Appearance
Polygamy & Polyandry
This is the CES Letter's most emotionally charged section. It opens with raw numbers -- "34 women," "11 married to other men," "a 14-year-old" -- stacked for maximum shock.[1] It ends with a side-by-side chart comparing Joseph Smith to convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs.[2]
The strategy is deliberate: pile outrage on top of outrage until the reader can't think straight. The women sealed to Joseph are treated as silent victims. Their extensive testimonies never appear.
What does the evidence show when you set the framing aside?
The number that should end the "sexual predator" argument
Zero.
That's the number of confirmed children Joseph Smith fathered with any plural wife. Every testable case of alleged offspring has been ruled out by peer-reviewed DNA testing.[3] During the same period, Joseph fathered nine children with Emma.
A man with 30+ "wives" who produces zero children with any of them while fathering nine with his legal wife does not fit the profile the CES Letter is building.
The women the CES Letter won't let you hear from
The CES Letter talks about Joseph's plural wives. It never lets them speak.
None of the approximately 35 women sealed to Joseph ever publicly accused him of wrongdoing -- including women who later left the Church. Helen Mar Kimball became one of plural marriage's most articulate published defenders. Lucy Walker testified to her agency and spiritual confirmation. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner bore testimony of the divine origin of her sealing.[4]
If these women were victims, they didn't know it. And they had every opportunity to say so.
Polyandry looks different when you check the details
The CES Letter dismisses the eternity-only framework with an emotional appeal:
"How is not having sex with a living man's wife on earth only to take her from him in the eternities to be one of your forty wives any better or any less immoral?"[5]
That sidesteps what actually happened. Every woman sealed to Joseph while married to another man continued living with her legal husband. No cohabitation with Joseph. No separation from the first husband. Several husbands actively participated -- Edward Sayers arranged his wife's sealing himself; Jonathan Holmes stood as proxy.[6]
Don Bradley's revised chronology shows Joseph's first Nauvoo sealings were to already-married women -- including one who was pregnant.[7] If his motive were sexual, he would have started with available single women. The sequence points to religious motivation, not sexual.
Twenty accounts of a man who didn't want this
A predator seeks victims. Joseph resisted for years.
Approximately twenty independent reminiscences describe Joseph's encounters with the angel commanding plural marriage. They tell a consistent story: he "put it off," "foresaw the trouble that would follow," and "would have shrunk from the undertaking." Five women declined proposals and Joseph accepted their refusals without retaliation.[8]
The CES Letter needs Joseph to be Warren Jeffs. The evidence shows a man who agonized over the command for years before acting on it.
The public denials are the hardest part
The CES Letter quotes Joseph saying in May 1844: "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one."[9]
This is genuinely difficult. Joseph had secretly taken plural wives by this point.
The denials require context. Joseph was combating John C. Bennett's public accusations of sexual license, which distorted plural marriage into something unrecognizable. Joseph's denials targeted Bennett's version, not the practice itself. D&C 132's own language condemns unauthorized sexual relationships three separate times.[10]
But context doesn't erase the problem. The denials remain the hardest piece of this topic.
The Warren Jeffs comparison collapses on contact
The CES Letter builds to a visual chart placing Joseph Smith beside Warren Jeffs.[2:1] It doesn't survive five minutes of examination.
| Joseph Smith | Warren Jeffs | |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed children from plural wives | 0 (DNA tested) | Multiple |
| Criminal charges | None | Convicted child rapist |
| Reluctance accounts | ~20 independent sources | None |
| Living arrangements | Most wives in their own homes | Controlled compound |
| Wives' testimony | Lifelong defense | None |
The comparison is character assassination dressed up as analysis.
These sealings had a theology the CES Letter never mentions
Joseph's sealings emerged from the doctrine that family relationships persist beyond death (D&C 130:2). Eternity-only sealings to married women, dynastic sealings connecting families across generations -- these have no sexual explanation. They have a theological one.
The Ruth Vose Sayers case is the clearest window. Her non-member husband arranged his wife's sealing to Joseph so she could have an eternal companion.[11] That's not predation. That's a family trying to solve a problem about eternity.
Bottom line: The CES Letter stacks numbers, suppresses the women's voices, and ends with a Warren Jeffs chart. The DNA evidence shows zero children from plural marriages. The women themselves defended these sealings for the rest of their lives. The pattern of reluctance has no parallel in predatory behavior. This is the hardest topic in Church history -- but the evidence doesn't say what the CES Letter needs it to say.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," pp. 51-52. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," pp. 55, 58-59. ↩︎ ↩︎
Ugo A. Perego, "Joseph Smith, the Question of Polygamous Offspring, and DNA Analysis," in Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster, eds., The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2010). See also Perego et al., "Resolving the Paternities of Joseph F. Smith, Mosiah L. Hancock, and Zebulon W. Jacobs," Forensic Science International: Genetics (2019). ↩︎
Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013). See vol. 2 for extensive firsthand accounts from plural wives including Helen Mar Kimball, Lucy Walker, and Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," p. 52. ↩︎
Brian C. Hales, "Joseph Smith's Sexual Polyandry and the Emperor's New Clothes: On Closer Inspection, What Do We Find?" The Interpreter Foundation (2013). https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/joseph-smiths-sexual-polyandry-and-the-emperors-new-clothes-on-closer-inspection-what-do-we-find/ ↩︎
Don Bradley, presentation at FAIR Conference (2012); see also Bradley's interview with Ward Radio, "BOMBSHELL New Discoveries of Nauvoo Polygamy." Bradley's revised chronology identifies Joseph's earliest Nauvoo sealings as being to already-married women, including Zina Huntington Jacobs, who was six months pregnant. ↩︎
Brian C. Hales, "Encouraging Joseph Smith to Practice Plural Marriage: The Accounts of the Angel with a Drawn Sword," Mormon Historical Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 69-70. Hales documents approximately twenty independent reminiscences of the angel's command. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," pp. 57-58. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 132:41-42, 63. The revelation condemns unauthorized sexual relationships and specifically condemns sexual polyandry. ↩︎
Ruth Vose Sayers sealing documented in Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy (2013), vol. 1. Edward Sayers, a non-member, arranged his wife's sealing to Joseph so she could have an eternal companion. ↩︎