You need to look here. You are being misled as is obvious by your worn out propaganda.
Here’s a few links to get your started from a different viewpoint. I have found that the vast majority of the “issues” brought up in the anti-Mormon propaganda can be found and addressed at http://www.fairlds.org/ but here’s more:
http://scriptures.lds.org/
http://www.lds.org
http://www.fairlds.org/
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/
http://www.mormonwiki.com/Main_Page
http://www.lightplanet.com/response/index.html
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDS_Intro.shtml
http://www.answeringantimormons.com/index.htm
http://promormon.blogspot.com/
Have a great night! Study and pray!
FAIL.
Paragon Defender, I respectfully disagree that the Mormon-related 'issues' that are so frequently discussed on Free Republic are addressed appropriately at the websites you always post. I also question your use of the term 'propaganda' when describing any discussion that includes unflattering quotes from LDS leaders, LDS publications, or historical events.
This is only my third post on an LDS-related FR thread. The first concerned the difference between LDS Scouting, under its Green Book as permitted by the BSA and the 1913 agreement between the BSA and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and traditional Scouting, a topic on which I am well-versed.
The second occurred on a recent rainy Saturday or Sunday and went unnoticed by the normal posters on similar topics, including those who perhaps show excess glee in pointing out elements of LDS doctrine and history that they find offensive or humorous.
I am an agnostic (which is permitted in the BSA, as I believe in a Supreme Being). I did not try to convert you.
I mentioned that I have read the Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, Doctrines & Covenants, and other LDS writings, including sermons in the Deseret News. I've also spend most of two days in the home of Mormon apostates Gerald and Sandra Tanner in the late 1980s, to learn about the Mountain Meadows Massacre (I lost a relative there, was working on my family history in Salt Lake City, and went to visit them; they are . . . interesting). I've also studied history of the early church as written by LDS-historians and non-LDS-historians, both religious and secular.
I asked a single question in respectful terms: why does the official website of the LDS church, www.lds.org indicate that Joseph Smith had only one wife, when he practiced polygamy? You pointed me to a two- or three-sentence description of the history of polygamy on the website which said, essentially, that God had revealed the doctrine of polygamy to Smith around 1831, but it was controversial, so it wasn't fully revealed to anyone except a few church leaders nor widely practiced until the Mormons moved west.
I responded that it didn't seem to be a particularly complete answer. Polygamy was a major factor in the LDS church moving west and in the unrest between the LDS church and non-LDS residents in Missouri and Illinois. Historians believe Smith had 40 wives or more, which makes polygamy like a wide practice before Utah - at least for Smith (others LDS leaders had multiple wives, too), and that Smith took as wives the wives of married men, or sent LDS men on missions and took their wives as men (some of the women wrote diaries or books about being taken as Smith's wife when they were already married), and that destruction of the printing press that published an editorial about Smith's polygamy is what led to Smith's imprisonment and death. Members of the church, including witnesses to the Book of Mormon, had left the church over polygamy. Anti-polygamy was preached at a time when polygamy was praciced. These are simply facts. It seemed as though leaving out so much information made the official website explanation of polygamy and the biography of Smith having only one wife incomplete at best and at worst misleading. The Mormons headed west so they could practice their religion in peace, and ONE of things they wanted to be able to practice in peace was polygamy. It was a factor in heading west.
Your response was swift.
You called me a propagandist.
There was no discussion of whether my facts were true. You made no attempt to lead me to historical sources to dispute what I understood. It was simply a case that if I was going to state historical facts that raised any questions about the purity of Joseph Smith or shined a light on the confusion regarding even one issue in the church's past - then I was a propagandist.
Asking questions about facts isn't propaganda.
I was offended.
If there's any propaganda going on, its the LDS website doing things like publishing an official biography of Joseph Smith that lists him as having only one wife, or brushing by polygamy in two or three sentences. It's propaganda by omission.
The term "McCarthyite" is misused - a slur created by the left, because there were communists in the State Department and everywhere McCarthy said they existed. Always screaming "Propaganda" and "Propagandist" appear to be like screaming "McCarthyite!" If somebody dares point out an inconvenient part of the LDS church history, or the writings or quotes of its leaders, or a part of LDS doctrine that may seem odd to Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, etc., directing them to websites that offer carefully written and incomplete answers (particularly ones that use the same words that are used by other faiths, without disclosing that those words have different definitions than used by those other faiths), and then screaming "propaganda" if they dare post quotes by LDS leaders that don't mesh with the LDS church's current "hey there, buddy, we're just like you" stance, is getting old.
Even for those of us who aren't trying to convert you. Or any Mormon.