January 2013

Happy New Year everyone. May 2013 keep us all free from delusion and lies.

During my research, it became abundantly clear over and again that the leaders of the LDS Church continue in a conspiracy to deceive rank and file Mormons to this day. There is no integrity at all. Even when fully evidenced truth is discovered and reported, it is largely ignored rather than faced, accepted and dealt with honestly. This is probably because that has been the way of things from the beginning. Here’s just one example of a prophet’s idea of personal integrity, which also epitomises the early Mormon male attitude toward women.

Snippets from The Mormon Delusion (Vol. 1:50-52): Brigham Young’s idea of integrity.

“To give an example of the arrogance and the attitude of Mormon men towards their wives, we need look no further than Brigham Young himself, in his treatment of one of his own wives, Ann Eliza Webb. She was one of a number of women who, when they could take no more of the principle [of polygamy] in practice, asked for a divorce. Young made her an offer but knowing his wealth, it was not as much as she felt she deserved, so she took him to court.

From that moment, Ann was never going to get any money from Brigham. When someone crossed Brigham Young, they didn’t always live to tell the tale. Although he was not in the habit of having wives ‘used up’ (killed), Young would not pay her a penny under any circumstances, once she took him to court, whether he was legally required to or not. He was a law unto himself until the day he died, not once taking any notice of anything he himself had not adjudged correct.

On 25 February 1875, Young was ordered by the court to pay $3,000 for Ann’s court costs and $500 a month in alimony. Young, despite the court ruling, did not make the payments and was then sentenced to a fine of $25 and had to spend one day in jail. That caused him no real discomfort as he was taken home for lunch and given a room in the warden’s office for the night. Even after that, Young refused to make any of the payments that the court had awarded.

At the appeal trial in April 1877, Young took a course of action that showed the true measure of the man and the chauvinistic attitude prevailing among the men generally. He actually had the gall to publicly declare that as the marriage was polygamous, it was not legal in the first place. He argued he could not therefore, in law, be adjudged responsible for alimony. The judge really had no alternative but to agree, as the marriage was indeed illegal and in essence just an ecclesiastical arrangement, so judgement for alimony could not be made. The judge decreed that the polygamous marriage was void in law, annulled the order for alimony, and assessed the costs against Ann.

The Deseret News reported on 12 May 1875 that Judge David B. Lowe had set aside the order, then amounting to unpaid alimony in the sum of $9,500, on the basis that alimony could not be awarded unless a valid marriage existed. As Ann could not deny that her marriage was indeed polygamous and therefore illegal, it was accepted as a fact by the judge. That was Young’s way. Women had no rights, but polygamous wives are here evidenced as having no security either.

Young had preached that if a wife wanted to leave, the husband should give her all he could and set her free. In his own case he manipulated the legal system in his own favour in order to avoid his responsibility and he gave his ex-wife Ann absolutely nothing.

Young showed no care or any sense of responsibility for his ex-wife, just concern for his money. He had actually used as his argument, the fact that polygamy was illegal. In other circumstances he had argued just the opposite, constantly blaming the United States for infringing his legal rights to religious freedom in marrying multiple wives. Brigham Young ignored the doctrine that polygamy was theologically legal, and even required in the sight of his God, in order to escape his obligation to pay alimony. If an epitome of rationalisation was ever required, never was there a better example than this. Instead of at least giving Ann what he had originally offered, prior to the first court hearing, he never paid her anything. And this man was supposedly a prophet of God.

Instead of being a good man with integrity, Young turned his back on his ex-wife and left her penniless and with costs to pay, reneging on his conviction that polygamy was of God. Instead, he declared it illegal rather than arguing in favour of it being accepted, simply because it would have otherwise meant he had to pay what was actually due to his ex-wife. The convenient legal position and Young’s complete lack of integrity was used just for the sake of his pride and more importantly, for his wallet. Ann sold her furniture, moved away and wrote a book, Wife No. 19 (Young 1876), exposing polygamy for what it really was.

So many women gave up everything, including true love, for the sake of a religious ideal. In return it gave them nothing but loneliness and misery in this life and empty promises in the next. The women of early Mormonism were trapped in an environment which many despised and most just endured. There was no way out for them. Many deserved better treatment than they received at the hands of husbands who often became cold and heartless in their approach to earlier wives, as soon as a new and younger one came along.

Claims that polygamy was a divine institution which was successfully and gloriously employed to the happiness of all involved immediately dissolve when the reality of the plight and misery of many of these women is exposed.”