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. Every sealing -- eternity-only, dynastic, time-and-eternity -- is treated as the same thing: a sexual marriage.
The women sealed to Joseph are treated as silent victims. Their extensive testimonies never appear. The theological framework behind the sealings is never explained.
The CES Letter closes by arguing that Joseph's "pattern of behavior" should make readers doubt everything else -- Book of Abraham, First Vision, Book of Mormon.[3] Polygamy becomes the lens through which all other truth claims are discredited.
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.[4] During the same period, Joseph fathered nine children with Emma.
Six named individuals have been tested. All negative. The strongest candidate -- Josephine Lyon Fisher, whose mother Sylvia reportedly confessed on her deathbed -- was proven by autosomal DNA to be her legal father's daughter.
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. This is physical evidence, not theological argument.
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.
Helen Mar Kimball -- the 14-year-old the CES Letter uses for shock value -- published two books defending plural marriage as an adult: Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph (1882) and Why We Practice Plural Marriage (1884).[5] The CES Letter quotes her adolescent distress but never her adult convictions.
Lucy Walker testified to her agency and spiritual confirmation. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner bore testimony of the divine origin of her sealing to the end of her life.
None of the approximately 35 women sealed to Joseph ever publicly accused him of wrongdoing -- including women who later left the Church.[6] If these women were victims, they didn't know it. And they had decades of 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?"[7]
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. No children. No change in domestic arrangements.[8]
Several husbands actively participated. Edward Sayers arranged his wife's sealing himself. Jonathan Holmes stood as proxy in the temple resealing. Henry Jacobs remained a faithful Church member.
Joseph's own enemies -- John C. Bennett, William Law -- never accused him of sexual polyandry. They would have if they could, since it would have been the most devastating possible charge.
Don Bradley's revised chronology shows Joseph's first Nauvoo sealings were to already-married women -- including one who was six months pregnant.[9] If his motive were sexual, he would have started with available single women. He started with the least sexually available women possible.
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."[10]
Five women declined proposals and Joseph accepted their refusals without retaliation. The angel threatened Joseph, not the women. No woman was coerced, isolated, or punished.
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 -- and who treated the women's agency as non-negotiable even when he believed his own life was at stake.
D&C 132 doesn't read like self-serving fraud
The CES Letter cherry-picks D&C 132 to make it look like Joseph violated his own revelation. It reads the consent requirement (v. 61) without the exception clause (vv. 64-65). It reads the "virgin" requirement as comprehensive when the revelation's own example -- Abraham and Hagar -- involves a non-virgin.[11]
Here's the deeper problem with the fraud theory: if Joseph were inventing rules to justify his behavior, the text should match his practice exactly. It doesn't. The revelation condemns sexual polyandry three separate times (vv. 41-42, 63). The gaps between the text and Joseph's practice suggest a man receiving revelation within a developing theological framework, not a con artist writing rules he's already following.
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."[12]
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 -- accusations that distorted plural marriage into something unrecognizable. Joseph's carefully worded denials targeted Bennett's version of the charge, not the authorized practice itself.
The 1842 Times and Seasons affidavit was similarly targeted at Bennett's "spiritual wifery," not at celestial marriage as practiced under priesthood authority. The distinction mattered to the signers even if it feels like splitting hairs today.
But context doesn't erase the discomfort. The public denials remain the hardest piece of this topic, and honest engagement requires saying so.
The Warren Jeffs comparison collapses on contact
The CES Letter builds to a visual chart placing Joseph Smith beside Warren Jeffs.[2:1] It cherry-picks overlapping categories while omitting every category that distinguishes the two.
| 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 |
That's not comparison -- it's character assassination dressed up as analysis.
These sealings had a theology the CES Letter never mentions
Strip away the plural marriage provisions and D&C 132 still contains one of the most consequential revelations in the Restoration: marriage can endure beyond death. That doctrine is the foundation of every temple sealing performed today -- for millions of couples who will never practice plural marriage.
The Ruth Vose Sayers case is the clearest window into this theology. A faithful woman married to a non-believing husband had no path to eternal marriage under the new sealing doctrine. Her husband Edward arranged his wife's sealing to Joseph for eternity, because he himself could only claim her in this life.[13]
That's not predation. That's a family trying to solve a problem about eternity -- and the husband initiating the solution.
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, 59. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," pp. 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). ↩︎
Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882); Why We Practice Plural Marriage (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884). ↩︎
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?" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (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). 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. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 132:41-42, 61, 63-65. The revelation condemns unauthorized sexual relationships, includes an exception clause for spousal consent, and uses the Abraham/Hagar example involving a non-virgin. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Polygamy | Polyandry," pp. 57-58, quoting History of the Church 6:411. ↩︎
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 for eternity. ↩︎