restornu, both you and Saundra Duffey quote from FAIRlds.org and Saundra advices people to go there for the truth. FAIR tells all about> the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, Jr.
Now, I'll let you in on a secret. I'm late to go somewhere. The official lds.org website also recognizes most of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s polygamous/polyandrous wives on its site in the History of the Church and in other places. Yes. The official www.lds.org site.
I'll post it for you tonight or tomorrow.
That is, except for Fanny Alger, who is recognized by FAIR as Joseph Smith's first wife. Fanny presents a problem. Oliver Cowdry says that Fanny was an affair of Joseph Smith, not a marriage. And Fanny was before sealing existed, or priesthood authority was restored, or something - but anyway, Fanny presents a problem. The LDS Church CAN'T recognize Fanny, because she doesn't fit into the timeline properly. Yet there are many, many LDS writings about Fanny, and LDS scholars and FAIR recognize her as Joseph's first wife.
So she was either a mistress, an affair, a wife before polygamy was authorized by God, or something else embarrassing. Because everything in LDS-dom recognizes her except the official LDS website.
Does Saundra recognize Joseph Smith's polygamy?
Do you recognize it restornu?
And those other organizations that "don't have anything to do with the original organization'? They were LDS until they disagreed about who the next prophet was after Joseph Smith, Jr., or about whether polygamy should still be practiced under Brigham Young, or over whether Joseph Smith lied about polygamy, or over whether the LDS church had God's permission to ban polygamy with the Second Manifesto in 1904, despite D&C 132. The were part of the original organization.
These all make it clear that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a polygamist:
Introduction of the Practice (to Joseph Smith), at fairLDS
Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Polyandry, at fairLDS (this is about the practice by Joseph Smith of marrying multiple women in addition to Emma Hale Smith, including women who were already married to other men - polyandry)
Pre-publication book chapter approved by FAIR on the subject of Smith's polygamous marriages
Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Plural Wives> some FAIR articles on a few of Smith's polygamous wives
Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Marriages to Young Women a FAIR articles with multiple subarticles regarding some of the young wives of Smith - you'll notice that "polygamny" is preceded and followed by a "/" in the title. That's because there are so many articles about and attempting to justify Smith's actions regarding his polygamy that there's an entire subsection on LDS polygamy devoted to Joseph Smith's polygamy within FAIR
There are countless books on the subject. You could start with In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, a meticulously researched book by LDS author and Ph.D. professor Todd Compton, which won the Best Book Award by both the Mormon History Association and John Whitmer Historical Association. It's 798 pages long. It takes each women Compton can document as a wife (nobody knows exactly how many - the Kirtland temple's records on Joseph Smith's wifes have been sealed in recent history by the First Presidency), and documents their feelings based in their diaries, journals, letters, conversations with friends and family. When a young girl tells another in a letter than she thought she was only marrying Joseph Smith ceremonially, but that he took her to bed that night and married her 'in deed,' well . . . those poignant words of a young girl tell what took place.
Or read Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Bushman, a LDS professor of Mormon Studies. Yes, it's an apologetic account of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s life, but it includes polygamy and polyandry.
Friends? Were you aware that www.lds.ord appears to have recently scrubbed its site of the "History of the Church"? Or at least that appears to be the case. This multi-volume publication of the LDS Church's history, started by Joseph Smith, Jr., used to be on the www.lds.org website. I was going to link my bookmarked pages from that history for days when Joseph Smith took specific polygamous wives and the mention of them.
My links are no longer valid. So I assumed they were moved. It's easy to search for the History of the Church.
If I search "History of the Church" on the site, none of that huge publication (save part of Chapter 1 in Pearl of Great Price) exists on www.lds.org.
If you attempt to access history, you'll be taken to a new subdomain, called josephsmithpaper.org. The history's not there.
it's been scrubbed. Please show me if I'm wrong. All of those inconsistencies with current teachings, all of those historical issues with the church that could be cited to the official LDS cite and no to third-party cites . . . they're gone.