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“Was Joseph a Sexual Predator?” and other fun issues

“Was Joseph a Sexual Predator?” and other fun issues

Last updated on: May 2, 2026 at 4:19 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Was Joseph a Sexual Predator?” and other fun issues 2026-05-02T16:19:34-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Brigham Young, in an unsourced photograph from ca. 1850
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Fourteen (14) installments of Becoming Brigham are currently available online at, well, becomingbrigham.com. On Monday, there will be fifteen. In the meantime, the teaser or trailer for Episode 15, which runs about thirty-seven seconds, is accessible right now. The fifteenth episode will be about the complex relationship between Emma Smith and Brigham Young: “The Lion and the Lady.”

The Utah Symphony, at Abravanel Hall, though not last night

(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

My wife and I attended a concert by the Utah Symphony last night, in Maurice Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake City. The conductor was David Robinson. The program included:

Aaron Copland, Danzón Cubano (1942), which actually sounded oddly East Asian to me at its beginning and its end
Steven Mackey, Aluminum Flowers for guitar and orchestra (2024), with Gretchen Menn on three different guitars (one acoustic and two electric)
Charles Ives, Symphony No. 2 (1897-1909)

I can’t honestly say that I loved the program. I find Charles Ives interesting and sometimes enjoyable, but I seldom find him emotionally engaging. And the Steven Mackey piece was interesting but, I thought, fairly cerebral and distant. Still, Gretchen Menn is a remarkable guitarist and, as my wife helpfully pointed out to me, very pretty. (It’s been a fun week for live guitar for me: The guitarist who played a prominent role in Hallmarked at the Hale Centre Theatre the other night was very good.)

Young women dressed in pioneer clothing participate in a reenactment of the Latter-day Saint handcart experience of the 1850s.
(LDS Media Library)

These three articles, on loosely related themes, caught my eye:

Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey, in the Deseret News: “The political left has a marriage problem. What’s the solution? No group is less likely to say marriage matters than liberals, especially those with college degrees”

Matt Boose, writing for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture: “Women Are Having Fewer Kids Because They Don’t Want Them”

Jennifer Graham, in the Deseret News: “Opinion: Are we really a culture that thinks it’s OK to mock widows? The decency bar keeps getting lower, and ‘the president does it’ is not an excuse”

And this nearly two-hour-long Mormonism with the Murph podcast interview, featuring Dr. Brian Hales, tackles a difficult subject that is forever connected with the controversial history of Latter-day Saint thinking about marriage: “Was Joseph a Sexual Predator: Defending Troubling Aspects of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy.”

In today’s episode I bring on scholar and researcher Brian Hales and we discuss some of the more troubling and controversial aspects of Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy including: Not always getting Emma’s permission, marriages to teenage girls, promises of exaltation, speaking out against those who rejected him. We also discuss Joseph’s sincerity in his practice of polygamy, his belief being commanded by an angel, other’s spiritual experiences and defending Joseph’s character and was he acting more as a sexual predator, or a prophet who was insituting a religious practice?

At Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I close, though, with a few appalling news items that I’ve retrieved from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™. The first is from the LDS Church News: “At young adult interfaith event, Arthur C. Brooks addresses the ‘meaning crisis’: Harvard professor speaks April 30 about cultivating meaningful lives in a technology-saturated world”

“At the end of the day, [God] is the ultimate concept of ‘better,’ the ultimate understanding of ‘meaning’ — the ultimate bliss that is our eternal reward, which is life with our Heavenly Father.”

Not content with blighting the lives of the elderly and seeking to indoctrinate children, theists are trying to give so-called “meaning” to young adults, too. There ought to be a law against such things.

And, unfortunately, similar Hitchens File atrocities occur every day, all around the world. See this, for example: “‘We’re Better Together’: Youth Serve and Strengthen Communities Across the Americas.” And also this: “The Church of Jesus Christ Engages Uzbekistan Leadership at Appreciation Event in Tashkent: The gathering celebrates nearly 30 years of humanitarian friendship and shared values”

P.S. Some of The Usual Suspects have been claiming of late that the very existence of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ is, in of itself, a violation of the counsel given by Presidents Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks that encourages us to be civil, polite, and charitable in our disagreements with others on religious, political, and other matters.

I don’t see it that way at all. Please note that I don’t attack the character of the late Mr. Hitchens (whose style, eloquence, and mannerisms, to some degree at least, I rather admired). For example, I’ve never accused him of antisemitism, religious bigotry, anger management issues, financial corruption, cruelty, viciousness, racism, dishonesty, sadism, callous exploitation of innocent people, misogyny, perpetual smoldering hatred, gluttony, or mercenary hypocrisy. I’ve never portrayed him as an irrational buffoon or as a flat-out liar. (I pass over in silence the fact that The Usual Suspects have accused me of all of those things, and of a good many other negative things besides.)

My little Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ theme is targeted directly and solely at one of the main claims of Mr. Hitchens’s bestselling 2007 manifesto god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. (It was, after all, the book’s subtitle. You may have noticed that.) It is intended to demonstrate — and, in my view, it has demonstrated, hundreds of times over — that the claim that “religion poisons everything” is indisputably false. It is, at the very best, a wild specimen of exaggerated rhetoric.

To argue, on the basis of supplied evidence, that a proposition advanced by an opponent is untrue is to engage the substance of the dispute. It is neither uncivil nor ad hominem, and it cannot reasonably be construed as defiant opposition to the counsel of President Nelson and President Oaks. Neither of them has ever taught that it’s the duty of a Latter-day Saint, or of a Christian more generally, to allow falsehoods to circulate without contradiction.

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