Equality wrote:Law's only crime was breaking omerta, the law of silence. I suppose you would also condemn Sammy the Bull Gravano as being not credible, and a troublemaker. At least he was from the perspective of those on whom he informed. I mean, the mob bosses already knew they were committing crimes, so Gravano's telling the cops about it wasn't whistleblowing; it was troublemaking. Right?
Tobin wrote:Wrong. If he felt there was wrong-doing going on, he certainly could have gone to the state officials with his accusations. They certainly weren't friendly with Joseph Smith. That is not what he did.
Or, he might have gone through church channels in accordance with the revelations on church governance, as he tried to do, and, only after Smith repeatedly tried to seduce his wife, and only after Smith--in direct contradiction to church policies and procedures--had Law excommunicated in a secret proceeding at which Law could present no defense, which secret metting was in direct response to Law's (and others') attempt to use church processes behind the scenes to deal with the corruption at the top, he might have decided to take the matter public so that the general membership could be informed, in the hope that if the general membership were made aware of Smith's corrupt practices, they might agitate for reform and save the church.
Equality wrote:Law was trying to inform law-abiding citizens and Mormons who were not in on all the secret shenanigans taking place by those at the highest levels of church government about what was taking place. Again, only 100 people in Nauvoo, a city of 18,000, knew about Joseph's polygamy, and far fewer still knew about Joseph's polyandry. The Expositor was going to expose it for the general membership who were in total darkness about what was going on. You've admitted that the polygamy accusations were true, so it wasn't that the Expositor was going to spread lies about Smith--it's that it was going to expose the truth. And it is precisely because William Law WAS credible that the paper posed such a grave threat. He was a member of the First Presidency, a close intimate associate of the Prophet. He wasn't some yellow journalist raking up muck. The Mormons tolerated all sorts of criticism from outsiders. They could chalk all that up to ignorant anti-Mormon bias. But this was coming from upstanding citizens and faithful members and believers in the restoration who knew what they were talking about.
Tobin wrote:The membership were not a concern actually. They already had seen the publication and rejected it. The concern and why it was shutdown was it would incite those outside the church.
What are you talking about? They had already seen the publication before it was published? You're not making any sense. It was shut down because it exposed Joseph Smith's secret polygamy and his secret Council of Fifty and his failure to follow church procedures. It exposed him as the tyrant he had become (which is virtually beyond dispute. Even reading the apologetic account of the Nauvoo years in Rough Stone Rolling leaves one with the unmistakable impression of Smith as being grandiose and drunk with power in the months leading up to his death. His actions can be spun by believers, but they really can't be credibly denied). Yes, there was concewrn that those outside the church would get a picture of what was really going on in Nauvoo, but there was also great concern about the effect the truth would have on believers--a concern that exists to this day and is evident in your own posts. Faithful Mormons still want to smear and defame William Law. They still want to ignore the substance of his accusations. And they still want to keep the Council of Fifty shrouded in mystery (this is why the LDS Church will not let ANY outsider read the Council of Fifty minutes. No one, not even Bushman, gets to see them. If the Council was as innocent as you suggest, Tobin, why do you suppose the church doesn't want those minutes to see the light of day?).
Equality wrote:What was slanderous? Point to something in the Expositor that Law said that wasn't true. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. On the one hand, you say polygamy wasn't a secret; that people knew about it or could have known about it, and that it was no big deal. Then you say that what Law was saying was "slanderous" and "non-sense." Which is it? Old hat common knowledge or slanderous non-sense?
I have read it myself, as have many others. We can't find anything slanderous in it. Everything Law said about Smith was true. Nothing was slanderous. YOU have made the assertion that Law slandered Smith in the Expositor. You must have something specific in mind. If you point to it we can discuss it. Whenever you are asked to show specific facts supporting your assertions, you throw up some dust into the air and disappear in a cloud.
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain
"The LDS church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
