Among the anti-Mormon accusations that get hurled at the Prophet Joseph Smith in the past decade or so is that he was a "pedophile." Hateful critics point to the plural marriage of Joseph to Fanny Alger, who was approximately 14 years old at the time the marriage was solemnized. Although the history of this union is murky, we know that Alger's father, an elder in the Church, performed the ceremony. Joseph, having received commandment of the Lord to begin to restore this ancient order of matrimony, approached Alger's family, taught them the doctrine of plural marriage, and asked their consent. Alger's parents and the young woman consented. As far as we know, this was Joseph's first plural wife.
They did not live together as husband and wife. None of the subsequent wives did either. Recent DNA research reveals that Joseph Smith did not have children with any of the plural wives. (See link below.)
In a recent discussion with a Q-follower on Voat, an apostate member of the Church challenged me with this argument. I took the opportunity to school him on the background of the criticism that Joseph Smith was a "pedophile" and he linked us with the illegal actions of the FLDS church. He began with the usual attacks and the used this argument. I replied that it was historically inaccurate and he asked me to explain how that was so. Here is my reply below.
First of all, the apostate groups (FLDS, et al.) have no connection to us. You're doing the historical equivalent of blaming Catholics for Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker's scandals. Yes, if you go back far enough, there was a connection. The fact that they separated themselves (apostatized) from our Church doesn't justify blaming us for their excesses. They are their own thing.
Your charges of "pedophilia" against Joseph Smith are misguided. I researched anti-Mormonism and its tactics for several years. For over a century-and-a-half, nobody made that charge because, if you go back in your own family tree, you'll find people who married very young. It was not uncommon for males to marry at age 16 and girls at 14 in frontier America. Those were not instances of child abuse or "pedophilia." If you go back into Biblical times, you'll find that betrothals took place around the age of 14 for young women with males who were usually around 18 or older--often much older. It is very likely that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was around 14 when she was betrothed to Joseph. Joseph, according to Catholic tradition, was a widower who may have been in his fifties!
Where did this "pedophile" charge against Joseph Smith emerge in the history of anti-Mormonism? I'll tell you. From 1994 to 2002, Catholic Cardinal Bernard Francis Law presided over the archdiocese of Boston. During that period, in 1998, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the construction of a temple in that city. Law used his influence among politicians and the religious community to try to block the construction of the temple. They found legal leverage over the height of the proposed spire. Opponents of the Church kept it tied up in zoning boards to prevent completion of the temple. Finally, in 2000, the LDS Church outfoxed the opponents and dedicated the building without the spire. Temple work began without hindrance, as the spire played no role in the purpose of the temple. Eventually, the opponents relented and the spire was approved.
While all this was going on, the scandal emerged that Archbishop Law had covered up for pedophile CATHOLIC priests within the archdiocese. The scandal went national and still reverberates today. This scandal had nothing to do with the LDS Church, but from that moment forward, anti-Mormons among the ranks of Protestants "borrowed" the accusation and applied it in a historical inaccurate manner to Mormons. It didn't matter that this was a historically inaccurate argument, because the horror over the Catholic scandal involving Law and the archdiocese of Boston, it became effective propaganda to sling at Mormons.
This essentially is the same kinds of slanderous attacks that Democrats use against Mormons. If you actually study anti-Mormonism, you'll fnd the very same tactics in use that the Democrats use. When you repeat those kinds of lies, distortions, and projections, you are doing what Dems do to conservatives.
Not that you care about any of this, but when you realize that the argument is historically spurious, and where it originated, it becomes less effective. However, if you wish to cling to lies,I cannot stop that. You live with the consequences.
My final point is this. Examine the tactics of the Dems regarding Trump and Ukraine. Obama's CIA helped overthrow the Ukrainian government in 2014. That corrupt government enabled a corrupt energy company, Burisma, to buy influence with Joe Biden by giving his son a sweetheart deal of a job that made $50K a month, despite Hunter Biden not being able to speak Ukrainian, Russian, and having no experience in the energy industry, or any executive experience. Ukrainian oligarchs sit prominently on the Atlantic Council, which includes many US politicians and policymakers. Ukrainian oligarchs associated with Burisma gave Hillary's Clinton Foundation $24 million and even visited her home. They even paid a $115,000 speaking fee to John Bolton last year. Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, and even Mitt Romney have children who are connected to this funny-business in Ukraine. But what do the Dems do? They use projection and accuse Trump of the very thing they are doing. They created fake charges to cover up their own wrongdoing.
This is exactly the same thing that the anti-Mormons are doing. The pedophilia charges against Joseph Smith emerged historically, not a hundred fifty years ago, when people wed at a younger age than today, but following a scandal that still embroils the great and abominable church of the devil in Rome today. They simply used the "mirror" of which Q speaks and redirected criticism for their own scandals on us without cause.
If you are a Q-follower, please recoginize the tactic and consider the accusations to be specious. If you don't follow Q, and you've just stumbled onto this site by accident, searching for answers about this damnable lie, I hope you find this helpful.
Joseph Smith was God's prophet. The power that is in the Church today comes from him. He was given the keys of the kingdom, which is why the devil and those who are under his influence attack us. In a football game, everybody wants to tackle the guy who has the football. If we didn't have the keys, they would leave us alone.
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