K-TALK
LDS Apologist Van Hale on Polygamy
Van Hale hosts his own Salt Lake area radio program called "Mormon Miscellaneous."
On June 12th, 2005 Mr. Hale discussed Josph Smith's polygamy and defended
his earlier statement that sexual access was not the reason for it.
Transcript
of Van Hale's Discussion with Caller
Van
Hale June 12, 2005 radio show - First call regarding Mormon Polygamy
(from approximately 23:00 to 42:00 minutes into the show) (not completely
verbatim but as close as I can be heard. Nothing of substance has been
left out).
Caller: If polygamy
isn’t about sex, why would they marry, like, 48 wives, for example,
and if they’re not having sex then how can they produce seed,
righteous seed, if they’re not having sex?
VH: (laughs) OK, I don’t
know, I don’t know how else to say this. I’ve said it as
clearly as I have. Let me just repeat myself.
There’s a difference
between having a number of wives with the sole purpose of having extended
sexual opportunities as opposed to the idea of restoring an ancient
order and providing husbands for women and children for women who wouldn’t
have an opportunity otherwise. Can you see a difference there between
just saying well it’s all about sex for the man, sexual gratification
for the man and that is all it is about?
Caller: Well, take Joseph
for example or Brigham Young and some of the early members of the church,
the leaders in the church, the only ones allowed to have polygamy, evidently.
But take a small town, for example, which most towns were. If the prophet
gets 48 wives and the 18, 19, 20 year old boys in town, other members,
young members, they get nothing. I mean, why not let the young men have
at least one wife instead of the prophet taking say 48, for example?
Van Hale: Well, your point
is a good point but it didn’t work the way you are suggesting.
You go back in Mormon history and you don’t find young men who
wanted wives who were not able to marry because there were no women
available. The fact is that the purpose, one of the purposes in plural
marriage was to provide for women who were anxious to have a good husband
who was a priesthood holder and an active member of the church in order
to provide for them that opportunity to have a husband and to have family,
children by a good husband, a good father, that they were allowed that
opportunity through polygamy whereas they would not have been allowed
that without.
All right, let’s continue.
(Same) Caller: I have a problem.
You take a Mormon town, virtually everybody in town is Mormon and they’re
going to church and doing what they’re supposed to be doing but
the prophet gets 48 wives and the young men get none at all. I don’t
think the young men were all reprobates and didn’t deserve wives.
Van Hale: Well, you’re
repeating yourself. Let me just repeat myself and say that just simply
didn’t happen. That isn’t what happened. So you know, until
you can come up with an example to demonstrate that that happened, then
your point is without merit.
Caller: Well, I know the
same thing is happening with the polygamists today. If you read the
newspaper, the Tribune, you know it talks about their prophet Jeffs
has 50 wives and he is running the 18, 19 year old men out of town.
Van Hale: But that has no
relationship to what I’m talking about. That doesn’t have
anything to do, you’re saying the same thing is happening. The
same thing is not happening because that didn’t happen in early
Mormon communities in the 19th Century. If you can give me an example
I will entertain that. But I don’t think there is an example.
Caller: Well, when babies
are born, there are about 50% boys, 50% girls, 50/50. But if you have
the leaders of the church, only, taking 48 wives here, 20 here, 30 there,
then the numbers just tell you there is not enough left for the young
men.
Van Hale: Well, what I am
telling you though is that is not what happened. That isn’t the
case. For one thing, a number of the wives that Brigham Young had, for
example - I don’t know to whom you’re referring with the
48 wives but -
Caller: Joseph Smith.
Van Hale: Well, Joseph Smith
(laughs) Joseph Smith didn’t have 48 wives in the sense that we
are talking about.
Caller: He had 48 that they
can document, that he actually had relations with. I mean, the church
historians aren’t saying, well, he had more than that but they’re
not really counting the ones that were sealed to him after he was dead,
of course. But he had 48 that they know the names, dates and so on.
Van Hale: Well, I don’t
know, you know the figures vary depending upon different researchers,
but the better research doesn’t place the number that high, doesn’t
place the number nearly that high and also the uh, but the way that
polygamy worked, I’m not aware of a single instance, I have never,
you know, I’m not saying it’s not possible, I’m just
saying it has never come out in the extensive study of polygamy that
I have done over the years of anyone, any young man in any town complaining
that there is no-one for him to marry, anyone that wanted to get married.
Nobody, I, what you are doing
is you are presenting something as hypothetical and you are saying well
the numbers would show this that and the other but the fact is that
it just to my knowledge never happened and until you have an example
to demonstrate that, I can’t even see how I can address your point.
There were not very many Latter Day Saint leaders who had 48 wives in
the first place. The vast majority of polygamists had 2 wives. The vast
majority. When you take someone like Brigham Young and his wives, a
substantial number of Brigham Young’s wives were wives that were
not, that no young man in Salt Lake City would have married anyway.
They were women who didn’t have, who had lost their husbands or
they had emigrated and they were not of marriageable age. Your point
would be a good one theoretically, but it’s only theoretical.
Caller: Maybe a lot of the
young men didn’t want to get married.
Why was polygamy such a secret
in the early church, even among the church members?
Van Hale: Well,
I think it was a secret because it was against the law.
Caller: Well, why were they
doing this against the law?
Van Hale: Well, because Joseph
Smith was given a commandment to enter into this and it was something
that, it is hard to speculate as to what would have happened had Joseph
Smith not been murdered in 1844.
Caller: Polygamy is what
got him murdered too.
Van Hale: No it’s not.
No, it wasn’t.
Caller: Well, when the local
Expositor press was printing things about polygamy and so on and he
orders the printing press and the office destroyed and then they arrest
him for destroying the office and he was in jail and then the mob came
and killed him but he was in jail because of destroying the press because
they were exposing polygamy.
Van Hale: Well, you can assemble
things that way. It was a very complex situation. But by far, by far,
without even a close second, the major problem and the major reason
that Joseph Smith was killed had to do with the politics in the state.
It had nothing to do with believing in baptism by immersion or baptism
for the dead or polygamy. It didn’t have anything really to do
with that. The reason that there were people that wanted the Mormons
out of there and wanted Joseph Smith dead had to do with the fact that
the Latter Day Saints were gathering and they held the political balance
in Illinois and that was the problem they had faced in Missouri. It
was the fact of gathering together.
If Joseph Smith and three
other families were living in Illinois and they each had 15 wives nobody
would have been out to kill them or anything you know, it wasn’t
about that. It’s a mistake to get that in your mind. If you go
back and read historical sources it’s clear and obvious that the
real issue that led to Joseph Smith’s death, the primary issue,
by far, was the political issue and the fact that they were gathered
there in large numbers.
So you know, polygamy was,
nobody got, was talking about killing anybody when the Missourians destroyed
the Mormon press in Jackson County, Missouri in 1833. Destroying a press
was not something that led, that in that time would have led to somebody
being killed for destroying a press. It wasn’t a capital crime.
It would not have been considered that by anybody. That was not the
purpose, that was not the reason why Joseph Smith was put to death,
was murdered, it was political.
So, there is, I mean, your
point, you know, I acknowledge your point. The practice of polygamy
led to some dissenters in Missouri, I mean Nauvoo, some dissenters.
That was one of the major things that led to William Law and some others
leaving the church and starting another faction in Nauvoo and opening
a press and starting to publish the Nauvoo Expositor and they were interested
in exposing Joseph Smith and his views on polygamy but also one of the
main things that they were attempting in the publication of the Nauvoo
Expositor was to get the State of Nauvoo to repeal the Nauvoo Charter,
which would have taken away the Nauvoo Legion and the protection that
uh, and the courts in Nauvoo and so on and would have resulted in a
loss of protection for the Latter Day Saints.
I have read through the original
Minutes of the council meetings that were held in Nauvoo on June 9 and
10 in which they were debating what to do about the Nauvoo Expositor
and the idea that all they were interested in was trying to cover up
polygamy was, that, that simply doesn’t come out in the debate
they were having over what to do about the Press, from the original
Minutes.
Caller: Section 132, where
it's talking about how you should espouse a virgin and then espouse
another virgin and another virgin and another virgin, that you are not
committing adultery, but according to Nauvoo temple records and various
other records from church historians, a lot of the women they married
weren’t virgins because they were already married to other men.
For example, Lucinda Morgan Harris, wife of G. W. Harris, Miranda Johnson
Hyde, wife of Orson Hyde, married when she was 24 in 1839. Of his first
dozen wives, nine of them were already married to other men, which is
adultery.
Van Hale: Well, that depends,
it certainly depends on the situation.
Caller: Well, but
if you’re already married to another living man and the man is
supporting her and she is living with him...
(commercial break)
Caller continues:
So I don’t see any reason at all why he would be marrying
wives of other living men that are still living with their husbands.
Like for example, Nancy Hyde, wife of Orson Hyde. She was 24. He married
her in 1839. (Gives several more names and ages). What was the reason?
Van Hale: These are matters
that I think need to be looked at one individual at a time but the situation
as I see on this is first of all we don’t have a substantial enough
documents and information to be able to answer quite a number of different
questions about the beginnings of polygamy and so forth and frankly
I don’t know, I don’t see within what Joseph Smith presented
an explanation of his marrying women who were married to other men if
it is your assumption that he was marrying them and that they were having
sex with their, with two different husbands. We don’t have enough
information really to sort this all out as to what was behind the whole
idea.
Caller: Well, the church
hides that information. It’s embarrassing for the church. There’s
no reason why. Family diaries, ... wife of Parley P. Pratt. There are
writings and so on in various places. Didn’t he even talk about
it in a meeting, that Joseph asked for his wife?
Van Hale: One of the things
that has come out in several different people’s testimony is that
Joseph Smith was doing this as a test. I don’t know quite what
to make of all that but the assumption that you are operating on is
that these marriages of Joseph Smith to women that were married to other
men that those marriages were something more than, than a marriage to
meet some particular principle or concept and that it was, in fact,
a marriage that involved sexuality. I don’t know whether that
is correct or not. Joseph Smith had a point of view on polygamy that
extended beyond this life. He believed in plural marriage that was something
that would extend on into the eternities and there were individuals
who were married to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and others who were
married to them only for eternity which had nothing to do with any sexual
union here on earth. Now I simply don’t know what the situation
was.
Caller: How many husbands
does a woman need on the other side? Parley P. Pratt, I think he could
take care of his wife and I think Heber C. Kimball could take care of
Helen Kimball but instead he married Heber C. Kimball’s. According
to church historians, for example, Andrew Jensen, formerly assistant
historian of the Utah Mormon Church, listed 27 wives in the historical
record. There’s 27, Orson…
Van Hale (interrupting):
OK. I really need to move along because I have other people waiting.
I think I have your point. You’ve made it and repeated it several
times. The fact is that Joseph Smith had more wives than one, the fact
is that he also entered into marriages with some women who were already
married. I don’t know quite how to fit that into the theology
of plural marriage if, in fact, I am assuming that there is something
that would explain this and make this understandable from Joseph Smith’s
point of view if we had more information but I don’t know,
I simply don’t know what the rationale was behind Joseph Smith
marrying these wives of other men except along the line of
thought that they were married to one man for eternity, er, for time
and to Joseph Smith for eternity.
Caller: And Heber C. Kimball
and Parley Pratt…
Van Hale (interrupting):
OK, let’s move along. We’ve been talking about polygamy
here a bit. Let me begin the second hour by going to an email I received
a while ago.
Reads and discusses email.
(now at approximately 42:00 minutes out of a 2 hour program).
More
on Mormon Polygamy Here
Mormon
Van Hale