Is there any real difference between Donald Trump and Joseph Smith?

[huckelberry]

Great!! What would scare me more than anything is agreeing with the majority of members on this board. That life isn't worth living!

whatever

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

In the 19th century, "the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was 16.6 years".
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... hood-onset
So I don't think it was, unless Smith had abnormalities in the temporal and frontal regions of his brain. Research has shown that pedos tend to be shorter and less intelligent than the average person. Smith was a little over six feet tall and he was very intelligent.
And there is no evidence, I think Smith was waiting for her to get older.

You've GOT to be kidding, right? Joseph didn't sleep with teenagers because he was tall and smart? That's possibly the dumbest argument I've ever heard. You've got to be parodying the apologists with that one...

Even if such a correlation exists, there's no logical causal relationship, and it doesn't rule out that tall, smart people can be pedophiles, too. (I don't actually consider Joseph a "pedophile," but I'll get to that in a second.)

The age of puberty onset is, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it's just more damning evidence that Joseph liked teenagers who looked all the more like little girls. We know he had sex with several girls who were 16 and 17. That's been established. So if that's the equivalent of an 11-year-old, which is the typical age of female puberty onset today....

Source? Kimball was made an apostle in 1835. The Helen Kimball sealing was in 1843. Kimball was never in Joseph Smith's FP; he wasn't called until BY organized a FP in 1847. So I'm not sure your theory fits the actual timeline.

It's speculative, but I think the evidence is actually stronger that Heber was buying his way up in the church than the evidence that Joseph had sex with Helen. (My sources here are Helen's collected writings and Todd Compton's "In Sacred Loneliness.")

Joseph was teaching polygamy as early as 1831. That year, he told Mary Elizabeth Rollins, who was 12 years old, that God had chosen her to be his plural wife. She didn't marry Joseph until she was 23, but we have it in her own words that Joseph was picking them out years before he actually married them.

Helen was 8 when her father became an apostle. (Incidentally, this was the same year Heber cut a hole in the frozen river so he could baptize Helen. In the middle of winter in Ohio. He also left on one of many missions after Helen's baby brother had come down with tuberculosis and, while he was gone, the baby died. Can we at least agree that Heber was a giant douche?)

But back to the marriage: There's really no doubt whatsoever that Joseph told Helen her family's salvation depended on her marrying him. She wrote in her journal: "I will pass over the temptations which I had during the twenty-four hours after my father introduced to me this principle & asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph, who came next morning & with my parents I heard him teach & explain the principle of Celestial marriage--after which he said to me, 'If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.'"

That really ought to be bad enough. The father she trusted implicitly first softens her up about polygamy. Then, clearly having arranged this with Heber already, Joseph shows up the next day and tells a 14-year-old that the way to get herself and her whole family into heaven is to marry him, a 37-year-old man. We could stop right there, couldn't we?

But I do think there's a lot of evidence in Helen's writing that her father's position in the church was elevated almost immediately after she married Joseph in May of 1843. In June of 1843, Joseph entrusted Heber with the money to build the Nauvoo Temple:
"I, Joseph Smith, a servant of the Lord and trustee-in-trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby certify that the bearer hereof, Heber C. Kimball, an elder and one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...is recommended to all Saints and honorable people as a legal agent to collect funds for the purpose of building the Nauvoo House and temple of the Lord, confident that he will honor this high trust, as well as ardently fulfil his commission as a messenger of peace and salvation, as one of the Lord's noblemen, I can fervently say may the Lord clear his way before him and bless him and bless those that obey his teachings, whenever there are ears to hear and hearts to feel."

There are a lot of references in Helen's journals to her father taking over various leadership functions in late 1843 and early 1844. Here's another example among many:
"[Joseph] expressed his gratitude to Elder Kimball in the strongest terms, for having commenced and carried on in so masterly a manner the good and glorious work he had undertaken. He said it would be the means of doing a great deal of good and of benefiting his young friends more than they were aware of, that the gratitude of all good men and of the young people whom he had so much benefited, would follow him through life, and `when gray hairs should his temples adorn' he could look back with pleasure upon the winter of 1843."

Definitive? No. But it is awfully suspicious that Heber starts being entrusted with more leadership and money after Joseph gets to marry his daughter.

There are also suggestions that Helen didn't understand the full reasons for the marriage until after it was done:
"Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, [Father] offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the altar.” [Emphasis mine. Also, "Ewe Lamb"----ewww! Even in 1843, normal fathers did not compare their daughter's wedding to animal sacrifice.]

So, Heber and Joseph initially bring this to Helen as a way to ensure her family's salvation. Then, after the marriage, Joseph tells Helen that her father had wanted the two families to be sealed together. Compton refers to the coupling as "dynastic." The whole point of a dynastic marriage is strategic. It's a trade, usually with the female as legal tender. If Heber wanted the families sealed that badly, there's no reason he couldn't have given Joseph his wife.

So, you're right. Heber was already an apostle before he gave Helen to Joseph, and Heber wasn't called into the First Presidency until three years later---but that's only three years later. In the meantime, Heber had been gaining more authority and more favor with Joseph, beginning suspiciously after Heber handed over his "Ewe Lamb."


And none of this even touches on whether Joseph had sex with Helen. (I was surprised I'd forgotten that Todd Compton leans towards, no, they didn't. Compton is usually trotted out by those who want to prove Joseph was a perv.) Which reminds me, I said I would touch on the pedophile question.

I think we ought to be able to agree that the Helen-Joseph relationship was disgusting on numerous levels, without even needing to get into the sex question. But the word "pedophile" has a specific meaning. There is a world of difference between a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old.

Personally, I think Joseph's marriages to women his own age were wrong, simply because of the power imbalance: He was The Prophet. How much more power imbalance can you get than that?

So I'm not justifying it by any means. The infidelity is bad. The power imbalance is bad. It's even worse given the enormous age difference, and the lack of brain development in teenagers. But a 15-year-old basically has the body of a grown woman. They have breasts and hips and pubic hair. It's just not comparable. Even our laws today recognize a qualitative difference between molestation of a child under 13 and molestation of a child over 13.

So I think it's an exaggeration to call Joseph a "pedophile." There's just no evidence of that unless we fail to make any distinction between toddlers and teenagers. And there's no reason for that exaggeration. Isn't all this bad enough without it??

[John Hamer]

At the end, Joseph Smith had himself crowned king of the kingdom of God on Earth and taught that he was going to become the same as God. And yet, his narcissism frankly pales in comparison to Trump's.

Trump is amazing in his perniciousness — Joseph Smith couldn't live up to the level of reality-denial and duplicitousness — Joseph Smith, as wrong as he was, as guilty as he was, couldn't achieve the Trumpian level of inhuman monstrosity.

[Binger]

At the end, Joseph Smith had himself crowned king of the kingdom of God on Earth and taught that he was going to become the same as God. And yet, his narcissisms frankly pales in comparison to Trump's.

Trump is amazing in his perniciousness — Joseph Smith couldn't live up to the level of reality-denial and duplicitousness — Joseph Smith, as wrong as he was, as guilty as he was, couldn't achieve the Trumpian level of inhuman monstrosity.

So a guy has himself crowned king of the kingdom of God on Earth and that pales in comparison to Trump? Very interesting.

The real answer is - yes, there are real differences. There are many real differences.

[Philo Sofee]

At the end, Joseph Smith had himself crowned king of the kingdom of God on Earth and taught that he was going to become the same as God. And yet, his narcissisms frankly pales in comparison to Trump's.

Trump is amazing in his perniciousness — Joseph Smith couldn't live up to the level of reality-denial and duplicitousness — Joseph Smith, as wrong as he was, as guilty as he was, couldn't achieve the Trumpian level of inhuman monstrosity.

Well said. Are you the John Hamer that the You Tube channel MythVision has interviewed? If so I really enjoyed it!

[John Hamer]

Well said. Are you the John Hamer that the You Tube channel MythVision has interviewed? If so I really enjoyed it!

Yes, indeed. Thanks!

[Atlanticmike]

At the end, Joseph Smith had himself crowned king of the kingdom of God on Earth and taught that he was going to become the same as God. And yet, his narcissism frankly pales in comparison to Trump's.

Trump is amazing in his perniciousness — Joseph Smith couldn't live up to the level of reality-denial and duplicitousness — Joseph Smith, as wrong as he was, as guilty as he was, couldn't achieve the Trumpian level of inhuman monstrosity.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. [Personal attack deleted, FR 2 -- RI] Because that's what it seems like. You guys are grasping at straws trying to find some correlation between Joseph Smith and Donald Trump. One grew up poor, the other with a gold spoon stuck up his ass. One didn't have a formal education and the other one graduated with a bachelor's degree. One was overly religious and ain't no way Trump is that religious.

I like your temple though, it looks really cool! It kinda looks like one of those cylindrical fly traps when you pull the sticky paper out and the paper is all twisted up.

[doubtingthomas]

You've GOT to be kidding, right? Joseph didn't sleep with teenagers because he was tall and smart? That's possibly the dumbest argument I've ever heard.

14 year olds were NOT teenagers in the 19th century. Only sick people are attracted to prepubescent children, pedophilia doesn't make evolutionary sense.

It is unlikely Smith was attracted to prepubescent children.

"those who victimize prepubescent children are more socially reclusive, less likely to have lived independently and to have been married, less intelligent, and more likely to present cognitive deficits and psychopathology"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10 ... =mfr&rss=1&

Even if such a correlation exists, there's no logical causal relationship, and it doesn't rule out that tall, smart people can be pedophiles, too

It doesn't, but it is statistically unlikely.

So if that's the equivalent of an 11-year-old, which is the typical age of female puberty onset today....

You said, "She didn't marry Joseph until she was 23, but we have it in her own words that Joseph was picking them out years before he actually married them."

We know he had sex with several girls who were 16 and 17. That's been established

There is a big difference between a prepubescent child and a 16 or 17 year old according to the medical literature[/b].

Several? Only Woodworth was 16 years old when she married Smith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_J ... %27s_wives

The age of puberty onset is, at best, irrelevant.

It is not. Pedophilia is a brain disorder.

[Philo Sofee]

Well said. Are you the John Hamer that the You Tube channel MythVision has interviewed? If so I really enjoyed it!

Yes, indeed. Thanks!

Oh COOL! When I get up and running and learn how to do all the shenanigans, I would very much enjoy interviewing you as well for a You Tube adventure...

[Res Ipsa]

Well said. Are you the John Hamer that the You Tube channel MythVision has interviewed? If so I really enjoyed it!

Yes, indeed. Thanks!

Welcome, John. Glad to have you aboard.