Hal Boyd, Mormon-owned DesNews this weekend:
The former are ideologically based and more common among conservative evangelicals. Usually based on vague or misinformed notions of LDS theology, these prejudices are very hard to overcome.No, we're well-informed -- to the point that some who are anti pro-keep-from-hell-Mormons even make up stories out of thin air about me that I'm an ex-Mormon missionary! :)
But, yes, I saw that Hal Boyd piece in the DesNews this weekend before you linked to it...Upon reading it, I had to say...I'm not sure when I saw a more historical-revisionist spin spun with so many outright lies and incomplete explanations than what that shame-faced wannabe journalist wrote.
The DesNews should either bump him up to the Lds, Inc. PR dept or fire him for masquerading as a journalist.
Aside from your quote from that piece of trash from the Mormon-owned newspaper, here's the portion that bothered me...Let me take it apart as it comes:
Prejudice against Mormons began when their founding prophet and president, Joseph Smith, claimed heavenly visions in upstate New York. Subsequently, he and his followers were driven from Ohio...
They were "driven" from Ohio, Mr. Boyd? Really? That's news to me! From all accounts, Joseph Smith had a bank failing and left Kirtland, Ohio in the middle of the night to avoid all those he still owed!
Mr. Hal Boyd, wannabe journalist representing the DesNews, what specifically do you mean by "driven?" Smith didn't even move his church HQ from Ohio to MO until March 1838 -- and in the 1830s -- the two "rough" short time periods the Mormons had [short in that they took place about 5 months over the calendar-years of 1833, 1838] -- Missouri was the "hot spot" -- not Ohio...unless you mean, Smith again put himself in the hot financial seat there!
I've read several chapters by Lds "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith -- Essentials in Church History + several entries on MO from Church History: Selections from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism edited by Daniel H. Ludlow...I didn't see ANY references to Smith himself being "persecuted" from a Mormon angle until Liberty Jail.
Boyd, DesNews: ...to Missouri to Illinois. After Smith's violent death in Illinois, more persecution prompted a mass exodus to the Salt Lake Valley. The flight to the Utah Territory didn't stay American prejudice; it continued with the Utah War and the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which dictated the incarceration of polygamists and the federal confiscation of Church land.
Let's see, if my memory serves me correctly, polygamy/bigamy was a criminal act in the 19th century! [What the Edmunds-Tucker Act addressed as its underlying motivator]. And the Utah War? Zakeet has done an excellent job chronicling how it was our troops who died at the hands of the Mormons with their raids of Federal cattle and food spoilage and the like! What Mormons died in the so-called "Mormon War?"
Per Sally Denton's 2003 book entitled: American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857 (Vintage Books, division from Random House), she noted what took place in Sept. 1857 -- the same exact month Mormon massacres were on the loose in Southern Utah Territory executing 120 -- including 7-yr-old twins, stealing the plunder, and kidnapping 15-17 children!
“...small guerilla forces on swift horses and under the direction of Danite chiefs William Hickman and Porter Rockwell began harassing the army. Setting fire to the government's wagons and stampeding its cattle herds, the Avenging Angels created havoc for the already demoralized American troops. On October 3 the Danites burned Fort Bridger, then set fire to the grass surrounding the army post, threatening the survival of the government's grazing lifestock. On October 5, fourty-four Danites raided an army supply train, burning the seventy-five wagons loaded with three thousand pounds of desperately needed bacon, coffee, flour, ham, and other foodstuffs, and running off fourteen hundred head of the army's cattle. The army troops moved two miles away and from the smoldering Fort Bridger established a new camp, which they named for the army's commanding general, Winfield Scott.” (Sally Denton, p. 168)
Hal Boyd, DesNews: Even after Utah's incorporation as a state in 1896, the U.S. House of Representatives still refused to seat the recently elected Mormon, B.H. Roberts.
ANY explanation at all from this sorry-excuse of a Mormon writer named Hal Boyd? Any at all offered up?
B.H. Roberts, who was a Mormon General Authority, was elected as a Democrat to represent the new state of Utah in 1898. Roberts has assumed a THIRD (count them, three) wife in 1893 -- three years AFTER the Mormons were supposed to have sequestered polygamy!
The fledgling GOP had already determined 42 years prior to that that as their social issues they would tackle the "twin relics of barbarism" -- polygamy and slavery.
The GOP of the 19th century had the fortitude to actually STAND for something, unlike the Mormon leaders, including Romney! They took it on to the degree that in 1898, 7 million Americans signed 28 banners telling Congress NOT to seat B.H. Roberts. Congress listened to the American people and didn't seat him!
Can you imagine 7 million signatures in pre-media crazed America? All on 28 banners? Can you, Mr. Boyd, comprehend the grass-roots uprising that Democrats like B.H. Roberts was provoking? Here, Mormon leadership was telling them one thing, but their leaders were tallying additional plural marriages onto the rolls!
Hal Boyd, DesNews: In the early twentieth century American-Mormon relations began to turn a corner, but only after Reed Smoot's Congressional hearings. Reed Smoot (a Mormon Apostle) was elected to the U.S. senate in 1903, yet his seating faced a three-year-long Congressional debate that included a three-day-long interrogation of Mormon Prophet Joseph F. Smith.
Ya better believe it!
Allow me to cite Ken Clark, who worked full-time for the LDS Education System for 27 years!
Lying for the Lord
The following was written by Ken Clark for MormonThink.com. Ken worked full time for the LDS Church Education System (CES) for 27 years. He also served as a bishop; a calling he enjoyed as much as full time instructor and Coordinator for the Church Education System. He loved (and still loves) the students and the ward members....
Ken gave an excellent presentation on Lying for the Lord at the 2008 ExMormon Foundation Conference in Salt Lake City. Lying for the Lord on You Tube. [indirect link]
...89. Ninety year-old President Wilford Woodruff took a new plural wife in 1897 one year before his death. He married Lydia Mamreoff von Finkelstein Mountford who was a 49 year-old. She was a guest lecturer in Salt Lake City, having been invited by James E. Talmage. President Woodruff was captivated by her. She was baptized in February 1897. They traveled together to California and used assumed names when registering in a hotel in Portland, Oregon. Between 20 and 22 September 1897, they were married while sailing back to Portland from California. Mountford was the legal wife of Charles Edwin Mountford. This would not be the first instance of plural marriage to a woman still legally married. Joseph Smith practiced that concept at least 11 times (In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 15-23). It has always been postulated that whatever others did after the Manifesto, President Woodruff had honored the "revelation." The marriage was later solemnized by proxy in the Salt Lake Temple in 1920. (B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 228-232)
90. The LDS leaders' constant use of prevarication turned friends against them. Theodore Schroeder, once friendly to the Mormons became a bitter enemy when he discovered the extent of the deceit used by church leaders and members alike. In 1897 he wrote essays exposing the continued practice of polygamy, despite denials issued by the church. He set out to prove that the church had consistently lied about its involvement with polygamy since the Nauvoo period. (Solemn Covenant, 246)
91. B. H. Roberts admitted taking plural wives as late as April 1890 during the Smoot Hearings, contradicting President Woodruff's statement in the Manifesto that no such marriages had taken place in the year preceding the Manifesto. Roberts was probably lying about the year he married his last plural wife, Dr. Milford Shipp. She was still legally married and lived with her husband until 1892. The marriage to Roberts most likely occurred in 1894. Roberts managed to expose both he and President Woodruff as deceivers at the same time. (Solemn Covenant, 247)
92. When B.H. Roberts was elected to the House of Representatives after Utah became a state, the House voted to exclude him because an investigation revealed that Roberts was engaged in polygamous marriage and that one of his wives had married him after the Manifesto. Since it was a clear violation of the law of the land, and he and the LDS leadership had ignored society's legal code, he was declared unfit for office. A petition was circulated demanding that B.H. Roberts be denied a seat in Congress. Seven million citizens signed it and it was presented to Congress. Those considered enemies by church leaders were provided a national platform to advertise abundant evidence of dishonesty on the part of Mormon church leaders and members. (Solemn Covenant, 249, 250)
93. Reed Smoot was elected to the United States Senate in 1902 and federal lawmakers protested immediately. He was sworn into office in March 1903. But government authorities feared that Smoot was a polygamous sympathizer, though he was not a polygamist himself. It was also a well established fact that the church had engaged in deception for decades to evade the law. Because of the church's reputation for dishonesty, the Smoot investigation lasted more than 3 years (1904-1907) and resulted in over 3,000 pages of sworn testimony. The scope of the inquiry broadened to include the history, theology and culture of Mormonism itself. If the citizens of the U.S. doubted the honesty and veracity of the Mormon leaders and their people before the hearings, afterward they did not doubt due to mountains of testimony and documented evidence. The Mormons were guilty of unending prevarication. (Solemn Covenant, 251)
94. President Joseph F. Smith was the first witness called and placed under oath to tell the whole truth before the Smoot investigation. His testimony may have been the most damaging. He pled incredible ignorance concerning the polygamous activities that he personally permitted and encouraged. Yet he admitted to fathering children by 5 wives since 1890, after the Manifesto had been issued. He categorically denied that Presidents Woodruff and Snow had authorized polygamous marriages after the Manifesto. He knew that to be false. He went on to say that he had not heard anyone "advocate, encourage or recommend" plural marriages since the Manifesto. This was false. U.S. leaders and citizens joined with the LDS members in disbelief that President Smith would blatantly lie under oath-denying what others plainly knew to be true. One witness suggested tongue in cheek that President Smith was using his words differently than the way most people use them. (Solemn Covenant, 253)
95. Mormon apologist histories complain about the "persecution" heaped upon President Smith at the hearings, and praise his dignified responses. The truth is the constant stream of duplicity and lies increased the hostility toward Mormons. Most were disgusted with the Mormon Prophet, Seer, and Revelator who refused to come forth with a degree of honesty while under oath before the Senate hearings. (Solemn Covenant, 253-254)
Secondary Sources: See http://www.mormonthink.com/lying.htm and for Ken Clark's testimony, see Why I left
Hal Boyd, DesNews: Smoot's distinguished thirty-year career in the senate, along with other 20th century developments, eventually helped assuage Mormonphobia by showing Americans that the LDS Church was, by most accounts, a benign institution.
Let's see. The Smoot Hearings were a mere 46 years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre (MMM). Benign? You need to understand that the National Press didn't even begin to cover the MMM in earnest until John D. Lee's mistrial in the mid-1870s! That was less than 30 years before the Smoot hearings! Benign? My foot -- and Fancher party's very lives! Along with U.S. Govt. troops, Missouri victims of the Mormons, and the apostates they killed by shedding their blood via blood atonement.
Besides that, as Hardy shows in his books, the Mormon leaders were NOT to be trusted. They could NOT be taken at their word!
