Introduction and Guest Background

Julia [00:00:00] Foreign

John Dehlin [00:00:04] and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is August 2, 2023. We are live today here to answer the very important question. Joseph, you know, was Joseph Smith a human trafficker and. Or was he involved in human sex trafficking? To provide a tiny bit of context today, there has been a lot of conversation in the United States and in Mormonism about human trafficking. And I think I can say up front that everyone involved in today's episode is against human trafficking, is against child trafficking, is against anything that's coercive and abusive and that harms any human and especially that harms children.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] I think that's one of the main reasons we're doing this episode. But while we're at it, there are so many faithful Latter Day Saints or Mormons who particularly seem outraged at the idea of, you know, child sex trafficking happening in the world, which is great.

John Dehlin [00:01:14] But what. What that does is it reminds me of, you know, the time that I read the Nauvoo Expositor, which was the newspaper article published by William Law, a member of the First Presidency, where he back in Nauvoo in 1844, where he talked, basically, Joseph and other missionaries going to Europe and bringing young women over to Nauvoo to then be kind of brought into polygamous marriages. And for years and years and years, that's been on my mind, does that qualify as sex trafficking? And so while we have. I don't think any of us on today's panel have any interest in sort of like making Joseph Smith this arbitrary punching bag where we accuse him of every bad thing that's going on.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] I think we're asking a legitimate question today, and that is, was Joseph Smith, you know, was Joseph Smith's behavior in Nauvoo, would it qualify under today's standards for human trafficking? And we want to be thoughtful and precise as we can about this question. And so what I've done is I've brought on three people who I really admire and respect in terms of their intellect, and. And so that's who we have on today. We have Julia from Analyzing Mormonism. Julia also is well known for doing the shorts, the TikTok and Instagram and. And Facebook and YouTube shorts here on Mormon Stories Podcast. Hey, Julia, thanks for joining us today. Julia, anything else you want to introduce, you want to say by way of introduction about yourself?

Julia [00:02:59] About myself?

John Dehlin [00:03:00] Yeah.

Julia [00:03:01] No, not really. I think that was like, I'm. I do analyzing Mormonism on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram. So I have a Webpage. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] And you are starting to publish out of date books and I think you are going to be publishing a printed version of the Nauvoo Expositor, is that right?

Julia [00:03:22] Yeah, we have. It's not up yet, but it's coming up soon. This is the printed version. It's a really long newspaper. It's only four pages, but it's. If you put it in book format, it's significantly bigger. But yeah, it'll be audio print, it'll be ebook, so it'll be up soon. So.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] And when it's ready, where do. Where do people find it? Can you give them the URL?

Julia [00:03:40] Wherever? Yeah, yeah, it'll be. It'll be on our company's website and then on my personal website with the store. So we can.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] What's the, what's the name? Do you have a name for that website yet?

Julia [00:03:50] Yeah, there's a. It's Adena Publishers. And then there at the bottom of the page spelled it spelled E D I N A publishers dot com.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Okay. Okay.

Julia [00:03:58] And then at the bottom of the page, there's the Mormon studies thing. You can click to show all the books that we're working on and then where to purchase them. And then on my analyzing Mormonism website, there's a store like hash, hashtag, not hash, backslash store. And then you can buy the books there as well too.

John Dehlin [00:04:13] And the reason why, you know, I've been admiring, Julia, your Mormon history chops and research on your TikTok channel for some time. And, and so when I needed someone to do a deep dive into this question in a scholarly way that would be perceived as, or that would be experienced as professional and thoughtful and careful, I thought of you. And so I asked you to do the yeoman's work in preparing and researching for this episode. So thank you for that.

Julia [00:04:44] Thanks. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] Yeah. Was it. Was it fun to. To do this research or painful or.

Julia [00:04:51] So I grew up in the church and like, asking the question of Joseph Smith, this man that I admired, if he was involved in human trafficking, like, that was really devastating. And then to see this or not the question, but the answers that I was finding, which is what we're presenting today, was like just seeing a person that I thought I knew in a different light, if that makes sense. And like, I like what you were saying. Like, I don't want to paint Joseph as a villain. I don't want to focus on him as, as a villain. I want to more focus on the women and their experiences than on anything else. So they're the ones that are important to me and sharing their stories.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being willing to do the research for this episode or the main research. And of course, we have back with us from across the pond, Nemo the Mormon of the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo [00:05:42] Hey. I think today's gonna tell us. I'm one of the only Mormons that didn't flee to America. Even Sam's runaway to America. What's that about?

John Dehlin [00:05:51] Well, Nemo, this is an issue that's personal for you as well. Do you want to just talk about that really, really quickly?

Nemo [00:05:57] Yeah. Ultimately, I've just been reading the story of a village called Downham. And to my understanding, what I've been told by others is that Downham was a village where there was a lot of preaching done up in Lancashire and so many people left in the village. The village was almost left destitute without people for a long time by these Mormon missionaries who came in and took everyone away.

Nemo [00:06:17] And recently, in the past maybe 10, 20 years, the church paid one, I think, to have the, the village's church organ fixed. You know, their, their pipe organ fixed as a way to try and kind of fix bridges. Yeah. Sort of thing. Build bridges with, with the, the town. Because, you know, whole villages have been converted to Mormonism and disappeared from the uk. So it is, it is very kind of personal to me, the history of the church here, because so many Brits went to America to build up the church. As we know, at one point there was more Brits in the church than there were Americans.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] Yeah.

Nemo [00:06:52] Right. In the early history.

John Dehlin [00:06:54] Well, we people always love having you on Nemo. And please do subscribe to Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel. Check it out and support Nemo. The. The fourth and final person that we're having on today's panel is Samantha Shelley of Zelf on the Shelf YouTube channel. Please support Zelf on the Shelf as well. And Samantha, I'm sure you could summarize better than me why this particular topic is personal to you.

Samantha Shelley [00:07:18] Because. Because I joined Mormonism and moved to America. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] As a, as a. As a young woman. Right.

Samantha Shelley [00:07:24] Yeah. And I mean, I obviously did not go through what the women back in Josephson, Brigham's Day went through, but, yeah, I suppose there's a similarity. But thankfully, I wasn't, unbeknownst to me, going into a polygamous system and then being forced to be the fourth wife to some old guy. So I had it good.

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Yeah. Well, we're really, really glad to have you back on Mormon Stories podcast. And please support Zelph on the Shelf. It's an. It's amazing content. And Samantha, you. You and Tanner have covered this issue explicitly as well, correct?

Samantha Shelley [00:07:56] Yeah, we. Sorry about my cat.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] No, cat's welcome. Cats are always welcome.

Samantha Shelley [00:08:01] We did a live recently where we dove into a lot of different contemporary news articles about what journalists were seeing in Utah under Brigham's rule. And it was. It was quite a bit worse than I thought in terms of how much these women and men from Europe were not told what they were going into. And then they're arriving in Utah and there's like guards standing with guns and then bishops coming in the first night and taking the women that they won. And then those women have to be that bishop's fourth wife. Like, it was just all very harrowing to have to absorb, but. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:40] Well, thanks for joining us. And that's what we're here to dig into today. So without any further ado, Julia, you're going to be the main guide for today, but we're going to ask Nemo and Samantha to jump in at will. And I think we're going to start with the first slide. Let's define what human trafficking is. Go ahead, Julia.

Framing the Trafficking Question

Julia [00:09:01] Yeah, so we're talking about specifically, we're talking about sex trafficking with Joseph Smith, but I wanted to put point out that there are two different types of human trafficking, and one of them is forced labor, and it's sometimes referred to as labor trafficking and encompasses a range of activities involved when a person uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the labor or services of another person. So, like we'll see in the Navajo Expositor and other places that this was happening in the early church. Except my research today is mostly on the sex trafficking with these. With his polygamous wives and the polygamous wives that he. Polygamous unions that he authorized. So we're talking about both or. Well, both happened, but we're talking about one of them.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] And honestly, I wanted. I mean, I think this episode would have been most aptly named did Joseph Smith Engage in Sex Trafficking? I've worried that that was a little too scandalous, but also I worried that the YouTube algorithms would punish us for using that word. So we neutralized it a little bit. I don't know if that was good or bad, but this really is about sex trafficking.

Nemo [00:10:03] But it's still true because sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking. So you. We're still. We're still living up to the promise of the thumbnail don't you worry, viewers.

Defining Sex Trafficking and Its Basics

John Dehlin [00:10:12] All right, well, Julia, tell us what sex trafficking is then specifically.

Julia [00:10:16] Okay, so there's, there's a few different definitions of sex trafficking. So sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking, like we said, and it is an act, an action or practice of transporting people from one country or area to another for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Yet there are other definitions as well, and it's been called a. More. It's been called a form of modern slavery because of the way the victims are forced into these acts non consensually. And that sex trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation provision, obtaining, patronizing or soliciting of a person for the purpose of commercial sex act in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion. So, so I think it's. There's a broader definition than just having people be taken in from, from Great Britain or England or wherever. It's just, it's the forcing or the coercion of people to do these commercial sex acts. Acts.

Nemo [00:11:09] So it can happen domestically is what you're saying. You don't have to cross international lines for it to count.

Julia [00:11:14] Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] I mean, it could happen in your own home, right? If your parent.

Julia [00:11:18] Exactly, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] Yeah. So, okay. All right. And I, and I am interested in making sure to explore that notion of force or coercion, because I think there's hard coercion where people are like chained, enforced, enslaved. But then there's also undue influence that I imagine can come into play here as well. Are we going to be covering that?

Julia [00:11:44] Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:11:46] All right, let's jump to the next slide. There we go. The basics of sex trafficking.

Julia [00:11:53] Okay, so how it begins. So people in sex trafficking situations almost always know and even trust or love their traffickers. Trafficking traffickers target vulnerable people. And if you're a person who's coming in from England to join the Mormons, you're a vulnerable person. Or even these young people who are just shy of 15 years old, sometimes they offer material support, a place to live, clothing, a chance to get rich quick, and other times they offer love, emotional support or a sense of belonging to. And with the Tim Ballard stuff, these stories of kidnapping victims and forcing them into these, these sexual acts, this is, that's very uncommon. That's not very usual. It's usually, like we said, people that you know and trust. And you could even add that these people can come the. They can be the prophet of your church who can do the trafficking. So.

John Dehlin [00:12:38] And that's one of the things that is Tricky is, again, who isn't against. Other than sex traffickers, who's not against sex trafficking. But. But when we focus on the kidnapping of people and forcing them in, maybe I hear what you're saying is the cost is we ignore other far more prevalent types of trafficking. Is that right?

Julia [00:13:02] Exactly. And when your focus is on that, on kidnapping individuals or people who have been kidnapped, you're losing. You're. You're not protecting these other people as well, who are in their own homes or in the homes of their neighbors or their friends. You're not helping these people. People.

Nemo [00:13:17] And I think it's always. It's very often the case that the more overt, the more sensationalist versions of events or problems tend to make their way to the fore. They make their way into the newspapers, they make their way into the media. Whereas the more subtle versions of things like sex trafficking maybe aren't as well covered. So, yeah, someone gets stolen from their home in the middle of the night, it's all dramatic. Yeah, people are covering that left, right, and center. The person whose parent takes them away somewhere, no one even knows.

John Dehlin [00:13:45] All right, very good. All right, let's go to the next slide. The basics of sex trafficking. Who are the traffickers, Julia?

Julia [00:13:51] Okay, so the traffickers come from all genders, races, ethnicities, and walks of life. They could be anyone. In sex trafficking situations, they may be an intimate partners or spouse of the victim, family members, friends or benefactors, or business acquaintances and bosses. And like I said, it can even also be the prophet of your church.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] So, I mean, in theory, it could be. I guess what we're going to be asking is, can it be clergy? Can clergy sex traffic?

Julia [00:14:14] Yeah. Why? Why not? Like, it can be anyone.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] Yeah. Okay. And. And Samantha, I'll invite you to jump in at any point as well to any comment you want to make. I'm not going to ask everybody to jump in because that just takes too long to. To run the rounds. So please jump in anytime.

Julia [00:14:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] Okay, so who are the victims then, Julia?

Julia [00:14:38] Okay, so the victims can be anyone also. So these are people who are generally have greater needs. These. They can include people in poverty or unstable housing situations, as well as people with a history of trauma or addiction. And because of his current and historic discrimination and inequality, people of color, immigrants, and people who identify as LGBTQ are more likely to be exploited for these vulnerabilities and face trafficking.

John Dehlin [00:15:02] And, and, and we. We've mentioned the UK or Great Britain quite a bit already, but. But there's probably some sort of socioeconomic historical context to provide about what was going on in Europe, which includes Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, you know, during the early 19th century. Nemo. Is that anything you would want to speak to in terms of famines or, you know, socio economic dynamics?

Nemo [00:15:30] People were coming out of the villages into the cities. The country was industrializing. Some of the newspaper articles I was reading in the lead up to this, as only Brits can, they made a lot of this issue about class. They talked about how the people that were leaving to join Mormonism were of a lower class, were of a lower intellect, all these sorts of things. I wouldn't want to cast those aspersions myself, but it was certainly something that was being talked about at the time, was more vulnerable people, people with less world experience, people that were in more difficult situations, in worse paying jobs, you know, work situations.

Nemo [00:16:03] We'd gone from agriculture to industry and industries where you start to get children running underneath cotton looms to pick up drop threads and you get chimney sweeps and all that Oliver Twist nonsense that, you know, Americans love to talk about. But this, this was a problem. You know, people were living in worse conditions than their ancestors had because as people were industrialized, it became about an economy of people, not about, you know, people's welfare so much.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] Okay, so it's, so it's fair to say that, that many of the women who were trafficked were, were economically vulnerable. Fair.

Nemo [00:16:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] Okay. All right, all right, so let's go to. Why don't victims just leave? This was a, this was a narrative that was advanced during the Elizabeth Smart sort of trial or sort of situation or case. Talk, Talk about that. Julia.

Why Victims Stay and How They Escape

Julia [00:16:56] Yeah, Elizabeth's a great example. She wasn't trafficked, but yeah, she's a great example of why they don't just leave. So yeah. So in many cases, people in sex trafficking situations do not see themselves as victims while they are being trafficked. They have been so expertly manipulated or groomed that they believe they are making their own choice to engage in commercial sex. These emotional ties are so powerful as being held in handcuffs or behind bars. People in sex trafficking situations may, may well also depend on their traffickers for physical needs like money or shelter. They may face threats against them or their families or violence if they complain or try to leave. And you can, we'll show a lot of these in, in the upcoming slides.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] So, so if, if, if the people are economically vulnerable to their captors or physically for, for housing, for money, etc.

Nemo [00:17:48] Which is what makes me worry about, I don't want to take us down this tangent. So please don't let me take a stance. Tangent. But I, it makes me worried about missionaries. The idea that missionaries have their passport taken away from them, they have their rights to move freely taken away from them screams trafficking. By these definitions, people.

John Dehlin [00:18:03] I have heard people mention, mention that maybe that's a good topic for another time.

Nemo [00:18:09] Indeed.

John Dehlin [00:18:10] All right, so how do people get out of sex trafficking situations, Julia?

Julia [00:18:14] Okay, so every story is different. What they have in common is resilience. Survivors come to the understanding that they want to leave the situation, then they fight to get out. Sometimes they get help from service providers or anti trafficking organizations. But the concept of rescuing adult sex trafficking victims is misleading and sometimes dangerous. Survivors, mostly survivors rescue themselves.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Okay. And that's important why?

Julia [00:18:40] It's important because these people, I guess it's important for education purposes and it's important for people. These are other organizations who are saying that they're helping and they're saying that they're rescuing people when reality maybe they're not as well or not being as successful. There's just a lot of different. Yeah, yeah.

Preventing Trafficking and Legal Context

John Dehlin [00:18:58] Okay, so how do we, before we jump into Joseph Smith, you felt like it was important to mention up front how we reduce and prevent sex trafficking.

Julia [00:19:07] Yeah. Because the answer, I don't think, is to just go in the Congo and, and break down doors. I don't think that's actually the answer. But there are, there is an answer here. So let me read this just for this purpose, just so human trafficking doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is the end result of other inequities in our society and our economic system that make people vulnerable to the enticements of trafficking. So while, while prosecuting traffickers and seeking justice for survivors is vital, it is not enough by itself to end trafficking, to reduce trafficking at the massive scale of the. At the massive scale of the problem.

Julia [00:19:39] We need to work together as a society to increase supports and services for vulnerable people and change conditions like homelessness, family violence, poverty and discrimination that makes people vulnerable to the lure of trafficking. So the more we can help people who are in hard situations, people who are like me, and identify as lesbian or gay or queer or people of color. This is what welcoming them and helping to stop discrimination is what's going to help stop human trafficking.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] Beautiful. So the next slide is interesting one. It's asking the question, was Joseph Smith a polygamist? I think I know why you're including this, but why don't you go ahead and tell us? Because for Many people. That's a foregone conclusion, but maybe not for all.

Julia [00:20:21] Right. And I've had people argue with me, too, that it was legal in Joseph Smith's time, but it's not. It's not legal. But, yeah, people have asked the question, was Joseph Smith even a polygamist? And the reason I put this, the picture up there is from Mormonism Live. It's from their episode. And so if you go watch that, they break down the evidence and they talk about it. But if you go to the next slide, then there. So what. What RFM did is he took the Nava Expositor and he took the revelation for DNC132 and he compared them. And these people who read the novel Expositor, which was published just before Joseph was killed, they are quoting directly from this revelation. So Joseph Smith. This revelation existed during Joseph Smith's lifetime, and that tells us that Joseph Smith was indeed a polygamist.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Yeah. And I'll just add, I recorded a special episode, so do check out Mormonism Live for that episode. I also did a good, solid two hours with RFM where we went into depth, and I really believe we have destroyed. Rfm has destroyed the notion that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. I think it's dead.

Julia [00:21:27] I agree.

Samantha Shelley [00:21:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:21:28] And watch for that in the coming week. It will be. Will be epic. So, yeah, let's have none of that nonsense. And then you've gone ahead and listed all of Joseph Smith's polygamous wives here.

Julia [00:21:42] Yeah, this is just sort of setting the stage of Joseph Smith's polygamy. So he married 11 women who are already married, 18 who are single, and four who were widows. So this just is just all the women. And we will be talking about a few of them in this. In the circum, in the circumstances of being human trafficked.

Nemo [00:22:00] And this list is from Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness here on screen for your viewing pleasure. There you go.

John Dehlin [00:22:08] And so total and total wives. Julia.

Julia [00:22:11] So what I. What is. What is that, 35 or something?

John Dehlin [00:22:14] 35 known wives to Joseph Smith.

Julia [00:22:16] Yeah. And there's more like. Like Fawn Brody adds more. There are other ones who add more, but this is just going from Todd Compton's list.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] And it seems like what you're doing in these slides is kind of trying to neutralize what some of the immediate arguments are going to be that Joseph Smith wasn't a polygamist. And then the next one that's very, very common is, well, maybe he was a polygamist, but sex wasn't involved.

Julia [00:22:37] Right, Exactly. Yeah. So in the Book of Mormon itself, it says. It tells us that the only reason why someone. Why God would command polygamy is to raise up seed. For he says, for there shall not any man be among you, save and have one wife and concubines. He shall have none. For I will say, the Lord of hosts, raise up seed unto me. I will commend my people. Otherwise they shall hearken unto these things. So only. Only for the purpose of having children. So which means if there's polygamy, you're going to have intimacy.

John Dehlin [00:23:03] Yeah.

Julia [00:23:03] And then historians today also say that this is the case that Joseph. They said that they claim that Joseph Smith had sexual relations with some of his wives. And my question would then be, why not all of his wives? And then I also wanted to point out something that I think is interesting, is that polygamy doesn't actually increase the number of children in the community. All polygamy does is increase the number of children for one person. So, like Brigham Young had, I can't remember the exact numbers, 54 wives and then 58 children. So like. Or something like that. So the average child per woman is one.

Julia [00:23:36] So but if. If Brigham had left these women alone, they could have had five children per husband. Like, they would have increased the number of children immensely. And so. So I just thought that was an interesting thing to point out. So, like, why would God command polygamy when in reality more kids come if there isn't polygamy? So anyway, and it's not.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] And it's not just the Book of Mormon, but the Doctrine and Covenants makes this point as well, correct?

Julia [00:24:00] Yes. Yeah. Nima, do you want to talk about this one?

Joseph Smith's Polygamous Relationships Overview

Nemo [00:24:03] Sure. Sure. Okay, so Doctrine Covenants 132, 63 says, but if one or either of the 10 virgins after she is espoused shall be with another man, she has committed adultery and shall be destroyed. For they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth according to my commandment and to fulfill the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men. For herein is the work of my Father continued that he may be glorified.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] So what does that say, Nemo?

Nemo [00:24:36] That says that if you're going to be getting into polygamy, you better be doing it to have kids, because that is the point.

John Dehlin [00:24:41] Yeah. And those polygamy apologists who try and claim Joseph never had sex with his polygamous wives they never can answer, you know, why would every prophet from Brigham Young to John Taylor and beyond have sex with their polygamous wives? But we would want to give Joseph a pass and claim that he didn't. Why would there be an exception there? Nobody has an explanation for that. In addition to the fact that many of the wives themselves on multiple occasions testified under sworn affidavit that they did know Joseph in the flesh, in the very deed, so to speak. We know that's true. Correct.

Nemo [00:25:31] I think part of the problem that comes up is the euphemisms like you were kind of alluding to there. There's this hangover from. From my country people and Sam's country people of not naming these things as we see them and using euphemisms to describe them. So a lot of what we're going to see later is people saying the transaction or this and that.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] Knowing, you know.

Nemo [00:25:52] Yeah, knowing. Lying with, you know, all these euphemisms that no one's going to out and out say that they were having sex, because in that time, you wouldn't say that sort of thing.

Samantha Shelley [00:26:04] And also, Joseph was very determined to keep his polygamy secret. He was denying it his whole life, whereas Brigham and the prophets that did have known children with their polygamous wives that, you know, they were out and proud about it. But Joseph was openly telling the church he wasn't practicing polygamy when the church itself now admits he had, like, 34 wives.

John Dehlin [00:26:24] Right. Okay.

Samantha Shelley [00:26:25] It makes sense that he'd be a bit careful about the baby making.

John Dehlin [00:26:28] Absolutely. Okay, this is great. So. So we know that Joseph Smith had sex with his polygamous wives. The next slide has to do with the term polyandry, which was a term that was brand new to me when I was in my early 30s and investigating, going down the. The Mormon history rabbit hole, so to speak. Tell us about Dan Vogel and Joseph Smith and other men's wives.

Julia [00:26:52] Julia. Yeah, so the reason I had this slide in here is because I didn't want to showcase his relationships with every one of these women. But it's. We're doing a podcast on human trafficking or on sex trafficking specifically. So I went ahead and added that information anyway. But in case you want to see the evidence for Joseph Smith having sexual relationships with these women, go to Dan Vogel's video, Joseph Smith and Other Men's Wives. And he does a really good job of showing the evidence for these relationships. And then also I talk about Todd Compton's book In Sacred Loneliness, where he goes through really great Beautiful detail about all these women and their relationships with Joseph Smith. So those two things, I would say, go there to find that evidence.

John Dehlin [00:27:30] I suspect that one of the reasons for Joseph choosing to marry other men's wives is that if a pregnancy emerged, Joseph wouldn't be suspected for it. It would just be assumed that it was the husband, you know, not. Not some single young woman getting pregnant. Is that.

Nemo [00:27:50] I thought of that angle. That's a. That's a good idea. That's a good thought.

Julia [00:27:54] A lot of these. A lot of these women that were already married, they were married to men who were active in the church, had served multiple missions, some of them good standing with the church. Only I think only a couple of wives had struggles with their husbands anyway. That doesn't make any sense anyway. So, yeah, I agree with that. That he would marry women already married to cover up if they were to have children.

John Dehlin [00:28:15] Okay. And let's talk about another polygamy defense, which is, it was spiritual wifery, and spiritual wifery is different than celestial marriage.

Julia [00:28:25] Yeah. So I tend to use the same term, like, just all of these terms to mean the same thing. So to me, it's not. These aren't marriages because none of them are legal and none of them are. Or even. Very few were known by even Emma. So. So I tend to use these. But Nima thought it was a really good idea to separate them out so that we understand each other better. So spiritual wifery is marrying. Again, this is not legal. Marrying women secretly without the authorization of Joseph Smith. And then celestial marriage and polygamy is marrying women secretly with the authorization of Joseph Smith under his direction. So. So sometimes I might use the wrong term, but what I mean is the ones authorized by Joseph Smith, because that's what we're talking about today. So what I mean is the celestial marriage and polygamy and not spiritual. Ivory.

John Dehlin [00:29:08] Got it.

Nemo [00:29:08] Excellent. Yeah. I think it's really important because that's what Bennett gets accused of, his spiritual wifery. And it was. Joseph used this. This invented this idea that Bennett was basically doing exactly what he was doing. But it's like, no, no, no, that's spiritual wifery. That's wrong. You can't do that. And that was his way of kind of offering up a sacrifice to other people and saying, no, this is wrong. We're gonna distance ourselves from polygamy. See, look, we're persecuting a guy who's doing basically exactly what Joseph's doing.

John Dehlin [00:29:32] And Nemo, when you say Bennett, you're referring to John C. Bennett.

Nemo [00:29:36] John C. Bennett. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] Helped help Joseph Smith establish Nauvoo. And it almost seemed, honestly, it almost seemed like Joseph was secretly practicing polygamy. And he would tell a certain number of men about it, but if they got caught or if they started practicing it in a way that Joseph didn't like, he would denounce them for, you know, for spiritual wifery, while continuing to practice. Yeah, you know, his. His own sexual.

Nemo [00:30:07] And that. That further relationships further solidifies Joseph's cover because then he can be seen publicly to be denouncing people who are engaging in this sort of polyamory, Polyandry. Whatever is going on, he can say, well, no, no, no, we don't do that. Look, see? Every time we find someone doing it, we get rid of them. See, look. So he can offer these people up as sacrifices to the Persona of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:30:29] Got it. All right, so, Julia, you now are going to take us through a slide that tries to connect all. Connect all this, which is basically saying, can polygamy, you know, how should we think about polygamy through the lens of sex trafficking, even though the slide maybe says it differently.

Overlaying Trafficking Criteria with Polygamy

Julia [00:30:47] Yeah. So I. So I went through a lot of the definitions and the circumstances of sex trafficking. I just wanted to overlay it with the polygamy. So these women did not see themselves as victims. They believe that they were making their own choice to engage or to become married to him. They depended on Joseph not only for money and shelter in a lot of cases, but for the salvation of their eternal souls and at the. The souls of their families. These women were. These women faced threats against them and their families if they did not accept Joseph. And I also wanted to point out that another form of human trafficking, another definition, is sexual, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and forced marriage.

John Dehlin [00:31:21] Yeah. So for me, the question is, did Joseph Smith, as someone who claimed to be God's sole, you know, voice and mouthpiece and prophet on the earth, did he use undue influence to coerce these women into polygamous marriages? Were they super vulnerable and did that make it worse? And. Yeah, you know, and did that. That undue influence come in the form of threats either to them or to. Or to their families? You know, so was there vulnerability? Was there informed consent? Was there undue influence and was there coercion? Those are some of the things that I'm looking for.

Nemo [00:32:07] I think we're going to see. Joseph used a mixture of sort of carrot and stick. He would particularly like. He would offer the men rewards and then he would make threats to the Women is generally what I think we're going to see a pattern of.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] Okay. Yeah. The men and parents, maybe, Right?

Nemo [00:32:21] Yes, the men and parents.

John Dehlin [00:32:22] Okay. Okay. All right, so let's jump to the Nauvoo Expositor. Does someone want to give just the quick 30 second overview of what the Nauvoo Expositor was?

Nemo [00:32:34] I nominate Sam.

Samantha Shelley [00:32:35] Okay, Samantha, Arguably the worst choice schema. So as I understand it was written. Was it William Law created? Yep. So guy who was originally buddy buddy with Joseph Smith, found out about Joseph's polygamy, was very disturbed by it. Was seeing Joseph lie to the community and say, no, I'm. I don't have any extra wives. That's slander. And then essentially published a newspaper detailing what Joseph was actually engaged in, which ultimately led to Joseph burning down a printing press, being put in prison, and then eventually being killed.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] And the only thing I would add to that, Samantha, is that he wasn't just buddy buddies with Joseph Smith. He was in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So it would be comparable to Dallin H. Oaks or Henry Eyring today breaking from the First Presidency and then telling the membership what Russell M. Nelson as the prophet, is doing secretly in a way that's deceptive and harmful.

Nemo [00:33:38] Not gonna lie. Can I advocate for that? I think we need that to happen. Can I just choose the universe probably

Samantha Shelley [00:33:45] have watertight NDAs at this point, but they wouldn't have back then.

Nemo [00:33:49] Yeah, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:33:50] But I just think. I think it's important to mention his status. It was way more than just buddy buddy. But I know you were.

Samantha Shelley [00:33:55] I know you were just. I just said something incorrect.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] Yeah, no, that was good. Okay, Julia, so do you want to. Do you want to take us through how the Navu Expositor connects all this?

The Nauvoo Expositor as Evidence

Julia [00:34:05] Yeah, so. So I'm using the Nava Expositor as sort of a springboard to talk about this human trafficking. And these are just some quotes that I really liked that really kind of put a light or a spotlight on these things. So he says that many items of doctrine are taught secretly and denied openly, which we know he was doing. William claimed that Joseph Smith would not make acknowledgments for these doctrines of, like, specifically plural marriage, but would rather be damned. Joseph Smith seemed to have thought that confessing would prove the overthrow of the church. And then he says whoredoms and all manner of abominations are practiced under the cloak of religion. And then I just love this line. He says, lo, the wolf is in the fold.

John Dehlin [00:34:41] What do you love about that?

Julia [00:34:42] I don't know. It's just a really great image of like because it's because sheep are these really docile creatures. But then seeing this wolf in the fold, that's going to prove the overthrow of this church. I don't know. I just thought that was a really good image.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Really quickly, I want to, I want to thank Rebecca Raven for her super chat donation through YouTube. Thank you, Rebecca. She writes, I learned so much from these sessions. Thanks to everyone who's joining us on YouTube on the live stream and we want to, we want to welcome all, all donations and Please subscribe to YouTube. Please follow us that that helps with our growth and with the algorithms. Thank you so much. And I'll also add that while we've talked about the Book of Mormon having and the doc, you know, the Book of Mormon having a clause that, that said basically the default is polygamy and concubines are bad.

John Dehlin [00:35:36] And then there's a clause in the Book of Mormon by 1844 that says if God's going to do it, he's going to do it, but otherwise it's bad. I think it's also worth noting that the Book of Commandments, Doctrine and Covenants during the time of Nauvoo prohibited polygamy and denied that the Saints were practicing polygamy. This DNC section 132 that we just mentioned didn't come until what, the 1870s, is that right?

Julia [00:36:03] Oh, well, it was written in 1842. Do you mean when it was published,

John Dehlin [00:36:06] it didn't become part of the DNC that the members would reference? In other words, when William Law is decrying polygamy and saying that we have a wolf in the fold, it's partly because Joseph Smith was not only publicly denying it all the scripture, all the Mormon scripture that was existent in 1844 was also prohibiting polygamy and concubines. Am I wrong?

Julia [00:36:34] No, you're correct. Yeah. Yeah. DNC 101 at the time in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants specifically says marriage is between one man and one woman. And there's an entire revelation for that. So.

Samantha Shelley [00:36:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] So Joseph Smith was violating his own scripture, is the point I'm making.

Julia [00:36:49] Yes.

Nemo [00:36:50] It's like with the current leaders of the church and the whole SEC debacle. Right. They've lied. And everything I can find in Mormon Scripture says that we should be honest and that we shouldn't lie to people. And everything in the teachings of the Church says that you Know, to lie is to lead someone to believe something that isn't true. And all these sorts of definitions that all fit with all the dishonesty that's going on. It's like me doing what William Law is doing now. I'm telling people, I'm going, look, this is really bad. They're not living up to the standards of the church. And then maybe in 30 years time there being a revelation that comes and goes. Oh, by the way, if God says that you want to lie, then that's fine. Yeah, we're living that.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] Another way to say that for me is if modern Mormon church leaders lie, it's hard not to imagine that they draw their influence from Joseph Smith's example. Is that fair?

Nemo [00:37:40] Absolutely fair.

Samantha Shelley [00:37:42] And also just a hallmark of high control groups, that it's one rule for the members and another rule for the leaders. So unconsciously they're just, you know, operating right out of the textbook for high control groups and cults.

John Dehlin [00:37:54] Yeah, rules. Rules for thee but not for me. Is that, Is that the way, the way it's said, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [00:38:00] Well said, John.

John Dehlin [00:38:01] All right, so let's go more to more William Law in the Nauvoo Expositor. Julia?

Julia [00:38:06] Yes. I don't know if I want to read this whole thing, but it's really important as far as using this to show human trafficking.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] So I'll just, you know, this is important to me, so I would like to read it. If you don't want to, is that, is that okay?

Julia [00:38:18] Yeah, if you want to, yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:38:20] This is why I did the episode. This is not me trying to force fit sort of the current Tim Ballard, our narrative onto Joseph Smith. When I first discovered the Nauvoo Expositor probably 20 years ago and I read through this, I was deeply disturbed and it made sense, especially because my ancestors come to the United States from Great Britain. So I. I was particularly impacted by this. So is it okay if I read it?

Julia [00:38:50] Yeah, go for it.

European Women Recruited to America

John Dehlin [00:38:51] Okay. This is. This is William Law in the Nauvoo Expositor complaining about what's happening with women from Europe coming to America under the influence of Joseph Smith. He writes, it is a notorious fact that many females in foreign climes and in countries to us unknown in even in the most distant regions of the Eastern hemisphere have been induced by the sound of the gospel to forsake friends and I would say, family and community, as Nemo pointed out, and embark upon a voyage across waters that lie stretched over the greater portion of the globe as they supposed to glorify God, that they might thereby stand acquitted in the day of God Almighty.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] But what has taught them on their arrival at this place? That's the informed consent part. They are visited by some of the strikers, for we know not what else to call them, and are requested to hold on and be faithful, for there are great blessings awaiting the righteous and that God has great mysteries in store for those who love the Lord and cling to Brother Joseph. They are also notified that Brother Joseph will see them soon and reveal the mysteries of heaven to their full understanding, which seldom fails to inspire them with new confidence in the prophet, as well as a great anxiety to know what God is has laid up in store for them in return for the great sacrifice of father and mother of gold and silver, which they gladly left far behind, that they might be gathered into the fold and numbered among the chosen of God.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] For me, this is the silver bullet slide. This talks about a lack of informed consent, about vulnerability, about coercion, about their sacrifices, and it implicates Joseph Smith. And this was not written in, you know, 2023 or 1900 or even 1870. This was written by a first presidency member in 1844. Nemo is actually showing the Nauvoo Expositor there. Julia, you'll hold up the new book that you are.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] That you are releasing for people who want to read it. And I just have a quick question. What do we make of the word strikers? I don't know what that word even means in this context. Can anyone enlighten me?

Nemo [00:41:36] There might be a question for the chat. John?

Samantha Shelley [00:41:39] Yeah. Can we flash back to the quote again? John?

John Dehlin [00:41:42] Yes, Samantha, go for it.

Samantha Shelley [00:41:45] Where is the strikers?

John Dehlin [00:41:47] So they are visited by some of the strikers, for we know not what else to call them, and are requested to. Hold on. This sounds to me like people close to Joseph Smith who are in charge of receiving these immigrants. And when the immigrants come to the vulnerable women, when they come to the United States and are unhappy, it seems like minions of Joseph Smith that sort of. Tell them, don't freak out. Blessings await you. Everything's going to be okay. Hold on. Joseph's going to meet with you and make it all right. Does anybody have a sense for what that word means? Go ahead, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [00:42:28] Well, I read an contemporary news article of a journalist describing what it looked like when the immigrants would arrive under Brigham. So this is under Brigham, but I imagine there'll be some similarities. And basically, first of all, they were taken to the tithing house to, you know, give stuff to the church. And then they were taken to this area outside in the scene that was being described and there were like militiamen holding guns standing around the perimeter and they had to basically sleep on the hard ground overnight. And they. This journalist described how the sort of high up leaders of the church, maybe this is what strikers could mean, but bishops and things like that would, would come in to this, you know, parking lots style space of, of people, some of whom were like women who were sobbing because they just hadn't anticipated Utah having this kind of vibe with, you know, like the guns and it all being so heavily regimented.

Samantha Shelley [00:43:23] But basically as soon as they would arrive, like the, the men at the top would come in and be scouring for like, who do I want to take as my wife and time. It. It could be people that maybe didn't necessarily speak much English and that, you know, they're just immediate. They don't, they don't have anything with them. They are now fully at the mercy of this system that again, they weren't anticipating to be like this. So when a bishop comes and is like taking them under their wing, they have no choice but to, to go with it.

John Dehlin [00:43:55] Any other, any other theories on the word striker or anything else we want to say about, about this slide?

Nemo [00:44:01] They might be the men that come to your door and say, oh, it could be post the fact as well is what I'm thinking. It could be afterwards, women that are maybe a bit worried about the situation they found themselves in. These are the men that are coming and saying, no, no, keep on hold the faith. Don't try and get out of this. Sorry, Julia.

John Dehlin [00:44:17] It's interesting that in the text they're saying we're having a hard time coming up with a word to describe what these people are. Julia, go ahead.

Julia [00:44:25] I was just going to say, like, I know he's referring to missionaries who deliver these messages and we'll talk about those in the slides. One other definition, I think this is from the 1828 Webster's Dictionary where it says that a striker is a blacksmith's helper who swings the sledgehammer. So like you could just say like a helper of Joseph or like, I don't know, like. But mostly he's referring to these missionaries,

John Dehlin [00:44:46] kind of like a henchman or an assistant.

Julia [00:44:49] And the word minion is used in one of these sources. So I thought that was a good description too.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] Okay.

Samantha Shelley [00:44:54] When a lot of men in Mormonism, early Mormonism, like they were all armed, which was something that was surprising to me. Reading again these contemporary news sources, like how present guns were in, in the whole environment. I don't know if that maybe started with brigging.

Nemo [00:45:11] Browning was a. Browning was a Mormon. No, John Moses Browning was a, was an early Mormon pioneer.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] Is he a arms maker? Nemo?

Nemo [00:45:20] Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of American arms are made by Browning. So a lot of weapons in the first second World War, like the Browning, high power is quite a common pistol still used today. So yeah, there was a, there was a gunsmith on site, at least one during these early days.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] So, Julia, you, you, I, I went ahead and read the entire slide. Is there anything else you wanted to tease out of. Of this quote other than what I, what we've discussed so far?

Julia [00:45:45] No, I just like it, like it. Like I highlighted parts that to me pull out this, these idea of victims where you're removing them at the great sacrifice of mother and father, you're removing them from financial security, that you're removing them from their homes. Females in foreign climes. And you're offering great. But they're offering great. They are offered great blessings and they cling to Brother Joseph. So like this is just setting the stage really, really perfectly. Like you said, the silver bullet for this whole topic is the slide. Like it's. Or this Nova Expositor and I don't know, just a very clear picture.

Nemo [00:46:16] So, John, I had one more thought. I remember I talked to Julia about it yesterday.

John Dehlin [00:46:21] Go ahead.

Nemo [00:46:21] Is that all right? So the bit that stands out to me is where it says that they left gold and silver and they gladly left. They gladly left their gold and silver part behind. And I think what is the first story in the Book of Mormon, it is a family leaving their gold and silver behind to go on a journey, to follow a prophet, to go across the sea.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] Yeah.

Nemo [00:46:41] And I hadn't thought about this before, but could that have been used by some missionaries to try and convince people that that's what they needed to do too, to leave their things far behind, to go across the sea, to follow God's call to America. That's just that came to me the other day when I was trying to Julia about it. So I thought it's worth sharing.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] Brilliant. And the other thing that I think is going to escape a lot of people's processing is it's one thing to kidnap people and chain them and force them into slavery, which I'm sure happens. I'm sure it still happens to this day. It obviously does. But there's something called learned helplessness that Marty Seligman of, from the psychology field helped us understand better a More powerful type of chains is what some would refer to as learned helplessness. In other words, if you've got these poor desperate women who are wondering about death, they're seeing death all around them, they're not able to feed themselves. If you promise them sort of a Zionic community, if you promise them a prophet of God who speaks with God and who can guarantee not only them but their entire family salvation, that's an incredible amount of influence that lulls people through a carrot to give undying devotion.

John Dehlin [00:48:09] And in that sense, that promise, that undue influence of celestial access and power becomes mental chains of their own making that don't require physical chains. And that's why I think that's so important. Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [00:48:28] Well, just an also, again, these, a lot of these immigrants that were coming over not knowing what kind of system they were going to have to end up participating in, they don't, they don't have a way to go back. Like it wasn't really a viable option for them to go back. Even if they could mentally free themselves from those chains like they are in a very theocratic community all of a sudden that does have militia men. And, you know, leaving is just simply not an option. So it's kind of a mix of that emotional and physical. You know, in theory they could try and escape, but it, but, you know, for the average poor Swedish woman who has nothing to her name and has, you know, given what she does have to this community does it even doesn't

John Dehlin [00:49:12] even speak the language. I mean, we should probably say that doesn't even speak the language.

Samantha Shelley [00:49:16] Ability to go back. Even if she, you know, could mentally free herself, like, so you, you can see how you would, well, A, probably be just too scared to even attempt escape, and B, there's a massive psychological incentive to just assimilate and to just trust these people because, you know, it's, it's too horrifying to reckon with the fact that this is all, you know, what it truly was.

Nemo [00:49:41] From my perspective, they were lucky to have survived getting there. You know, if you came across one of the handcuff companies, you saw people around you die on this thousand mile journey to get there. So you're hardly going to consider going back, you know. You know, because you wouldn't have the support of that large group. You'd almost certainly die trying to make the journey back yourself, certainly, if you

John Dehlin [00:49:59] could, if you could even afford it.

Nemo [00:50:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] And weren't, weren't the naval journeys potentially as perilous as the, the pioneer treks? Or do you guys Even know I haven't, like. I'm sure. I'm sure those. Those journeys by sea weren't super fun, right?

Nemo [00:50:12] Yeah, yeah, they were. They were like, well, you've got the journey across the Atlantic anyway, and then a lot of people would come up the river. Certainly when the. The Saints were in Nauvoo, they'd come up the river on steamers to get there. But then obviously, afterwards, there's not the infrastructure to get across the plains for a long time. So I did some people come round onto the other coast, onto the Pacific coast. Was that a journey people made up through California?

John Dehlin [00:50:36] No, no, I'm sure it was Atlantic. No, I didn't mean to imply Pacific. Really quickly, Maven's moderating the comments for us. Thanks, Maven. She highlighted a comment from Trev. Anon. The reluctant polygamist gives me the term striker to describe the seducers who were telling women it was acceptable to participate in illicit intercourse. Trevan on. Is living in Europe. He played an important role in helping us archive and. And create time codes and show notes for past episodes. So shout out to our European listener, Trevanon, who I think has never been Mormon, but he comes through with a definition of the term striker. Anyone on the panel want to react to that? That. That definition?

Nemo [00:51:22] I trust Trev sounds about right.

John Dehlin [00:51:25] All right, I'll read that again. It is the seducers who were telling women it was acceptable to participate in illicit intercourse. All right, thanks, Trevan on. Okay. Yeah. So. So again, back to your point, Julia. This excerpt from the Nauvoo Expositor to me shows that William Law was as concerned about trafficking as we all are trying to be in this episode. It just shows that his mind was on trafficking. Is that fair to say, Julia?

Julia [00:51:58] Yes. And we'll see later with these other newspaper articles that he wasn't the only one. There were people in Great Britain and elsewhere that were also concerned.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] Yeah. Now, this next slide is really, really crucial. It's something that even in 2023 with me, 20 plus years in all this, I hadn't thought about, you don't hear a lot of concern about male trafficking. Can you talk to us about that, Julia?

Historical Voices on Mormon Polygamy and Coercion

Julia [00:52:21] Okay, so this is something I was reading in Sacred Loneliness, and he points out something really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:52:26] He says, todd Compton.

Julia [00:52:28] Right, yes, sorry. Todd Compton. So in talking about Orson Pratt and Samuel Smith's mission to Boston, in which he gets one of Joseph Smith's polygamous wives, he says, if there were male converts in Boston, they are not mentioned. And I think that's super interesting. And so I also wrote, throughout church history, women were converted to the church, not taught anything about polygamy, traveled across the country, or sometimes as far away from as Europe or even Boston, having. Having given up their homes, riches, and family members, and then were given to be to married men as their polygamous wives. So, yeah, this. These missionaries are going out to find polygamous wives.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] So, yeah, there just aren't a lot of male converts, young male converts coming over. And that fits with what we know about the Lost Boys and in the FLDS communities, when. When there's a competition for young women, young men aren't. Aren't desired. Is that fair to say?

Samantha Shelley [00:53:24] There were also news articles written at the time about how there would be a lot of instances where, for example, a wife and daughter would travel to Utah first, and then when the husband would arrive a few months later, again not knowing that he was going into a polygamous system. This is also still under Brigham. Sorry, I keep talking about Brigham when we're talking about Joseph Smith. But he would find upon getting to Utah that both his wife and daughter had become, you know, second, third, polygamous wives to men in leadership positions. And his only option was basically like, take up arms for us, you know, become part of our militia and just deal with it.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah, very good.

Nemo [00:54:03] And Thomas Moore points out in the chat, this gave us Sherlock Holmes. Right. Arthur Conan Doyle did in A Study in Scarlet. Talk about it is essentially this in part the story of a young woman who's trafficked to Utah to become a polygamous woman, then tries to escape, but ultimately she kills herself because that's kind of all she sees is the way out. Spoiler alert. If you haven't read Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. But that's the first Sherlock Holmes book.

John Dehlin [00:54:25] Yeah, I mean, authors are going to choose carefully the topics that they choose, and they're not going to just pick random things that really don't have any relevance to real life oftentimes. Right.

Nemo [00:54:35] Yeah, it was. It was definitely very much in the zeitgeist, as we're going to see over the next few slides.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] Yeah. All right, so let's go to the next slide, which is missionaries converting wives.

Julia [00:54:45] Yeah. So this is. This is a guy. It's a letter to an apostate Mormon to his son. And this was written, published in 1908. So this is during Brigham Young's time, but he's referring to an older woman who could very well have been not in Utah before the. Before the trek. Over there. But he says, in talking about this woman, he says she then told me that her husband had been to England as a missionary and had brought back a young woman with whom he had become. Who. With whom he had become his second wife. She said, oh, no. This is her experience with that.

Julia [00:55:13] No woman can ever know what I have suffered since night after night I have lain on my lonely bed, alone and comfortless. I have walked the floor for hours and have talked, walked to and fro through the night between the cabinet and the cabin where he. Where he stays with his other wife. Years after, she said to me, thank God, I am all over it now. I do not care for anything now. I am not a woman, only a stone. She broke down and cried, and I left the house with doubts as to the hardness of such a life because I had not yet been tried by the curse of polygamy.

Julia [00:55:45] And I just thought this was a really, like. First of all, the story is really heartbreaking, but then him going to England to find a polygamous wife is also. That's. That's part of this trafficking that we're talking about.

Samantha Shelley [00:55:56] It's.

John Dehlin [00:55:56] Any other. Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [00:55:58] Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting because, you know, earlier you were talking about how a lot of women, polygamous wives, did not, say, see themselves as victims. But we also do have so many accounts of women who. Who clearly did feel victimized by this system, but it's just, you know, complaining wasn't allowed. We have talks from Brigham Young where he's scolding the woman for complaining and basically saying they'll get kicked out of the community if they keep complaining. So it's not like they had much of a voice. But we. We do seem to have a number of records of women and girls absolutely feeling like victims.

John Dehlin [00:56:34] That, that. That quote, I am not a woman, only a stone. To me, that just speaks to the objectification of polygamy. It's. It. I heard someone once say, 5 cents to a dollar, a woman's worth is a fraction of a man's because it's. It's a numerical. It's a numerical proposition where women can only be. Cannot be anything else but devalued.

Samantha Shelley [00:57:00] Something I found as a theme in all the contemporary news articles I was reading in recent weeks is all these journalists describe Mormon women as never smiling, always looking so gloomy and unhappy. There was even one article describing what immigrants looked like on the boat and how they just completely kept to themselves. Barely eight. Like that. There seemed to have been. I don't know, I sort of originally imagined that these, these converts a lot of the time would be full of life and, and so zesty. But apparently it was just kind of widely known that Mormon women were treated poorly and also that they seemed deeply unhappy.

Julia [00:57:42] Yeah, I want to add to that.

John Dehlin [00:57:43] Oh, go ahead, Julius.

Julia [00:57:44] I just want to add. So in the book Wife Number 19 by Ann Eliza Webb Young is. She's one of Joseph Smith's or, excuse me, one of Brigham Young's wives. And she talks about that as well. And we have. I put a slide in there talking about the condition of, of these plural wives and how they just is sort of, they sort of became the stereotype of, of these ugly, haggard women. And like you were saying, these, they're. This isn't the life of what one would think, that this is the true gospel or that this is like, people talk about the countenance of the Mormons being so bright, but like, that's not. That was not what was the case during these years of polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:58:18] Yeah. Well, let's go to this next slide about missionaries picking out convert wives. Julia.

Julia [00:58:23] Yeah. So this one is. This one's post Joseph Smith. This was from 1860, but this is Heber C. Kimball, and this was published in the New York Times. I don't have this article, so this is behind a paywall. But if anyone wanted to share with me, I would not say no. But he says, brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to. That it is not to. To be as it has been there here. Excuse me. Heretofore, the brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here and bringing on the ugly ones for us. Hereafter, you have to bring them all here before taking any of them and let us have a fair shake.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that quote? Julia?

Julia [00:59:02] There are so many things wrong with this. These are missionaries converting people to the true gospel. They should not be picking out wives anyway. But also how this just really gross and degrading to. To call women ugly, first of all, and to say that these men are picking out the pretty ones and leaving the ugly ones. So don't pick out any of them. Wait till they all get here. It's just all of that's gross.

Samantha Shelley [00:59:20] This coming from.

John Dehlin [00:59:21] Yeah, go ahead.

Samantha Shelley [00:59:22] Same man who said that he thinks as much of taking a wife as he does buying a cow.

Nemo [00:59:28] Maybe we found the original Johnny Lingo. Inspiration, I think, is this guy.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] Yeah, I want to just go ahead and share just one little definition. As I was studying feminism more, I came upon the word chattel. And I was always like, do they mean to say cattle? Is that just like a British pronunciation of the word cattle? Chattel is a catch all category of property associated with movable goods. At common law, chattel included all property other than real property. Examples include leases, animals, and money. In modern usage, chattel usually only refers to tangible, movable, personal property. And I remember in the suffrage movement there being women basically saying, if you don't want us to vote, you're basically treating us as chattel, subhuman. And you kind of just. You get that vibe when you read this quote from Heber C. Kimball that women, Mormon women, Mormon, polygamous women are more chattel than humans. Is that fair?

Julia [01:00:36] Oh, yeah. And he says a lot of those things, like comparing them to cows and things like that. Those are. Yeah, this isn't even the worst quote, I think, but yes, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:00:43] Yeah.

Nemo [01:00:44] This is a very good example of the objectification of women. They're being treated as objects to be divvied out between men.

John Dehlin [01:00:51] In the worst way, Samantha.

Nemo [01:00:53] In the worst way.

Samantha Shelley [01:00:53] Well, I'm not saying I agree with this characterization, but there were writers at the time who again witnessed, like immigrants arriving and witnessed the polygamous system in Utah and compared. One writer compared the new influx of immigrants to being akin to an African slave mart. So people were seeing what was going on and comparing it to slavery and to meat markets. And like, that was very much the vibe of how people wrote about it outside the church.

John Dehlin [01:01:23] Yeah. And. And don't just take our word for it. Let's go to contemporary newspapers in Europe expressing concern. Do you want to read this to us, Julia, and tell us what this is?

Julia [01:01:36] Yeah. So this is a newspaper published in Great Britain. This is the chambers Edinburgh Journal. And let me make my screen.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] So is this out of Scotland? Nemo.

Nemo [01:01:46] Yes, that would come out of Scotland.

Julia [01:01:48] Okay, okay. So it might be deemed superfluous to say so much on the subject were it not that the Mormon delusion has spread widely in North America and even in Great Britain. Joseph Smith and his colleagues settled in 1831 in Missouri.

Julia [01:02:01] Once they were soon afterwards expelled on account of their lawless conduct. And I highlighted that just because polygamy is very lawless. And they were doing a lot of other things. And then they went to Illinois and founded a town or city called Nauvoo near the Mississippi. And now it contains 1700 abled bodies, men, exclusive of Women and children to this place. Too many immigrants are directing their course, even from Great Britain.

Julia [01:02:24] But such blasphemous and deceitful stuff as this. The poor cotton spinner, like too many others, was induced to go to Nauvoo, where, like other victims of delusion, he was wretchedly used. The Mormon preachers in England had described Nauvoo as a land of overflowing with milk and honey. It is needless to carry our notice of this matter further. Every shadow of evidence yet obtained tends to prove Mormonism to be a gross imposter and one unworthy of notice, save on account of the dangers which were. Which have here been described and exposed.

Nemo [01:02:56] I apologize for my countrymen and their difficult way of writing.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] Nemo, why don't you. Why don't you translate what she just read into.

Nemo [01:03:05] Yeah, throw that back up on screen.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] American English.

Nemo [01:03:07] Oh, hello. Steady on, Sam. Back me up. Thank you. Yeah, throw that back up on screen for me, John. Yeah, I'll run through it.

John Dehlin [01:03:15] Okay. Yeah, Nemo, we need a translation here.

Nemo [01:03:17] Yeah, that's fine. So basically saying we wouldn't. We wouldn't bother talking about it were it not that it had become so popular and it's actually spread to our country. So maybe we do need to take a look. He outlines the lawlessness of what's going on and says that they're being moved from place to place, talks about how they settled in Nauvoo, and it's a place that far too many people are going to, including people from Great Britain.

Nemo [01:03:38] And then he talks about this is. It comes in partly through a story about a cotton spinner, which, again, I was talking about the industrialization of the uk People working in cotton mills, people of a sort of lower class, not getting much chance for education.

Nemo [01:03:50] He talks about those people are being victimized and are being induced. Induced is a good word to go to Nauvoo. And they are the victims of a delusion because they're talking about it as a land overflowing with milk and honey.

Nemo [01:04:04] And he's saying we basically don't need to say anymore because everything we've looked at says that it isn't that. And. And it's not really that important or significant, apart from the fact that it's causing danger to our people because they're going there, because what Nvidia really was was a swamp full of mosquitoes rather than a land of milk and honey

John Dehlin [01:04:23] and sexually desirous men looking for young wives. Right.

Nemo [01:04:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:27] And. And I just want to call everyone's attention to the year again on this newspaper article. This is an 1860. This is an 1880. Julia, what's the year on this article? 1842, which is two years before the novel Expositor was published. Two years before Joseph Smith, you know, died. You know. Right.

Nemo [01:04:51] We saw right through him. So many British newspapers saw right through Joseph Smith and the whole movement. But it was these people in more difficult circumstances, the sort of people that, regardless of the Mormon angle, would go, you know, what? A life in America sounds better if it's a land of opportunity. Opportunity where I can try and make better of my situation. And there's this organization that can organize me getting there. I'll go.

Samantha Shelley [01:05:13] And is that not classic human trafficking, you know?

Nemo [01:05:16] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:05:16] Someone telling you there are all these opportunities there. You're going to have such an abundant life, and then by the time you get there and have no way to get back from there, you find out it's not that.

Nemo [01:05:24] Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] Yeah. Beautiful. All right. Well, that. That is again, that's the second silver bullet of this episode as far as I'm concerned. Why don't we go to the next slide, Julia?

Julia [01:05:38] So this one is Nima, did you put this one up?

John Dehlin [01:05:43] Do you want to read it, Nemo?

Nemo [01:05:44] Yeah, yeah, I can do. Yeah, I was just looking at it on my other screen. Okay. So it happens some. This is 1861. This is a slightly later one because polygamy is starting to come out now.

John Dehlin [01:05:54] Okay. All right, go ahead.

Nemo [01:05:56] Okay, sure. It happens sometimes that women, after having drunk the cup of polygamy, become sensible of its deadly effects and end by opening their eyes to the pitfall into which a blind confidence in their missionaries has lured them. They weep bitterly and would fain fly. But they are mothers, and how can they abandon their children? Maternal love rises up stronger than the shame which overwhelms them. Moreover, they feel themselves dishonored and betrayed and innocent as they feel themselves to be by the verdict of their own conscience. Yet in spite of this, they think not themselves, the less degraded. The marriages they have contracted are purely religious.

Nemo [01:06:30] No civil authority has ratified them. Everywhere else, they would be considered concubinage, which I think raises a really good point that exists in polygamous communities today. The idea that these marriages they're entering into aren't legally ratified. These women have no rights. They have no recourse if the husband just decides to kick them out. They have no access to their children. They have no right to money from him. It's a really horrible situation for polygamous women to be in. And it's still going on now.

Julia [01:06:58] Other. I was just gonna say the word conc. The use of the word concubine and specifically in the Book of Mormon condemns concubines. I just thought that was a really interesting thing that in this newspaper in the 1860s was saying the church is going against their own doctrine in a way.

John Dehlin [01:07:13] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And again, that's 1861, but I think it's still relevant to what was going on. We've got another one from 1843, which, again, is a year before the Nauvoo Expositor while Joseph Smith's still alive. Samantha, do you want to read this one?

Samantha Shelley [01:07:33] Yeah. So it says, we have often deplored the existence of such a system of delusion as that concocted and practiced by the notorious Joe Smith and his fellows and have repeatedly warned the honest and industrious working class of this country against being made the dupes of those designing fellows. The said Nauvoo being represented as a very terrestrial paradise where want, care, toil, and the thousand annoyances to which society is subject here are kept at an unapproachable distance and where their opposites are in luxuriant abundance. They want either young women that they may ruin them, or young men to be their slaves. The males from 18 to 45 years of age are all required to bear arms. The writer describes this place as miserable. The condition of the settlers are wretched, and the conduct of the prophet and his minions as abominable and blasphemous in the extreme. Again, we say, be not duped by these imposters.

Nemo [01:08:31] This sounds like what was going on. Yeah, it's great. Sounds like what was going on was like we're getting all these reports of this place called Nauvoo, and so many people are going over there. So they've almost sent a reporter or spoken to a reporter who's been there to see what is actually going on there. What is the truth of this place that these missionaries are inviting people to? And that was their report,

Julia [01:08:54] I was gonna say. I would almost call that another silver bullet to me, like, is this. They're just blatantly. They're just saying it. They're saying women are being taken and men are being taken for their labor. I don't know how they could be more clear.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] Yeah. Yeah, that's powerful. All right. And again, that's from Ireland. Let's go ahead and talk now about German attitudes. We've talked about Scotland and Ireland. What's going on in Germany.

Nemo [01:09:22] So I pulled this one forward from a book that I was reading. So I was. Because I, I said to Judah, I'm pretty sure there's something. There's something. And sure enough, Mormons were all but effectively banned by the German government because of reports of polygamy. So in 1853, the Prussian Interior Ministry issued a rundelas, which is a circular stating official government policy that denied the Mormons legal status in Prussia. And that in effect became a standing expulsion order that authorities used to harass, detain, and deport the church's missionaries. Throughout the 19th century, Mormons clashed with the German authorities over emigration, not only because of the emotional issue of German women becoming polygamous concubines, but also because of Mormon immigration's effect on draft eligible men.

John Dehlin [01:10:08] Wow. So that's, that's not Hitler Germany.

Nemo [01:10:11] That's.

John Dehlin [01:10:12] That's Weimar Republic, mid 19th century.

Nemo [01:10:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:15] Germany. Identifying this polygamy trafficking for what it was and prohibiting Mormons from. From being a part of an integrated part of their society. Is that right?

Nemo [01:10:28] Yeah. So missionaries were constantly getting kicked out and they were trying to remove missionaries. And the problem was that the Americans were sending a lot of German converts back as missionaries. And then they would come back and these young men would be detained because they'd be accused of not having fulfilled their military service requirements or whatever. It was just all. It was all a big mess. And it's the reason that the headquarters for the church were in Switzerland, the headquarters for the church in Europe in Switzerland, not in Germany. They couldn't have them in Germany because the church faced so much opposition at the time.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] As I'm channeling the Mormon, the orthodox believing Mormon mindset, we've been conditioned to encode any adversity as anti Mormonism, as Satan's influence, as sort of like Satan working with evil people to thwart the purposes of God. So when like Scotland and England and Germany and other countries are saying things like, hey, this trafficking is bad, this polygamous trafficking of our women is bad, I just know that in my orthodox Mormon mindset, I'm not paying attention to that is like, wow, they were calling it correctly at the time it was happening. Instead, my mind just immediately dismisses it as anti Mormon Satan, you know, inspired opposition. Can you guys relate to that?

Samantha Shelley [01:11:48] Yeah. But it's worth noting that, that people within Mormonism were corroborating the types of things that were being written. I mean, Brigham Young and John Taylor both had daughters who tried to escape Utah because they hated living under the Brutal polygamous system. But they were both captured by the church's guards and brought back and weren't allowed to escape like that. And they, at least one of those daughters was 22. So I mean, that just objectively is trafficking, you know, like forcing someone to, to, you know, remain in a place where they're. Or, you know, bringing them back against their will.

Nemo [01:12:25] Yeah, yeah. I think, I think it's very easy for us to fall into the trap as believing Mormons to say, oh, well, these people had an angle against Mormons. They didn't. You read in that first one. Actually, it's not worth us talking about the Mormons other than they're a bit of a danger to our people. The Brits are literally saying they're insignificant, they're unimportant to our daily life. We don't really care that much about them. But we're bringing it up because loads of people are getting duped and we need it to stop. It's the only reason it was getting written about. So this isn't some like, conspiracy against Mormonism. The Britons, to use a colloquial phrase, couldn't give a toss for the most

Samantha Shelley [01:12:59] part, which I think me and Nemo can confirm. They really don't give a shit about Mormonism.

Nemo [01:13:03] They don't care.

Samantha Shelley [01:13:03] Not on their radar.

Nemo [01:13:05] No. Even today it's not. Other than there's these towns where they're annoyed at the Mormons because they stole away all their working age people, you know, they stole away all their farm hands and, and they all went off to America. That's what, that's what got the Brits anointed, if anything.

John Dehlin [01:13:20] Yeah, but it's also trafficking vulnerable women and putting them into abusive sexual circumstances. Right. There was probably concern about that. I think that was a genuine concern.

Nemo [01:13:34] Yeah, that's, that's, that's the point I'm, we're making is the only reason they brought it up is because they had genuine concerns about what was going on.

Julia [01:13:41] Yeah.

Nemo [01:13:41] Not because they hated the religion, because, like they said, they didn't think it was particularly significant.

John Dehlin [01:13:46] Yeah. Yeah. And this next slide speaks to the issue of informed consent and deception, which for me is particularly important in all this. Julia.

Julia [01:13:57] Yeah. So this is from the same book, Letters of an Apostate Mormon to His Son. And again, it's published in 1908, but it's still applicable, he says. And speaking of a convert named Jorgen, I think is how you pronounce it, they told him that the only possible. These are the missionaries the missionaries told him that the only possible escape from his sin was to join the Mormon Church. But said Jorkin, people say that Brigham Young is a polygamist. How do I know that Joseph Smith is, is not the. One of, one of the false prophets of which the Bible speaks? But the elder said that Brigham Young was not a polygamist, that polygamy was not a part of the Mormon system, and that the Book of Mormon opposed polygamy.

Nemo [01:14:29] Yikes.

Julia [01:14:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] Why? Why yikes?

Nemo [01:14:32] Timo, this is patently untrue. It's. It's a bold faced lie. It doesn't get much more brazen than that in terms of lies that, that members of the church will tell to try and convince people.

Samantha Shelley [01:14:45] And it's also telling because were that person to immigrate, they would obviously discover that that wasn't true. But presumably they had enough confidence in the, the power of the system once immigrants arrived that like, despite the fact that they were learning that those kinds of things were lies, they'd still be able to keep them.

Nemo [01:15:03] Well, I guess it's that sunk cost fallacy that they're relying on, isn't it? They've made that big journey. They've got there. They know it'd be terrible difficult, if not impossible to leave. So they're like, well, I guess I better get on with it. And also this idea that Jurgen violence,

Samantha Shelley [01:15:16] I think, like actually. Yeah, yeah, physical restraint.

Nemo [01:15:19] And then you've got Jurgen as well, clearly a male. So actually he may have discovered that once he got involved in the system, he quite liked the, the newfound power it gave him. You know, it's very possible because he will have been one of the benefactors of that system if he was into that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [01:15:35] And I hope I'm not stealing the thunder of an upcoming slide, but when I discovered that, you know, Mormon missionaries were going to Europe and literally administering flyers that denied that Mormons were practicing polygamy back in the United States and that polygamists themselves, Mormon polygamist missionaries, were administering pamphlets that were claiming that polygamy wasn't happening. That was one of the most disturbing things I've ever read related to this topic. Is that, Is that, Is there a slide on that? Or can any of you guys confirm that that happened, that that polygamist missionaries were handing out pamphlets denying that polygamy was being practiced?

Julia [01:16:24] I don't have a slide on that. I would love to see that source and I would love to know what year those, what year that happened.

Nemo [01:16:30] Me too. I don't. I Don't know anything for certain.

Samantha Shelley [01:16:33] I think there's even an account or several accounts of John Taylor in Europe denying that they were practicing polygamy over there.

John Dehlin [01:16:40] Wow. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we'll. We'll have to pull up that maybe. Maybe one of our viewers or listeners can. Can pull up that resource as we continue this presentation, because I'm pretty sure that's factual. But just to make the point, these women were being deceived. It wasn't informed consent, where it's like, hey, polygamy's awesome. We're practicing it back in the United States, and you, too, can be a polygamous wife of Joseph Smith or of one of his best friends. That was not how these women were being sold. A trip to the United States. Fair. Yeah. All right, let's go to the next slide. And I don't know, do we want Nemo to read this one? Julia?

Julia [01:17:27] Oh, sure. Yeah.

Nemo [01:17:28] Can do. Right?

John Dehlin [01:17:29] All right. Who is this? Is this a quote from the Nava Expositor?

Julia [01:17:33] It's from the preamble, I believe. Just. Yeah, from the Nava Expositor.

John Dehlin [01:17:36] Okay. So this is William Law and whoever helped him write it. In the voice of Nemo,

Nemo [01:17:43] they are visited again. And what is the result? They are requested to meet brother Joseph or some of the 12 at some insulated point or at some particularly described place on the bank of the Mississippi, or at some room which wears upon its front. Positively no admittance. The harmless, inoffensive, and unsuspecting creatures are so devoted to the prophet and the cause of Jesus Christ that they do not dream of the deep laid and fatal style scheme which prostrates happiness and renders death itself desirable. But they meet him expecting to receive through him a blessing and learn the will of the Lord concerning them. And what awaits the faithful follower of Joseph, the apostle and prophet of God, when in the stead thereof, they are told, after having been sworn in one of the most solemn manners, to never divulge what is revealed to them with a penalty of death attached, that God Almighty has revealed it to him that she should be his Joseph's spiritual wife, for it was right anciently, and God will tolerate it again.

Nemo [01:18:40] But we must keep those pleasures and blessings from the world, for until there is a change in the government, we will endanger ourselves by practicing it. But we can enjoy the blessings of Jacob, David, and others, as well as to be deprived of them if we do not expose ourselves to the law of the land. She is thunderstruck, faints, recovers, and refuses the prophet Damns her if she rejects. She thinks of the great sacrifice and over the many thousand miles she has traveled over sea and land, that she might save her soul from pending ruin, and replies, God's will be done and not mine. The prophet and his devotees in this way are gratified.

John Dehlin [01:19:18] All right, who wants to translate what, what you just read? Nemo.

Nemo [01:19:23] Sam.

Samantha Shelley [01:19:24] Oh, God. Get back to it.

Nemo [01:19:28] If not, I can jump in.

John Dehlin [01:19:31] All right, Sam. And Sam. It's okay. Nemo, why don't you summarize what you just read?

Missionary Deception and Recruitment Tactics

Nemo [01:19:38] Yeah, okay. Sorry, I dropped some in it there. Okay, so he's talking about young women that are taken to a secluded place, either on the bank of the river or into a room where they put a sign up that says, positively no admittance. So they make this room secret and pull it to one side, and then they think they're there to get a blessing from Joseph Smith, or they're there to hear something about what God has in store for them.

Nemo [01:20:00] And what happens is Joseph proffers them spiritual marriage. He proffers them polygamy, and they kind of understand what it means. He tries to justify it with biblical passages, and they. They faint, say no. Then he threatens them and says, well, actually, no, this is. This is not going to be spiritually good for you if you don't. And then they think about, as we talked about, they have this sunk cost fallacy moment where they think, you know, and I wouldn't even call it a fallacy at this point because it is just a recognized sunk cost of theirs that they've traveled thousands of miles. They've come all this way seeking spiritual deliverance.

Nemo [01:20:35] And the man who promised it to them is now saying, well, this is how you get it. And they say, well, then, not my will, but God's be done. And I have to say, all this is done under the threat of death penalty to. To. If you reveal it, because they're told that the government will ruin the whole enterprise if they find out. Is that about right?

Samantha Shelley [01:20:55] It does feel like even sunk cost fallacy is, like, not a strong enough way to describe it, because they're feeling like, oh, I'm. I'm in a dangerous situation here. Like, I'm essentially being threatened. I imagine the whole vibe was extremely threatening.

Nemo [01:21:07] Yeah, Love it.

John Dehlin [01:21:09] Really quickly, just as a matter of kind of business. Huge thanks to Brian Pratt for his super chat donation. These donations help us pay for these guests and for all the production behind the scenes. Brian Pratt writes extremely important episode. Mormon Stories has helped me so much in my deconstruction process. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brian Pratt, for the super chat. Everyone who's listening and viewing now, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or Facebook. Please share this episode wherever you can. That will help and we always appreciate the donations. I'm also just going to quickly say that one of our viewers or listeners was able to find the reference that I made, or at least one reference to it.

John Dehlin [01:21:52] It's called Three Nights Public Discussion John Taylor. And I believe it's in this source that people can find. I guess maybe John Taylor's denial that polygamy was being practiced as a practicing polygamist. And if anyone wants to correct me on that, they can. But please, Maven. We'll make sure Maven includes that in the show notes. Any. Any other comments before we go to the next slide?

Nemo [01:22:20] Other than you just beat me to it because I just pulled up that same thing from John Taylor.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] Okay, well, we've got the reference so that people can't claim us of maligning John Taylor, future Prophet Mormon. John Taylor, apparently as a polygamist, lied as a missionary in Europe claiming that polygamy wasn't happening. All right, let's go to the next slide, which is what did William Law mean? Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [01:22:47] Yeah, so the. So I was told that the novel Expositor was just a bunch of lies and like, just. Just anti Mormon literature. But these stories. So with the slide, what does William Law mean? He's referencing two stories that actually did happen in church history. So with the story of Positively no Admittance, he's talking about a specific wife.

Samantha Shelley [01:23:08] And then.

Julia [01:23:09] And then the one where he references on the banks of the Mississippi river, he's also talking about another specific wife, which we'll go through these wives later. But like, I was just told that these were all lies. But everything he says, the novel Expositor is just spot on. And he, like, we're finding references to everything that he's saying. So I'm just like. I mean, I guess I sort of feel in shock sometimes where I'm like, I believe these were lies. And then I'm finding out that the church is the one who was not being honest and that this anti Mormon literature is just now what Mormon historians confirm to be the truth.

John Dehlin [01:23:38] Yeah. Like, William Law is demonized as an apostate. He's demonized and dismissed and forgotten as an apostate. Yet he probably wrote, word for word, the most accurate depiction of. Of Mormon history in the history in. In the entire 19th century. You could argue that William Law wrote the most Important, most accurate piece of Mormon history. And he's forgotten and demonized. Right.

Julia [01:24:06] Yeah. And I'm. And I feel sad that, like, me as a member for 30 plus years, I've never read this. This is the, this is the paper that potentially got Joseph killed. Like, there are so many members that I think don't have never read this. And they should give it a second look. For sure.

Nemo [01:24:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:21] It should be required reading. More Mormon reading of all Mormons.

Nemo [01:24:25] Should definitely be a seminary lesson on it.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] Yeah.

Nemo [01:24:28] When you're doing dnc.

John Dehlin [01:24:30] Yeah. All right. So did we, did we clear this slide, Julia?

Julia [01:24:34] Yeah, that's fine. I just wanted to mention how accurate he is in these. The. He's just alluding to very specific stories. And I just wanted to point out. Yeah, just that.

John Dehlin [01:24:43] Yeah. All right. Samantha, would you mind reading this next episode from the Nauvoo Expositor? And then, Julia, you can interpret.

Julia [01:24:51] Sure.

Samantha Shelley [01:24:52] Our hearts have mourned and bled at the wretched and miserable condition of females in this place. Many orphans have been the victims of misery and wretchedness through the influence that has been exerted over them under the cloak of religion. And afterwards, in consequence of that jealous disposition which predominates over the minds of some, have been turned upon a wide world, fatherless and motherless, destitute of friends and fortune, and robbed of that which nothing but death can restore.

John Dehlin [01:25:21] Samantha, what's it. What's it saying there, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [01:25:23] Hell of a line. It's talking about orphans. Do they just mean. I'm assuming. Well, it seems like Joseph would take in orphans. Right. And. Or if someone had, like, a dead mother, he might send their father on a mission and then. So they are motherless and fatherless. Is that the kind of people it's referring to?

John Dehlin [01:25:44] Absolutely. Joseph had orphans as polygamous wives and

Samantha Shelley [01:25:48] young girls, which is very convenient because even Tim Ballard says that separating kids from their parents is a pathway to being able to exploit them.

John Dehlin [01:25:58] Yeah. Now, in some cases, I think the parents had died, so it wasn't necessarily Joseph creating the orphans, but certainly bringing in orphans as domestic help and. And then propositioning them as wives. And we've covered that in the LDS discussions, episodes on polygamy quite extensively. Go ahead, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [01:26:18] Well, I also think it's interesting because it mentioned. You can flashback to the quote if you want, but it mentioned, like, the. The jealous disposition which predominates over the minds of some. Is that talking about. Am I taking a leap here? Is I talking about how the whole. If you have more priesthood keys than another man you can take their wife or. What's that all about? The jealousy thing.

John Dehlin [01:26:42] Anyone want to. Anyone on the panel? Julia?

Julia [01:26:45] I. I kind of want to say the priesthood keys might have happened under Brigham because I know, like, Annaliza Young talks about that a lot, but the jealous disposition. So Emma was really struggling with all this. And there's a lot of stories of other wives who are jealous. So I'm wondering, he's. This is just a general understanding of. Of the world that these women live in with. So that's what I was thinking.

Samantha Shelley [01:27:04] And I imagine, like a lot of the, The. The new wives, like, it's not like they would have the support of Emma or, you know, and again, they are essentially concubines. They have no. Just no protection at all, even from the other women in this system.

John Dehlin [01:27:19] Yeah.

Julia [01:27:21] I also wanted to point something else out that.

John Dehlin [01:27:23] Please.

Julia [01:27:23] So they talk about. They talk about orphans. And so I know. I think there were actual orphans going that were there, but I wanted to point out Annaliza Young and wife number 19 also points out that. That they often use the word widows to describe a woman who is just separated from her husband. Like, he's just not with her or he's in a different area. And so they would call her a widow. And so I just wonder if in the cases of orphans, if these dads who are fathers who are sent on missions or mothers who are elsewhere, if these women could classify as orphans. Although I don't know if William Law would use that word. So that's. So. But I just wanted to point out that where the widows are sometimes women who. Whose husbands are just not with them, but they're still alive.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] Yeah. All right, well, let's go. Nemo, were you going to say something?

Nemo [01:28:07] I just said excellent. I was just applauding.

John Dehlin [01:28:09] Yeah. All right, well, let's go to the next slide about condition of polygamous wives. Nemo, you want to take a read?

Nemo [01:28:16] Absolutely. Sorry, I don't know why I do that. It makes it sound very. Makes it sound very pretentious.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] Nemo can read and Samantha can interpret the reading.

Nemo [01:28:25] Yes. Right. Okay. Gonna need that on screen. Thank you. When flippant newspaper correspondents after a visit to the Valley of the Saints, go away and write in terms of ridicule of the Mormon women, calling them fearfully ugly in looks they little know. The bitter, hard, cruel experiences have carved the deep lines around the eyes and mouths and made the faces grow repulsive and grim, and taken from them all the softness and tenderness and grace which glorify a happy woman's face, even if she be ever so plain of feature. If these men who write so carelessly could only see the interior of the lives that they are touching with such a rough, rude hand, they might be perhaps a little more sympathetic in tone.

Nemo [01:29:08] It is no wonder that the women of Utah are not beautiful. There is nothing in all their lives to glorify or beautify their faces, to add at all to their mental or physical charm or grace. They are pretty enough as children, as young girls, they can compare favorably with any girls I have seen in the East. But just as soon as they reach womanhood, the curse of polygamy is forced upon them. And from that moment, their lives are changed and they grow hard or die one of the two in their struggles to become inured to this unnatural life.

John Dehlin [01:29:38] I mean, on the one hand, I'm just repulsed that anyone would feel comfortable characterizing an entire gender within a state as being ugly, like in 21st century sensibilities. That's deeply offensive. And in here, it's a woman doing it. But regardless of that. Samantha, what. What's your reaction to that quote?

Samantha Shelley [01:30:00] Yeah, it's interesting because obviously I imagine most journalists at that time would be men, and I guess Annaliza Young is expressing her frustration that they will so flippantly cast these women or talk about how they're ugly, which I assume because I've. I've read a lot of those articles, and I feel like it is coming from a place of wanting to portray the reality of life in Utah. And, you know, the fact that these women are not doing well and they're not like, these shiny, happy things, like, they're sort of portrayed to be.

Samantha Shelley [01:30:30] But, yeah, I like that Ann Eliza Young is like. Is highlighting that these women are being robbed, like, as soon as they reach adolescence. I mean, because it is true that sort of your inner world determines your external presentation in certain ways. You know, if you're. She talks about, like, the deep lines of grief being carved into their faces and. Yeah, I suppose it's just. It's nice to hear a more compassionate insider take of. Of why the women presented that way. Though I did also read a lot of contemporary news articles that were, you know, like, talking about how wrong it was that Mormon. Mormonism treated women so poorly.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] But, yeah, I'll just say from my perspective, I did a deep dive about a year or two ago on my polygamous ancestors. My grandmother, Karma Parkinson Benson, was the daughter of a third wife. So my great grandparents were polygamists in, you know, Franklin Preston, Logan, Logan, Idaho. And Franklin. Preston, sorry, Logan, Utah, and Franklin in Preston, Idaho. And when I read about my own great grandparents, I think William Brigham Parkinson was my, the father of my maternal grandmother. And it just. The story that I saw was that he would get excited about his early wives, but then after a while he would get interested in subsequent wives and almost neglect the previous wives and in some cases completely abandoned them.

John Dehlin [01:32:04] And this is again, my own great grandfather. I'm not talking about other people's families. And, and one of the wives, the third wife, as I recall, ended up in addiction where she got addicted to opiates and was completely abandoned. You know, several of these kids died while he was serving a mission. Like it wasn't enough that this man had four wives, but then he was being called to serve as a missionary anyway. And so he's like almost abandoning these wives with multiple children, probably not financially supporting them. So frontier America, you know, in the 19th or early 20th century was hard enough, but then to be in effect abandoned by your husband, left to financially and in otherwise support your children, that's going to be really hard on any human.

John Dehlin [01:32:59] And so if there are criticisms or, or characterizations of, of the appearance of Mormon pioneer or polygamous women, I could understand why that life was brutal and why it would lead to, you know, unhealthy circumstances that would be reflected in their appearance. It makes perfect sense to me.

Samantha Shelley [01:33:21] Yeah, I feel like Anne Young is saying the body keeps the score. And yeah, I don't know that it's very possible to sort of like glow with beauty. I mean, she even says in that thing like she's not necessarily necessarily talking about exceptional beauty, but just kind of the, a general sense of well being and radiance that can happen even with plain looking women when, you know, they're not grieving and, and they have their needs met and things.

John Dehlin [01:33:46] Yeah. Really quickly. I just want to thank Robin Noma, I don't know how to pronounce that, for her super chat donation. Also, Daddy Todd says, great episode. Thanks. And Christina Flores writes, thank you for doing all you do. We're glad that this episode is resonating with people and we're super grateful for those who are donating to help make this episode possible. Julia or Nemo. Anything else you want to say about the ugliness of Utah women? I say that sarcastically and embarrassed, you know, in an embarrassing way.

Julia [01:34:19] So I think it was Annaliza Young in that same book where she describes sort of the opposite image of these men who were taking on polygamous wives, she describes them as being like, like jovial and young looking. And, and the more they take on younger wives, these older men, the older they get, the younger wives they take, the younger they seem to look. And I just thought that was a really interesting perspective from her, who is a polygamous wife.

Samantha Shelley [01:34:39] So like stealing the youthfulness of these women, robbing them of that. Yeah, that's so sad.

John Dehlin [01:34:46] And, and, and remind me, this isn't just any polygamy ex polygamous woman. This is a former wife of Brigham Young who lived polygamy under the second Mormon prophet. Is that right, Julia?

Julia [01:34:59] Yes. I don't think she was the actually the wife number 19. I think she was further down the line, but to her understanding she was the 19th wife.

John Dehlin [01:35:06] Yeah, yeah. There was, there were so many and so much deception, she didn't even know which number she was.

Julia [01:35:12] Right.

John Dehlin [01:35:13] Yeah. Nemo, anything you want to add about. About this topic?

Nemo [01:35:16] I have learned from sad experience that I'm not to comment on the. The looks of women. So I shall.

John Dehlin [01:35:23] Beautiful. Yeah.

Nemo [01:35:24] So I shall abstain.

Samantha Shelley [01:35:27] Can I just say though, I feel like there's something about Mormon polygamy that makes Mormon women really beautiful. I feel like when I meet women who are from pioneer ancestors, they always have like the most incredible heads of hair and just like everything about them,

Nemo [01:35:41] it's all that Swedish DNA. Yeah, that's what it is.

Samantha Shelley [01:35:44] You guys doing this. So many good looking women.

Nemo [01:35:47] It's why Mormons are so tall as well.

Samantha Shelley [01:35:50] Oh, are they?

Nemo [01:35:51] Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, have you seen me stood next to John? I feel like a child.

Samantha Shelley [01:35:55] Very tall. John is very tall.

John Dehlin [01:35:58] What is this conversation gone?

Nemo [01:36:01] Well, we're just commenting on your looks instead, John.

Samantha Shelley [01:36:03] Right, John.

Nemo [01:36:04] Exactly.

Julia [01:36:05] You know, John said he hated my

Samantha Shelley [01:36:07] bangs one time, so we actually are allowed to. To roast his physical.

Nemo [01:36:10] We are allowed to roast John's physical. I've got a picture, I've got a picture that I may put online at some point of John next to a tiny little old English door. It's about 4 foot tall and it's like something from Lilliput. It's excellent. From like Gulliver's Charles.

John Dehlin [01:36:24] It's like Gandalf showing up in the Shire.

Nemo [01:36:28] Yes, absolutely. Anyway, back to the sex trafficking.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] Successfully digressed.

Nemo [01:36:34] Indeed.

John Dehlin [01:36:35] Robin wants to remind us that the pronunciation of her name is no Ma. I. Thank you, Robin. It's going to take me a while to remember that, but thanks for your support. Okay, now Julia, you're taking us to the basic structure of Sex trafficking. So that then we can analyze what, some of Joseph Smith's own marriages to see if they fit the pattern. Is that right?

Trafficking Framework Applied to Joseph Smith

Julia [01:36:58] Yeah. So I just wanted to show this little diagram. Oh, if you'll pull it back up.

John Dehlin [01:37:01] Yep.

Julia [01:37:02] Just to. Just to show. I don't know, just to see it easier. So you have the victims, which can be male and female. With human trafficking. In this case, we're talking about sex trafficking. So it's usually just the women, or it is the women, and then they are obtained by a trafficker, or they have. They're under the jurisdiction of a trafficker, and then the trafficker gives those individuals to the buyer. And so this is just how sex trafficking works in general. And so I'm going to be using these little diagrams to showcase or to show the cases of these women who. Who I think, or the question can be posed, were these women trafficked?

John Dehlin [01:37:34] So, yeah, And I think I can already anticipate kind of some questions here. Do missionaries or other Mormon general authorities in the 19, in the 1800s count as traffickers? And, you know, if. If we say buyer, does that necessarily have to mean, here's money for these women, or can. Can buying be interpreted a little bit more loosely? I imagine we're going to be covering that, right?

Samantha Shelley [01:38:01] Yes.

Julia [01:38:02] So, like, I don't know if we want to discuss it now.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] No, no, no, we can. I'm just anticipating the questions.

Julia [01:38:06] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:38:07] Okay. So that's the basic structure. So the. Tell us about the next slide. Joseph Smith, sex trafficker with the question mark.

Julia [01:38:16] Okay. So one thing that I wanted to make clear is that Joseph Smith was, In my opinion, 100% a sexual predator. So we get a lot of these stories of him threatening women. We get a lot of stories of just women in general. And what I see is if he's talking to these women one on one, that's not sex trafficking. If he's going directly to Zaina and saying, I need you. An angel came to me with a flaming sword and told me that if. If you didn't marry me, then the angel was going to kill me. That's. That's a sexual predator. And that's not trafficking to me because there's no.

Julia [01:38:44] To me. There has to be at least the three people or the three individuals involved. So that's what this slide is talking about, is that we're defining, or I'm defining sex trafficking as these three people, these three parties, the victim, the trafficker, and the buyer. And so I just wanted to make that clear. And so in A lot of these cases, and with the research done by Todd Compton, he calls that there, and he says that there is a intermediary involved. And so that's what we're going to be showing is these, these circumstances or these cases.

John Dehlin [01:39:10] Okay. Any other, Any other comments about this slide?

Samantha Shelley [01:39:14] I think you had it on that slide, but just an obvious point, but just because something isn't classed as trafficking doesn't mean it's any more ethical. You know, obviously, grooming, hebophilia, all the other coercion, all those things are in my mind, like sort of morally equal to human trafficking, you know, but obviously we are specifically talking about that.

John Dehlin [01:39:34] Got it. Okay. All right, let's go to the next slide. Church history and sex trafficking.

Julia [01:39:40] So, yeah, like what you were saying with the question. So these are talking about plural wives, these older women, or even young children who are 14 years old. So these are the victims. And then the traffickers can be prominent members of the church. They can be the missionaries, they can even be Joseph himself. And then the buyer is. We can talk about Joseph being the buyer. We have a lot of cases with that. We can also talk about Joseph Smith being the trafficker. So. And then the other prominent members being the buyer in this case.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] Yeah, it can't. It can be his buddies, his friends. Those are in his inner circle, those who he's trying to buy, their loyalty. You could, you could argue that if Joseph wanted, you know, loyal support in his inner circle, wives could be used as, as a way to gain favor or loyalty with people he needed loyalty from. Is that fair to say?

Julia [01:40:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:30] Okay. All right. Okay, so let's go to the next slide. Polygamy transactions.

Julia [01:40:37] Okay, so I just. The reason I'm saying this is from a commenter on X Mormon Reddit, is because I didn't. I didn't want to take credit for this quote because I really like it, but they say on the Joseph Smith Papers website, the church softly admits that Bushman is right in his conclusion that these were transactions involving something that sounded awfully like payment. Having surveyed the available sources, historian Richard L. Bushman concludes that these polygamous marriage, and perhaps polyandrus. Excuse me. Yes. Concludes that these polyandrous marriages and perhaps other plural marriages of Joseph Smith were primarily a means of binding other families to his for the spiritual benefit and mutual salvation of all involved.

John Dehlin [01:41:14] Okay, so what are you saying that means to you, Julia?

Julia [01:41:17] So just the, Just the idea. The payment doesn't have to be money. It is. It is usually in sex trafficking situations, but with this one, the payments can be salvation. The payments can be. They are now okay to live polygamy. Certain wives were given as payment, the exchange of women. So it doesn't have to be money. So in these cases, it's never money. It's just other things that Joseph has. He's power, things that he's holding that he can give to these people.

John Dehlin [01:41:43] So what I'm hearing is that. That the currency can be connection, loyalty, social capital, influence. It doesn't have to be currency.

Julia [01:41:55] Right, exactly.

Nemo [01:41:56] Social capital, I'd say, is a big one to keep in mind here.

John Dehlin [01:41:59] Social capital. And that's significant right on the frontier. Like if you're in Nauvoo, if you're, you know, if you're wanting to be a person of status. Joseph Smith is mayor. He's commander of the legion, he's judge, he's chief cook, bottle washer, he's prophet. He has all the power. So why wouldn't you want. And he needs loyalty because he's in such a powerful position. So he's a chief what?

Nemo [01:42:29] A chief.

John Dehlin [01:42:30] Chief cook and bottle washer.

Nemo [01:42:32] What is that?

John Dehlin [01:42:33] That means everything. He's got all the power. He's doing it. All right.

Nemo [01:42:36] Okay, cool. Sorry, we can't go through an episode without you using some Americanism that I don't understand.

Samantha Shelley [01:42:45] Also, he's not cooking or washing bottles.

Nemo [01:42:47] Exactly. That's why he's got so many wives. That would be his attitude.

Samantha Shelley [01:42:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:51] You know, but he is head of the legion and mayor and prophet, right?

Nemo [01:42:56] Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with your point, John. I just didn't understand the example you gave. Oh, yeah, King Follett sermon. He's king of the world.

John Dehlin [01:43:03] King of the world. That's good. That's good. Okay, so, Julia, now you've got what, the first example?

Case Studies of Individual Victims

Julia [01:43:11] Yeah, this is my first example. This is Fanny Alger, or Alger, I don't know exactly how to pronounce it. So with this case. So Todd Compton says that he points out in his book, perhaps the most troublesome, perhaps most troublesome form of modern perspective is that it's this idea of the exchange of women. And he says that Smith offers Clarissa Reed to Levi Hancock in exchange for Fanny, Levi's niece, commissioning Levi to obtain Annie for him. And he says that Levi considers this assignment a mission and brings Fanny to Joseph and then is given Clarissa. So that's the payment. And so this is the. This person is going. Being coerced, or however you want to say this with Fanny. And then. And then the Reward or the payment is that Levi can have this woman.

John Dehlin [01:43:53] Okay, so Fanny Alger is Joseph's, according to the church, Joseph Smith's first plural wife. And we're basically saying that Levi Hancock is the trafficker who delivers Fanny Alger to Joseph.

Julia [01:44:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:44:08] Is that right?

Julia [01:44:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:09] And this is without Emma's knowledge and without Oliver Cowdery's knowledge, which leads Oliver Cowdery to call Joseph's relationships with Fanny a dirty, filthy, nasty affair. Right.

Julia [01:44:23] Yeah, yeah, that'll. That's in the next slide. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:25] Okay, next slide. Let's go to it.

Julia [01:44:27] Yeah. So I thought it was important to at least show the evidence that we do have, or some of the evidence that we do have for intimacy with Joseph and these women. And so, yeah, I like the quote that you said in a journal or in a letter written in 1838, Oliver Cowdery writes, I did not fail to affirm that what I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy. And he crossed out the word scrape and wrote a fair of his. And Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I was strictly declared that I had never deviated from the truth on the matter. So, yeah, that's one of the things, one of the evidences. And then does somebody else want to read William McClellan's Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [01:45:03] Yeah. William McClellan once said that one night she, Emma Smith, missed Joseph and Fanny Alga. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction. She told me this story too, was verily true. That's interesting because Joseph Smith did not have the ceiling power that he allegedly at that point. Right. He's a 16 year old girl. And in DNC132 it says that Emma has to give permission for all plural wives for them to be valid. So it's pretty damning.

Nemo [01:45:38] But to be fair. Well, I can't use the phrase to be fair. The caveat is if Emma disagrees, she'll get destroyed.

Samantha Shelley [01:45:45] Yeah. Bit of a catch 22, but.

Julia [01:45:47] So in theory.

Nemo [01:45:48] In theory, she must be consulted. At least her opinion doesn't matter, but she must be consulted.

Samantha Shelley [01:45:54] Yeah. And Joseph hadn't even claimed to have the ceiling power and was certainly not said to Emma.

Nemo [01:45:59] But this is that euphemism I was talking about earlier comes up, you know, they talk about the transaction like, we know what that means, we know what they're getting at.

John Dehlin [01:46:06] But.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:06] But it's not a little wedding ceremony with fairy lights.

Nemo [01:46:09] Yeah, but apologists will be fighting back saying oh, well, the transaction. It could have been any number of things, really. Get it in the barn at night, swapping knitting tips. Like. Yeah, no.

John Dehlin [01:46:24] Did we read that? Do we read the final quote? Do we want to have Nemo? Do you want to have Nemo?

Nemo [01:46:28] Read that.

John Dehlin [01:46:29] All right.

Nemo [01:46:30] This is from Wilhelm Vile. We hear that Joseph's dissolute life began already in the first times of the church in Kirtland. He was sealed there secretly to Fanny Alga. Emma was furious and drove the girl, who was unable to conceal the consequences of her celestial relation with the prophet, out of her house. Sounds. Yeah. Sounds like preggers.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:54] Yeah.

Nemo [01:46:55] Yeah.

Julia [01:46:56] I don't know that there's evidence that Fanny Alger had a baby by Joseph, and I don't know that even any DNA tests have been done on her children, but we know that she got married after she left the Saints and then had children with him. So I don't know what that. To me, that sounds like she was pregnant. I don't know how. What else that would mean. But.

Samantha Shelley [01:47:14] And could that be a John Bennett abortion situation?

Julia [01:47:19] Oh, possibly. Yeah. Because. Yeah. Who knows? Because John C. Bennett was the doctor that was really well versed in the abortions. And a lot of historians will talk about the Nauvoo abortions. And one of the research I did is that the John C. Bennett was. There was a little tiny book that was. Talks about abortions and how to perform them. And it was small so that people could carry it discreetly anyway, so that in there, there's a lot of information. So, yeah, this could be a case of an abortion done.

Samantha Shelley [01:47:45] So especially given the sending away thing.

Julia [01:47:48] Yes. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:49] Maven writes sending women away for embarrassing pregnancies was common even up. Even up to now. The church still does that.

Julia [01:47:58] Well, in the Nauvoo Expositor, I think he even talks about women being sent away for a time and then they're brought back in. And so, like that. That could be a case like that. Yeah, yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:48:07] And that's interesting. I haven't heard that before, but did they ever do that with Brigham Onward? Because if that was sort of a unique to Joseph Smith's time thing, that feels. Yeah. Silver bullet esque.

John Dehlin [01:48:20] Yeah.

Julia [01:48:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:22] All right, so should we go to the next wife? We did Fanny Augur. Wife isn't the right term. Let's say victim.

Samantha Shelley [01:48:32] Child victim.

John Dehlin [01:48:33] Who's the next child victim? Julia?

Julia [01:48:35] Okay, so Prasindia I don't think is a child. She in fact is married. She's a. She's another polyandrous union. So Joseph goes to Dimmick and he says, dimmock, I want your sister Prisendia. And this is a quote from. From Oliver Huntington. So I'll just read it. Oliver says, soon after, Dimmick had given our sisters Zina and Pressendia. So he's adding Zina in there as well, even though I didn't add her as a. As a trafficker. He says to Joseph as wife for eternity. Smith offered to make any reward he wanted. Dimmick merely requested that. That where your fa. Where your father's family are there I and my father's family may be also. So. So that's a transaction between Joseph and Dimick is any reward you want. And then all Dimmock says is, you know, he says, I guess that's Ruth who says it in the Bible where you dwell. I want to dwell as well.

John Dehlin [01:49:20] So that is so gross to hear Joseph using the term any reward in connection with Dimmock Huntington procuring Pressendia for Joseph's polygamous transactions. Yeah, that's super disturbing. What's that?

Julia [01:49:44] Yeah, Zina's Crescendia's sister. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:49:46] Okay.

Nemo [01:49:47] I wonder if what's interesting is the way that he says. Let me just find the quote exactly. He says, Dimmock merely requested that where you and your father's family are there I and my father's family may be also. That could be a veiled reference to the idea of. Well, actually, the thing I want from you is permission to do this myself is to enter into polygamy myself because he's is. It could be a veiled way of saying, well, the situation you're in where you're getting to be polygamous, I want that too.

Julia [01:50:15] I'm pretty sure Dimmock was. And I don't quote me on this because I didn't do the research, but I'm pretty sure Dimmock did become a plural husband of. He had plural wives. So that doesn't surprise me if that's what he meant by that.

Samantha Shelley [01:50:28] And I assume just wanting to secure his social status as, you know, a bestie of Joseph.

Julia [01:50:34] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:36] Really quickly, there's a comment about a comment I made. Coco writes, I think John just misspoke when he said, still today the church sends them away. I'm pretty sure that there are still instances today with teenage pregnancies, unmarried pregnancies, where young women are encouraged to either stop going to church or they're shipped off to other states to live with family while they have the baby. And then they, they come back to their, their families of origin. I'm pretty sure that still happens today. Does somebody want to.

Nemo [01:51:10] I know there's certainly. I know there certainly is cases where they're forced to give up that child

John Dehlin [01:51:16] or strongly coerced or encouraged to give up the children. Right?

Nemo [01:51:19] Yeah, yeah. However you want to phrase it. But an LDS Family Services could play a role in placing that child. So, you know, this is it. It's not, you know, it's not the late 1800s anymore where you have to send your daughter away on a trip around Europe to conceal a pregnancy. But, you know, there's still that embarrassment there. It's still a community that doesn't believe in premarital sex or, or whatever. So, you know, if, if there's a reasonable way in which someone could try and hide something that's embarrassing to their family, I don't find it hard to believe that someone would do such things.

John Dehlin [01:51:52] Just in the spirit of accuracy, Coco writes, I think LDS Services is out of the adoption.

Nemo [01:51:57] They are now.

John Dehlin [01:51:57] I think that's true. But I think that's true because they don't want to let gay people adopt kids, not because they don't want to be involved in adoption services. That's my understanding. Okay, so we've got the second one, which is Presentia Huntington. Should we go to the third?

Julia [01:52:14] Yeah. So this is Louisa Beeman. So this one is one of the ones that William Law brought out, specifically where he says the banks of the Mississippi River. So I'll just read what Ann Eliza Young is saying. She says he, Joseph Smith then advised Joseph Bates Noble to seek a second wife for himself and to commence at once to build up his kingdom. He was not slow in following the Prophet's advice. And together the two men, with their chosen celestial brides replaced, repaired one night to the banks of the Mississippi river, where Joseph sealed Noble to his first plural wife. And in return, Noble performed the same office for the Prophet and his sister, Louisa Beeman, his sister in law.

Julia [01:52:52] These were the first plural marriages that ever took place in the Mormon Church, which is not the case. We just didn't. He just wasn't aware of Fanny, or she wasn't aware of Fanny Alger. And they were obliged to be very secretly performed and kept hidden afterwards. In fact, I think Elisa Beamen was dressed as a man during this ceremony, and which I guess Joseph Bates Noble's wife would have been as well. So very secret man.

John Dehlin [01:53:14] So if I'm understanding this correctly, Joseph says. Joseph Smith says to Joseph Noble, you Get me Louisa Beeman. And in return, I'll give you Sarah Alley. Is that right?

Julia [01:53:28] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:53:28] I mean, that's. That's super gross. That's. That's women as chattel. And that's Joseph basically saying, you hook me up with another woman to have sex with, that I'll hook you up with a woman to have sex with.

Julia [01:53:40] Yep. Really gross.

John Dehlin [01:53:43] Yeah. Any other comments from the panel on that?

Nemo [01:53:46] Just makes me feel grimy inside.

Samantha Shelley [01:53:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:49] Yeah. All right, you've got Luisa Beeman here. A quote from her. Julia.

Julia [01:53:56] Yeah. Does somebody else want to read this?

John Dehlin [01:53:59] Let's do Nemo.

Julia [01:54:00] Yeah.

Nemo [01:54:01] Yeah, that's fine. Okay. In a court Testimony given in 1892, Noble reporter that after the marriage, he said to Smith, blow out the lights and get into bed and you will be safer there. And he took my advice. Noble, under cross examination, clarified that he did not actually see the couple get into bed, but he. Smith told me he did. There is no good reason to doubt that Louisa's marriage to Smith included sexuality. Noble further testified under oath question. Where did they, Joseph and Louisa sleep together? Right straight across the river at my house. They slept together together.

John Dehlin [01:54:34] Nemo.

Nemo [01:54:35] More euphemism, more euphemisms getting in the way. Did they just go to bed together? Did they do this, do that? But it seems pretty obvious that what was got to was that because through cross examination they got to the idea that did they have a sexual relationship? And yes, the answer was yes.

John Dehlin [01:54:51] Samantha, your reaction?

Samantha Shelley [01:54:53] Yeah. Obviously they had sex. He wasn't asking her about her hopes and dreams, was he?

John Dehlin [01:54:58] Yeah. Julia.

Julia [01:55:00] Yeah, I don't. I don't see how you can dance around that one. Joseph. Joseph and Louisa were intimate together.

John Dehlin [01:55:06] Yeah. And why? Why? No one can argue for me why we would assume otherwise. Why do we want to say that Brigham had sex with his wives, that John Taylor, that Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow all had sex with their polygamous wives, but somehow we want to say Joseph Smith didn't with his. Nobody can answer that question for me. Yeah. All right. The next wife of Joseph that we're going to be talking about is probably one of the most revolting and disturbing. Helen Mar Kimball. Take it away, Julia.

Julia [01:55:40] Yeah. So she's the one that the. On the churches in the church's essays, they say that she was just shy of 15. So this is the one. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:55:46] She's 14.

Julia [01:55:48] Oh, sorry.

Samantha Shelley [01:55:48] Yeah. Who?

Julia [01:55:48] She is 14. Yeah. So from. From Helena Kimball. This is in her. The. I guess her journals or whatever. She says my father having a great Desire to be connected with the prophet Joseph. He offered me to him. This I afterwards learned from the prophet's own mouth. My father had but one lamb, but willingly laid her upon the altar. How cruel this seemed to my mother. The prophet said to me, if you take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of our fathers, your household and all of your kindred. This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward none but God and his angels could see my mother's bleeding heart.

Julia [01:56:27] She saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set. But it was all hidden from me. And so I really like this imagery. This, she even says she uses the word purchase. She's purchasing her family's salvation, exaltation and all of the kindreds after her. And to, to be involved in this polygamous union. This is, this is very payment to me. This is very trafficking. Yeah, I don't know how to see it any other way.

John Dehlin [01:56:53] So basically Joseph Smith is offering Heber C. Kimball eternal salvation and exaltation for the price of his 14 year old daughter, Helen Mar Kimball. Did I get that right?

Julia [01:57:09] Yeah, I also wanted to point out. So a lot of people could argue and say, oh these, these, or I've heard them argue, these polygamous unions were just to connect males together, to connect families. But Joseph was also, it was also a thing to seal men to men. So why didn't Joseph just seal himself to Heber Kimball instead of his daughter? Like why didn't he seal himself to Dimmick Huntington and not, not his sisters? So this argument just falls flat to me when you, when you know that he was doing that he was performing ceilings for between men to make those unions. So I just think that's a really poor argument.

John Dehlin [01:57:41] Samantha, tell us what you're nodding is saying.

Samantha Shelley [01:57:45] Yeah, I mean I just, yeah, I just agree with what Julie is saying. I think it's absurd to claim that it was in the name of anything but Joseph's lusts.

John Dehlin [01:57:57] And what do we make of a father? Like, I guess we don't want to be guilty of presentism. We don't want to be guilty of applying what 21st century bias to 19th century, early 19th century frontier America. What do we make of a father who's willing to give his 14 year old daughter to a prophet that's already got, I don't know, a dozen or two wives anyway? Well, what do we make of that?

Nemo [01:58:21] I mean he's straight up like he straight up will be viewing his daughter as property that he can either give away or not. Like that is the view of men of their daughters in traditional Christianity. I suppose it's part of traditional Anglican wedding ceremony still the idea that the father gives the bride away. Right. So there's this possessive idea. So I guess it was just a case of Joseph needed to give him a big enough price, like a solid enough price to warrant that.

John Dehlin [01:58:52] But do we reserve our anger towards Heber or do we have compassion for Heber? I guess that's my question.

Nemo [01:58:58] I don't have compassion for him because ultimately it's his daughter. And even in those circumstances where he views her as property, it is his job to ensure that she is then with someone that it's, you know, good for her to be with when it is time for her to get married. And as a 14 year old is not an appropriate, appropriate time even in the day to be handing over your daughter to a man for marriage, let alone a man who, it's very clear, isn't marrying her as his one and only, but is having her as part of his harem.

John Dehlin [01:59:34] Yeah.

Julia [01:59:34] Julia with Heber seek him. Well, I just wanted to point out this. So Joseph first approached Heber and said that he wanted his own wife. He wanted, I don't know how to say her name, Violet or Vilate. He said, give me your wife. And then Heber went home and he was really stewing over this. He had a really hard time. And then he eventually came to Joseph and said, okay, you can have my wife. And then Joseph said, that was just a test and you passed it. But what the real test is that you need to give me your daughter. So I wonder just in a sense of understanding Hebrew and where he's coming from.

Julia [02:00:00] I would imagine that he felt a sense of relief that he doesn't have to give up his wife, but that he could instead put his daughter in, in the target. As for Joseph, so I don't know that. Just a sense of understanding that why he would do this and why he would.

Julia [02:00:15] But we know that Joseph, he's. He's very involved in polygamy and he becomes one of the, one of the chosen to live polygamy. So. And we'll see more of that later. So I don't know. I have compassion and I'm upset at Brigham or I mean upset at Heber and have understanding for him. So that's a. It's a hard place to put my emotions for Hebrew.

Nemo [02:00:32] But then equally there's a story that I, I'm looking to tell at some point, but I may as well talk about it here. The story of Mary Smithies, the first child born in the church in the uk. Mary Smithies was blessed at the, at the, at two weeks old, she was blessed by Heber C. Kemble. So he held this two week old baby in his arms and blessed her as the first child born into the church. 19 years later she would become his polygamous wife. So this man's relationship with, you know, with polygamy, it's, it's hard to have sympathy for him in that sense when you go to see the things that he would do under polygamy and the sort of grimy stuff that he'd get involved with.

John Dehlin [02:01:14] Yeah. And I just did a episode with Randy Bell on Heaven's Gate and how Marshall Applewhite convinced 39 people to all die with him in sort of this religious cult like suicide pact involving, you know, alleged spaceships. And so I guess we shouldn't put it past a cult leader to be able to demand and extract extreme devotion from their followers. And if Marshall Applewhite or Jim Jones can convince dozens or hundreds of their followers to kill themselves, then I guess it's not a stretch to think that Joseph can, could exact a male follower to, to provide his 14 year old daughter to Joseph. I mean that's just the way undue influence works.

Nemo [02:02:10] Yeah, maybe I'm just not being kind. Gone. Sorry.

Julia [02:02:13] I was just saying even with, with your Heaven's Gate thing, they, they targeted people with high IQs. So intelligent people are joining cults like that and so we can't, I don't know, like everyone's susceptible, everyone can be susceptible to, to these types of teachings and cult like organizations and they say

Nemo [02:02:32] that highly intelligent people are able to rationalize these things better. So when, when contradictory evidence comes up that their cult isn't true, they're actually better able to formulate reasons why they should remain in the cult. They're better able to feed their confirmation bias.

John Dehlin [02:02:47] Yeah. Now a lot of people are going to argue again that Helen Mark Kimball, even though she was 14, didn't actually, actually have sex with Joseph Smith. We've already beat down that dumb defense, you know, but, but let's go ahead and address the evidence that Joseph and Helen Mark Kimball did have sex. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [02:03:05] Yes, so she, in her books and in this was one of these is published in the Juvenile Instructor. She defines polygamy herself. So she says it was revealed to the latter that there were thousands of spirits yet unborn who were anxiously waiting for the privilege of coming down to take tabernacles of flesh that their glory might be complete, which makes this plural wife system an actual necessity. So she is saying the reason for polygamy is to give these spirits bodies like that's it, full stop. That's why we have polygamy. And that's what the Book of Mormon says as well.

Nemo [02:03:37] Such a silver bullet because she is someone that lived polygamy. She is a first time witness to polygamy. And if she's saying that in her understanding polygamy is for bringing spirits down into bodies that she's responsible for creating with her husband, then why would anyone else have any, any argument to say she wasn't having sex with Joseph Smith? Because her understanding of what polygamy was, a system that she was involved in, was that it was for having sex and bringing up children.

John Dehlin [02:04:03] Yep. Let's go on. Let's read the second quote. Julia.

Julia [02:04:06] She also wrote the principle was established by the prophet Joseph Smith and all who have entered into it in righteousness have done so for the purpose of raising a righteous seed. The object is that we may be restored back to that Eden from whence we fell. And then again, she writes, she wrote, I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young and they deceived me by saying the salvation of our whole family depended upon it.

Nemo [02:04:29] Just before we get to that last quote, can I just throw something in there about that middle one, which is the idea that Joseph established the principle which could fly under the radar. But I'm sure I'm not the only one that would notice this. The principal is a youth euphemism used at that time and still used now by fundamentalist groups to mean polygamy. And again, it's all about these euphemisms that we use to try and hide it. At the time they would talk about it as the principle, but there are, you know, the Apostolic United Brethren amongst and other polygamist fundamentalist groups use the term the principle to mean if you're living the principle, it means you're living polygamously.

Julia [02:05:02] Right?

John Dehlin [02:05:02] Yeah. For some reason I did not realize that last quote from, from Helen where she says, had I known it was anything more than ceremony, I would have never been sealed to Joseph. That implies that she ended up regretting her being sealed to Joseph Smith. Am I reading that right, interpreting that right or not?

Julia [02:05:22] So that's what it sounds like. So this, that was published in 1948. So just a few years after Joseph Smith's death. But I think she was. I think Helen Moore Kimball was one of the ones that people point to to say she always defended polygamy. So, like, this was this. That was an earlier quote or an earlier source, whereas maybe later she defended it. So, like. Yes, like, I can imagine to some degree she did, because that's what that quote is saying. But then I think, I think later she did defend it. And I think that people have to do that. These wives have to do that to make, to make it make sense, to make this okay. Like the sunk cost kind of thing.

John Dehlin [02:05:54] Yeah. I'm almost troubled by the apologetic that the wives, the polygamists wives spoke highly of polygamy. So it must not have been a bad or an immoral thing. Like, I can't even get the family of prophets and general authorities who no longer believe in the church to come on Mormon Stories podcast because they're so afraid of the familial and social consequences of speaking up. I cannot imagine what it would be like for a 19th century Century plural wife to. To denounce openly polygamy is a bad thing. The social pressure to speak highly about polygamy or to stay silent about it must have been just overwhelming. Am I wrong?

Julia [02:06:42] No, I agree.

John Dehlin [02:06:43] Yeah, I would agree.

Nemo [02:06:45] We've got someone saying that it's not Helen's own words in that last quote, is it? Reported speech from that Catherine.

Julia [02:06:52] Catherine Lewis?

Nemo [02:06:53] Yeah.

Julia [02:06:54] Well, Catherine Lewis says she's quoting her, so. Yeah, I guess you could. I don't.

Nemo [02:06:59] Yeah, yeah, but no, I mean, it's just, you know, it's a, It's a source just as good as any other. And it's just reported speech. You know, we have plenty of those examples throughout church history. So I'm writing what someone said to them.

John Dehlin [02:07:10] Yeah. And it's a fair point. But of course, the Mormon Church won't hesitate to use a quoted reference if it's to their benefit. So we have.

Nemo [02:07:18] They've used Catherine Lewis to their benefit in the past as well. They've tried to undermine her as a source, but I'm pretty sure they've used her to support their arguments and William

John Dehlin [02:07:26] Clayton and Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery and, you know, David Whitmer. Like, there are all sorts of sources that the Church will embrace when it's positive and then denounce, you know, when it's negative. Right.

Nemo [02:07:39] Yeah.

Julia [02:07:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:07:40] Yeah. Okay, let's go to the next plural wife of Joseph Smith, which is Almera Johnson. Johnson. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [02:07:47] Okay, so does someone want to read in the voice of Benjamin with the, with this?

John Dehlin [02:07:51] I guess that would be Nemo.

Nemo [02:07:53] Oh, the voice of Benjamin. Okay, sure. Right. So that's. Let me just make sure that's Almira Johnson.

John Dehlin [02:07:59] Okay, really quick, really quick, set up the structure so that then we know who Benjamin is. Julie.

Julia [02:08:03] Okay, so Benjamin. So Benjamin's the brother and Joseph goes to Benjamin and says, I need, I want your sister Elmera. And Benjamin's. This is Benjamin's response, which I think is really, really interesting. Interesting. Okay, and then there's more I want to talk about on the slide, but I want to hear Benjamin first. So we'll go to Nemo, I guess.

Nemo [02:08:20] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:08:20] Benjamin.

Nemo [02:08:21] I sincerely believed him to be a prophet of God and I loved him as such and also for the many evidences of his kindness to me. Yet such was the force of my education and the scorn that I felt towards anything unvirtuous that under the first impulse of my feelings I looked him calmly but firmly in the face and told him that I had always believed him to be a good man and wished to believe it still and would try to. And that I would take for him a message to my sister. And if the doctrine was true, all would be well. But if I should afterwards learn that it was offered to insult or prostitute my sister, I would take his life.

John Dehlin [02:08:58] Ouch.

Julia [02:08:59] And then the last line, yeah.

Nemo [02:09:00] With a smile Joseph, he replied, benjamin, you will never see that day, but you shall live to know that it is true and rejoice in it.

Julia [02:09:09] Yeah. So I just really like that line because it seems like Benjamin to some degree had a hunch of what was going on. He's like, if I've learned that you're prostituting my sister, I'm going to kill you is essentially what he's saying. And then Joseph's reassuring him that that's not the case. And if you go back to the slide, I wanted to point out another situation which could have been one, a case for trafficking. I put a note down here that says Joseph also asked Benjamin for his 15 year old sister Esther, but she was already engaged. And so I guess Joseph is either fearing Benjamin or he's somehow, he's drawing the line with this engaged woman, although he's never drawn any lines before with women who are already married or, or engaged.

Julia [02:09:46] With Zina, she was going to marry Henry Jacobs. And anyway, so I don't know what caused him to draw that line with Esther, but I just thought that was an interesting thing to point out that. That he wanted Almera's sister as well.

Nemo [02:09:56] I think having a Manta around, say, like, if you do anything unburtuous with my sister, I'm gonna kill you, might make him question it. But then Joseph Smith isn't a man known to know his own boundaries. He's not a man to know when it should stop. Hence ordering the destruction of a printing press that puts him in jail, hence denying federal troops to be allowed into a city. Again, sending him to jail. Right. So he's not a man who knows when to stop, really. But for some reason, he did.

John Dehlin [02:10:22] Sammy.

Samantha Shelley [02:10:24] Yeah, I mean, hard to know. I do think it's. I do think the. The brother threatening him might be a piece of it. Maybe he's feeling like it's already, you know, has the potential to be rocky or to catch him out. So he's like, I won't push it on that one. Seems like that's just going to make my life more difficult. I imagine it would all just be through the lens of, like, what's going to make my life the easiest.

John Dehlin [02:10:47] I'm just going to note that, you know, I'm in a. I'm. I'll just be candid. As a podcaster, as someone who has some public notoriety and some influence, you know, the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories has some limited power and money and influence. I just can't imagine going to you, Nemo, or you, Samantha, or you, Julia, and saying, hey, I want your siblings or your children as polygamous concubines. Can you guys hook me up? Like, that's just a level of boldness that is just really hard to comprehend. Pulling off. Am I overstating that?

Nemo [02:11:29] I can confirm publicly I have never received such a communication from John de Lynn.

Samantha Shelley [02:11:34] You also haven't built your whole thing on fantastical claims or magical thinking, which certainly helps. And obviously, back then, people are even more prone to magical thinking. So you don't have, like, the right kind of foundation with the people that sort of support you. I mean, I'm sure you, you know, anyone with sort of power and influence probably could exploit certain people. But. Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like that's. That was Joseph Smith's. His whole charismatic, presumably narcissistic, whatever energy was. Was kind of apparent from the beginning. So the people that are following him are the people that, you know, are vulnerable to that type of presentation, whereas you present quite differently. So, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:18] I mean. I mean, I've gotten in trouble for Saying before that it should be illegal to claim that you speak to God and that you speak for God. But, you know, there's this phrase, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think we could also conclude that extraordinary claims lead to extraordinary abuses.

John Dehlin [02:12:41] And, you know, whether it's Chad and Laurie Daybell, whether it's Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, you know, Warren Jeffs, as soon as you claim to be the voice and mouth of God, you yourself or people under your influence and power just far too often do horrific things. And so I just think we should have built within society, you know, just like, just like we have certain medical assumptions and certain social assumptions, like children shouldn't have sex with each other, like, you know, incest laws. I just think that we should learn as a society that nobody should publicly claim they speak to God because it's almost a guarantee that extraordinary abuses are going to follow. That's just what I think.

Samantha Shelley [02:13:32] It's tough because some people genuinely do believe that they do. And you obviously don't want to like, punish people for certain mental illnesses or. I. It's like murky with, you know, making it illegal. But I mean, I think like the type of work you're doing is like spreading aware and Stephen Hassan comes to mind, like just making the information more ubiquitous of like, this is what undue influence looks like.

John Dehlin [02:13:54] How about. How about you can believe it, but just don't talk about it? Or you can believe it, but just don't.

Samantha Shelley [02:13:59] You don't.

John Dehlin [02:14:00] Go ahead.

Samantha Shelley [02:14:01] A tax exemption for your organization based on it.

John Dehlin [02:14:04] Yeah. You don't get to amass massive wealth and power around your claims that then just compounds your influence with people. Right.

Julia [02:14:12] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:14:13] It's kind of shocking that an organization being built on the back of magical claims gives it more privileges under the law than sort of a regular organization.

John Dehlin [02:14:24] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [02:14:25] Rather than saying it should be illegal to claim you speak for God, it should be illegal to make money on the back the. Of. Of a claim that you speak for God. You shouldn't be allowed to take in money based on that fact. And that would undermine. Because the money becomes the power in lots of ways. It allows people to then buy a ranch where they can then isolate themselves. It allows people to, you know, sustain it, sustain these communities, all that sort of stuff.

John Dehlin [02:14:46] Yeah. All right, Julia, back to Almera Johnson and Benjamin Johnson. Anything else you want to say about that?

Julia [02:14:52] I just wanted to point out the payment for that was that Joseph allowed Benjamin Johnson to live the polygamously. And I think this was, this was heard that Todd Compton had had trouble finding any evidence for their sexual relationship, although you could argue that with a lot of people, there isn't sexual evidence for sexual relationships. He did say that there is a possibility that one of her kids could have been Joseph's, but was most likely belonged to her husband. So. So there's that. But yeah, the. The payments for sure, was that Benjamin was able to live to have polygamous wives himself.

John Dehlin [02:15:21] So, yeah, yeah, that just seems to be a common part. It's you get me wives and I'll get you wives.

Nemo [02:15:29] My back, I'll scratch yours.

John Dehlin [02:15:30] Yeah, you get me sex, I'll get you sex. Okay, And. And speaking of sex, let's talk about the evidence, or lack thereof of Almera Johnson and intimacy.

Julia [02:15:41] Okay, so that. So. So the. So the wife that. That I just referenced was probably not her. There's one of them that I. That there was. Was struggling to get evidence for that. But. Yeah. So let me read these ones.

John Dehlin [02:15:53] Okay.

Samantha Shelley [02:15:54] Okay.

Julia [02:15:54] So Elmira Johnson, in her affidavit on August 1, 1883, she said, I had been fearing and doubting about the principle. And so. And so had he. But he now knew it was true. After this time, I lived with the prophets, Joseph Smith as his wife, and he visited me at the home of my brother, Benjamin F. At Macedonia.

John Dehlin [02:16:13] And then immediately, I lived with Joseph Smith as his wife, and he visited me at the home of my brother. That sounds like sex to me.

Julia [02:16:24] Yes, for sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:16:27] You agree, Samantha? You're nodding. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo [02:16:30] To say as my wife is the euphemism for we're having sexual relations.

John Dehlin [02:16:35] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, go ahead and continue, Julia.

Julia [02:16:39] Yeah. And then Benjamin goes on to clarify. He says, on the 15th of May, some three weeks later, the prophet again came and at my house, occupied the same room in bed with my sister. So again, evidence that he and Elmira were intimate together.

John Dehlin [02:16:53] And I guess people could argue, well, maybe they just like, put. Put pillows between them and had a little dividing line. So they shared the same bed but didn't have sex. But then why would they be making that argument, you know, when. When there's no reason to believe that that's what would have happened.

Nemo [02:17:10] He had a mansion house, plenty of other beds that could have occupied.

Samantha Shelley [02:17:14] Yeah.

Julia [02:17:14] Probably don't even need to be in

Samantha Shelley [02:17:15] a bed if it's not going to be sexual. You know, you think they'd be all knowing enough to avoid any. The appearance of evil.

Nemo [02:17:22] The appearance of evil.

John Dehlin [02:17:24] I'm reminded of the family that I grew up with when they went to Astroworld, an amusement park. They were so worried about drinking a cup that said Coca Cola, even though they were drinking Sprite. They were so worried about drinking a cup that said Coca Cola that the family stood in a circle so that they would drink the beverage from the inside of the circle so that no one outside would think that they were possibly drinking Coca Cola.

Nemo [02:17:52] They did a circle of trust over Coca Cola. That's wild.

Samantha Shelley [02:17:57] That's giving scrupulosity.

John Dehlin [02:17:59] Wow. And yet Joseph Smith was sleeping in the same bed with women, and we want to believe that he wasn't having sex with them.

Julia [02:18:05] Yeah.

Nemo [02:18:06] Yeah. We've had a request from the chat to stop using the word intimacy when we talk about sex. It's difficult with YouTube's algorithm and all that. So if you say that later, I

Julia [02:18:16] don't want to have to edit myself out. So that's probably why I'm doing it.

Nemo [02:18:19] But just to be clear, that is what we mean when we talk about intimacy. I think everyone having watched this video for two hours now, should be very clear that that is what we're talking about.

John Dehlin [02:18:30] Yeah.

Nemo [02:18:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:31] All right, well, that's another super powerful slide. Again, just occupied the same room in bed with my sister. I don't know how he could even utter those words without getting super furious, but let's go.

Nemo [02:18:44] He sounds.

John Dehlin [02:18:46] Yeah. Let's go to the next victim, which is Emily Partridge. Do you want to set up the structure for us, Julia?

Julia [02:18:52] Yeah. So this is one of those unique situations where Joseph uses one of his widow wives, Elizabeth Durfee, as the. As what you can classify as the trafficker. So Elizabeth. So Joseph went to Elizabeth and said, hey, help me get. Get Emily. Go and talk to her and tell her to come meet me. And then I want to talk to her about her becoming my polygamous wife. So Elizabeth, then. So we can read these quotes from her. So she. So Compton points out, even those unsympathetic to Joseph will understand that Elizabeth, like all Mormon women, had accepted him as an infallible leader, and that it was.

Julia [02:19:22] And that it was the intensity of her religious religiosity that led her to influence other women to enter polygamy. And so this is the only case that I pulled out with these four widows that he married. But I. You could argue that he married these women to help him traffic other women, but this is the only one I pulled out. But Emily wrote. Mrs. Durfee came to me one day and said Joseph would like an opportunity to talk with me. And I asked her if she knew what he wanted. She said she thought he wanted me for. For a wife. I was to meet him in the evening at Mrs. Kimball's. And Joseph and Emily were married that night. So. Yeah.

Nemo [02:19:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:56] All right. All right, Nemo.

Nemo [02:19:58] The role of these older women. I mean, these. These older women. Not to get crass about female biology or whatever. But some of these older women are beyond childbearing years. And so already in marrying them as polygamous prize. Joseph's in contravention of DNC 132. Which says it's for the bearing up of the salts of men. So he shouldn't be marrying them anyway. But I think Julia's very right when she talks about how he's marrying them. To use them, then to control the other brides. Because you have these almost matriarchal women. In these polygamous marriages. If they get big enough. You have the older wives. That school the younger wives. And teach them how to behave and all these sorts of things.

Julia [02:20:35] Exactly, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:38] And then answering the question of whether Emily Partridge. If there's evidence for sex. Not unjust intimacy between Joseph Smith and Emily Partridge. We have a transcript from the Temple Lot case. Where Emily Partridge was questioned. Nemo, what if you play the inquisitor and Samantha, you play the respondent. Would that work?

Nemo [02:21:01] Sounds great.

John Dehlin [02:21:02] Is that all right, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:03] Yes.

Nemo [02:21:04] All right.

John Dehlin [02:21:04] Go for it, Nemo.

Nemo [02:21:06] Had you roomed with him prior to the night after you were married the last time?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:12] No, sir. Not roomed with him.

Nemo [02:21:14] Well, had you slept with him?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:16] Yes, sir.

Nemo [02:21:17] Had you slept with him before the 4th of March, 1843, their marriage date?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:22] No, sir.

Nemo [02:21:23] Did you ever live with Joseph Smith after you were married to him. After that first night that you roomed together?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:29] No, sir. Emma knew that we were married to him. But she never allowed us to live with him.

Nemo [02:21:34] Do you make the declaration now that you ever roomed with him at any time?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:38] Yes, sir.

Nemo [02:21:40] Do you make the declaration that you ever slept with him in the same bed?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:44] Yes, sir.

Nemo [02:21:45] How many nights?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:47] One.

Nemo [02:21:48] Only one night?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:49] Yes, sir.

Nemo [02:21:50] Then you only slept with him in the same bed one night?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:54] No, sir.

Nemo [02:21:55] Did you ever have carnal intercourse with Joseph Smith?

Samantha Shelley [02:21:58] Yes, sir.

Nemo [02:21:59] I feel like a Mormon bishop. That's really grimy.

John Dehlin [02:22:03] Sorry, Samantha. Thank you for doing that. I'm sorry. That's awkward. But that's also the facts, right? I mean, that's pretty explicit. How's anybody going to argue with that exchange? You know, believe the women. If we're going to believe women. I mean, this is one that might be Worth believing. I don't know. Samantha, what's your reaction as you read that, that exchange?

Samantha Shelley [02:22:28] I mean, I believe her. I have no reason not to. It's embarrassing for women at that time to talk about sex at all. And I, I think it would be a massive net negative for them to admit something like this. Like, you know, you obviously hear those claims of these women are just, I don't know, trying to get something out of it, but there's nothing in it for women at that time to admit that they slept with another man they hadn't slept with.

Nemo [02:22:57] No, there's only social stigma and shame and.

Samantha Shelley [02:23:00] Yeah.

Nemo [02:23:01] The lack of prospect of another marriage down the line or whatever.

Samantha Shelley [02:23:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:05] Julie, any reactions for you from that exchange?

Julia [02:23:07] I, I think I've heard people say that these women. This is a temple lock case. And I heard, I've heard people say that these women were under a lot of pressure and they could have answered incorrectly, but, like, I, I. There's no reason to doubt it. Like we said, the default of polygamy is that they were having sex together.

John Dehlin [02:23:22] Yeah, Makes sense. Yeah. That was unsavory. That was not my favorite part. Part of the podcast.

Nemo [02:23:29] Enjoyable.

John Dehlin [02:23:30] All right, well, if that weren't enough, there's more. I mean, there's so many of these. Like, we're going through a lot, but I guess we're trying, we're trying to provide evidence. Right, Julia? So, so the next one is Sarah and Whitney as the victim. Do you want to set up the structure, Julia?

Julia [02:23:47] Yeah. So Joseph goes to the parents this time, Newell and Elizabeth, and says, hey, I want your daughter, Sarah Ann. And the. The. What happens is, what comes out of this is the. The. A July 1842 revelation. And Nemo, in Joseph Smith voice, would you read this? The revelation?

Nemo [02:24:04] Yeah, absolutely. Joseph Smith received a revelation on July of 1842 that reads, verily, thus saith the Lord unto my servant N.K. whitney. The thing that my servant Joseph Smith has made known unto you and your family, which you have agreed upon, is right in mine eyes and shall be rewarded upon your heads with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house, both old and young, because of the lineage of my priesthood, saith the Lord, it shall be upon you and upon your children after you from generation to generation, by virtue of the holy promise which I now make unto you, saith the Lord. Am I the only one that's hearing the temple in that? There's a lot of language there from the temple ceilings and generally through all generations. Yeah, for all generations, sealed upon you, by virtue of my promise, all these sorts of things.

John Dehlin [02:24:53] Now, is that, is that enshrined in the Doctrine and Covenants, what you just read?

Julia [02:24:56] Yeah, I think so. I, it's on Joseph Smith papers. If you just type this in, it shows up. And I'm pretty sure I don't know what section it is, but yeah, it's definitely in the Doctrine Covenants.

John Dehlin [02:25:04] Oh, that's. I, I, but it's not acknowledged in the Doctrine and Covenants as, as being what the, what the subject of the topic is. Is that correct?

Julia [02:25:15] Right. I mean, he doesn't say anywhere in there that it's about polygamy, but we know that's what it is. And he says, he talks about, he alludes to how they've already talked about it. And, and I really like the line where he says that it is right in my eyes. So he's, he's being. Joseph is taking the voice of God saying that polygamy is right in my eyes. And the payment or the reward is honor and immortality and eternal life for all of you for your house, both old and young. And. Yeah, so this is, this is where

John Dehlin [02:25:42] I think traditional mainstream Christians get really mad at the Mormon Church and Joseph Smith because they claim that, that Mormonism ruins people for God because here it's not just Joseph, you know, giving, offering a payment in exchange for sex with women, but it's Jesus Christ himself. Right. I mean, the, the God of the Doctrine and Covenants, according to Mormonism is Jesus Christ. So it's Jesus who's offering eternal life, immortality to, you know, this entire family in exchange for letting Joseph have sex with Sarah and Whitney. Am I overstating that, Julia?

Julia [02:26:24] I don't think you are. I think, like, yeah, they're taking, he's taking on the voice of Jesus and, and saying these horrible things that Jesus did not stand for.

Nemo [02:26:34] And this is all, like, leads to the happiness letter. And the idea of Joseph Smith being able to switch into the voice of God quite easily to kind of get what he wants out of these situations. And so this is one of those expedient revelations that Joseph receives where, oh yeah, God says that what I've just said to you is totally justified, by the way. Thus saith the Lord. It's kind of like, not to be flippant, but he has, as we've gone over in the LDS discussions, episodes. He has this habit of getting expedient revelation as and when he needs to back up his position with a deity in force.

John Dehlin [02:27:05] Samantha, are you feeling any, any reaction to that part.

Samantha Shelley [02:27:09] That's just. Well said, Nemo.

John Dehlin [02:27:11] Yeah. All right. And let's jump to again, the question of whether there's evidence for intimacy. Do you want to cover that, Julia?

Julia [02:27:19] Yeah. The following month, Joseph wrote a letter dated the 18th. Oh, I didn't put the month August of 1842, to the Whitney parents, telling them that it was God's will that they and Sarah come and visit him. He even assured them that he had a room to all to himself and told them to avoid being seen by Emma at all costs. And finally, he instructs them to burn the letter after reading it. Three days after doing this for Joseph, he seems to reward Newell with instructions to take another wife or wives.

John Dehlin [02:27:46] Wow.

Julia [02:27:47] So, yeah, like, he. Joseph, in his letter, he was like, hey, I've got a room to myself and don't be seen by Emma. Like, in fact, he. I think he's very specific on the time and day that they should come and. To avoid Emma and. And bring your daughter with you. And he. Yeah, it's just awful. And then the instruction to burn the letter is very similar to the happiness letter.

Nemo [02:28:07] What's really interesting to me, like you said about the happiness letter and things he employed. In the case of the happiness letter, I believe he employed Sarah Hyde, Orson Hyde's wife, who he taken as a polygamous bride. He employed her as one of these sort of helper wives to then try and get Nancy Rigden involved.

Nemo [02:28:24] But how he managed to do all this without Emma? Like, how he managed to do all this without his first and most public wife, the one that he's the only one he's legally married to, how he managed to do all this without her help and assistance. He did it through this system of other women and male relations, keeping it all secret from his. His wife for the most part, until it then comes out, she tries to have some control over it, and he basically rides roughshod over her. I don't understand how he managed to do it. Just a thought.

Samantha Shelley [02:28:56] I feel like a lot of what cult leaders are able to get away with is very surprising. I know they obviously had, like, no technology back then that would make it way harder now. But I feel like you always, you know, when you hear about Keith Ranieri or other leaders of these types of groups, they're just so relentless in their lying and their schemes. But for whatever reason, people don't pick up on it for way longer than you would think that they would. It's almost like the brazenness of them and their lying kind of Gets them through for longer or something.

Nemo [02:29:30] Yeah, maybe it's that whole thing of, like, act like you belong. So, yeah, when you walk into a. To a building where you know you shouldn't be, if you act like you belong, people don't question you.

Samantha Shelley [02:29:39] And I've been thinking lately, there's almost like this level of lying that is so out there that you almost wouldn't consider that it might be a lie because you're like, if someone was lying, they wouldn't go that far. I don't know if that's like, a phenomenon coming into play, because it just sounds so extreme, like, you know, God told me, you need to give me your daughter.

John Dehlin [02:29:57] But the weird. The weird psychological dynamic is that social sociologists have determined that the more that you require, the more sacrifice. If you're a cult leader, the more sacrifice you require of your followers, the more devoted and loyal they're going to be. So it works the opposite way that we think the more outrageous the sacrifice that is requested, the more devotion you. Exactly.

Samantha Shelley [02:30:26] Haven't they even found on a smaller level in psychology that if. If you ask someone who only kind of likes you to do something for you that's a little bit out of their comfort zone, usually people will do the thing, and then their brains will create more of a story about why they like you. So, weirdly enough, asking people for things that are, you know, asking them to, like, overextend themselves a little bit for you can almost solidify their opinion of you in a way that is favorable.

Nemo [02:30:53] Yeah, it's like you believe in them. Like, you have faith in their ability to. To go above and beyond for you.

John Dehlin [02:30:59] And again, there's. There's several kind of silver bullet slides, but this slide is so gross because he's basically wanting Sarah to come to him. The parents are involved. He has a room all by himself. But he's telling her, don't tell Emma. That's so disrespectful and deceitful to Emma. And then he's saying, burn the evidence. You know, that's just all. It's unsavorable for anyone. But it's particularly unsavorable for someone who claims to be, literally, God and Jesus's representative on the earth. You know, obey me and give me your money and your time and your power. It's just so gross. All right, so, Julia, let's go to the next slide. Now, I thought, oh, phew, we're finally done with Joseph's wives. But there's a. There's a couple more but we have a little bit of an interlude where you have a slide about Joseph Smith as trafficker. But wait.

Joseph Smith as Both Buyer and Trafficker

Julia [02:31:58] Yes, yes. Before, I was discussing Joseph as this type of buyer. Although. Although I do list him as a trafficker, too, because it's unique, because he's. Because he's. As the one benefiting from these unions. He's going to someone else so that they can get the thing that he can benefit. And so he's sort of the trafficker and the buyer. So it's kind of a weird way to define it, but with these next ones, Joseph Smith is the trafficker, and someone else is the one benefiting from these polygamous unions. So that's what we're.

John Dehlin [02:32:23] Oh, wow. Okay. So this is the. One of. These aren't Joseph's wives. These are wives that Joseph. You're saying maybe trafficked other men?

Julia [02:32:30] Yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:32:31] All right. All right. So go ahead. Who do we want to read this? Julia.

Julia [02:32:37] I can just read some of those.

John Dehlin [02:32:38] Okay, go for it. Go for it.

Julia [02:32:39] So Joseph gave. So from. I don't know how to say this person's name. Bergera.

John Dehlin [02:32:44] Gary Bergera. Bergera.

Julia [02:32:45] Bergera. They say that Joseph Smith gave permission to 28 men to live celestial marriage or polygamy. And such unions had to be sanctioned by Joseph Smith. And if you were caught living spiritual wifery, which is basically the same thing like we said, but without Joseph's permission, then you were punished just like those of William or W.W. phelps and John C. Bennett. And these cases of celestial marriage, Joseph giving women to certain male members of the church. It can be argued that. That Joseph was the trafficker. And what I. Another thing that I think was interesting is that under Brigham Young, he made it okay for every man to.

Julia [02:33:17] He. He said everyone should be a plague. Every man should be a polygamist. And that's how you can have higher glory in heaven. And then. So everything became the same thing. Spiritual. I. Free polygamy. It sort of all became the same under Brigham.

Julia [02:33:28] I just thought that was interesting to know that Joseph was very select and who lived like me. And then Brigham was just open that up.

Nemo [02:33:35] Because then I guess it's. It's down to where they were. Right. So Joseph Smith's kind of under the purview of the US Government when he's trying to practice polygamy, so he's got to keep a secret, whereas Brigham's purposely run off to the Rocky Mountains so that he can basically be open and free with this stuff. And so, yeah, then. Then it's Game on for everyone. Because it's like, well, this is. This is finally able to be part of foundationally what it means to be one of us. This is something you've got to be willing to take on to be part of the. In group. So it becomes a. An expansive sort of idiomatic thing to Mormonism that helps people feel special and unique and bonded to the. The group, I would have thought.

Julia [02:34:11] Yeah.

Nemo [02:34:12] Meanwhile, these other men are just complicit for Joseph Gordon. John. Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:34:15] Right. No, that's good. So, Julie, tell us about this next slide. Joseph Smith was in charge of polygamy. What you're saying here.

Julia [02:34:21] So, so just. There was a publication in the Times of. And Seasons, I think, where this guy, Solomon Freeman, he was living with another woman. And so presumably the same thing, but Joseph didn't give him the okay. And he's part of the quorum of the 70s. So, Joseph, they said you were guilty of polygamy and they. I think he was kicked out of the 70s. So I just wanted to put the slide just to say that Joseph was the one, sort of like Warren Jess is the one who was in charge of every relationship in the RLDS church or the FLDS church. Joseph was that guy here. He was the one solely the one in charge of who can and cannot live like me.

Nemo [02:34:56] Do you want to.

John Dehlin [02:34:57] Do we want to read those quotes?

Julia [02:34:58] I don't. Do you think that'd be beneficial or. I just wanted to point that out specifically.

John Dehlin [02:35:03] Okay. Well, I'll just say that when I learned about Warren Jeffs, I was deeply disturbed by the. I mean, it's all disturbing, but I was extra deeply disturbed that, like, he was taking wives, you know, if. If one of his male followers who was practicing polygamy fell out of favor that, that Warren would literally, like, excommunicate those men, kick them out of the tribe, and then reassign those wives to other men. Or men would bring their daughters to Warren Jeffs, and then it would be Warren Jeffs who would reward men who did his bidding with. With the wives of Warren Jeff's choosing, I found that so disturbing.

John Dehlin [02:35:51] And it was extra disturbing when I realized he was literally just following Joseph's playbook. And if you read DNC132, where it talks about polygamous virgin wives as chattel, it's all over. DNC132, where it talks about women and wives being reassigned, other men, if they misbehave. And I. I guess that was a real aha moment for me that you. It's really hard to find something heinous that Warren Jeffs did that he didn't learn from Joseph Smith other than maybe having sex with the, with the, with the young girls during the temple ceremony. That's about the only thing I can find. Warren Jeffs did that Joseph Smith didn't, that we know of.

Nemo [02:36:42] And I think this comes back to as well, the whole having a kind of a public scapegoat or something. So you've got these newspapers in the UK going on about polygamy. They know what's going on, even for the Navu Expositor. And then someone that Joseph falls out of favor with, he can cast off and say, yep, we've kicked him out for practicing that horrible polygamy thing you're accusing us all of. It's almost. It presents this image to the outside world that we're rooting out people, polygamy from within our ranks. We're getting rid of it. We're sorting the problem that you're accusing us of. Anyone we find practicing it, we're getting rid of. Meanwhile, Joseph's still practicing it secretly. So this idea that he's condemning polygamy is very, very expedient to him because he can use it as a way to, to publicly show that they're distancing themselves from it.

John Dehlin [02:37:30] All right, well, let's jump to these final instances of Joseph Smith as trafficker. The first one is Sarah Peak Noon. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia [02:37:41] Yeah, so Joseph went to Heber C. Kimball. So I have some things I want to read, but he went to Heber C. Kimball and was like, hey, you need to marry this woman, Sarah Peak Noon. And I just want to read a little bit. So Joseph taught Heber about polygamy and Heber at first thought of marrying two older women that would cause, quote, little if any, unhappiness, unquote. For his wife. However, Joseph had already picked out a wife for Heber. For Heber, her name was Sarah Pink Noon and she was the 35 year old woman from England, a convert. Additionally, Joseph forbade Heber from telling his own wife of the arrangement.

Julia [02:38:11] And according to Orson Pratt, Heber was told by Joseph that if he did not do this, he would lose his apostleship and be damned. And then Todd Compton goes on to say that so often Joseph Smith taught polygamy as a requirement and to reject it was to lose one's eternal soul. Once he had accepted him as a prophet, one had to comply or accept a damnation.

Samantha Shelley [02:38:33] What was the benefit for Joseph of him forcing Heber to take that 35 year old woman. Is it just that he, like, wanted them to be in the same sort of company so that they were more in it together? Like, why did he care if she married, if he married the older woman?

Nemo [02:38:50] Is it a bit of a mutually assured destruction type thing where, like, once Joseph gets him in a polygamous relationship, then if he tries to out Joseph, he can out him?

John Dehlin [02:38:58] It reminds me of the Scientology auditing. You know, when L. Ron Hubbard would audit, you know, the new members, they would basically just get them alone with someone to confess all their dirt. It also reminds me of Keith Ranieri getting some of his women concubines to send him sexually compromising photos. Once you have dirt, like you said, Nemo on somebody, it's mutually assured, described destruction. I think that's a great way to characterize it. Heber C. He wanted Heber C. Kimball in on it so that he wasn't vulnerable to Heber C. Kimball ratting him out later.

Nemo [02:39:38] This is why if you look at the slide, it says buyer next to Heba C. Kimball. If you go to the previous slide, but there's a question mark there because it's like, well, was he a buyer or was this kind of forced upon him? Because Joseph basically said, if you don't, you lose all your position. So it's a bit of a strange relationship there. It's not as simple as I want a plague of his wife. Go out and get me one. It's Joseph as the trafficker enforcing his trafficked product onto someone. And that's just a bit of a strange relationship.

John Dehlin [02:40:10] Yeah, yeah. And it's really. This is just really troubling. And it's just hard to believe that people can behave this way, honestly. Yeah. Okay. And. And again, let's go ahead and talk about any evidence that Sarah Peak Moon had sex with Heber C. Kimball.

Julia [02:40:32] Yeah. So they had kids together. So they had four kids. And they had their first one. How do you say the name? Adelbert. Adelbert was born in 1842 and Henry was born in 1844. And I highlighted those ones just because this is during Joseph Smith's lifetime while he was alive. And so why would. Again, why would Joseph not have sex with these women, but allow these other men to have sex with their wives? It doesn't make any sense.

Nemo [02:40:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:59] Yep, that's a great point. All right, so let's go ahead and jump. I think this may be the final example. Is that right?

Julia [02:41:11] I think there's two more.

John Dehlin [02:41:12] Okay. Yeah.

Julia [02:41:14] So this is. This is Martha, the penultimate.

John Dehlin [02:41:16] This is the penultimate example of trafficking. Go ahead.

Julia [02:41:20] This is one that William Law talked about in the Nova Expositor when he pointed out the circumstances. The one where it says positively no admittance. So does someone else want to read the notes that we have for Martha?

Samantha Shelley [02:41:34] Sure.

Julia [02:41:36] Yeah.

Nemo [02:41:37] From John C. Bennett, we hear the story of Martha Brotherton. Ms. Brotherton is a very good looking, amiable and accomplished English lady of highly respectable parentage, cultivated intellect, and spotless moral character. She was selected as one of the victims for the cloister in order to be consecrated to apostolic brutality.

Nemo [02:41:55] In her own words, she. She goes on to say that when we reached the building, he led me up some stairs to a small room, the door of which was locked, and on it the following. Positively no admittance. She goes in and is introduced to Joseph by Brigham. Except immediately afterwards, Joseph leaves and Brigham Young locks her in the room with him. Brigham tells her of polygamy and proposes that they get married. That day, with no luck, Brigham has Joseph return and they both proceed to try and convince her of polygamy. Joseph stated that if you will accept Brigham, you shall be blessed. God shall bless you, and my blessing shall rest upon you.

Nemo [02:42:29] And if you will be led by him, you will do well. You will do well, for I know Brigham will take care of you. And if he don't do his duty to you, come to me and I will take him. And if you do not like it, in a month or two, come to me and I will make you free again. And if he turns you off, I will take you on. Martha does not end up marrying Brigham.

Julia [02:42:52] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [02:42:52] So you get away with that?

Nemo [02:42:54] I have no idea.

Julia [02:42:55] I don't know. But yeah. This is from John C. Bennett's History of the Saints and I. And just pointing out that she was from England, she's a convert from across the ocean. And the. The note on Joseph Smith's office door that says, post positively no admittance. And then just this, these two men are trying to convince her to live it, and she keeps asking for more time, and then eventually, I think she just sort of. It sort of seems like, or sounds like she sort of goes to him and she. Because he gets distracted with other women, and then. So she doesn't end up having to marry him, but this whole thing. So this was not a successful, I guess you could say successful trafficking transaction, but it was set up to potentially be one.

John Dehlin [02:43:33] And I could just hear Mormon apologists saying, well, you can't trust John C. Bennett as a source because he was kicked out of the church, I would say, like William Law, like John C. Bennett, like Oliver Cowdery, ex Mormons that were whistleblowers who were contemporaries with Joseph Smith, I think are among our best sources for truthful information. Not our least reliable sources. Is that fair to say?

Julia [02:44:03] Yes.

Nemo [02:44:05] Yeah, I'd say so. All right, they're out from under Joseph's spell.

John Dehlin [02:44:11] And they were there, right? And they left. They left for good reasons, right? Yeah, they were there and they left for good reasons. So they're whistleblowers of integrity, not malcontents to be dismissed, in my view. All right, I think we've got the last one. Julia.

Julia [02:44:30] Yeah. So I'll read this story. This is. This is from a journal or an article by John George D. Smith. He says by the time William Clayton first mentions plural marriage in the early 1843, he had been married to his legal wife Ruth for six years and they had three children together. Smith called at his home one day and invited Clay for a walk. Clayton. During which he said that he had learned of a sister back in England to whom Clayton was very much attached. Clayton. Clayton acknowledged the friendship, but nothing further. Then an attachment such as a brother and a sister in the church might rightfully entertain for each other.

Julia [02:45:03] So he's like, I don't. We're just. We're just friends. The prophet then suggests, why don't you send for her? Clayton replied, in the first place, I have no authority to send for her. And if I had, I have not the means to pay expenses. Joseph Smith says, I give you authority to send for her and I will furnish you the means. Which according to Clayton, he did, noting that this day in early 1843 was the first time the prophet had talked with him on the subject of the plural marriage. Clayton recalled the prophets further sanction. It is your privilege to have all the wives you want.

Julia [02:45:34] Okay, so, yeah, so another woman from England who's traveling over to a new place. And then this one's kind of interesting because I put a question mark, because Joseph Smith is trafficker. Because this is a unique situation where Joseph says, as the trafficker in the position that I'm putting him in, he's saying, I give you authority to go and get her, and I'll give you money to go and get her. So Joseph is. He's sort of benefiting in a way because he's getting another loyal follower. He's got someone in the inner circle with him who Will. Will. How did you guys say that? Like, hold his lies close or or

John Dehlin [02:46:06] lie with mutually assured destruction was Nemo's term, I think.

Julia [02:46:10] Right, right. So like, something like that and then. And then William as the buyer. So like, so I guess discussion on whether this was trafficking, we can ask that question. It just sort of seems like it to me.

John Dehlin [02:46:24] And then the, the evidence of, of, of sex. Sexual intimacy between Margaret Moon and William.

Julia [02:46:30] Yeah. So they had. So they had kids together. Yeah, they had six kids and the first one was born in February of 1844. So again, why would Joseph let his. The 28 people that he selected, why would he allow them to have sex but he abstained from sex? That doesn't make sense. So. So yeah, they for sure were. They had. They had sex together.

John Dehlin [02:46:47] Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's powerful. Well, I guess that concludes the examples we have of human or sex trafficking that Joseph Smith was involved with. I'm sure that we're not trying to claim that that's all, but those are certainly, those are certainly many. We do have a few closing slides just to kind of summarize what we're talking about. And this first slide deals with the Nexium cult. Keith Ranieri and Allison Mack. So what were you wanting to say here, Julia?

Comparisons to Modern Trafficking Cases

Julia [02:47:23] Yeah, so I, I haven't seen your episodes on the Nexium, so I don't really know a whole lot about this, but I do know I did watch all of the Smallville. I was a fan of Alison Mack until all this stuff came out that I didn't know. But it's. But it says here. Let me, let me read the quote. So on July 6th of 2023, it was, it was posted that television actor Alison Mack, who pleaded guilty for her role in a sex trafficking case tied to the cult like group Nexium, has been released from a California prison. According to a government website, Mac helped prosecutors mount evidence showing how Ranieri created a secret society that included brainwashed women who were branded with his initials and forced to have sex with him.

Julia [02:48:01] So just wanting to pull in actual cases of sex trafficking, I think is really helpful to see from back then and how we see how it is now. And then also the creating the secret. The secret society, which is what Joseph Smith did in the Holy Order, and having these women be involved in that as well with polygamy, I just thought that was very similar.

John Dehlin [02:48:19] So wanted to go ahead, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [02:48:21] Well, also feels similar in that a lot of the times these, these cult leaders will like, turn their victims into perpetrators so that, you know, they have more power over them and can't turn on them. So I feel like Alison Mack is a good example of that. Like she was a victim of Keith Ranieri, but then she ended up becoming a perpetrator and victimizing these other women. And it feels like Joseph Smith would take certain wives or people under his wing and then, but then they would end up victimizing others and you know, they become like pawns in the victimization schemes.

John Dehlin [02:48:57] And I think the Jeffrey Epstein case is another great example of this. Do you want to talk us through this, Julia?

Julia [02:49:03] Yeah. I don't know how to say her name. Is it just so.

John Dehlin [02:49:07] Yeah, I don't know.

Julia [02:49:08] Okay, so just. Lane Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was charged on Monday. This is a, an article of the New York Times. She was charged on a Monday for the first time with sex trafficking a minor as federal prosecutors accused her of grooming a 14 year old girl to engage in sexual acts with Mr. Epstein and later paying her.

Julia [02:49:27] And then with this last slide, I just wanted to change some of the wording to fit this Joseph Smith with human trafficking or with sex trafficking. So if you go to the last slide, I've taken the same article and I've changed some of the wording. So I've made it to say this is not a real thing, but I've made this to say Elizabeth Durfee, a longtime associate of Joseph Smith, was charged with sex trafficking a 19 year old girl. She was accused of grooming this woman to engage in sexual acts with Mr. Smith with a promise of eternal glory.

Samantha Shelley [02:49:54] Yeah, same energy.

Nemo [02:49:57] Gives us same vibes.

Julia [02:49:58] Yeah, that's what I wanted to point to. That they're so similar.

John Dehlin [02:50:04] Well, I guess we've made our case. Julia, I want to thank you and of course I know Nemo and Samantha provided you with at least some support on this research. But that's Julia's case or our case for considering Joseph Smith Smith in the context of human or sex trafficking. I guess I want to give Nemo and Samantha a chance to provide their assessment. And then Julie, I'll give you maybe the final, the final word. Nemo, let's have you go first. What are your summative thoughts?

Nemo [02:50:40] It feels like a pretty strong case to me that the, the setup of polygamy was to bring women to America or even just remove women from their families within America to allow these men to have multiple sexual partners. That seems to me to be pretty much what's going on here. And then Brigham Young turned it almost into an industry that the numbers went up and up and up and up. So the, the idea the trafficking gets more intense with Brigham Young, and it'd be interesting to almost do a follow up episode examining that through a similar lens and through a similar structure.

Nemo [02:51:15] But I think, yeah, ultimately polygamy requires more women than these men can often acquire organically. And so they have to find them elsewhere and they can get brought to them by any number of sources. And it's just a horrible thing to realize is part of the history of the church that I am a member of.

John Dehlin [02:51:35] So, Nemo, you're saying guilty, Joseph is guilty of sex or human trafficking by your assessment, is that right?

Nemo [02:51:41] Yeah, I'd say so.

John Dehlin [02:51:42] Samantha, what's your take?

Samantha Shelley [02:51:45] Yeah, to me, there's no question that human trafficking was a part of early Mormonism. And I guess I just want to echo something I said earlier, which is kind of an obvious point, but, you know, human trafficking is just one type of abuse with like, you know, a specific structure in a way that it happens. And this episode has only explored that. And, and I think Julia made a fantastic case for it. But it's like we're not even touching on all the other instances of abuse and child grooming that maybe don't fall quite under the trafficking category. Like, there's just endless abuse perpetrated against women, children, men. So even this isn't, is only painting one slice of the, the picture and it's, it's horrifying on its own, so

John Dehlin [02:52:34] that it's kind of, it's kind of just. We're just scratching the surface.

Samantha Shelley [02:52:37] Right, right. And yet it's this bad.

John Dehlin [02:52:40] Yeah. All right, Julia, what's your final, your final summation?

Conclusions, Theological Implications, and Closing Remarks

Julia [02:52:45] Yeah, so I know that, that accusing Joseph of being a sex trafficker is a strong and bold claim. And I feel like I have strong evidence. And for those of you who are listening that disagree, I ask that you do that you disagree with me kindly, and that you disagree with me with some sources. Because I would read, I would be interested to know if I'm wrong, then I would, I want to know that. However, I think that, I think that this evidence shows, in these cases, show that Joseph Smith was sex trafficking. And to me, if people dismiss these stories, they're dismissing the, they're dismissing the, the lives of these women who went through these difficult situations and circumstances. And so just listen to these victims, listen to these women and, and then decide. I don't know how else to say that because these stories are so important to tell in church history,

John Dehlin [02:53:30] this isn't me playing devil's advocate, but I am going to represent kind of an orthodox believing mindset. And I'll say two arguments. One is that this is reductionist. Yes, sex was involved, but these people believed that they were being led by God, believed that they were being led by the Holy Spirit. And, and just like, you know, gay or lesbian Mormons say, don't reduce my marriage to just sex.

John Dehlin [02:54:00] Our marriage is about much more than sex. It's about doing the dishes together and going on walks and vacationing and emotional intimacy and psychological intimacy. I could hear an orthodox Mormon saying, stop reducing these marriages to sex. These marriages were about faith. They were about faithfulness. They were about obedience to God. And we were, by the way, we were led by the Holy Ghost to enter into them. So stop your religious bigotry and, and reducing everything to sex, you dirty ex Mormons. Any, any. Any reaction to that? And then I have one final apologetic argument. Anyone want to respond to that argument? First Julia, then Samantha.

Julia [02:54:46] As you were speaking. I was, I was looking at it through the lens of the FLDS church with Warren Jeffs, or even this one isn't trafficking, but with Elizabeth Smart. And like, oh, it was. These relationships were more than just sex. They were other things. This man was called of God or whatever. Whatever. But, like, well, leaving that out is a huge thing. And it's an important thing to, to keep in. These are, these are real victims that have real stories. And I, and I'd hate to throw that out completely. Yes, their relationships could be more than that because they are trying to follow God. But to remove that is. Is doing a very great disservice.

John Dehlin [02:55:21] Samantha, you, you, you had a reaction, I think.

Samantha Shelley [02:55:25] Yeah. I mean, it's not uncommon for victims to be complicit in their own abuse and to, to need to find meaning and purpose in it. And, and obviously there's a spectrum of, of how, how much women were willing to speak up about their misery in this system. But also, I don't think Joseph Smith was, like, doing dishes and having, you know, like, binge watching shows with these women. Like, he's going to them. You know, that one account where he's with a woman for one night only. Like, they, they're all secret wives. He's denying it publicly. So they're not. They're not having this, like, beautiful, I imagine, relationship out.

Samantha Shelley [02:56:02] Outside of that. I mean, I'm sure. I mean, everything's always bigger than sex, but. But it does seem primarily sexual because they're all so secretive. He's not allowed to just be, like, having a day date with them. You know, it's got to be like, in the COVID of night in this special room when my wife is for some reason busy that night. Like, they're not. There's no space for them to create an actual marriage. Like, it wasn't an actual marriage. I mean, it literally wasn't because, you know, it was illegal. But, yeah, there was no space for them to get to know each other in the way that spouses should be able to get to know each other.

Nemo [02:56:37] And I would also say off the back of that, Sam, is when the active believing Mormon or the, you know, the apologetic comes through, stop making it about sex. DNC132 literally makes it about sex.

Julia [02:56:49] Yeah, it's not us, it's God, not us.

Nemo [02:56:52] It's DNC132 that says these polygamous marriages were about having sex and about bearing children. Children.

Samantha Shelley [02:56:57] And it does matter whether sex was involved. Like, we're talking about girls as young as 14. Of course that's gonna be an element that is horrifying to us. Like, there are so many victims of sex trafficking that also have, like, friendships or relationships with their abusers. It's not always this black and white thing, as I feel like this episode has outlined. Like, lines get blurry and a lot of the time victims can be friendly to their abusers. And yeah,

John Dehlin [02:57:27] yeah, that's why I'm grateful for Patrick Mason. One of the most important things ever said by faithful top Mormon scholar Patrick Mason is he admitted on Mormon Stories podcast that when he studied Joseph Smith's polygamy, that to him it looked a lot like sin. And I think that's one of the most courageous things ever said by a prominent faithful Mormon on. On Mormon Stories. Okay, well, the final argument that I was going to make, we've alluded to it, but I'm just going to make it hardcore, is that God can do what God wants. God's ways are higher than man's ways. Isaiah 55 says that God tells, you know, Nephi to chop off Laban's head.

John Dehlin [02:58:07] God tells the Israelites to kill all the, I don't know, Philistines or whatever. That's men, women, children, animals, that sometimes God understands things a lot more sophisticatedly than humans do. And that if God is commanding this, then Joseph and all the women and all the other participants, they're literally just doing God's bidding. And if you're going to be mad at anybody, be mad at God, blame God. But God can do what God wants because God has infinite wisdom and understanding.

Nemo [02:58:45] God can do. God can do what he wants. But he blessed me with the morally, with the, as Bednar would call it, moral agency. And I will make a moral judgment that God shouldn't have done that. If that wants to be the argument, you know, you can say, yeah, God can do what he wants and people are free to disagree with God's decisions.

Samantha Shelley [02:59:03] And it's hard to believe that an all knowing, loving God would demand things happen that look so much like child abuse and grooming and human trafficking. Like I've said it before, but it's like God just has horrible PR senses. If that, if that is like, there's surely better ways to do it, whatever his purposes even were, than creating a system that looks exactly like child abuse a lot of the time.

John Dehlin [02:59:34] Not just a PR problem. God's a monster. If God is commanding and he doesn't, God does it. Mormon God doesn't have the power to go to Helen Mark Kimball or to go to, you know, Sarah, what, Sarah Whitney? Is that her name? To go to Emma Mormon God doesn't have the power to actually tell the women this is what they should do. It's always filtered through Joseph. So why is God's power limited? It would have been so much better if God could have just appeared to all the women and all the men involved. And explicitly, as explicitly as Joseph claimed, he and, you know, God and Jesus told Joseph to start the one true church.

John Dehlin [03:00:15] As explicitly as Joseph claimed. Moroni told Joseph Smith to go find the gold plates. Why didn't God have the power or the respect to personally appear to these women and tell them what he wanted them to do? Why did he require Joseph, you know, someone with a vested interest, someone with a dual, you know, interest in this relationship. Why was it Joseph who always had to communicate, you know, God's will to these women?

John Dehlin [03:00:49] I just defy anyone to tell me what is the meaningful difference, you know, between David Koresh, Keith Ranieri, Warren Jess, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, pick your cult leader, L. Ron Hubbard, David Miskovich. Tell me the meaningful difference between any of those cult leaders and Joseph Smith's behavior. And in all of those cases, it's God that becomes the monster. And I just want to ask the orthodox Mormon, do you want to believe in that type of God, the Mormon God?

Nemo [03:01:25] Because God is the ultimate scapegoat, because he's unquestionable. These men can turn around and say, well, God made me do it. And no one can turn around and go and ask God if he did or not. It's almost as simple as that right, you can't prove that. Exactly. Yeah. Prove a negative.

John Dehlin [03:01:39] Were we getting snaps from you, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [03:01:42] I thought you. Yeah, you made an amazing point just then. I love it. Why would God need it to look exactly like X Exploitation? Exactly. Out of the same playbook as every other cult leader who abused women and children. Bit suspicious. Feels like he could have done it a different way.

John Dehlin [03:01:56] And of course an apologetic Mormon is going to say, well that's the trial of the faith, right? That's the Abrahamic test, right. That God requires an Abrahamic sacrifice like unto Abraham having to kill his son Isaac. Of course, all in Abrahamic test, right.

Nemo [03:02:14] The key difference there is that God went, oh yeah, but here's an innocent animal you can slaughter instead. I mean it's a whole different problem. But you know, no one thinks of the ram, do they?

John Dehlin [03:02:23] But Samantha thinks of the ram. We know Samantha thinks of the ram.

Nemo [03:02:27] We're going peak vegan tonight, guys. But the actual issue really is that God said, right, okay, don't actually kill your son. Whereas God said, oh no, actually do hand over your 14 year old to Joseph Smith. So there's no Abrahamic test of faith here. God could, God could have done an Abrahamic test of faith and then found out that he was he Kimball was willing and then said but you don't actually have to. But no, it happens.

John Dehlin [03:02:50] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [03:02:50] And let's say someone fails the test of faith because they're like this looks exactly like child grooming and human trafficking. And I'm not okay with that. What kind of all loving God would count that against you? Like oh, this Homo sapiens who I have endowed with reason and the, you know, the ability to, to think critically, has looked at this, compared it to other situations of abuse and grooming and exploitation, determined that it looks exactly the same and is morally repulsed by that and therefore has stepped away from Joseph Smith in this organization. Like how could a loving, all knowing God have any beef with you for that? Like that's a strong moral code. Why does he want the people that are willing to stand idly by while racism and child grooming and human trafficking is happening? Because like oh God said so.

Nemo [03:03:31] Because unfortunately within that God's paradigm, that isn't the moral position. The moral position justifies child grooming and, and all these bad things to happen because God does in, in these scriptures justifies the murder of a man who can't defend himself. So his clothes can be stolen, you know, and, and plates can be taken and all these sorts of things. So the, the answer to that argument, I guess, Sam, would be that we view it as a moral position, but God doesn't necessarily view it as a moral position. So he wouldn't applaud you for having coming to that conclusion because the conclusion didn't come from him saying so.

Samantha Shelley [03:04:07] Bit of a narcissist?

Nemo [03:04:08] Little bit, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:04:10] Mormon. So many people. You know, I'm often asked, why do so many ex, you know, Mormons leave Mormonism and stop believing in God and Jesus altogether? It's, it's because Mormon history, Mormon doctrine, Mormon theology ruins God and Jesus for so many people, I think.

Samantha Shelley [03:04:30] And the same critical thinking skills that get you out of Mormonism can get you out of Christianity too. The Bible is an ethical nightmare and

John Dehlin [03:04:39] an ahistorical nightmare, but Mormon God is particularly problematic. I mean, he takes Old Testament, he. It's weird because Mormon God is supposed to be Jesus and yet Mormon God is about as Old Testament of an unethical God as you as you could experience.

Nemo [03:04:57] It's weirdly like when Jesus is down here in a body and having to suffer like the rest of us. He's all nice and kind and compassionate and be nice to everyone, but the moment he's up in the clouds and he's got his, you know, his distance between us, he just becomes pretty vindictive.

Samantha Shelley [03:05:10] Up in his ivory towers.

Nemo [03:05:12] Yeah, right. So when he's down with the plebs, he, he's all like, oh, be nice to each other because, you know, he wants people to be nice to him too. But yeah, when he's up in the ivory tower. Exactly, Sam. He just smites people and he's like, oh well, no, go do this, you know, go and traffic a 14 year old. Thus saith me, you know, I'm gonna kill all the firstborn children in a country just because I want you to, to give special privilege to a group of my people that you're not being very nice to.

John Dehlin [03:05:38] I'll shout out a quick comment. Coco B Writes. John, your podcast yesterday was excellent. Love the idea. Go big love. We interviewed a woman named Celeste who talked about, you know, losing the Mormon God and then sort of discovering her own God. Her name was Celeste Davis. But that's a really profound episode. It's not as salacious as, you know, this episode about Joseph Smith and sex trafficking. But if you want to hear someone explore the idea of a God that's more palatable or of a spirituality that's more powerful, I recommend my two part series with Celeste Davis. All right, well, this has been an amazing panel.

John Dehlin [03:06:23] We were able to do it in around three hours instead of four. I commend us all for our discipline. I want to give everyone a chance to kind of plug whatever it is that they want to plug in because, you know, we, we really appreciate other contributors and it's a priority on Mormon stories to support the work of other contributors. So Sammy, please plug both your life coaching work and Zelf on the shelf.

Nemo [03:06:47] Shamelessly plug it, Sam.

John Dehlin [03:06:49] Shamelessly plug.

Samantha Shelley [03:06:50] Yeah. So I am a faith transitions coach. If you're interested in that, you can go to samanthshelleycoaching.com and that's Shelley with an EY.

John Dehlin [03:06:58] Samantha Shelley with an EY.

Samantha Shelley [03:07:00] You can also find me on Instagram at thesam Bow and all my links are there. I co host self on the shelf on YouTube. You should definitely check us out and subscribe. And we also have a community on patreon of about 700 people, which is just a nice, like, more insular community where we can support each other. And me and Hannah read 80s Mormon fiction there every week. So it's a really good time.

John Dehlin [03:07:24] All right, Samantha, it's so great to have you back. I hope you'll come back again. You know we adore you. Yeah, thank you. All right, Nemo, tell us about Nemo the Mormon and how they can support you.

Nemo [03:07:36] First, if you like the me, John and Sam energy, you should definitely check out a video on Self on the Shelf's channel, which is us roasting John de Lin.

Julia [03:07:43] I just want to give one of

Samantha Shelley [03:07:44] the best videos that has ever existed in the X Mormon space. I don't say that lightly. When I'm feeling down, I watch that video because I just think the vibes are immaculate. It's so funny. There's a lot of people unhinged. You don't know John Dylan until you've watched that video.

Nemo [03:07:59] So many people have come back to me and said, like, that's my comfort watch, you know, like I go back and watch it and it cheers me up. So definitely go check that video out.

Samantha Shelley [03:08:07] Roasting John de Lin on the Shelf channel.

Nemo [03:08:10] Yeah, it's. It's excellent. I never thought I'd have Tana Gill and sat on my lap, but there we are. You know, that happened.

Julia [03:08:18] Sausage.

Nemo [03:08:18] Immaculate sausage will be the name of my band one day. Anyway, so what I'm doing, I'm also having a bit of humor this week. The past couple of weeks I've talked about the LDS temples. You know, who builds them, who's profiting off building them. Are they being built to a sufficient quality. You know, we looked at the temples that got torn down in the east of the US because there was rampant mold problems within 20 years because someone in Utah went, oh well, we'll just design them like we design them here. But what works in a desert doesn't work in a swamp. So mold problems were rampant.

Nemo [03:08:49] But this week I'm lightening the tone a little bit and asking the question, what would happen if you furnished temples with Ikea furniture? And it's going to be a wonderful ride. We'll have a great time. So come and look at YouTube and yeah, just come over, join the, join the community.

Nemo [03:09:07] I generally do kind of investigative journalism type pieces on Mormonism, so I'll look into a topic and there'll be sources. The description is always like 90 source material. So you can come there and just have a great time. And. And I'm also on the LDS discussion series on Mormon Stories podcast, which I love being involved with and can't wait

John Dehlin [03:09:24] to do more of in the fall. And Nemo, how do people donate to you if they want to financially support your work?

Nemo [03:09:30] It's donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon. Pretty simple.

John Dehlin [03:09:34] And they can just become a monthly donor.

Julia [03:09:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] In that way financially support. Support you. Because you're always, you're trying to do this full time, right?

Nemo [03:09:41] Oh, I am doing this full time. Yeah. So it is, it is my full time job, as it were, which I love, I really enjoy. But you know, any, anything people can do to help make that more stable is always appreciated.

John Dehlin [03:09:55] Beautiful. All right, Julia, tell us about your amazing platform and your offerings.

Julia [03:10:01] Yeah, so I have a TikTok, a YouTube and an Instagram and a website, the analyzingmormonism.com and there's various donate buttons if, if you're interested. I don't, I just do all this in my spare time. I don't, I don't get paid for any of it unless someone pays me or sends me some money. But. But also we have the Adena Publishers website. Our submissions are closed until the fall, so. Because we're working on publishing some. But if you go to the bottom of adinapublishers.com you'll see our Mormon studies books that we're publishing. We have William Smith's book out already. It's on audio, it's on Amazon I think we're struggling with our printers to get it up there. But you can reach out to me if you were interested in a copy. And then our Nava Expositor will be available soon with the audio as well.

John Dehlin [03:10:42] Show it.

Julia [03:10:43] Oh, yeah, there it is.

John Dehlin [03:10:47] All right, so you can read the Navu Expositor and put it on your shelf and underline it and mark it up.

Nemo [03:10:54] Get me a copy of that.

Julia [03:10:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:10:56] And just describe again the concept of Adina Publishers. Real quick.

Julia [03:11:00] So data publishers, Our focus is to bring more LGBTQ affirming books into the world. And so that's what we're focusing on. Just anything science fiction, you know, history. I don't know anything that's under that umbrella as long as they have queer characters or good representative. So that's what we're interested in publishing. You can see all the. On our website, all what we're interested in. And so, yeah, so that's our main focus. But our. As a side thing, we're publishing out of print Mormon books that. Yeah, so we have, we've got the novel release Study Minute book. We have John, John D. Lee's Mormonism Unveiled. We have wife number 19 that we're working on. We've. We've just got a lot of stuff coming, so.

John Dehlin [03:11:38] Yeah, beautiful. All right, we'll keep up the good work, Julia. And again, thanks for your research for today's episode. We hope to have you back. And thanks to Samantha and Nemo for all the assists. I think today was a great panel, so we did good work.

Samantha Shelley [03:11:55] Yeah.

Nemo [03:11:56] Congratulatory claps.

John Dehlin [03:11:57] All right, thanks everyone. And thanks to Maven for moderating the comments and always doing the time codes and show notes. We really appreciate all the work that Maven does. Gerardo for the thumbnails, Brooklyn for the video editing, and of course, the Open Storage foundation board.

John Dehlin [03:12:14] Clint Martin and Kerry Whitbeck. They keep us alive and keep us functioning. Thanks to all our viewers. Thanks to all the commenters. Thanks to everyone who donated through the Super Chat features today. I forgot to mention one Leaders writes. Big thanks to all you creators. I really think conservative religious America would abandon tolerance of Mormonism if they knew this early history.

John Dehlin [03:12:36] Thanks to everyone who donated through the Super Chat features today. Also, I just want to thank our rank and file donors. Those who go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button to become monthly donors. That's sustainable. Monthly revenue is what allows us to hire staff reliably and to keep them employed. So whether it's Julia or Nemo or John Larsen or Brooklyn or Gerardo or Margi or all the different people that get paid monthly through the Open Stories foundation, we're able to do that because we have monthly recurring donations that allow us to bring people on to work. So if you value this content, you're not a donor, and if you want to see it continue, all you gotta do is go to MormonStories.org, click on the donor button, sign up for a monthly donation.

John Dehlin [03:13:27] We're transparent in our finances. We release our 990s every year as we're required. We do our best to provide you with as much transparency as we can about what we're doing. And we do our best to make sure that, that all the money that you donate goes to staff, goes to computers, goes to machines, ego equipment, Internet, broadband, you know, whatever it is that we do, we try and just make sure that your money is efficiently spent to promote the cause, which is to promote informed consent within Mormonism, to educate Mormons and the rest of the world about Mormon history, Mormon doctrine, Mormon theology, and then to support Mormons in faith crisis and to support those who decide they need to leave the church.

Nemo [03:14:10] And.

John Dehlin [03:14:11] And now we're surprised to learn that over half of our YouTube audience has never been Mormon. We're not just supporting Mormons and ex Mormons. We're supporting the ex Joe's Witness community, Scientology, Evangelical Christianity, Catholic, Episcopalian, Orthodox Jew. We're supply. We're supporting so many different faith traditions as well as the secular community and understanding their lives better. Because I believe that the Mormon story is the human story in, in so many ways. So thanks to everyone again for today. Join us again next time for another episode. Check out our very important interview with Radio Free Mormon that destroys any speculation as to whether or not Joseph practiced polygamy.

John Dehlin [03:14:54] He absolutely did. And check out the Mormon Stories episode coming soon with Radio Free Mormon about that, as well as Mormonism Live and Radio Free Mormon podcasts and just all the things. Love you guys. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.