Did Joseph Smith Have Sex With His Plural Wives? | LDS Discussions 62 | Ep. 1992

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2025

⏱️ 201 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many have asked the question: Did Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith have sex with his polygamous wives? During his lifetime, Joseph Smith engaged in polygamy (which was illegal in the state of Illinois) and his wives consisted of women who were underage, women who were single, women who were widowed, and women who were already legally married. What is the evidence for his sexual relations with them? Additionally a number of the brethren were also commanded to live polygamy, what is the evidence for sexual relations in those unions? Were any children born in polygamy during the prophet’s life? Join us for a unique LDS Discussions episode where we explore these topics and answer these questions.

Show Notes

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00:10:50 The purpose of polygamy from the scriptures - Book of Mormon Jacob 2:27-30

00:14:05 List of all 35 of Joseph Smith’s wives

00:19:45 Color coded list of the wives and sexual relations with Joseph Smith

00:26:55 Fanny Alger was Joseph Smith’s first “polygamous” wife

00:32:45 Lucinda Pendleton Harris was the first polyandrous wife

00:38:20 Zina Huntington was already married and was seven months pregnant

00:45:30 Presendia Buell didn’t know if her son was Joseph’s son

00:49:42 Levirate Marriage with Agnes Smith, Joseph Smith’s sister-in-law

00:58:44 Sylvia Sessions Lyon thought her daughter was actually Joseph Smith’s

01:01:15 How can the Mormon polygamy deniers explain this away?

01:12:40 Elizabeth Durfee helped Joseph arrange new plural marriages

01:19:00 Did Emma Smith push Eliza R. Snow down the stairs?

01:22:26 Clip - Emma Smith did not attend Relief Society through all of 1843

01:30:06 Sarah Ann Whitney had a fake or “front husband” after she married Joseph Smith

01:38:00 Joseph Smith visited Flora Ann Woodworth often

01:54:50 Lucy Walker answers the question of why Joseph Smith didn’t have children in polygamy

02:05:36 Helen Mar Kimball was only fourteen years old

02:25:50 Desdemona Fullmer dreamed that Emma was going to poison her

02:36:40 Malissa Lott’s testimony that she slept with Joseph Smith

02:46:10 Human Trafficking in Mormon history

03:03:10 Children born into polygamy

03:08:52 The final count for who Joseph Smith had sex with and who he did not

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions
0:04.9	Edition. It's February 13th, almost Valentine's Day. I'm not sure if that's a yuck or a yum
0:10.7	for today's episode, probably a yuck. But today we're going to cover a really important topic.
0:18.3	The topic is, did Joseph Smith have sex with his plural wives?
0:23.2	And this is important for a number of reasons. We just did an episode with responding to
0:30.7	Mormon historian and apologist Keith Erickson, where he tried to make the argument that
0:35.8	many, many of Joseph's polygamous marriages,
0:39.7	especially the polyandrous ones,
0:42.4	or where the women were already married to other men,
0:45.1	that he did not have sex with them.
0:47.1	It's just a typical apologetic Mormon tact
0:49.9	to try and minimize or downplay Joseph Smith's of plural marriage or polygamous sex
0:58.8	while not acknowledging at the same time that every other prophet and apostle
1:04.8	and man called a polygamy until polygamy ended around 1910 or
1:10.8	1915 they were all having sex
1:12.9	with their plural wives and having babies
1:14.5	why would Joseph be any different but that's
1:16.8	getting ahead of ourselves here but the reason
1:19.1	why today is really important is we are
1:21.4	going to bring the receipts we're going to
1:23.7	go through all I don't know 34-ish
1:26.6	of Joseph Smith's wives and we're going to go through all, I don't know, 34-ish of Joseph Smith's wives, and we're going to give a rating, a red, a green, or a yellow rating for whether or not we think it's pretty certain that Joseph Smith had sex with those poor wives, probable or likely, but not certain, or we have good information
	...

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