The Audacity
The recent Deseret News opinion piece condemning polygamy and polyamory as a “direct threat to kids” and insisting that “monogamy ought to remain our social ideal” is dripping with irony. For a newspaper owned by the LDS Church to rail against the supposed dangers of polygamy—without mentioning their own history as America’s largest polygamous religious movement—is breathtakingly hypocritical.
The Deseret News piece argues that polyamory, allegedly recently popularized by media coverage and memoirs, is being falsely marketed as a liberating, progressive alternative to monogamy, when in reality it leads to emotional turmoil and instability. The authors claim polyamorous relationships produce jealousy, disappointment, and unhappiness rather than fulfillment. They dismiss advocates’ claims that polyamory empowers women or modernizes outdated cultural norms, asserting that such arguments lack data and ignore historical and sociological evidence that monogamous societies are more stable, prosperous, and equitable than polygamous ones.
The article concludes that monogamy should remain society’s moral and social ideal because it promotes personal happiness, stability, and, most importantly, protects children. It cites various studies and sociological data to argue that people in monogamous marriages report the highest levels of well-being, while children raised by married, monogamous parents fare best emotionally and physically. Polyamory, the authors claim, undermines trust and commitment, and therefore the “progressive push” for it should be firmly rejected in favor of preserving traditional, heterosexual, lifelong marriage as the safest and most beneficial model for individuals and society.
Polyamory is having a moment… Polyamory is the latest in a long line of supposedly shackles-breaking, self-actualizing adventures in the realm of love, sex and marriage that are supposed to open new horizons of meaning and happiness for men and women who are looking to change things up….
According to research from MIT historian Anne McCants, an estimated 5 billion people are living, right now, in societies with legal polygamy… Polygamy is particularly disastrous for women, and is “associated with the commodification of women at the expense of their health, wealth, education, and personal agency,” wherever it is practiced, McCants and her co-author, Daniel Seligson, write…
The data has long shown that Americans who are married — still legally defined in the U.S. as a contract between only two people — report the highest levels of personal happiness…. Marital happiness is much higher for couples who embrace the norm of faithful, monogamous marriage, and who say they believe sex with someone outside the marriage is always wrong. Happiness in marriage is also higher for those who embrace monogamy in marriage…
Sexual health certainly impacts a marriage. But research suggests it’s actually the quality of friendship and commitment, the attachment, between a husband and wife that most profoundly influences their marital satisfaction. No one can truly feel safe inside a marriage whose vows have an asterisk. And it’s exactly these components — the friendship, trust and commitment — that polyamory devours.
Perspective: It’s time to push back against the glamorization of polyamory, Opinion By Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox, Deseret News, October 18, 2025
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/10/18/polyamory-monogramy-marriage-common-good/
While we must praise the article for the obvious conclusions it reaches about the dangers and inequities of polygamy, what the Deseret News article conspicuously omits is that the LDS Church itself has long defended polygamy (and polyamory) as divine commandments. The practice was introduced secretly by Joseph Smith in the 1830s and 1840s, who took more than 30 wives, including teenagers and women already married to other men. He called plural marriage part of the “New and Everlasting Covenant” — not just permitted, but required for exaltation in the highest degree of heaven. Doctrine and Covenants 132, still canonized in LDS scripture today, explicitly commands plural marriage, teaching that those who reject it “shall be destroyed.” Smith and other early leaders taught that monogamy was a fallen, worldly standard, and that celestial marriage—plural and eternal—was God’s law for the faithful.
The article includes a chart to show marital satisfaction based on sexual history, which depicts that those with fewer sexual partners are more likely to be “very happy” in marriage. According to the data, satisfaction tends to decline as the number of past partners increases. Men (in yellow) generally report higher happiness than women (in black), and both lines trend downward after two partners.
The irony is palpable, because the sexual or marital “partner counts” of early LDS Church leaders — such as Joseph Smith (with an estimated 30–40 wives), Brigham Young (55 wives), and Heber C. Kimball (43 wives) — they wouldn’t even fit on this chart. The x-axis stops at “21+.” The men who instituted “celestial marriage” and declared it an eternal commandment from God would land well off the chart’s edge. The church-owned Deseret News uses this data to argue that monogamy produces happier marriages and better outcomes for children, yet their own founding prophets practiced the very relationships they now condemn.
Even after Joseph Smith’s death, his successors, including Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Joseph F. Smith, and Heber J. Grant, continued and expanded the practice of plural marriage, often while publicly denying it. It was preached as a holy duty and practiced as both polygamy (multiple wives for one man) and polyandry (shared husbands among believing families). Only under intense legal and political pressure from the U.S. government did the church officially suspend new plural marriages in 1890. Yet the doctrine itself remains in scripture and in modern temple theology: men sealed to multiple women in life or after death are still taught that those eternal unions continue in heaven.
It should be stated plainly that polygamy and polyamory are a direct threat to kids, both emotionally and physically. Boys whose parents either never marry or break their marriages (including after “opening” them) are more likely to go to prison than to graduate from college. Kids without a married mom and dad at home are far more likely to report feeling “sad a lot of the time,” and those whose parents invite an unrelated adult into their home are at exponentially higher risk of experiencing physical, sexual and emotional abuse…
Progressives can rebrand their natural human longing for exclusive love and commitment all they like. They can tell themselves they “chose” monogamy rather than it being “chosen” for them by their culture; that’s fine. That’s still an improvement over those who would advocate for polyamory because they believe it’s progressive, despite the human misery it is likely to leave in its wake.
Monogamy ought to remain our social ideal. Because of all the other choices on offer, it offers the very best chance for freedom, advancement and human happiness. Even more importantly, it’s the safest option for our children.
Perspective: It’s time to push back against the glamorization of polyamory, Opinion By Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox, Deseret News, October 18, 2025
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/10/18/polyamory-monogramy-marriage-common-good/
An intellectually honest discussion about the dangers of polygamy or polyamory cannot omit this relevant context. For the LDS Church’s own media outlet to condemn such relationships as harmful, without acknowledging that they were once considered key to eternal salvation, is not just disingenuous — it’s another example of historical revisionism. The church doesn’t want believers to remember that plural marriage was once its central and “everlasting” covenant, and that by its own revealed scripture, it technically still is. They’ll never admit the unhealthy practice in history, but are free to lambast the modern practice. While the article condemns the practice of polygamy and polyamory, it doesn’t condemn the leadership that embraced it for decades.
The Unmentioned History of Mormon Polygamy
Let’s not forget: Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had 30–40 wives by the time of his death. He secretly married other men’s wives, teenage girls, and even pairs of sisters. This wasn’t a fringe offshoot—it was the Prophet of the Restoration himself, experimenting with polyamorous and polygamous relationships while preaching “virtue” from the pulpit.
Nor was Smith alone. The following five presidents of the LDS Church were also polygamists. Entire communities of early Latter-day Saints were built around the doctrine of “celestial marriage.” The same mainstream culture that Deseret News now appeals to as an ally in defending monogamy once labeled Mormon polygamy a dangerous, abusive practice. They called it a “threat to children” and “human happiness”—the exact words this article now applies to “progressives.”
The church’s own essay acknowledges that plural marriage “was introduced carefully and incrementally … participants vowed to keep their participation confidential.” It also acknowledges early plural wives and the troubling age circumstances: estimates show Smith had wives as young as 14, and there were continual denials of the practice while it was being practiced.
Let’s be clear: the LDS Church didn’t abandon polygamy because it suddenly realized it was harmful to children or women. In fact, it was taught that it was healthy and better for children, women and society.
The one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosopbical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people. Hence I see the wisdom of God in not tolerating any such system among the celestial worthies who are to be kings and queens unto God for ever.
Official LDS periodical, Millennial Star, Vol. 15, Samuel W. Richards, editor. p. 227, Nelly and Abby, A familiar conversation between two cousins on marriage, April 9, 1853.
https://archive.org/details/MStarVol15/page/n234/mode/1up
There are no brighter children to be found in the world than those born in this Territory. Under the system of Patriarchal Marriage, the offspring [children of polygamists], besides being equally as bright and brighter intellectually, are much more healthy and strong.
Apostle George Q. Cannon, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 207
https://journalofdiscourses.com/13/23
Talk about polygamy! There is no true philosopher on the face of the earth but what will admit that such a system, properly carried out according to the order of heaven, is far superior to monogamy for the raising of healthy, robust children!
Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 317, April 17, 1870
https://journalofdiscourses.com/13/36
Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire….Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers…. Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord’s servants have always practiced it. ‘And is that religion popular in heaven?’ it is the only popular religion there…
Brigham Young, The Deseret News, August 6, 1862, (page 1, column 4)
http://udn.lib.utah.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/deseretnews2/id/45064/rec/32
God’s people, under every dispensation since the creation of the world, have, generally, been polygamists…. God has established polygamy under the present circumstances among this people… This law of monogamy, or the monogamic system, laid the foundation for prostitution and the evils and diseases of the most revolting nature and character under which modern Christendom groans…
LDS Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, page 195 https://archive.org/stream/JoDV13/JoD_v13#page/n202/mode/1up
https://journalofdiscourses.com/13/22
We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices; and it is not to be wondered at that they should envy those who so much better understand the social relations.
LDS Apostle George A Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 3, page 291 https://archive.org/stream/JoDV03/JoD_v03#page/n298/mode/1up
The LDS church abandoned polygamy under threat of government seizure of their property and political power. Their leaders fought tooth and nail to preserve the practice, even lying about it for decades. So when Deseret News pretends to defend children today, it’s not about protecting kids. It’s about protecting the institution’s reputation.
The gaslighting here is astounding. Deseret News pretends polygamy is a modern danger imported by progressives, when in reality, it wasn’t long ago that Mormon prophets forced it on their own people, justified it with theology, and made it the defining battle between church and state in the 19th century. The Deseret News even reported on it and defended it!
Void of Moral Authority
The LDS Church has no moral authority to lecture the world on the dangers of “alternative marriage arrangements” until it reconciles its own violent and exploitative history. Women were coerced into plural marriage. Children grew up under an institution that sanctioned secrecy, manipulation, and abuse in the name of God. Families were torn apart, with men exalted for “collecting” wives while women were shamed if they resisted. It’s not just a regrettable chapter in Mormon history—it’s baked into the foundation and doctrine of the church itself.
Alternative/Progressive Marriages
So why now? Why trot out this moral panic about polyamory and progressive culture? It’s a distraction, pure and simple.
The church is scrambling to keep LGBTQ people out of its sacred spaces. By loudly insisting that monogamy must mean heterosexual monogamy only, they can double down on excluding same-sex couples while appearing to defend “family values.” The real target here isn’t polyamory—it’s gay marriage. It’s trans kids. It’s any identity that doesn’t fit the narrow mold of a temple recommend holder.
The leadership knows they can’t openly say “same-sex marriage is the threat,” because that battle was lost in the broader culture years ago. So instead, they lump it in with polygamy and polyamory, dressing up their prejudice as a defense of tradition. It’s the same old playbook: redefine the narrative, erase the inconvenient history, and paint themselves as moral guardians of society.
In the end, the hypocrisy is staggering. The church that once tore families apart for refusing to enter plural marriage now condemns others for experimenting with the very same thing. The prophets who boasted of dozens of wives are memory-holed while modern leaders pretend to be champions of children and monogamy. And Deseret News expects readers to swallow it whole, no questions asked.
If the LDS Church wants to condemn “harmful marriage practices,” it should start by issuing a full, unflinching apology for its own. Until then, every Deseret News op-ed on marriage reads like a bad joke: the polygamists-turned-puritans wagging their finger at the world.
So let’s call this what it is: a clumsy attempt to rebrand Mormonism as the last stronghold of “traditional marriage” while slamming the door on LGBTQ inclusion. The irony writes itself—because the only thing more awkward than a church that once mandated polygamy now preaching monogamy, is a church that insists “love is love” is a threat to children.
More reading:
- Why Did the Mormon Church Stop Polygamy?
- Church Teaches Children Eternal Polygamy
- Irony of Mormon Church Complaining of Bigoted Marriage Laws
- https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/10/18/polyamory-monogramy-marriage-common-good/
- Sex Therapist Natasha Helfer RESPONDS To @DeseretNews article on Polyamory
- http://www.mormonthink.com/QUOTES/polygamy.htm
- https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1uq65h/early_mormon_leaders_on_monogamy_with_links_to/