I adore monogamy.
But because of my writings, from time to time I am contacted by someone (usually associated with the apostate Snuffer movement) who tries to convince me that Church historians and particularly Brian Hales are wrong about Joseph Smith teaching plural marriage.
Because Snuffer trained to be a lawyer, the folks who contact me try to wrap their reasoning in legalistic terms. But it’s a problem to try to argue history with someone (like me) who actually knows the source documents. Monogamists arguments take license with truth. They often take gross license with the truth. They depend on you being too stupid and uninformed to know that they are lying.
I have already excoriated one variant of the Monogamists’ attempt to re-write history (Commentary on Joseph Smith’s Monogamy, 2015).
But here’s the point, and why monogamy had to be removed as a requirement for eternal marriages:
Insisting on monogamy when doing temple work for the dead would result in excluding numerous women and their children. Maybe many of us are lucky enough that our ancestors were never married to more than one spouse over the course of their entire lives. But even if there were just one woman in a million who married a widower with children and then proceeded to conceive that man’s children, this would be sufficient for ensuring we didn’t insist on monogamy when we perform temple work for the deceased billions of mankind.
Maybe once we all get to heaven it might turn out that there are more men that women. But the point is that we need to make sure we do all the ordinances for everyone in this life. Insisting on monogamy when sealing up our dead would leave far too many women and children without their saving ordinances.
Please don’t be ignorant and stupid. Lovingly allow for all the ladies and their kiddos to be sealed into the family of mankind. Don’t throw off the gospel because of any reason. But particularly don’t throw off the gospel because of this monogamist silliness.
Pretend I was as eloquent about the evils of folks insisting on monogamy as Mormon was about folks baptizing their infants (Moroni 8). Except for the part where Mormon uses words like hell. My autistic daughter gets very upset with me when I say words like hell.
End of rant. For now.