The Smoot agreement - a matter of Congressional record (vis-a-vis ending polygamy by agreement with the US government) being entered into, and violated repeatedly and with apparent impunity by the mainstream LDS hardly qualifies as a fairy tale: those things are known matters of historical fact.
There are two people in my wife’s stake that I know of whose grandparents’ “plural marriage” vows were solemnized in a ceremony where about a half dozen such “celestial” affairs were solemnized about ten months after the agreement was signed, sealed and delivered.
Though I am certain you would rather it were a fairy tale, it is not. Nor is it anecdotal.
The woman’s testimony which I referenced - also no fairy tale. Alas, though many who were there may have wished it so. Perhaps if they just covered their ears and chanted “La-la-la-la-la-la” it would be just like none of it ever happened.
If all the Roman Catholics call the stories of the Spanish Inquisition “fairy tales” and close their eyes and chant “La-la-la-la-la”, maybe that whole ‘episode’ will never have happened either...
Ditto the bad parts of the Crusades, and the few Popes over the centuries who were bad actors rather than men of G_d...
Summary dismissal/denial - an effective coping technique (especially for all those who held their breath until they turned blue as children in order to get their way).
OMm, I cannot help but laugh - and I’m not laughing with you, I am laughing at you in this instance.
The stubborn refusal by LDS to believe that Joey-boy and Brigham Young and the other key leaders were anything other than near-perfect paragons of leadership, truthfulness, and religious virtue... flies in the face of accounts too numerous and independently verified to constitute mere anecdotes.
The only churches/religious folk that come even close to such a historical claim in my mind would be the Amish and the Mennonites.
In the interest of disclosure, I will add to this that I am not of either of those latter two persuasions, nor have I ever been. I have nothing to lose or gain by identifying the two groups.
Mormons did not “cut the mustard” from the very outset. Joey Smith is the main reason, and “Brigham the brigand” right after him as the second “Joe-Bot” in chief...
A.A.C.
Sounds like more of the same fairy tale to me.