holy sanction for this endeavor in the form of God’s direct communication, already outlined above. Although his first wife, Emma, was not happy about this new principle of “plural marriage,” Smith was undeterred; one historian, Andrew Jenson, records that Smith eventually had twenty-seven wives, Fawn Brodie counts forty-eight, and Stanley S. Ivins put the number at eighty-four.4 After the murder of Smith, his successor, Brigham Young, continued to champion the practice of polygamy with religious zeal; estimates vary, but it’s safe to say that he had between twenty-seven and fifty-five wives.5 While most Mormon men could not afford to support multiple wives, many could, and somewhere between 20 percent and 45 percent of Mormon adult men and women lived in polygamous marriages in the latter half of the nineteenth century.6
All of these married men living with numerous wives in the territory of Utah caused quite an American scandal: salacious stories—peddled by journalists, novelists, and various anti-Mormonists—percolated throughout the country, raising much intrigue and ire.7 Subsequently, the federal government got involved, passing a series of anti-bigamy laws, such as the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, aimed directly at destroying the Mormon practice of “plural marriage.” Such anti-Mormon legislation severely crippled the Mormon community: many leaders were imprisoned, parents’ rights over their children were endangered, the Church’s land holdings were threatened, and even the movement for the territory of Utah to join the United States was in peril.
And then, in 1890, the Mormon leadership made a spiritual about-face. Wilford Woodruff, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spent a prayerful night struggling with the Lord, the result of which was his issuance of a new manifesto declaring that Mormons would no longer engage in plural marriage. Utah was subsequently admitted as a state in 1896. In 1904, the new president of the Church, Joseph F. Smith, further declared that any Mormons who continued to practice plural marriage would be excommunicated, a declaration approved by the Twelve Apostles. And such has been the official position to this day: the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints currently proclaims that the “standard doctrine of the Church is monogamy.”8
Throughout the short history of Mormonism, this thorny matter of polygamy has caused much schismatic strife. It first spurred a split when the Prophet Smith initially instituted it; his wife, Emma, and her
