June 10, 2009, The Mormon Church & Polygamy: A Double Standard?, by Helen Radkey,

A Temple System Out of Control Or Unofficial Thumbs Up for Polygamy?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicates any church member who practices polygamy. The Church has publicly disowned Mormon fundamentalists, representing the sects of Mormonism which embrace early Mormon teachings that made polygamy a central part of the Mormon faith — the ongoing legacy of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

While the LDS Church says it does not sanction polygamy, behind closed temple doors, and in Mormon databases, many excommunicated Mormon fundamentalists (and their plural wives) have been reclaimed through posthumous rituals for the dead — and, in numerous cases, posthumously reinstated through “resurrected” original LDS ordinances, including baptisms.

Reinventing its polygamous history, the LDS Church is ushering deceased excommunicated Mormon fundamentalists — such as Rulon Clark Allred; Rulon Timpson Jeffs; and members of the LeBaron clan, including notorious killer, Ervil Morell LeBaron — back into the LDS fold.

The LDS temple system is systematically validating the plural marriages of many deceased Mormon fundamentalists who, when they were alive, were excommunicated from the LDS Church because of polygamy. Some of these polygamists have been posthumously sealed in LDS temples to plural wives they married — after the LDS Church officially suspended polygamy.

Why does the LDS Church condemn the practice of polygamy — including the polygamy of Mormon fundamentalists — as the LDS temple system consistently validates deceased Mormon fundamentalists and many of their plural marriages?

Pensito Review contributor Helen Radkey is a Salt Lake City-based researcher into the practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose groundbreaking research showing that the church was continuing to posthumously baptize victims of the Holocaust sparked outrage in recent years.

© Copyright 2009, Helen Radkey — Permission is granted to reproduce, provided content is not changed and this copyright notice is included.