"How could you convert knowing these things!?"

, screamed my mother last night on the phone. She was referring to the fact that Joseph Smith (the first Prophet of the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) practiced polygamy for a while. Apparently my mother has been operating under the false pretense for over 2 years that I converted in ignorance of the controversial parts of the Church's history. This realization has, as of last night, propelled my mother into a newfound state of panic and disgust, putting our relationship back by 3 years...

Since my mother is unwilling to hear explanations I would give her, I give them to my blog... in the hope that others will not think I converted in ignorance, or that I avoid the very hardest of issues.

http://www.fairlds.org/Mormonism_201/m20117b.html

"Opposite the images of sensual appetite that McKeever and Johnson portray in relation to Joseph, plural marriage was something that Joseph himself was reluctant to practice and only did so under the threat of destruction at the hand of an angel.35 Joseph stated that "the practice of this principle would be the hardest trial the Saints would ever have to test their faith."36 He was not alone in his feelings. Upon learning of plural marriage, Brigham Young said that "it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin."37

B.H. Roberts provides a concise and basic understanding on what was involved and expected in the practice of plural marriage:

The Saints did not accept into their faith and practice the plural-wife system with the idea that it increased the comfort, or added to the ease of anyone. From the first it was known to involve sacrifice, to make a large demand upon the faith, patience, hope and charity of all who should attempt to carry out its requirements. Its introduction was not a call to ease or pleasure, but to religious duty; it was not an invitation to self-indulgence, but to self-conquest; its purpose was not earth-happiness, but earth-life discipline, undertaken in the interest of special advantages for succeeding generations of men."..."It was indeed a principle of religion to them, a holy sacrament, and not at all designed to become a general practice under merely human laws. It is unfortunate that the world outside of the Church was not impressed with this phase of the subject; for then it would have been apparent that the things the world argued against and fought against--a general plural marriage system free for all to adopt, considered to be destructive of the monogamous system and the menace to the home itself--was not the thing upheld and contended for by the Latter-day Saints, who believed that the privilege of plural marriage is to be limited to persons of high character, approved lives, and living under the most sacred obligations to chastity, and granted this privilege of the marriage system only under the most carefully guarded permission amounting to divine sanction.38

Again, plural marriage was a matter of principle, revelation, and obedience; not lustful "errant yearnings," "extra-marital romantic liaisons," or "affairs," as portrayed by McKeever and Johnson. With this basis in mind, the following marital issues that are addressed become more clearly understood."

Historical accounts from the period say that very many members of the Church left, because the commandment was too difficult and disgusting to them. They were just like we are now... accustomed to monogamy, and believing polygamy to be evil and base. Joseph Smith actually received the revelation for polygamy years before he announced it, he disliked it so much.

Other than that, let me make it very clear that polygamy was revoked, and when "mormon polygamists" are mentioned in the news or on the radio, they are using "mormon" incorrectly. There are offshoots of the Church who continue practicing polygamy but all are excommunicated and are not associated with the Church.

*Phew*