"Predatory Techniques of Mormonism's Prophet Joseph Smith"

I highly recommend the video lecture, "Predatory Techniques of Mormonism's Prophet Joseph Smith" on YouTube by Mormon Discussion Inc.

Listening to this video above, you will understand why John Turner, author of the book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, begins his book by basically saying he would not have trusted Joseph Smith to be around his daughters; and even the devout Mormon historian Patrick Mason, said in a Mormon Stories podcast interview around 2024, that trying to defend Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages would be like trying to put lipstick on a pig!

The information covered in this video lecture linked above is pretty damning. Even if the Mormon apologist were to argue against calling these young women "children" by saying they were at least 14 years old (a legal age to marry at the time in the 1800s), you still have a clear case of grooming behavior. You have Joseph Smith isolating the teenage Fanny Alger, leading Emma to find some interaction between Joseph and Fanny in a barn. You have Joseph Smith adopting foster daughters and then marrying them plurally while in some cases sending the father away on a mission! 

At 39-44 minutes, they discuss Orson Hyde and how after Smith sends him on a 3-year mission, Smith marries his wife. They discuss how Joseph Smith creates the problem of Hyde's wife becoming desolate leading to Joseph Smith composing a so-called "revelation" where the Lord allegedly directs Smith to take care of her financially after she agrees to become one of his next plural wives. This reminds me of how when many Christians were speculating on whether or not Native Americans were Jewish or not (i.e. from the Lost Tribes of Israel), Joseph Smith took advantage of their uncertainty by answering by Smith claiming absolute certainty through his own revelatory book of scripture called the Book of Mormon. In the video above they mentioned other times when an LDS man was sent away on a mission and then Joseph Smith marries his wife plurally. 

As I listened to all of this, I could not help but think of the content in my Holy Joe series (see the table of contents for this site), where I point out that it is clear that Joseph Smith, even if he was to a certain degree what Dan Vogel calls a Pious Fraud (meaning he was sincere in his deceptions to create conversions to Christianity), that doesn't change the fact that he clearly utilized manipulation tactics: like threatening his Book of Mormon readers with hellfire and scaring them with talk of the Devil and demons. We know this was manipulation because in D&C 19, Smith states that such Hell language was used to "work upon" the reader. So even though  Smith himself did not believe in an actual hell, he was willing to use such language to intimidate and mentally terrorize his early readers into conversion. If he was capable of doing that then he was capable of threatening women equally deceptive claim that an angel with a sword would kill him if they didn't become his next plural wife; or Smith saying that if the young woman did not marry him in a plural marriage the young girl's family would not gain exaltation. We can thus see a clear pattern of behavior, from the hellfire threats of the Book of Mormon to the angel with a flaming sword and telling young women that if they don't have sex with him her family will not get into the highest level of heaven. 

When you then realize that Smith’s whole theology after 1840 is based on justifying his sex life, by saying the Gods themselves accumulate wives and concubines in order to grow their kingdoms, as I discuss here; and it becomes clear that what Mormonism today calls "scripture," is basically a codified text on how to manipulate your way to gaining a harem of wives and concubines.