Excommunicated for Disbelieving in Joseph Smith's Polygamy - Karen Hyatt | Ep. 2096

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John DeLin. It is December 18th, 2025. And today we are covering the communication, the recent communication that as of two weeks ago tomorrow. So we're talking December 5th. Karen Hyatt was executed for a stunning and surprising reason. She was executed for believing that Joseph Smith was telling the truth. And for believing that Joseph Smith was not a sexual predator, but instead was a monogamous faithful husband. Is that fair to say? Did I get that wrong? I think people might bulk at your phraseology there, but he was faithful to Emma. I believe he told the truth that he did not practice pulling me and that he was faithful to Emma. And it's and just to clarify right off the bat, I wasn't ex-communicated for believing it. I was ex-communicated for being public about it. That's the distinction. All right, well, we're going to get into all that. But just to just to give a tiny bit of background, many of you who have been following Mormon stories will know that recently in the past out of a year, I interviewed Michelle Stone, who is historically one of the more prominent influencers in modern times for disbelieving the history that historians put forward, claiming that Joseph Smith was a polygamous. And her channel, 132 reasons. 132 problems. Revisiting Mormon polygamy. Had over 100,000 subscribers was doing very, very well. And I don't know that she's been public about why she stopped doing the YouTube channel. So I don't want to claim any special knowledge that isn't public. But let's just say she's no longer currently releasing videos on that channel. Y'all can do your own math or speculate as to why that might be. But she's working like a busy bee. Michelle is working like a busy bee to pursue graduate school. And also to start up a journal called the Journal of Mormon polygamy with Cheryl Bruno to sponsor academic work conferences, journal articles around the evidence surrounding Joseph Smith's polygamy or Joseph Smith's non-polligamy and other, you know, Mormon polygamy more generally. But it has been rumored. And I think it's evidenced that the LDS Church has become very uncomfortable with people holding the position that Joseph Smith wasn't a polygamous and that he was honest in claiming that he was a monogamous. And so the question has been, will the Church take that extra step to start executing people who publicly voice those beliefs? And on Mormon Stories podcast, we have a long, long history of covering Mormon Church Communications for apostasy. We've covered Grant Palmer. We've covered Jeremy Reynolds. We've covered myself. We've covered Kate Kelly. We've covered Bill Reale, Natasha Help for Sam Young, and many, many others because we have strong feelings about the Church, communicating people for apostasy the way that it does. And so that's what we're going to be covering today. We are really grateful to have Karen Hyatt on the show to talk about her recent communication. And we are, we traditionally livestream these episodes. So we also very much welcome our livestreamed audience. And we invite our livestream audience to post questions or comments. And we will do our best to share those. The best way to make sure your comments or questions are shared is to share them as a super chat. That's a YouTube feature that helps notify us. And and a filter to the top. The most pressing and important questions are comments. So please do that viewers and listeners. We welcome you. We also thank our donors to Mormon Stories podcast that make all this possible. Also, the last thing I'll say for business is we're like two or three thousand YouTube subscribers away from hitting that 300,000 mark. We really want to hit it. It'd be great to reach it by January 1st, 2026. So please take a second to both like this episode and subscribe on YouTube or on Spotify. That would make a huge difference. So without any further ado, Karen, before we jump in to your story, is there anything you want to say at the outset in terms of your intentions? What you do or or anything you want to clarify or add to or take away from my introduction. Oh, let's clarify that the Journal of Mormon polygamy is up and they're having their second conference on March 20th and 21st. So people can go to JournalofMormonPolygamy.org and sign up for that if they want. So now I won't get killed by any specific people who would have liked me to say that. So no, I you just fire away John and we'll talk and and I don't have any particular. I just I'm so happy that you would have me on. I'm really grateful for that. I think this is super important. It's a super important message and it's just an odd thing to be you know, excommunicated for these reasons. It's just completely unexpected. I would have never believed it. People right now when I tell them they can't believe it. And so I'm really glad to be able to come on and tell the story. And it's funny because of course Mormon stories is more associated with you know, anti-Mormons, ex-Mormons, whatever. But I love that you've been branching out to talk to like Michelle Stone or more recently Greg Matson. And when I heard your intro for the Greg Matson episode, I was just wildly impressed. Like that what a lot of all thing to do to say you know, I want to be a little more balanced and talk to maybe faithful members and things like that. And I just thought that was fantastic because you know, I debated for a moment, but really I wanted to come on. I'm happy for any opportunity to talk about this. I really appreciate it. Well that makes me feel really good. I'm getting the chills, Holy Ghosts sort of a effect where I'm feeling the hair standing up on my arms and neck because I do think it's better that we talk to each other than about each other. But I also think we need to model healthy civil discourse, peacemaking, bridge building, and just open communication. So I love it that it's this conversation's framed that way. I really am glad you valued my conversation with Greg. And I want to get better and better at it. Some even said I was a little bit too spicy with Michelle. So I want to get better and better. I know I was too spicy with Rod Melder, but I'm going to blame Carabell a little bit for that. You felt I was okay with Michelle? I did. Okay, good. I think we both did. I mean, I thought it was great. I mean, you had her on for six hours. I did. I love the comment. I think people are like letter, letter rest. Oh, that was so funny. That was so she called me in the morning and she's like, I'm so sick. And I said, you're still going on. She says, I'm still going on. And then later in the comments, you know, if you watch it in fast forward, you can just watch her shrink down as the time goes on. And in the comment section, they started a hashtag free Michelle. It was so fun. Yeah, totally. I love that. Anyway, she's a I really consider her dear friend and it's nice to meet you as well. So okay. And let me just as the outset, for those who let me just say, if you really want a more deeper dive into the details of like whether or not the evidence suggests that Joseph Smith did or didn't practice plegiume, that's not what today is primarily going to be about. Like, I do want to give Karen a chance to share how she arrived at her position. And I may ask a few questions just to sort of understand that, but do not expect today some big battle or pushback or debate on that point that we're bridge building. We're peacemaking. We're doing open dialogue. And mostly, I'm just today curious about Karen's story, Karen's thinking. And so that's what today is going to be about. How does that? That's fine. It has to play a part because it's you don't understand the absurdity unless you do see some of the documentation and not a lot, but I will quote you a few things. And it's just, you know, it's crazy. It's really crazy to be to be balking at this new kind of narrative that's a legitimate possibility to say the least. The end of my presentation, we'll go ahead and go talk about that. Yeah, keep going. Well, so I compiled documents. I don't know how far you want to go back, but to your story. Yeah, we just dive in. Yeah, well, let me ask if you, but I like to establish people's backstory a little bit. It's okay. The quick version. Yeah. So your parents were they raised in the church? You know, so my parents joined the church. I believe before I was born because I understand that I was blessed in the church. So I know that they wanted to raise their kids in a religion. So there's probably isn't the right, their coverage. What state did they join in? California. Okay. My dad knew a really great guy, really upstanding guy at work and admired him. Turned out he was LDS. So they joined that church and mom had some questions, you know, kind of early on and was told, like, just have faith. You know, we don't have answers for those. She's like, what? And so she quickly kind of fell away and that's, that's fine. No big deal. But when I was 15 or so, they came back to church, mom found her way back to church through some cool things that happened. Have you seen Southern California or Northern California? Northern California by this time. By the time they, they, they joined in Southern California, we moved up north to Fremont. Okay. Between San Jose and Oakland. And so she finds a way back to church. I'm not interested. I'm 15 at the time and I just organized religion. I thought was a scam. Like, why would I pay somebody to read me the Bible? You really raised Mormon. Oh, no. Okay. Okay. And you raised kind of secular or just normal, just a normal kid, you know, I religious wasn't a thing in your family. Yeah. And I always believed in God. Okay. I absolutely believed in God. And I could, I just could tell he was there. That's all I can say. But, but okay. So a couple years after they came back to activity, I was at home alone and a couple of missionaries came by the house. And one of them was of exceedingly fine workmanship, shall we say? And so when they wanted hot missionary. So when they wanted to come back, you know, can we come back when your parents are sure? You know, absolutely you can. I'm 17. So anyway, they came back and a fine workmanship had been transferred of course. That wasn't the plan. You know, so these missionaries start teaching me. And but I don't even understand why they're there. So sometimes I would be there. And sometimes I wouldn't. And my parents would be like, well, you missed the missionaries today. He's like, well, that's fine. I hope you had a nice chat. I really didn't understand that they were there. They're just for me. So long story short, I eventually began to feel that God wanted me to be baptized. And I was very spiritually immature, very, very immature in every way. So my big thing was I don't want to get my hair wet in front of people. I mean, that's the extent of my thoughtfulness on this. But I did just kind of start to feel like God wanted me to get baptized. So I did. It was a good year later that I really understood like the treasure that I had in the book of Mormon. And the story of Joseph Smith like this isn't the same story. This is somebody that's claimed to have seen God. That does change things, right? So I joined the church was not reactive the first year kind of got a testimony and was all in after that. So I, I think this is around what? 1983 is when I joined. So 17. Okay. Okay. Okay. And eventually went up to rich college. You're like a junior. Okay. Okay. If I recall, yeah, I think I'm doing the math. Good. I don't know. Yeah. I guess I, I guess I was baptized the summer before my senior year. There you go. Okay. So then eventually went up to Rick's college, which was a miracle itself to even pursue more education because I was the type that I didn't love being at school. You know, I aced tests. I did well and tests, but I hated homework. So I would usually flunk the class if it required a lot of homework. So anyway, went up to Rick's college, kind of the same pattern there. My first year was invited not to come back. Again, if the class required homework, I didn't do well. And so my GPA was terrible. So I ended up calling on a mission. Oh. Mm-hmm. Okay. To Montreal, Canada. And French speaking. French speaking. Okay. Had lots of French companions. It was pretty fun. Anyway, came home, had it together a little bit better by that time. Did you enjoy your mission? Loved my mission. Okay. Loved it. It was terrific. Yeah, it was awesome. Highly recommend. Came back, went to went back to Rick's and retook all those classes that I had failed and replaced them with A's. My GPA went from something like a 2.1 to a 3.7. And that was before they raised the bar at BYU. So I was able to sneak in there. So I went to BYU. And then and the provo BYU program. Right. And teacher. Yeah. Okay. Marriage wasn't super high on my list. I hadn't grown up with that thought. Was happy to put that off for a long time. But my, you know, boyfriend had different ideas. So he proposed. So we got married. Anyway, so it was all good. He proposed a little earlier than I would prefer. He knew that. But it worked out great. And I love that guy. And I can't imagine anyone better. He's the biggest blessing in my life. So anyway, those, that was what you've been married to this man for how long since 91. So that's that 34. 34 years. That's huge. Congratulations. It is. He's he's fantastic. We're an effective team. He's he's terrific. So temple married. Yes. Oakland. Oakland temple. And how many kids did y'all have together? Four. Okay. Four kids. Yeah. They're 32 down to 26 right now. Three are married. Okay. And I'm just curious. So three married in the temple or okay. Wow. Okay. Wow. So we're all in, right? All in. The kind of person you want to kick out of your church, I would say. And I'm that's kind of what I'm building for. So, so were you a state home mom or? Yes. He always had jobs that allowed me to stay at home. So I was really happy about that. Where did y'all basically raise your family? So after we graduated BYU, he actually got a job off right back where I grew up in California. So that was crazy. So we went back there and and lived there for three years. And then, you know, California's great. Like I love it. The Bay Area is awesome. You're right by Santa Cruz, San Francisco, lots of stuff to do. But if you have little kids, it's just not the same. Even the beach. It's like sand in the diaper. It's just not cool. So it also got really, really crowded. And it was impossible to even decide to go to Walmart at 3 p.m. Because you're like, wait, do the math. I can't because we'll be in gridlock on the way home. Like it's that crowded. So anyway, one day he called and said, Hey, I just went to a job fair and I was like, Oh, he is going to say Utah. Don't even because when we lived in Utah for a couple years, when we first got married, you know, it's a fourplex. There was no garage scraping the windshield every single winter day. It was a nightmare. And so that's what I pictured, you know. So of course, he says Utah, but we moved back and it's just life's different if you have a garage. So it was awesome. So we've loved it. We've been here for 27 years. So we're in West Jordan. Okay. So that's in Salt Lake City in the Salt Lake Valley. Yeah. In the White County, but on the West side. Yeah. It's where the Jordan River temple is. Is that right? Yeah. Closest. That's South Jordan. But yeah. Okay. We've got and also South Jordan has Okra mountain temple. We're closer to that one. Okay. Okay. Okay. So raised four kids faithful in the church. Yeah. Yeah. So it was ever a point where y'all were doubting your questioning or a post AIDS or like inactive during these 30 whatever years. Not even a little and really? I don't want to I don't want to clarify like, you know, we did found home evening. We did all sorts of we were all in and we didn't do the things because the church said to do them. We did them because we thought God wanted us to do them. And so that was, I mean, that's a I think it's an important distinction. Yeah. We weren't checking boxes. We weren't we weren't doing that. And we would learn together and our we and our children had a pattern of learning together. You know, somebody had a question. It's like, that's a good question. It was never like, well, that's how it is in the church or in the church. This is what we do. It was just this is what God wants us to do. Yeah. So that was. Yeah. Well, it's cool because we didn't have the checkbox mentality. So if somebody, you know, if we discovered something that didn't match, it was okay. It didn't throw us for a loop or anything. I can already see why that's a recipe for danger from the church's standpoint that you're doing things intrinsically not not out of obedience. Um, per se. Obedience to the church. Right. Obedience to God. Obedience to God. Not to be cynical, but I mean, sure. I know I get you, John. And you know, I don't blame me like I get that. And it's very calm in that sort of. It's a it is a cult. He minds it, you know, and I just feel like we were able to avoid that to a large degree. Yeah. And it just wasn't on a radar. We just we just assumed that what came down from the church was from God. So anyway, it's all good. So in terms of callings, did you ever serve like in primary relief society and women's all the things? So yes, take young women president. What? You were a state young women's president. Yeah. Should I be offended that you're surprised? What does this mean? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is I'm just I don't know you, but like I always it's it's you know, Mormons care about status and positions and titles, even though we we we say we don't, but we all do. And I just want to let especially my never Mormons understand state, state young women's president is a very high status level position. It means that over like 10 or 12 awards or congregations. And this is Salt Lake Valley. So this is like the heart of Utah. She's leading the young women's programs for like 10 congregations. And it needs to be said that the church values its youth more than any other asset. I think it's fair to say the church cares about about its youth. So the woman who's leading 10 congregations of young women, that's probably a position of higher status than bishop in Mormonism. And I only say that because Mormons care about status in title and position and power. So it's a credit, it's a huge credit to you and to your devotion. They didn't let me near the youth. Right? So. And again, is that unfair when I just said or is that okay? No, no, I get that. And, you know, believe it or not, I just never considered it that. I didn't want to, there was no ladder climbing. I just was glad that God would trust me. You want to serve? Well, yeah. And it felt like, again, it felt like God was trusting me with these young women. And really, in all seriousness, the stake young women presidency, you know, not to denigrate, but it's like, it's the ward young women presidencies that do all the work. So we are more like cheerleaders for the ward leaders. But you did that too. You were a young women's leader. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I can't think of very many positions that I haven't held. So you've been a really exciting president. Uh-huh. And stake relief society counselor. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, yeah. So this is an accomplished of a woman as can really happen in Mormonism, save an auxiliary like general relief study presidency. Sure. And, you know, we've been in this area for 27 years. This word for most of that. And so, you know, that's the blessing of it. When people hear about this, and I'm very open about this because it's there's nothing, I've done nothing wrong. So I want people to understand if they hear through the great vine that I've been ex-communicated, I don't want them to be like, did she murder somebody, right? So I'm very open about it. And when they hear that I'm ex-communicated, the response is not, oh my goodness, what did you really do? The response is what the, I thought that was for bad people or, you know, evil things or whatever, you know, and it's like, yeah, it's, it's really not. I mean, they're just surprised. And I love them for that. There's some comments about like this idea of status and position. I think also what I'm trying to address because I've covered a lot of these ex-communications is the idea that somebody who's in a post-aid, someone who's an ex-mormon, wanted to sin or never really believed, you know, or was a week, you know, not really ever committed member to begin with. And I think by talking about these positions, we're basically dispelling all of that in one fell swoop. That's fair. You know, you certainly can hold, you know, high positions in the church without being all in. Like I do see that, you know, where people aren't really focused on Christ, but they do hold high positions. I mean, that happens. We all know that happens, right? But that just wasn't, didn't happen to be in the case here. Like, I loved God. He was number one all the time. And I was grateful to be trusted with these, with these positions of school. Perfect. All right. So my experience with sort of the faith challenges I had was that I was taught this correlated correlated correlated narrative in the 80s. The same time you were getting active in the church. That was very different from what I later understood the historical record to actually show. So it wasn't until the early, my early 30s, where I started getting presented evidence around, let's just say, Joseph Smith, translation, the Book of Mormon or Book of Mormon, historicity, or in my case, claims about Joseph Smith's polygamy that then just threw me for a loop. So what I want to know is, first of all, are you okay with that framing of like the history that the church allows the members to see that's often viewed as whitewashed versus like actually learning the historical record? Are you even okay with that sort of narrative? Yeah. I want to level set a little bit. Sure. And what I have done is I wouldn't say church. I would say church historians and people do push back on that a little bit. But the more I look at it, I mean, I just still see that it's the historian setting the narrative because the church's, the church leaders have said several times that when they have questions about something, they turn to experts. And so and Quentin Cook held up the Saints book and said, we wanted a place where people could go for real information for correct accurate information. So we hired these historians to write the Saints book. So that's, you know, to me, I don't think that the brethren that the apostles are truly digging into the history. And I could be wrong. If someone knows differently, please let me know. But as far as I can tell, they've outsourced it. The historians, the historians are giving them a very inaccurate version of the history and leaving out so much. But mostly I'm interested in your experience with more with credible academic scholarly Mormon history, starting from your real conversion to the churches of teenager. Did you, you know, ever, when did you, like were you ever taught that Joseph Smith was a polygamist growing up? Did you ever learn about Fonbrody or the Tanners or any of the questions around Book of Mormon history, a city book of Abraham stuff? Was that stuff never really part of your Mormon consciousness even into adulthood? Okay. Not really. Okay. Not really. You know, we would hear about the God makers or something like that, right? As far as Joseph Smith's polygamy, they really didn't talk about that in the 80s. No, they did not. But doctrine and covenants 132 has always been there. Right? So it's in there. And it's like, well, that's disturbing. So you had read DNC-132. Yeah. At some point, you know, at some point, probably years into my marriage, I probably hadn't read it before, before I was married or had been married for some years. But at some point, you know, I read the whole scriptures. I mean, I read all of them. Of course, I'd read the Book of Mormon many times. And of course, I wanted to read the standard works all the way through and things like that. So I'm sure I'd read it. And it's, I mean, it's just horrible. It's like this loving God, all of a sudden, it turns into this kind of monster guy. And he's just like, you know, well, you need the first wife's permission. But if she doesn't give it, she's going to be destroyed. And you're like, that's not cool. Okay. That seems awful. And it just sounded awful. And so, let me, let me, let me, let me jump in there. So when do you remember the first time you read DNC 32, like, I just think most members skim through DNC 132. And I think the church curriculum even tries to discourage people from really paying close attention to it. Because it's so problematic. It is so problematic. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, our, it's arguable that DNC 132 is the most problematic chapter of scripture in all of Mormonism. Amen. Is that fair? Totally fair. Yeah. Okay. Ridiculous. I mean, first, I mean, verse one calls Isaac a polygamous, which he's not. He's not. And it's like, and I've had people actually bend over backwards and say, well, this is where we learn that he is. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, if that was the case, he'd be telling us who the wives are. You know what I mean? You don't just drop a bomb like that. You know, if you're God and you're like, this is how I'll teach them. I'll just drop a name here. That's ridiculous. And then verse three goes, oh, Joseph, prepare your heart for what I'm about to reveal to you. Because this is really this new doctrine. And then a couple of verses later, it's like, Emma needs to accept all the wives that you've been given. Like, that doesn't make a bit of sense. Are you kidding me? Like, is it introducing it? Or does you already have a bunch of wives? It's absolutely internally a hot mess. So I didn't notice that. And it introduces the love Sarah saying the first wife needs to approve all wives. But according to the official historical narrative, Joseph started to have 20 plus wives by this point. Absolutely. So why would God introduce a lot of Sarah requiring Emma to approve wives when Joseph started God 20? Yeah. And according to their own story, she didn't approve of it. It's it's yeah. And then but that also, yes, there's a lot of Sarah, but then also God immediately says that if the first wife doesn't approve, she's going to be destroyed. And Joseph gets to have the wives anyway. Like it's probably it's ruining tunes. Okay. And I didn't notice that reading it through the first time I didn't notice these things. You know, I just thought she was its harsh like we have most of us do. You know, and you know, just real quick, before I forget or before we get off this or something, and I forget to say it, Joseph absolutely got a revelation on July 12, 1843. This is what it's claimed to be, but it definitely was not four days later. It's absolutely in his journal that he got a revelation on July 12, on July 16, the historians acknowledge that this is the first time he's teaching about eternal marriage publicly. So I think it's pretty obvious what the revelation on July 12 was about. It was about eternal marriage. It wasn't about polygamy. But anyway, I just wanted to make sure that let's get into that. But I do want to establish your story. So almost the first time you remember reading DNC 132 with a lot of like focus and scrutiny thoughtfulness. Okay. How many years ago? Okay, well, you know, so when I read it through, I'm sure I didn't see all this the first time. It just seemed harsh. You know, she kind of have this big idea, but hey, we have the Old Testament in which, you know, you have who's touching the ark and getting stricken dead, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like there are some harsh, yeah, there are some harsh tones in the scriptures in general. So I just sort of chalked it up to that, you know, it didn't seem that preposterous. It was disturbing until later. I mean, after you get married and you, you know, pretty soon you look at that thing and you're like, are you serious? There's going to be some other chick in our marriage. Like that is messed, you know, that's what I'm, that's I'm trying to pinpoint. Can you think of a year? I can't pinpoint it. No, it was like an awakening. No, no, you started going, wait a minute. I haven't been, this is starting to bug me or no, it's gradual. And I think it is for most people. I don't know if there's probably some women read through it, you know, for the first time late in life and go, what the heck? But it's gradual and the more, you know, the longer you're married and the more you think about it and the more you love your husband, you're like, this is really a problem. And I never doubted God. So I just always said, I guess I'll, he'll change my heart. I guess he'll make it make sense later. Right? I just knew, John, that I would not get to the other side and be ticked off or disappointed or anything. I had implicit faith that I would be happy. I never doubted that. I think that's what most Mormons feel is whatever ceiling means, whatever eternal families means, God will make it all right. God will make it all right. But you know what, there are many women who have, this is the saddest thing ever. I know more than one woman who has prayed, God, if this is really a thing, please let my husband go ahead and be in the social kingdom and I will take a lower kingdom because I can't live that. Yes. They have prayed that since your parents. They sacrifice their eternal. So, yeah, that's mess because polygamous. Yeah. That's as messed as you get. That's how tangled your mind gets with this stuff. And Carolyn Pearson's book, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, she still thinks Joseph was a polygamous because she's, I'm confident she hasn't seen the original documents, but she's read many, many books about him, right? So they're all by historians that say he is. So she still thinks he is, but what's valuable about her book are the many, many, many first-hand testimonies that are in there. She solicited people's accounts when she was doing her book. Please tell me your experience with this. Yeah, the way it pretty good. It's lots of stuff just marriage destroying, you know, this one girl. I mean, her whole first week of marriage was miserable because she just kept thinking, I hope I don't die young because I know he's going to marry again if I do and I'll have to live polygamy in heaven. I mean, this is horrific. This is so damaging that there are no words. Yeah. And I want to refer people. I have interviewed Carolyn Pearson about The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. Please check out. We'll put that in the show notes, a link to that episode. You can also buy your book. It's fantastic. Carolyn Pearson is a legend. Okay. So back to your story. Yeah. I'm trying to pinpoint. There is a point where like, there's like a tipping point where in your mind, it's either like, there's a problem here or like, I'm going to need to start speaking up or you start reading or listening to alternative voices that the church wouldn't approve. I want to do your best to what year? 2022. Okay. So we're talking three years ago. Yeah. Just a few years ago. Okay. Let's go there. So what happens in 2022? Is for, I don't know what reason. It turns out my husband was looking into stuff and didn't tell me because he was worried that I would think he's apostate or whatever. So it wasn't sharing a lot with me the things that he was learning. This is like still COVID or a little post little after COVID was, I mean, that's a whole another subject. It was like, okay, they can make big boo boo's. I get it. You know, I should. So you didn't love that the church encouraged people to get the vaccine or the mass or wear mass. No, I've been. Have you got your car? Yes. I'm fine with that. I have been looking into the United Nations and let's say geopolitics since 2007. So I actually, anyway, did some work on that. Did quite a bit of work on that, let's say. And so I knew the pattern of the UN and the who and they would just occasionally cry pandemic. It's just periodic. And the pattern is, you know, this is totally off topic, but the pattern is scare everyone. The government's all sign contracts to buy X number of millions of vaccines. And then it turns out it's not a big pandemic and the vaccines go to waste, but they've all made this money. So that is a pattern that happens over and over and over and all these scare things that grow government. And so this is a pattern that I was very, very familiar with when I could, you know, if I could just give a disclaimer because there's people who feel the past. I know there are. So that's why we won't focus on this. Today's episode is not to adjudicate vaccines for those of you who want me to argue with her. That's not what today is about. And it's not I'm not talking about vaccines in particular. I am talking about COVID. It's specifically, I'm talking about COVID specifically. So, and that is, I mean, all the documentation says that's right. It wasn't what they said that like now if you just look for two seconds. So that's fine. But, you know, so there I just alienated half of your audience and maybe half of my audience. So it's all. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, no, no, no. There's already a comment like somebody says, all conspiracy theories. And I just want to say, we're trying to let people tell their story. Yeah. Let's be respectful. No, and I don't mind that at all. I do not mind that. If someone wants to say that because it's that's their perception. And I know it because I've looked into documents. I have documents. It's not my opinion. It's not my theory. It's what they've said about it. So I actually compiled all this into a website in 2021. So about about about their words about COVID. So it's all good. But let's just say the point is for your story, the church's reaction to COVID was troubling. Apolling. Yes. And I thought you're kidding. Like, you don't know that this happens. And so, you know, so people were split. Our stake was pretty cool about it. Our word. Anyway, our word was probably extra cool about it. We didn't wear a mask, you know. And so, you know, we didn't get a lot of flak. Just people understood. And also, I got people saying, you know, my husband wasn't going to come anymore because he doesn't want to wear a mask. But here's your husband in the bishopric without a mask. And so he can come now. You know, so it enabled people on both sites to come. We were never in anyone's face about it, not not once. I never shoved this in anyone's face, you know, during COVID at church or anything like that. I didn't even, I think I made like two posts on Facebook because at the time I was really a society president. And I didn't want to alienate any sisters that might feel uncomfortable, you know, uncomfortable politically. Like, I didn't want to drive any wedges between me and anyone. And so I just went out and I, you know, gave sisters hugs. They were very grateful that I would visit them in person and not just drop stuff on their porch. Like again, it was just God centered. It was like, what does God want me to do? I know I will. She's a really sunny president during COVID. Yes. Okay. I don't think we've adequately covered our Mormon stories, the impact of Russell Mnellson's decision to support masks and or support the vaccine on Mormon, Elia's church member faithfulness. But it was probably a significant blow to maybe hundreds of thousands of members. Would you say? I would absolutely say that over and over people go, well, what shook me? You know, what started me getting to look more critically at things was COVID. So it was, it was a blessing in disguise. But let me just say this for people who are uptight that I went and visited people or whatever. I knew I was well. I was very aware that I was well and not sick. So that's why I would go to people's houses. I had elderly ladies in our ward whose, whose grown children would not visit them because they were told to stay away. Now I knew that suicides and despair were up incredibly and I just didn't want that on my watch. So I would visit these sweet elderly sisters. We're still good friends because we would go over and play dominoes or whatever when their kids wouldn't visit them. So that's what drove me is just trying to do what the Savior would do, which is, you know, visit the afflict, the lonely in the sick and the afflicted. And so that's what I did. So anyway, that's all. So, so what you're talking about though, is that I did probably soften. It sounds like even as relief study president in, in Salt Lake County Valley, that probably started having you go, oh man, maybe the brethren don't always get it right. Maybe a little more than you would have felt prior to COVID. Is that fair to say that's fair to say? I never, confidence in the brethren's sure in fallibility will say and I never thought that they were infallible to clarify. I knew very early on that Bruce McConkey had said, you know, the blocks will never get the priesthood until the millennium or those kind of things. So I never labored under the delusion that the brethren couldn't make a mistake. I didn't think they would make a really big mistake, but I knew that they could. Does that make sense? So I never thought they were infallible, but I didn't expect that degree of mistake, that they had made during COVID. So you're right, that was a big, I mean lots of people were like, we've looked at the documents, we've looked at, we know what a PCR test is and that wasn't used correctly. and all these things, right? So, yes, so that you're right. And I spent months like a lot of us did, just racking my brain, why are they doing this, why are they doing this, are they playing 3D, 40 chess, are they biting their time? Is there a reason for this? Is this just to keep temples open? All the things. And at some point, I finally realized, you know what? I can stop racking my brain and wondering what the heck I just forgiving them and I just forgave them. And once it became a question of forgiveness, that was like instantaneous. It was like, it was just off my shoulders because I know God can help me forgive people. That's his forte. So I forgave them and that was that I moved on. I didn't have to keep on, you know, stuying over why, why, why? - But it's yeah, but not to believe at the point, but it's telling that as a faithful lifelong committed letter they say, you felt the need to forgive the eldest church prophet and his leaders for their actions around COVID. And that's valid, I mean. - It is valid. - You were, you clearly were the only person who felt that way. - And no, no, not by a long shot. So, okay, so enough with that, everybody come back from both sides here. - Yeah, yeah. - We'll quit dividing everyone. So fast forward to, I would say it was 2022. It could have been 2023. - You said your husband started. - Yeah, he was doing stuff, he was looking at stuff and he just was worried that I'd freak out so he didn't share. But be that as it may, we kind of have a different recollection of how we first started talking about all this, but here's the kicker. I mean, the main pivot point was when on my YouTube feed here popped up a video called, who was the first LDS Polygamous, Joseph or Brigham? This is by a guy named Rob Fatheringham. And I was like, what is that a question? Like I've never heard that question in my life, you know? It's in the doctrine and covenants, of course, was Joseph, right? So I watch his video and he has all the receipts. He's got documentation. He shows that Joseph Smith denied polygamy every single time he talked about it. He condemned it without exception. Hiram condemned it without exception. Emma maintained throughout her life till her dying day that he never had any other wife, but her in any sense spiritual or otherwise. And it was unequivocal. I was like, what the heck? And he's got quotes from Brigham that you've never heard. It's like, where is this coming from? Remind me who this guy is again? Rob Fatheringham. He, we all, I mean, everybody in this camp just sees him as a hero. Is he really kidding? Yes, not at the time he did that video. He was still in. He worked for the church's IT department. Oh, he was a church employee. Yep. And he, he was helping with the gospel library app back in the day. And as he helped with that, he'd run across this history and be like, whoa, that doesn't match the narrative that we've been told. And so he saw that and he started, you know, publishing, being public about it, making some videos and his wife was very worried that he was going to get in trouble. So he asked his supervisor who said, I mean, it's just church history. You're fine. So he was fine until, you know, was fine until it wasn't. And so he ended up getting an excuse. What was his, or is his YouTube channel called? Does it have a name? I think it's just Rob Fatheringham. I hope that's correct. OK. But yeah, if you type that in anyway. So he has this video and he's just got all these receipts. And I thought, are these real? He didn't have links, John. So I had to look at his screenshots, which included the URL on some of the screenshots. So I'm zooming in and typing, painstakingly typing in these silly URLs, you know, FQPR, right? The whole thing. And sure enough, they come up and they're from the Joseph Smith papers project. They're from totally legit sources. And in two hours, I was done. Complete paradigm shift, done with polygamy, not a thing. Didn't come from Joseph. Wow, this makes so much more sense. The universe just clicked into place. Because you're like, how? How can he do this behind Emma's back? And how can he do this awful thing? And still have brought forth the Book of Mormon. Still have functioned as a servant of God. It's crazy. Because we have this story that we've passed down. And I have no reason to doubt it. That Joseph and Emma once had a TIFF. And then he went to translate, and he couldn't-- do you remember this story? Until he went back and made things right with Emma. And then after that was taken care of, then he could translate again. How do you have that story? But you also have the story that he was marrying women behind her back. And she was so ticked off about it. But somehow, he's still bringing for a scripture and being an instrument of God. That makes those two stories don't mesh at all. They don't make sense. So yes. At the end of verifying the documents that Rob Fatheringham had shown, I was done. It was awesome. I just was doing cartwheels mentally, right? And thinking, this is the best news ever. So I was so excited. Because everybody's going to be so happy about this. So for our never-mormons, I want to try to do the history of the Mormon church's position on polygamy in two minutes. Is that OK? Sure. OK. So here's how I will say I understand it. I'm not saying it's right. And I think it's fair to say you've studied this more than me. But anyway, which is saying something. So what we know for sure is that when Joseph Smith came out with the Book of Mormon, it basically condemns polygamy with a small caveat saying unless the Lord needs to prepare righteous seed. But basically, Michelle is good at helping me understand this. There are dozens and dozens of verses where the Book of Mormon condemns, hordoms, and concubines, and all sorts of things. So it's fair to say that the Book of Mormon is overwhelmingly condemnatory of polygamy with maybe one little possible caveat. And that little caveat deserves a moment. It just takes a moment, John. The verse is, Jacob-- this is in Jacob, too. And he's just spent the whole thing telling how terrible polygamy is. And you people have doing it in your excusing yourselves by what's been done by them of old. And he says, behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, say, at the Lord? It's unequivocal. And then you have the doctrine in covenant saying, no, no, no, I gave David all his wives. Just Beth Sheba was the problem. It's their irreconcilable. And I remember seeing that those were totally at odds with each other and thinking, well, the doctrine in covenant is newer, I guess it's right. I'm totally ashamed of that now. But the verse you're talking about is after Jacob condemns this in no uncertain terms, then he says, for if I will say at the Lord, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people. Otherwise, they shall harken unto these things. And we think it's saying, if I want a bunch of kids, I'll command my people to do polygamy. Otherwise, you'll harken unto this monogamy that I've been telling you about that whole time. So if you take it out of context like that, you can say, OK, that makes sense. It doesn't make sense. Because the next verse says, for I have seen the sorrow that it causes my daughters. If you interpret, verse 30, as an exception that the Lord sings, sometimes I'll command polygamy. This is what you get. I'm going to command polygamy sometimes because I see that it breaks my daughter's heart. Read it carefully. Which it does, by the way. Which it does. It just droids, I crushes them. And the whole rest of it. And the next chapter says, the laymenites are doing better than you because they only have one wife. I mean, the whole thing is unequivocal. So that little thing that we think is a loophole or an exception. Read it carefully in context. It makes zero sense. That's fair. Keep saying, if I want to raise a righteous seed, seed unto me, people that keep commandments, I will command my people. I will be giving them commandments. If I don't, if I don't, they will harken unto the abominations I was just talking about. That is what it means. So if yours and listers, yeah, we want you to listen to her or me. Go read the book of Mormon. And read it with an open mind and decide what you think the context is. I'm not personally taking a position today. Right, right, right. I want to hear her story. But this is an important part of your story. It really is. There is no exception. So now you can continue. So you have the bookmark in that. OK, so the book of Mormon is pretty much overwhelmingly condemning polygamy. If not, totally condemning polygamy. Then just as it comes out with Dr. Nicarbonate Section 130 with 101 in 1835, that explicitly condemns polygamy, denies that it's being practiced, and he condemns it. And as much as this church of Christ has been condemned with the crime, has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man shall have one wife and one woman but one husband. That is in our original doctrine and covenants. And the next version, too. And it stays there until like 1877, right? Yeah. So I mean, that's important. Yeah, you would think. Sorry, John. Did you remember seeing that in the Saints book? I can't remember. Is that in the Gospel topic? success is it seems to have you're saying that out. Yeah, it's not in there. Okay. That is the part that our original doctrine of covenants literally called the ligumia crime right nowhere to be found. So the church you're saying you're saying in your story is hiding the historian church historians are hiding the fact that the doctrine of covenants can then plug me for a good 50 years. Yes. Okay. And they will say we're not hiding it. It's right here. It's like how was anyone going to find that when you've given them the Saints book that omits it completely. It's so aggravating. So continue. Okay. So yeah, scriptureally other than someone who may want. And by the way, in the Old Testament, it's a lot of farmers like to say, well, we'll, you know, prophets practice pleading the Old Testament. Abraham. My best understanding of the Old Testament after having talked to people who really dug into this is God's never really saying, hey, prophets, please practice polygamy or I say shim polygamy. It's more, it seems to be more just what something that's a common practice at the time. And God just happens to call a few prophets who happen to be practicing it and doesn't like forbid them from being prophets because they're practicing it. Is that fair to say? Okay, that's that's probably fair. Here's something even better. Abraham. It wasn't Abraham. It was Abram and Sarai before their conversion that are promised that yeah, that they're they're promised to see, you know, God's calling him to this and Sarai finds herself barren and she says, take my hand made. You read that, God never commanded it. I hadn't realized that. I thought he commanded it. You read it carefully. He didn't Sarai says, take my hand made and go and pregnant her and we'll have children by her. And how would that hand made feel about that? I mean, I of course, I've never thought about that. Like what a horrible thing. How is that not, you know, sex travel? It's awful. So Abram does this. And how did that work out for him, John? It was a lovely happy family, right? It was like the most miserable family you can imagine. And I can't think of a way for God to say, don't do that again. And they don't. The thing is they don't do it ever again. Their names are changed subsequently to Abraham and Sarah. And they never return to that practice again. And they wait and wait and wait until in their old age, they have Isaac. What a beautiful story. It's a beautiful story. And beyond that, here's what I thought was the most important part of this story. People have said, that's ridiculous. God's not going to call a prophet who did something that bad. Okay, then you don't understand the atonement of Jesus Christ. Yes, he would. If he takes a man who's practically perfect and shows that he can be this great guy, what's the lesson? If he takes someone who has, whose sins might be scarlet and washes them clean and makes him the father of nations, that's a message, right? No one can do anything to be out of God's reach. You could be forgiven for anything. And they did. They turned to him with their whole hearts. And he was made father of nations in this great patriarch. That's the message of that story. It's fantastic. All right. I love it. I love it. You're making a strong case for your position. And that's what I want because this is part of your story. So you're basically sharing how your thoughts evolved over time. Yes. Which is important. Yes. So all right. So I see Rob's video. I'm done. Hallelujah. Wait, wait, wait, sorry. A little bit more about one history. So, but, but you would agree that Jacob who becomes Israel has multiple wives and sort of David and Solomon and Jacob, how did he get his wives? He was tricked by his father in law, right? He loves Rachel and the story. And that's a weird story. No doubt about it. Like he thinks he's going to sleep with Rachel. And in the morning, it's Leah. It's, it's a hard to understand story. I absolutely admit that. But nowhere again, nowhere in there did God command him. Right. Yes. Not at all. And then they're having baby wars. It's so sad. And Leah, oh my gosh, that story's so terrible because he wanted to marry Rachel as father in law, Tricksam and to marrying Leah first. And and then Rachel. And Leah, the whole time is like, well, now I've born him a child. Maybe now he'll love me. And it is a heartcrusher. It's so sad. So no, again, just misery in that family completely after polygamy enters the scene. So it's horrible. Um, okay. So sorry there. And then you have, but it's, but it is fair to say that God is of calling prophets in the Old Testament that at some point in our lives, we're practicing either polygamy or concubines or whatever. Yeah. Okay. So, okay, going back to early Mormon Church history, then the historians, let's say the, the the historical historical consensus would be that even though the Book of Mormon and the Dr. and Covenant's condemned polygamy, the historians would say that from 1840 to 1844, Joseph began the practice of polygamy in earnest secretly first in conjunction with John C. Bennett, an early Navu mayor and an early member of the first presidency or co-president of the church. And the Joseph did this in secret that he didn't tell Emma that he denied it whenever he was asked about it. That John C. Bennett, it got out as a scandal. So Joseph kicked out John C. Bennett said, hey, that's spiritual wifeery. I don't condone that, but still continue to privately practice polygamy. But deny it publicly and to Emma. And then as we've already said at some point, Emma found out, got angry Joseph receives DNC 132 to try and beat Emma back into submission on Hiram Smith's recommendation. The, the, the historical narrative is that Emma was okay with polygamy for a brief amount of time and then wasn't again. And that ultimately Joseph was killed because William Law, his counselor in the first presidency exposed Joseph's polygamy through the Navu expositor. And that's Joseph had the Navu expositor destroyed, which then landed him in Carthage jail for the destruction of property and the violation of freedom of press, which then led to his ultimate martyrdom. So that's, but the still the LDS church didn't officially claim that that polygamy was an official practice until the mid 1850s, long after Brigham Young brought the Saints West. And then came the narrative of the reorganized church. Emma's eventual church maintained the position for 100 plus years that Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy. So that led the Brighamite Utah Mormon Church to try and prove, to distinguish itself from the RLDS claims to try and prove that the LDS church did in fact, the Joseph Smith did in fact practice polygamy, which led to Joseph to Brigham Young and others, getting alleged pluralized of Joseph Smith to sign sworn affidavits, testifying that they were in fact Joseph's wife. So there was this battle between the LDS church in Utah, affirming Joseph Smith's polygamy and the RLDS church did nine Joseph Smith's polygamy. And this, this lasted long into the 20th century. So and a little correction. The bulk of the affidavits were collected in 1869. So well before what you're talking about the temple lot case. So what you're mostly referring to is there was a dispute over who owned the land on this temple lot. And that was in 1892 around there. But well before that, in 1867 or so, Joseph Smith's sons, a couple of them had come to Utah. They were traveling all over the country on a mission. And when they came to Utah, their message, part of their message was our father never practiced polygamy and never taught it. You know, this was not from him. And so what's interesting is that Joseph F. Smith, who was an apostle at the time, said, let's just gather up the evidence that Joseph was and put this thing to rest because a lot of members were leaving when they heard the sons preaching this. It rang true with them and they started to leave the church and bring him was very upset to be leaving losing these people. So Joseph F. Smith, let's just gather up the evidence, put it to rest. And he says he couldn't find any. He couldn't find any evidence for it. So at that point, he said, well, I still know he did it. So let's he would write out affidavits in his own writing. And he would say, I blank on the blank day of blank was married or sealed to Joseph Smith. And he would have these old women sign these. So that that's the bulk. He has a celestial marriage, affidavit book, two of them. And so there's dozens in there, right? Well, I'm thinking about this and I have not I'm always terrible at telling this part of the story because I haven't really internalized it like I should. But on the one hand, if Joseph F. Smith wanted to prove the Joseph Smith practice, flig me, he could just rely on the Nabeu expositor. The reason why he couldn't do that is because William Lowe was in a postate. in the next video. And the novel expositors is probably what led to Joseph Smith being killed. So he couldn't rely on it from his perspective from his professor. Right. So if you thought about that, why he did why Joseph F Smith didn't just say novel expositors. I think it's more than that because we attribute more to the expositor than is really warranted because there's only a tiny bit of that that referred to the polygmy revelation supposedly. And here's a deal Austin Cowles is the only one that came out publicly at the time of the expositor to say Joseph presented this at our high council meeting. It's just Austin and Cowles William Law wasn't on the council and his wife wasn't on the council. So we have those three affidavits in the expositor. People like to say Jacob Hansen and other apologists like to say lots of men, lots of people on that council said that Joseph did this. That's not quite true. At the time we only have Austin Cowles and he waited 10 months. So supposedly this revelation about polygmy was read to the whole high council by Hiram Smith. Okay. And then 10 months later Austin Cowles decides to put it in this newspaper and say how terrible it was. Where what was he doing for 10 months? Why didn't he say something right when it happened? That would be a question. How about where were the other high councilman talking about this? Didn't it freak out any of the rest of them, but not a peep from them until 1869. And it's none of the high councilman said anything for decades after Joseph's death. Why? Why would that be? So I do not think that happened. I, it doesn't jive with anything else. We don't have one diary entry from one supposed plural wife during Joseph's lifetime. Not one woman wrote in her journal. I was married to the prophet today or boy is this hard keeping the secret from everybody or anything. And I think that's important to note. But I also think it's, it could also be very obvious. There's lots of crimes that have been committed where there were journal entries for the crimes. Because clearly it's very reasonable to think that the woman would have been told, keep this super secret. Sure. That is the, that's what they say. The reason we, as if there's journal police that would even look into your journal, it's that secret, right? On the other hand, John, we've got Hiram just telling the whole high council about it. Do those match? Like those don't match at all. We've got Hiram supposedly giving William Law the revelation to take home and show his wife. Is that match with I can't even breathe a word of this in my journal? They don't match. They don't match at all. Okay. It's, it's preposterous, right? And, and I'm also, I'll just say Dan Vogel's in the chat. Dan Vogel has very strong views about this. If any of you want to actually go watch the chat replay, I, I, I love the conversation, which is part of what I love about what Michelle and Sheryl are doing. They're wanting to have a conversation with the documents. And I know there are strong passions around this. Dan's got a strong opinions as well. And if any, the person today is not to adjudicate the history, but I am glad you are able to share your, your position on the history. Yeah, she'll explain that this is not my feelings. I keep getting told Casey Griffiths, other people. I show them these documents and he still persists in saying it's based on our feelings because we just hate polygamy. I was like, I made this into a book. There are 80 plus references. You have a book? Yeah. Yeah. It's right here. Wait, show it on camera. I read, read what it's called. It is called, "Woe unto you, scribes, the hidden history of polygmy." So what happened was I compiled. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I saw Rob. Fatheringham stuff. I saw Michelle stuff. I saw other people's stuff and they would have these amazing nuggets that were so important like the 1835 edition of the doctrine. It's kind of important that we should know that. We have Joseph condemning it every time, kind of important. We have Hiram who was supposedly tearfully converted to this in 1842 or 1843 by Brigham Young. We have him just weeks before his death in 1844 saying anyone teaching this should have his nose around. This does not match. These are really important and I thought these need to be compiled into one place. So I compiled these all together, all these documents and put them into a video so that it's not my, I tried really hard to keep my opinion out, try not to connect dots where people just show the documents. Dan Volv was actually saying in the chat he likes your video. I appreciate that Dan so much. There was a part where we. That's a huge endorsement by the way. I know it is. Yeah. That really, you surprised me. It's awesome. Seriously Dan, thank you so much. I appreciate that. He and I see the William Clayton entry differently and that's okay. So I thought there's not a chance in heck that the brethren are going to watch a video from some rando. So I turned it into a book because I thought there's at least a tiny chance that they might read a book from some rando. So I turned it into a book and sent it to each of the apostles. Just explaining like here's information that is usually omitted from the history by the historians that you've hired. So I sent it to them and of course heard nothing back. There was a visiting general authority in my ward earlier this year and I had an amazingly miraculous opportunity to put it in his hand as well. So I outed myself. But anyway, it's, I'm very open about this. I want to. My point is that I've gone through all the quote proper channels and have heard absolutely zero about it. Of course. Of course. Okay. So I've been going to come back to this more story, but I'm glad you got to say it and I'm okay if you say it twice. Okay. In fact, I want you to say it. Okay. But the only point I'm going to make for the never Mormons and for the newly, for the Mormons who are new to this conversation is that for like a century, the RLDS church or the Communion of Christ now was saying that Joseph never practiced pleging me. Whereas the LDS church before the manifesto was vehemently fighting to argue that that Joseph Smith did practice pleging me, then after the manifesto and the multiple manifestos and eventually by the 1930s, the church wanted, the LDS church you taught church wanted no associates with pleging me at all. And so not only did it stop really trying to assert or affirm Joseph Smith's pleging me allegedly, it just didn't want pleging me to talk about. You are so right. Right. Do you know? Are you aware that that do you remember the series teachings of the presidents of the church? Yes. Sunny school manual. Yeah. Do you know that the Brigham one, the Brigham young manual does not mention his pleging me. In fact, they edited it where it said wives where they changed it to say wife, as I understand it, to obscure the reality that Brigham young was a polygamy. It's, I couldn't, I could not believe that. I had a check for myself. It was ridiculous. Brigham. Brigham's polygamy is not mentioned. But really it's not, it's not because they want people who are curious to not know about pleging me. It's because they're embarrassed about pleging me and they just want people to forget about it. Right. Isn't that interesting? This is like the one doctrine that we teach that is morally repugnant. Right. It's not just like, oh, darn, I can't drink or you know, this kind of thing or oh, I have to pay 10%. This is the only doctrine that offends your sense of morality. I think that is so important. You know, Alma, Alma teaches how to know a good seed from a bad seed. But unfortunately, we almost always just talk about the good seed. We go plant the seed and it'll bear fruit and it'll be delicious and enlightening. You got to be careful. Look at closely what he says because he says sometimes you have a seed that's not delicious and it's not enlightening and you should cast it away. And there's not one person in a hundred that thinks that polygamy is delicious or enlightening. No, for sure not. Do you know Brian Hales even said polygamy's very unlike every other doctrine because the more you study polygamy, the more confusing it is. I was like, should that maybe be a hint for us? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, I was raised weirdly, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, Karma Benson Parkinson, was the daughter of a third of four wives. And I knew her. So, like, my living family lived in a polygamous household. And I knew her and I talked to her. So, however, up until my early 30s, if you had asked me, did Joseph Smith practice polygamy, I was like, all I know is the Brigham did. Like, that's how someone with a grandmother practiced polygamy, that's as much as I knew. So, all the Fom Brody stuff, all the stuff in Nome and O's in my history, all the claims about recent claims, relatively recent claims about Joseph Smith's polygamy, I had no knowledge of up through my early 30s. And I only say that because I think that would have been most Mormons, let her say it's perspective if they're raised in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, is they would have been like, I guess there was plugging me at some point. Yeah, Brigham did it. But other than that, I I don't know anything else. Is that fair? - 100% fair. A few months ago, you know, I like to say, I'm very open with this. I'm not in anyone's face, but I'm very open about it. I have a lower my voice or talk conspiratorially about it. I'm very open because I think it's the best news ever. But one lady that I talked to, she said, well, didn't that start in Utah for the trek widows to take care of the, like people still think that. - Total misinformation. John Wood, so Apostle John A. Wood, so debunked that in the 1940s. He said there were not, and there was not an abundance of women, you know, a surplus, he called it, of women in the church or in Utah, either one, and that is not why we did polygmy. So he put that to rest ages ago, based on census records and church records. So it's not a thing. - Yeah, and so yeah, that's the other thing is, what I did know is that the church's justifications for polygmy in the 60s through the 90s was that there were way more women than men, that men were being killed off. And so they needed men that women could get married, the surplus women could get married to, and that God wanted lots of righteous babies. - Right, all these reasons. - Those are wrong. Why, those two reasons are wrong. There were more men than women or more women than men. - There were slightly more men, but it was essentially even. And did polygamous wives have more babies? - No, like yes, the men would, obviously, because they're married to multiple women, but per woman, no, there is, polygamy does not produce more children per woman. - Which would then contradict the whole purpose in the book of women. - Yeah, that they, if you believe the Jacob exception, right? - And the doctrine count, I mean, 132, which I believe was absolutely tampered with, the rationale is gone, to raise up seed. And then you have Joseph having, I'm sorry, John, how many kids do you have with all his polygamous wives? Can you remind me? - Joseph Smith? - Yeah. - None that we know. - Yeah, I think it's zero. Last time I checked, zero. Like what the heck? - Spicy. Here's spicy. I love it. - It is really aggravating because it's not gray to me. And again, I don't sound like it right now, but I really don't tell people, this is what you must believe. I just say, look at these documents. And to me, they just speak for themselves. Like all these, we had many people claiming to be offspring of Joseph Smith and DNA testing says nope. So there's the science for you, you know? - All right. So most of us were raised with just polygamy, probably being the largest elephant in the room in Mormonism, it was never discussed. The average non-mormon who studied Mormonism, probably knew more about polygamy and the eldest church than the average faithful pioneer multigenerational Mormon. Is that fair? - That could be fair, could be. - We just didn't talk about it. - Right. - And we were discouraged from studying it. So. - Sure. It's a horrible stumbling block for people to come into the church. It's a huge reason for people to leave the church. I mean, how many people on your show have been like, well, the first thing was that I found out Joseph Smith slept with chainagers and married other men's wives. You know, and they go, that's not true. And then they run to the gospel topics essays, which said, yes, he slept with teenagers and married other men's wives, but it was 'cause God wanted him to. You know, that's not cool. - And for me, you could argue in the 80s and 90s that I could have read stuff. The only place, if I'm going back into that time period, the only possible way I could have realistically learned about the source documents for polygamy would have been either through the Tanners, which they were labeled as apostates. They did plenty of documentation, but I was taught to stay away from the Tanners. Or Fon Brodie's book, "No Man, Those My History," where again, we were taught she was the biggest apostate ever. Other than that, I don't think there really was much I could have reasonably had access to other than like dialogue or sunstone. And that stuff again was too academic for the average Mormon - For the average person ever. - To ever really get into at the time. - Absolutely. So it's very obscure and it always has been and you had to go in the archives and look at these things. They weren't available. There was no internet. And now, here's the crazy part, John, is the Joseph Smith Papers project. If anyone doesn't know about that, that was started years ago. They worked on it for like 10 years. And- - It's like 2004, 2005-ish maybe. - Maybe a little later than that, but I had in my head 2014, but I may be wrong. But all I know is they've scanned all these original documents, just thousands of them. And they're now available to your average lay member. You don't have to- - 2001 actually. - Oh, for real, I'm so off. Okay, so the 10 years must be 2004 to 2014. Okay, so-ish,ish. So anyway, these are all available to us now. This is what has changed. If we were bulking at polygamy right now because of our feelings about it, we would have done it 30 years ago. I would have done it a long, long time ago. That's not what changed. What changed is the documentation, showing all these things that we didn't know before. And so this is the crazy part. The church helped fund the Joseph Smith Papers project. Larry H. Miller funded a ton of it. But the church helped as well. - That's right. - And their stated reason for funding it was to be more transparent with their history. Okay. It is the bulk of my work. So I'm taking what they said they wanted to be transparent about and I'm highlighting it in a movie and a book and they go, get out. - Right, right, right. Well, we're getting there. - This is my boggling. I'm boggling. Do you remember the old movie that the church did in the 80s called How Rare a Possession about the book of Mormon? Really well done, really well produced. I loved it. But one of the stories in there was about Vincenzo D. Francesca. He was this Italian pastor. - He's a fine man. - Finds a book of Mormon, doesn't have a cover on it, doesn't know what church it belongs to. He starts preaching out of it because he reads it. He realizes it's lovely, it's true, he loves it. So he starts preaching out of that. And his colleagues are like, you are disrupting the brotherhood. You know, they're like, don't preach out of that. You must burn the book. And I'm like, I'll be darn, I am Vincenzo now. You know? And my church has stepped into the role of, you must burn the book. No, for sure. - For blowing my mind. - I love it. Okay. And we're almost done with the degree. So we're all raised either with complete ignorance about early polygamy or miseducation, like propaganda deception around it, right? Okay. And people are reminding me that I could have read Mormon and Nigma, which was about Emma. But again, I had been taught that Emma was evil, growing up as a Mormon, right? - Where are you? - Where are you? - Oh, yeah. - So I wouldn't want to read a book about Emma as a faithful Mormon, 'cause I was taught she was evil. Where are you? - She's apostate. It's terrible. - Because Brigham hated her because she didn't follow Brigham. - Absolutely. And she knew he was doing this. She knew they were practicing it. She, I can't remember how she referred to it, but it's bad. And she wasn't going to follow them. She, the stories that we tell about Emma, this is one of my main motivations. This is one of my main motivations. We paint her as a psycho, right? Like you said, oh, she just wouldn't get on board. Here, this angel came, you know, this nameless angel has come and told Joseph, he must practice polygamy. And she won't get on board. So she's just a thorn in his side, making his life miserable while he's trying to keep this commandment. And then finally she decides, okay, I'll dip my toe into the polygamy waters by doing what? Giving him two sisters at one time, 'cause that's definitely how you try out polygamy maybe. And then by the end of that night, after they were married, she's already kicked the sisters out of the house. These are all baloney. These all these stories came decades after Joseph's death. They didn't happen. Emma, the first time she heard about the doctrine of polygamy officially was in 1853 when Orson Pratt published in the Sear. In your opinion, been you're reading the documents. - According to Emma. - Right. - According to Emma. - So that might be my opinion, but according to Emma, we will say yes. - And so why disbelief her? Her testimony is consistent throughout her whole life and repeated. These mother testimonies are all over the place. - In the timeline, after Emma remarries and starts the RLDS church, she's interviewed. - She didn't start it. That's another misconception. It helps. - It has-- - It had been-- - Thank you. - It had been started years before and the leaders of that church came to Joseph the third and really wanted him to join it and he said, beat it, I don't want anything to do with any other religion right now. And so it took him some years to decide to come join and he felt inspired at that point he is a mother join. - But when she was interviewed later in her life, she said Joseph never practiced. - Never. - And that's important. - Okay. - Okay, so going back, I was gonna say, the authors of Mormon andigma, but were not I communicated, but they were disciplined until they couldn't talk publicly. So again, the church has done everything they possibly could in the 20th century to just silence anyone who wanted to talk about pleading me. I think Michael Quinn, the main reason D. Michael Quinn was I communicated was because he was publishing about post-manifesto polygamy and the church hated that. So like, Is it, you probably agreed that the church has, the modern LDS church has been silencing people who wanted to talk openly about this. For most of the 20th century and for some of the early 21st century, unless they were apologists like Brian Hales. Bear? Yeah. Okay. All right, so anyway, back to modern stuff. So, clicking me, there's really no way to learn about it unless you read apostates like the Tanners or the Mormon Enigma people or Fombroty until the internet. And I guess Todd Compton published in Sacred Loneliness right around the time I started Mormon stories. So, you know, he was obviously an early source for me. And then, you know, and so that that takes us up to the early, you know, 2000s where the internet started making this information available. So, at that point, the church was put in this position of not being able to continually silence people or deny or miseducate because the internet starts holding the LDS church accountable for silencing or misrepresenting things. And as you say, the Joseph Smith Papers project starts again, publishing documents that people who wanted to understand the early history could use is say, "Hey, look, the church is now even publishing documents that substantiate this or that part of the official record. Are we good on that?" Okay. So, that gets us to then, you know, Mormon stories, Mormon think, to see yes, letter that starts blasting historical documents around early church polygamy to the world, which leads the church to do the gospel topics essays in 2014-ish, which then creates a problem. So, take us from there, you know, how that leads to you, right? The besides seeing, I mean, that's what do you mean? Because in 2022, that's when you finally, and then again, this is-- 23, yeah. This is like eight, this is like 10 years after the church starts to, I mean, there was a there was like a New York Times article that basically said around 2013, 2014, 2014-- The church finally acknowledges the Joseph Smith Papers. Right. I mean, is that my blade? That comes out. Oh, I get-- I still, you know, 97% of the comments I get on my YouTube videos are positive. You know, thank you so much, and my sister's struggle with this and now it's gone. She's great. But once in a while, I'll get someone that pops on there and says, "Don't you know that your own church even admits that Joseph was a polygamous?" You know what I'm like? Admits? They claim he was a polygamous. I wouldn't say they admit it. They claim he was. And so, yeah, that's not correct. I mean, as far as the documentation goes, there's at least the very mildest way I can say it is there is a very strong case that Joseph was telling the truth and only had one wife. So it literally the end of my movie, the end of my book, says, "Isn't it time to consider that our founding prophet may have been telling the truth all along?" Now, that's as mild as you could say it. So I just don't think that's in your face. It's all documentation. It's just gathered into one place. It's stuff that they said they wanted to be transparent about in the first place. So it's very, very surreal to be like, what did you-- I actually just posted a meme the other day and it shows those sort of anti-Moroman protesters that go to Temple Square and they hold up their placards for their website that says josephlide.com. I think is what it's called. And I juxtapose that with the picture of me next to my van fitted out with the bumper stickers that I have and my t-shirt that says joseph told the truth.org. And I put over the anti-Moroman one unacceptable. And I put over mine also unacceptable. So it's-- this is just-- I live in the upside down. Yeah. I don't know what to-- So I think we covered the history fine. And the reason why it tines into you, I'll just summarize. There-- I think everyone has to agree that the church has-- that the official LDS church has been either supporting josephs miss polygamy post 1853 or whatever, or hiding it and punishing people for talking about it or misinforming people about it up until the emergence of the internet where it was forced to acknowledge it. So you seven, eight years after the church finally acknowledges it, it still takes you five to seven years to even kind of have all this come on your radar. And in that sense, you and many church members are victims because the church could have just not punished people for talking openly about this and openly taught what it believed to be true or what it had on the historical record. It could have done that from the beginning, but it didn't, which then leaves people like you and others, Michelle and what's the fathering ham guy's name to try and make sense of all this. And in that sense, the church I think is set people up for this confusion. Is that fair? Yeah, for sure. And the-- you know, it's historical records. We should be able to examine them, no matter if we're a credentialed historian or a housewife, we should be allowed to examine the historical record. There's a historian in England that I talk to once and while email him. And he's appalled that anyone would be disciplined for interpreting the historical record differently. It's-- and actually there are historians here as well that have privately said that they can't believe that the church is, you know, excommunicating or displaying people or threatening them with excommunication for interpreting the historical record as they wish. It's very surreal. And I don't really understand it. I know people keep saying to me, well, they have to have Joseph be a polygamist or else what about the line of authority? Okay. And so that's a huge thing, I guess. And I can't get there. Okay. The-- Well, literally, let's treat-- let me just do this. I want to do this a tiny bit systematically. So-- So, the obviously, the historical consensus among reputable academic historians, you already make it face it. Yeah, reputable. But, you know, keep going. I'll say, you know, John Turner-- I've credited it. I've credited it. Okay. The John Turner's never been Mormon. I talked to him. I see I talked to these guys. I talked to them one-on-one. I've talked to John Turner. I've talked to Casey Griff. It's like, talked to Steven Smooth. I've talked to Jared Halverson. John, by the way, I've talked to these people one-on-one because I just want to put the book in their hand. Because over and over and over, you would be shocked John. How many people historians tell me, well, I haven't dug into the polygamy documents myself, but I trust my colleagues. And then another one will say, well, I haven't looked into Navu polygamy specifically, but I trust my colleagues. They're all trusting each other. And by each other, I think I mean Brian Hales. I mean, really-- Well, I-- This is incredible. That's okay that you make that hard. But-- False traditions get passed on. No, I want you to respond, but I just want to establish this for people that aren't in the weeds like you are in the details that-- The history of the 400 census. Let's just say, for better or for worse, the people who acknowledge to be credible historians around Mormon history. So we'll say, Farn Brody, Dan Vogel, you know, D. Michael Quinn, Richard Bushman, even George Smith, Brian Hales, John Turner, you could just go down the list. Almost there, Ben Park, like for better or for worse, those are the most reputable, credible, well-published early Mormon historians. And all of them have read the documents and have come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith indeed practiced polygamy. They haven't given you a chance to-- Right, they haven't necessarily read the documents, but they've read what their colleagues have said about the documents. Okay, yes, but that's their conclusion. That's their conclusion. Right, sure. And in 2025, LDS Church historians, all those Joseph Smith papers project dudes, and they're mostly dudes. And I should add signature books and George Smith and all the good people who have done work there to that former list. But the church agrees now with these apostate or secular historians. They all kind of agree that in their view and they're reading the documents or in their trusting of others who read the documents, that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. So that's the overwhelming consensus. Now I want to hear your take on how you you started saying, wait a minute, I, I'm not sure I agree. So I know you, I know you watched Fathering Ham's video, but tell us your journey for arriving at a different conclusion. Okay. From the start, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I mean, I really like to start. That was the start, you know, is that because I never heard it even proposed before? It was like, what? So what questions did he raise for you that then made you start digging? Oh, well, I didn't know that was in our original doctor in covenants that polygamy was a crime. Okay. Kind of helpful information that the church had that the historians don't say. Yeah. Right. It's not you don't get that in the Saints book. You don't get. So a lot of people talk about the happiness letter. You know, that's one that's brought up sometimes where there's this tone in it. It doesn't overtly talk about polygamy, but I think we all agree that it's hinting at polygamy and saying, you know, sometimes something that looks wrong is actually right. And this is allegedly from Joseph Smith to Nancy. They did and Signe Rigdon's daughter. Right. Trying to manipulate her into the practicing. And you when you read that letter, what? I mean, that's just generally accepted as that's what that was. You felt it was what? The letter. It's Nancy said it wasn't from Joseph. She says it's not his writing and not from him. And her father publicly publishes the newspaper. Please don't say this. This she says it's not from him. It's from someone else. So that's kind of important too. Another thing that's important in the happiness letter specifically is there's this illusion that if you don't take extra wives, it's like burying your talent so that you'll end up with none. Right. And that's preposterous, but you know, who else openly said that? Brigham Young in Utah. We have him actually teaching that it's like the parable of the talents. If you don't take extra wives, you're going to lose the one that you have. And he taught that openly. It matches perfectly with the happiness letter. Why are we attributing to Joseph? But you find it to be a repulsive document, correct? If it would have been used by someone to manipulate Nancy and Terrible. Absolutely. So what else was disturbing or? Oh my gosh. The one a huge one is the Whitney letter. So this is Joseph. He's in hiding. There's a warrant out for his arrest and extradition. They're trying to extradite him back to Missouri and where they will certainly kill him. So he's in hiding. And while he's in hiding, he's he's he's changed his location because they found out where there's a rumor that they found out where he was hiding. So he changed location. And at that point, he writes to the Whitney family and says, dear brother and sister Whitney, etc. That is how he addresses it. So Sarah and Whitney, their daughter is not mentioned by name in it. But he says, I'm now in hiding. I'm over at Granger's House. Please come visit me. I'm very lonely. Come over here. And the historians almost universally chalked that up to him, asking the parents for a booty call. Please bring your daughter over because I'm lonely. And I just married her a couple months ago. Please bring her over so we can, you know, have a trist. And it's like, are you kidding me? What they leave out? And it says, burn this letter. And it says, if Emma comes, don't come. Okay. And I have literally heard historians misquote it and say, please don't tell Emma about this and burn the letter. It doesn't say that at all. It says, if Emma is coming, don't come. And the reason for that is that the sheriff, and this is all on record, this is in my book, this is in my movie, the sheriff was watching Emma closely to follow her to find out where Joseph's hiding. So if she's, if she's visiting, there's a very good chance that the sheriff's watching or has his eye on a place that she's visited or whatever. So we don't want a lot of people visiting at once and making a big deal out of his hiding place. We're trying to keep it covert, come one at a time, that kind of thing. And when he says, please burn this letter, it has his location in the letter. Obviously burned the letter. It's got his secret location in it for crying out loud. So this is, they never say that when the historians present this letter, like you mentioned George Smith, the historian, oh my gosh, he picks and chooses out of that letter and it is horrific. So when's the last time you heard that he was in hiding and his location was in the letter, they never include that. That's just saying. It's aggravating. But it does seem impossible that a parents or family would deliver their daughter to a booty call. I just interviewed this week. Well, I'm actually going to say something that you may not expect. But I think you'll be okay with this. This week, I interviewed a woman named C.C. Hendrickson who was raised at FLDS. And we're going to release this story in a couple weeks. But she tells the story of Warren Jeff's calling her as a 16 year old to marry a man as a second wife. She marries that man. And then within a year or two of marrying that man, he delivers his own 12 year old daughter. Personally, goes down to Texas, delivers his 12 year old daughter to Warren Jeff's as a as a as a teenage bride. Not even teenage as a 12 year old child. That's true. It is disgusting. People can do that. Absolutely. They can't really just believe for sure. And it's not see that's the thing. You could take all this documentation that I've collected and say, I still believe Joseph was a plugmas. I still believe he did it. That's totally fine with me. I honestly, I never come out people. Don't you see it? Don't you? Never. I've never done that. It's like, please look at this. Just please watch the movie. Please read it through before you make up a month. Conclusions. Please. That's your position. A hundred percent my position. And in my council, I mean, again, I'm all over the place, but my friends that were allowed to come in and testify on my behalf, that is what they said. She doesn't shove in this down. Anyone's throat. She just offers it. Here's some documents. Take a look. Yeah. No, I love that. And we'll get to that for sure. Okay. Okay. So that was just her being the way that you feel like historians have treated. You call it the Whitney letter. Yeah. It's known as the Whitney letter. But that's not. Who's the Whitney Clayton? That's not the Clayton. William Clayton. William Clayton. That's different. Yeah. That's another one. So yeah. Thank you. Okay. So any other things that were big red flags for you making you question Joseph Smith, polygamy in those early time for you. No, none of this was the early time. This is all post video. Like that. I'm telling you, when Rob showed those receipts, it was plenty for me. What he showed was plenty for me. That was enough. That was absolutely. So the main five receipts, he showed were what? I don't remember. I really don't. It's been a long time. And I've watched a couple times, but it's been a long time. It's it was a done deal. Like not just not just that he showed the not just the documents themselves, but the fact that the historians leave them out. That's bigger. Right? To me, that's even bigger than the documents themselves. This is a concerted effort to obfuscate this information. Why? Why? So I don't have an answer of why. And again, I forgive them. I don't have animosity toward Casey Griffiths. You know, I gave him, I put this book in his hand. He was very gracious. Casey is one of the church historians. He works at the church history library. He's a BYU professor. So he splits his time between the CHL and BYU. So he graciously allowed me to come and meet with him. And I thought I was just going to put the book in his hand. He talked to me for an hour and a half. Super great. Really good guy for doing that. I showed him the I explain the affidavits to him that they were in Joseph of Smith's own hand. He didn't realize that because he said, you don't, you know, you have to believe the women. I was like, well, I it's not that I dismiss those affidavits, but I wait them more lightly because they're not even in the women's own words. And he said, well, you don't know that. And I said, they're, they're all boilerplate. They're all identical. So yeah, I do. You know, he was like, well, you don't know how affidavits were collected. And I was like, okay, this is a weird conversation. Like, who would argue this? And I realized kind of his claws were out, so to speak. So I kind of said, well, you're right, Casey. I don't know how affidavits were collected, you know? So he calmed down a little bit after that. Like, it doesn't matter because they're still not the women's words, no matter if that's a normal way to collect them or not, they're not the women's words. So the next thing, you know, he goes on another interview after we talk. And the person asks, it was Pastor Jeff and Pastor Jeff asked him about these polygamy deniers or whatever. And he's like, well, you know, they take Joseph denials and then their own feelings and they try to build a case that Joseph wasn't a polygamous was like, so my feelings, are you serious right now? So I went to education week when he was there presenting. And I was able to talk to him before he went on. And I go and he goes, oh, hey, I know you. I was like, yeah, you do. I said, why did you tell Pastor Jeff that I based this on my own feelings? And he says, well, aren't your feelings important in this? And I said, yeah, did you think those 80 plus citations at the end of my book were my feelings? It was like, I said, it was crazy. This is what I'm up against. Did you? So I'm saying, I do. I do. Okay. So you've already teased this out, but I want to do it in one five to 10 minutes. Yes. From your book or whatever, make your make your five to 10 minute argument for why you've concluded, based on your understanding of the documents that we should be at least skeptical if not disbelieved that Joseph did practice believe me, summarize your main arguments if you're willing. - Sure, I think I've already made many, right? - But no, but sorry. - But in one, - Oh. - Consolidate - And five to 10 minute argument. You can even look at the table of questions. - I thought I was doing pretty good to sum it up in two hours, John. But seriously, the whole story that Joseph got this revelation, what we now know as 132, all right? It hinges on William Clayton, who was supposedly his scribe at the time, which is, that's even debated. One man, James Whitehead said that William Clayton had been let go, that he was a financial clerk and he'd been let go. But that aside, the story is that William Clayton was in his office and here came Joseph and Hiram talking about how Emma just won't get on board with polygamy and Hiram says, well, just write down the revelation, Joseph, and then I'll take it to Emma and show her and she'll get on board, 'cause who wouldn't, being threatened to be destroyed, it's a silly story. But supposedly, Joseph says, well, okay, and Hiram says, use the Yerman thumb 'em and write down the revelation right now. And the Yerman thumb had supposedly already been taken away back then. That's another hole in that story. So, Joseph says, well, I have memorized, so I don't even need the Yerman thumb and proceeds to dictate a 10-page revelation by heart to William Clayton who writes it down. And then Hiram takes it to Emma and, oh dear, it's she didn't like it, you know, who knew. So, the thing is, here's a real key to this. In his 1843 journal entry, William Clayton says, on Joseph's behalf, received a revelation today concerning Moses and Abraham and their polygamy, okay, in a nutshell. And it says, Joseph and Hiram took it to Emma, who said she did not believe a word of it and was very bitter, okay? So, he's got both Joseph and Hiram taking this revelation to Emma who didn't like it. Later, decades later, in his 1874 affidavit, William Clayton tells a totally different story. The one I just said about how Hiram was begging Joseph to write the revelation and Joseph finally does and Hiram takes it by himself. And Clayton says he and Joseph both stay in the office together and wait and Hiram finally comes back and he's been berated by Emma, blah, blah, blah, blah. These don't match at all they're irreconcilable. And you say, well, people remember things wrong. Yeah, they do. So if anything, you should go with the original that supposedly happened hours after the fact where it's both Joseph and Hiram going, but they don't go with that one. They go with the later one with this whole story about how Emma berated Hiram and blah, blah, blah. All those details that we get in our current story are from the late one that doesn't match the 1843 one. That's not okay. To me, that's huge. Dan Vogel disagreed with me that that was a big deal. You can decide for yourself. I think that's a huge deal. Okay. So Clayton's not credible, is that the first? No. Okay. Like you can say he made a mistake. I don't care what it is. Nefarious mistake, whatever. Didn't remember, but these contradict each other. It's not, he's not a credible witness. Liza Arsnow in 1842 in October signed a declaration with a bunch of other women saying, "Poligamy is not practiced here in Nauvoo." Okay. That's October of 1842. So then 27 years later in 1869, she signs an affidavit that she had been married to Joseph Smith in June of 1842, three months earlier. It's like those, she's contradicted herself. You can decide why. You can decide if she was coerced or remembering wrong or whatever. I don't care about that. What I care about is she said two opposite things that cannot be reconciled. And it's just no, I like to realize that. Is that in your book? Absolutely. Okay. So okay. So, you know, Dan obviously is giving his opinion in the comments. So I'm just going to say, our position is, go read the doc. You read it. Go read it. Go read the documents, make your own conclusion. Dan disagrees, but we're giving Karen her voice here. So keep going. Thank you. I do not mind people pushing back. It's fine, but I would love it if they would look at the documents first because this is not happening. So William Clay's not credible. Eliza Snow contradicts herself. So trust her first. What else? Well, yeah, I do. I think she was telling the truth in 1842, not later. Joseph denied it. Emma, if you believe Joseph's an honest person, that should be a problem. Emma denied it because you also, if you believe in the restoration, you want to believe that Emma was a person in good faith. Well, and it's not just choosing who to believe. Her story never changed. So where is these other witnesses? Their stories all over the place. It contradicts Emily Partridge claims that she and her sister were both married to Joseph secretly. Okay. Because Emma wasn't on board. But that was in March of, I think it was 42. And then three months later, this is when Emma supposedly deciding, okay, I'll try out this polygmy thing, right? I'll get on board. And who does she pick, serendipitously, but Emily and Eliza, right? Who just married Joseph secretly a few months before. So Emma supposedly chooses them for his wife. So what did the three of them do? They pretend that they haven't been married already. And they deceive Emma. That is the story. So they have a pretend wedding with Emma there and judge Adams there and Emily and Eliza Partridge get married to Joseph. Okay. Later in court, this is brought up. And the lawyer says, well, let's look at Joseph's journal for the day that you said this happened. Oh, I see Emma was not in town. So this did not happen. Nor was the judge that she claims. So her, so Emily Partridge says, well, I might have got the date wrong, but I know I was married to Joseph. Who gets their date wrong where they were married to the prophet of the restoration? It doesn't make any sense. You can believe it. Again, go ahead and believe it if you want. Just know that. Just don't pretend like we don't have a leg to stand on. We absolutely do. And you, I think you've already said that DNC 101 in the 1835 version of the Dr. and evidence for me, along with the Book of Mormon, pretty much deny it. And what we now know is DNC 132, that whole polygamy revelation. That was not introduced to the saints until 1852, eight years after Joseph's death. You can read that. I've got it in the book. I've got it in the movie. Brigham Young says, we're introducing this to you. And he says, has his counselor, Orson Pratt, who says, I'm surprised to be talking about this in public. We haven't made this a habit of talking about it in public, but I'm going to introduce this doctrine. This is new after Joseph's death. So these are not small things. They're huge. And to pretend like we're just conspiracy theorists and all this, it doesn't make any sense. Or that we're doing it based on our feelings. I hear that one more time in it. But it's so ridiculous. It's like read the documents. They're very, very compelling. And might I add, when they say you're conspiracy theorists, Brian Hales refers to Joseph's inner polygamy circle. OK? This is not disputed that there was an inner polygamy circle of secret polygamous in Navu. All the historians acknowledge this. I acknowledge this. But I believe Joseph was fighting against them and trying to root it out. And they believe he was part of it. That's the only place we differ. So don't bring up the conspiracy theory thing. Everyone believes that there was a conspiracy, that there was a hidden cabal and polygamous. It's which one. Yeah. Just who? Yes. And Joseph and Hiram, again, never changed their story. Always said that they condemned it. OK. And then what do you do with William Law and the Navu expositor? So he had already fallen out of favor. None of these guys spoke a word until they had already been excommunicated. Then all of a sudden, oh, Joseph, you know, Hiram read this 10 months ago. Why didn't you say something 10 months ago if it was so egregious? Why don't we have any journal entries from any of the other high counselors saying, oh, my gosh, this was the craziest thing I've ever heard. Why don't we have any reports of them saying it? Again, the whole story that it was so secret that women couldn't write in their journal. And yet, Hiram's telling the whole high council, no matter if they agree or not. And he's giving it to William Law to take home to show Jane. It's crazy. This doesn't make any sense. And the idea-- So you're saying it comes too late. If William Law believed these things, you shouldn't have waited a year and a half to publish. 10 months or so, whatever. A year. Yeah. And not that that proofs anything, but you have to put it into the mix. You have to put in the equation and not just be like, obviously, this happened because these three people-- and it was only Austin Kowls of the three affidavits in the expositor. It was only Austin Kowls that was supposedly at the meeting where Hiram read it. William Law's story is that Hiram handed it to him. and said, take it home and show your wife, you know, this ultra secret document. It doesn't, it doesn't fly. - And what, so with John C. Bennett, who did claim that Joseph Smith was in on the spiritual wifeery. - Well, first he claimed he was and then he claimed, he signed an affidavit that Joseph hadn't taught it to him. So he's all over the place as well. - But your general view of allegations that Joseph and John C. Bennett were both in on it, would be what, your response to that would be what? - That Joseph wasn't in on it, not at all. - That John C. Bennett was a liar in a scalar way. - And he was, and he was. - He clearly was. - Yes, that's the crazy thing. Another one, John, thank you for bringing that up. He came to Navu, he's this charismatic guy, kind of helped the saints in a lot of ways. So they made him the mayor. And like you said, Joseph Smith made him a counselor for a while. And then it came out that he had left his wife back in wherever it was, Iowa or something. And so Joseph was hesitant to believe it, but he checked on it and found out it was true. And so there's this whole thing. It's not debated whether John C. Bennett was a bad guy or not. He's a terrible guy. And yet they prioritize, they're now citing him as a source to tell us that Joseph was a polygamous, it blows my mind. The other crazy one is, you know, the whole fanny algebra and the barn thing that everybody, you know, knows about. This came from an 1872 letter from William McLellan to Joseph III, Joseph's son. And William McLellan, here's how Brian Hales refers to him in his book. William McLellan, who had been an apostle briefly, and then he tells the story about him. Okay, that's nice creds. He had been an apostle. How about this? He robbed Joseph and Emma's home while Joseph was in prison. That's on record. He was excommunicated twice. Even after being let back in, he was excommunicated again. That might be important. He is on in the church history, history of the church, asking the sheriff for permission to flog Joseph while he's in prison. Who is this? This is William McLellan, who tells the story about fanny and the barn. Why do you think Oliver was excommunicated? Oliver? Yeah. I'm talking about Oliver. Oliver Cudry. That's out of blue. No, no, Fanny Alger is all about Oliver Cudry making the accusation of Joseph. Right, that's fair. But my point is that the story of the barn doesn't come from Oliver. That comes only from William McLellan. I'm sorry, I jumped ahead. Yeah, yeah. So you're saying the guy who tells the barn story about about fanny and the barn and Joseph. Okay. He tells that in 1872, and he is an avowed enemy of Joseph. So I'm more worried about Oliver. Okay, let's talk about Oliver in a second. So William McLellan, his claim is that here's Emma denying this to everyone that Joseph had any other wives that he practiced bullying, she's condemning it. But William McLellan's story is that she confided in him that Joseph was both an adulterer and a polygamist. That is straight from Brian Hales's article. Okay. We are prioritizing William McLellan, who robbed them, who is ex-communicated and said this, you know, almost three decades after Joseph's death, or prioritizing that over Emma. It is incredible to me. Okay, Oliver Cowdery, he writes a letter, I heard some of the other day-- I heard someone McLellan is incredible 'cause he became an apostate. He, it's incredible that we would prioritize him who was an avowed enemy of Joseph Smith in every way over Emma. So you think he just made that up to smear Joseph? 100%. I don't know why. I never attribute motive. I just don't. I don't know. Okay. But it's pretty, we would not do this with any other historical thing to prioritize someone's enemy's words three decades later over the person who actually was involved in it, Emma Smith herself. We would never, you never do this. In any other case, it's so weird to me that this is so weird. But okay, Oliver Cowdery. So I heard some of the other day claim that Oliver's journal, he mentioned, you know, the dirty nasty filthy affair. That was not his journal. It was a letter that he wrote to his brother Warren. He wrote the letter in 1838, and he refers to the dirty nasty filthy affair between Joseph and Fanny Alder. Okay? He does not give details about what that is. And let's be honest, a fair means a piece of business. The event. He, right? So it has multiple meanings. It has multiple meanings. Can be broader than sexual affair. Absolutely. But at any rate, even if he is referring to that, he doesn't give specifics, and he never says that he saw anything. And he's writing this two years after Fanny has already married another man and moved away. We don't have anything from Oliver while Fanny's there. I am totally inclined to believe that he has heard rumors that everyone else has heard of Joseph Smith's pulling me. Okay? That this is their absolute, they're absolutely were rumors that Joseph was practicing this. That's the point of the 1835 doctrine of covenants saying in as much as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of pulling me. So there's no doubt that there had been rumors swirling. It's just who do you believe? And Oliver's letter to his brother Warren is two years after Fanny's already moved away. We don't have anything concurrent, right? We don't have anything contemporaneous to Fanny being there. So I believe that Oliver is speaking from rumors that he's heard. He and Joseph meet up and they sort of make peace in a way. But the other thing is this is brought up. These accusations from Oliver, like you say, are brought up at the high council. So he makes these accusations against Joseph. And a lot of other things of like seven points or something that he said. So the high council says in the minutes, it said that Joseph explains quote, the girl business. Okay? And it doesn't give any details, but whatever it was, the high council was satisfied with the explanation. So of course you could say, well, that's because they were in on it or they were just winking and nodding at his-- - Relentive the profit. - Right, you could say that. - Like you. - But. - Do you believe the profit? - No, no, no, I would say no. Like that's not what I base this on. I don't go. Joseph had to have told the truth. So that's why absolutely not. Here's one thing. Joseph's enemies later who would accuse him of polygamy, they never brought up the fanny algebra thing. So if it had teeth, why didn't they use it against him later? That would have been super potent, but they didn't. - So you have a theory for why Banny was sent away? - I don't know. Michelle has some, it's people had theorized. And I'm theorized all you want, you know? I don't know, but it's-- - Or why Oliver apostatized or was it communicated? Why did you think-- - Yeah, they list those. He was definitely at odds with Joseph, but he did come back as we know he did come back and he never denied his testimony. - Okay, okay. - The things that had happened. He never said Joseph was a liar. There was no angelian and nothing like that. So I really tried to steer clear of the why. I don't know why. - No, it's like your job to prove that. - It's really not that. And people are always like, well, you have to have an alternate theory. I was like, I don't though. I can just show that your theory is crazy. You know, it's just full of holes. Let's say crazy is very rude. I'm sorry, but your theory is full of holes and let's point those out and discuss them. You know, and again, I don't need people to agree with me. I just need people to understand that we have a leg to stand on with this hypothesis that he did not practice pulling me. It's real strong. So for the biggest areas of skepticism around Joseph Smith's alleged polygamy, do you feel like you've covered him? Or are there any really big ones that you haven't covered today that you want to make so much of it? - The only other thing you're so nice. The only other thing is the last third of my book is, and the movie, is let's look at each of the suppose of 35 wives, okay, that Brian Hales, they're all over the place. Every historian chooses a different number. - So it's a good word. - Yeah, or more, 50. And the reason that there's such discrepancies is because the evidence is fragmentary, they'll say, or the evidence is lacking. You know, it's like, yeah, no kidding. It's real lacking. So why are you making up this huge story around such flimsy evidence? I'll never understand it. But I go through each wife that Brian Hales claims, and I picked out from his articles, what I thought were his strongest points. And you would not believe that they're his strongest points because some of them are so, so terribly flimsy. My favorite one to cite, but this is, I mean, there's lots that are terrible. Is Mary Herron, there's a woman named Mary Herron. And Brian Hales claims that she was one of Joseph's wives. Why does he says there's one source for this, one? And who's the source? It's a man named Joseph Ellis Johnson. It's Mary's son-in-law, okay? He is on, he's facing church discipline for having impregnated the wife of Lorenzo Snow, okay? So he's knocked up Lorenzo Snow's wife and is facing church discipline for this. And during the conversation, it comes out that Joseph Ellis Johnson is familiar with the first fricking between Joseph, and Mary Heron. Do you have words for that? Like who goes, that seems like a good piece of evidence. All count Mary Heron. Who would do that? I don't understand. There's another one, Lucinda Pendleton, and Brian Hale's little, he literally says, "They are evidence for a ceiling between Joseph and Lucinda is non-existent." Okay, then why is she on your list? For the love. Why is she on your list? So I just, his work is not examined. They just see it and they accept it and they don't look at it and scrutinize it. It is time for some QC. Somebody has to take a step back and say, "Are his conclusions valid?" Is the evidence that he's using substantial enough to make this case that our profit was lying? This is a big deal. This isn't Brigham. Brigham never claimed to have been visited by angels or seen God or translated anything or anything. It's okay. Joseph Smith claimed all those things. If he's lying about this, why maybe he's lying about everything, it's kind of important to figure it out if it could be true that he was telling the truth. So that's what it's all about is just, I think it's important and we should look into the evidence and scrutinize it and see because it doesn't hold up. Okay. Now do you feel like you hit the main ones? I'm not in the hurry for you to conclude. I love that you are making a summary of your most important arguments. I think that's really important. Okay. Okay. I want to address one thing, not in a contentious way, just to have you address it. You talked about being upset when people say that your emotions, that you're emotionally driven. And I want to give you, and Michelle and Cheryl and others credit, you all know the documents better than 99.99% of anyone in the world. Like the only people that could even come close to you would be George Smith, Brian Hale, Stan Bogle, probably not Richard Bushman, honestly. I would guess you guys know the documents better because he had help writing his book and he doesn't even cover the stuff. He leaves out most of the stuff in rough stone rolling. But you know, I'm just saying John Turner's pretty good on the stuff. So I put him Sandra Tanner Fond Brody, but like there aren't many other people. That's like two hands. Like I'd say you and Michelle and others are definitely in the top 30 people who've ever lived maybe, or at least top 50, who know these documents as well as you do. So having acknowledged that, I also think that all of us can be have to deal with confirmation bias, or what I call Jonathan Heights writer in the elephant hypothesis, which is that we oftentimes arrive at our decisions emotionally and then arrange the logic of the evidence to justify the position that we arrive at emotionally. And I'm going to just say we all do it. Anyone who thinks they don't do it, or at least aren't heavily influenced by their emotion. I just think they don't understand reality or the human brain. Now having said that, that's not me invalidating what you're saying. But I think you and Michelle have strong emotional feelings about this. And that has to at least someone influenced the position you're coming from. And I'll ask the question this way. If Joseph, if you were to learn that that all the evidence was true and that Joseph Smith did do all the things that we'll say Dan Vogel or John Turner claims. Would that be a deal breaker for you being able to accept him as as God's prophet or not? Yeah, I would say he I would say he made a big mistake. I would say that's awful. And I would be really confused how God could have used him because I love the book more and he helps me every single day. I love it. I can't deny that it's from God. And so that would be confused. I mean it was confusing. I this is the thing John. We we always believed that he was a polygamist, right? Like that is, it's not like we have to hypothesize. We know how we would feel because that's what we thought. We thought he was. Do you see what I'm saying? So if you're saying we've been up all sides, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. You could still swallow that God used an imperfect man to be as prophet who did things as horrible as, you know, John Turner or Sandra would claim. You could still swallow that. It would just be confusing, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker. Wouldn't be a deal breaker. Deal breaker for the problem. Be it not being a prophet, the restoration isn't true. The Book of Mormon has to be a fraud. Oh yeah, no. No, I already the Book of Mormon something that I do know is is from God. Right. I do know that and that's just, you know, but your belief in the Book of Mormon being from God would persist if for some reason you were to decide that Joseph Smith actually was a polygamist. Correct. Okay. And I would be just where I was 20 years ago going, I don't get it. I can't. That's not. That's not even fair. Because 20 years ago, I didn't know the story that he had done all this change. So now I would be extra confused for sure. And I'm happy to say that. Yes. Like 14-year-olds. Yeah, it's like mother-daughter pairs. How could it possibly be an intimate God's hands? Right. It might be a deal breaker for you. A deal breaker for him being like maybe he was a fallen prophet or something I'd have to conclude. I don't know. Okay. But maybe the restoration would still stand. The Book of Mormon will still stand. The Book of Mormon stands on its own. Yeah, the Book of Mormon stands on its own. That's fair. That's fair. No, I don't know. And that's interesting because you say, you know, motivated by your feelings, of course, we all are. I am. Of course, of course, they get in there. And I'm not going to, I mean, absolutely. But as far as what information to pick based on your feelings, that's not it. I've been accused of cherry picking in my movie. And it just makes me laugh. I'm like, duh. You know, because I am not trying to show the whole story. You can go into Desire at Book, close your eyes and point anywhere and get a book on the normal story of Plegme, the traditional narrative of Plegme everywhere. It's not hidden. I have no need to rehash that. I'm trying to show you the documents that have been left out of the story. So of course, I'm cherry picking. I am picking the cherries that the historians left on the tree when they cherry picked. Like, is that fair? That's fair. Yeah, it's true. If I'm filling potholes, I don't need to resurface the entire thing. I'm filling the holes. And you don't complain that I didn't do the whole road. It's like, there were holes and I filled them. So that's part of why I feel like your story is so important. Amishels and others is because you're, if anything, your victims of the church is hiding and deception and misinformation. At a minimum, that's just a fact. In other words, whatever position you've arrived at and whatever passion you've arrived at with is at least significantly driven by the church, just not being candid and upfront with the documents, whether it was punishing past historians or putting out saints and leaving out of this information or just not integrating it into the curriculum so that we could know about DNC 101 and we could know about these other sorts of things. Yeah. So when you say church, who do you mean? Like, I always, I always just sort of bristle at that because I do think it's the historians. And so I think the church is, the church's fault is to not quality check, right? They haven't taken the time to look at Brian Hales's work and see if it's based on good, good documentation. Well, let me start here. So yeah, what would you say? Excommunicating Fom Brody, excommunicating, you know, or threatening with excommunication Sandra Tanner and Gerald Tanner, excommunicating Jeremy Reynolds or me. I mean, that is the church. Sileencing people that tried or even intimidating the authors of of Mormon andigma, threatening them with excommunication. Just that practice of silencing people that want to talk openly, I think is that's that's on the church. For sure, that part is on the church. The obfuscating the history, I'm not sure how much they knew that was going on. That's, I guess, the difference. So I don't know if I can fault them for hiding history as much as just blindly trusting their historians to whom they've outsourced it. So that's up for debate, for sure. And maybe somebody will have some something in the comments. The other thing is they didn't, it wasn't just, you know, about Leonard Arington, right? Like they start the church history department to finally be honest about the church history. They let Leonard Arington do his thing from 72 to 82. Yeah, 10 years of an actual historian. Then they start to not like the history he's producing. And then within 10 years they fire him. Okay. Shuttle the shuttle the department and, and yeah, keep business as usual. Right. So whoever was in charge of that decision, you're correct. That's that was an overt attempt at squalching history. You're right. So for sure, I give you that. I mean, it's not a big deal to me, the difference, but Um, it just I do fault. I do fault the historians, but you're right. There's some point they made the decision to not have a professional historian doing it and to, well, even in modern times, who do they choose as historians? Marlon Jensen, what is, what is his occupation? I don't even know, but I know. Yeah, that's what Kyle McCay is, right? Snow attorney. Kyle McCay. Kyle McCay attorney. The church in modern times does need one to use the historian to be church. That's what I mean. Yeah, we only had one for 10 years. Joseph Elling Smith was not a historian, right? Be a trobberts was not a historian. So like for the overwhelming, yeah, 100 and whatever, all the 10 years, all the 10 years, the church didn't want me to have a historian, be church historian. It's painful. So I'm going to pay the price, right? I don't want to scratch you on this. Yeah, yeah. But I don't like always the accountability flowing downhill. I can get on board that. And you're, you, that is a great point. Like the ones today, I don't buy the, the apostles are digging into this and no better. Maybe, maybe not, but what you're talking about when they made the conscious decision to not have a professional historian as the church historian, that is definitely on them. Absolutely. It's still to this day. Yeah, absolutely. Still doing that. They're still doing that. So call upon them to do that. That might be a request. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So you learn all this stuff. Okay. And you just, thank you for acknowledging the emotional aspect. But that's not in any way me trying to imply that you're, you're scrutiny of the documents and your meticulousness of the documents is not laudable. It is laudable. And the fact that Dan Vogel is saying he loves your video and loves your book. I don't think there's bigger praise, honestly. That's awesome. I mean, again, thank you, Dan. That's fantastic. I love that. Yeah. Okay. So, you learn all this stuff. Where does that take you? This is just two years ago, two, three years ago. So I'm on fire and I'm like, this is the best thing. This is help my marriage. You know, it's a, it's a horrible thing to think that you love this man, but someday there's going to be another girl in the mix. You know, this is not cool. And these poor men are trying to console their wives and say, look, I'm not going to take another wife, you know, and our position is, yeah, but if it's a commandment, you will, because you're a righteous guy. So it just doesn't help for them to promise that. You're like, you're promising to do something that might go against God's commandment. If polygmy is really from God, then this is going to be a thing in my future. There's just no way around it, right? It's very disturbing and distressing. You just sort of put it on the proverbial shelf and keep it in the back of your mind and hope it doesn't rear its ugly head at the most in opportune times, you know, thinking about some other woman. Do you start to worry about like the implications of DNC-132 being true? Oh my God. And still being valid doctrine and still being considered a whole time until I was done with it with Throbs video. Honestly. Okay. I have a very empirical way of thinking. And when you show me the documents that our founder was like, no, it's a crime. That's for done. I'm done. That's cool. That's a much better, that fits much better with everything. And you don't have to pretzel yourself into a crazy twist thinking, how did the prophets still do this behind them as bad? And now it makes total sense. So you decided that you felt like it was okay to not accept DNC-132 as scripture. It's definitely it's tampered with for sure. That's a pretty big thing for Mormon, a faithful Mormon to just feel confident or empowered enough to say an entire section of canonized scripture is false. That's a big deal. I don't think I've ever known a faithful Mormon that arrived at that conclusion that state of faithful Mormon. So I know a few, you know, it's crazy. But no, it never crossed my mind because that was the whole point. It's like, hey, it's canonized scripture. What are you going to do? Obviously it's from God. There was just no question until I saw. And one of the things that Rob points out and I point out in my video and my book is that there is a history. Brigham talks about revising the church history. We have, oh my gosh, I can't believe I left this out. Thank you so much for going here. We have a journal entry from Joseph Smith written by his scribe. The scribes would sometimes speak in first person or second or third person. This journal entry is from Joseph Smith and it's October 5, 1843. And it says, walked up and down street with scribe, gave instructions to try those who were teaching or preaching the doctrine of plural wives, of a plurality of wives. So he's talking about church courts. On this law, Joseph forbids it. No man shall have but one wife. That is what the journal entry says. 11 or 12 years after Joseph's death, death, the Utah scribes changed that. They change it to say, unless the Lord commands otherwise. For I hold the keys of this power and no one can do it. They add all this to it and they absolutely scratch out the part where it says no man shall have but one wife. That's just gone. That is in my book, the pictures of those doctored documents are in my book. It's altered. No one disputes it. It's right there in the church history. You can see the draft of it. You can see what's been crossed out. You can see what's been added in in another hand. And it's all there. Well, it's not disputed. Can I just add? Yeah. That's just scratching the surface. Like if you, this is some of the work that Tanner did, we've covered this in the "Odeus Discussions" episode. The doctrine and covenants from the 1835 version to subsequent versions, they take stuff out from Revelation, Joseph Smith received, they add stuff. They write in a whole bunch of stuff that Joseph didn't publish in his first version. Correct. And then John had Joseph Smith's mom's autobiography rewritten once he didn't like what she published. He tried to burn them all and then they got republished. He was so mad. Yeah. So I mean, I think something where I think you and I at all credible historians can agree on is the start of the "Pregnant Beyond Going Forward." There were all sorts of unsavory shenanigans where the LDS corporate LDS Utah church was rewriting and deceiving people through rewriting history. Well, even before it was a corporation, but sure. And you're saying even to the point of rewriting Joseph Smith's own words. Absolutely. He's talking about it. Absolutely. I think you get all of it. Yes. And Brian Hale's treats this and he says he acknowledges it and he says, now the amateur historian will say, "Wow, there's a lot added here. This isn't, this is Brigham adding to Joseph." And he says, "It's not. It's just bringing it into conformity with what we knew Joseph was trying to teach." It's like, "Are you kidding me? That's your answer." So, if that rings true to someone, more power to you. It's fine. But just don't say that we, that are narrative, it's flimsy. It's not flimsy. It's very, very well documented. They absolutely changed his journal to say the exact opposite of what he originally said. So there's precedent for this. So yes, I believe that his original revelation on eternal marriage was tampered with and added to the point that we have this polygamy revelation to support what was being done in Utah at the time. Okay. So you, what do you do then where you're no longer believing in these, you went 32. You know, what do you do from there? Celebrate, just celebrate, do cartwheels. No, really, it was like every woman, that was my goal. No woman in my acquaintance is going to suffer with this as, you know, Carolyn Pearson calls it the ghost of eternal polygamy haunting the, what does he say, haunting the hearts and minds of, you know, women and men. So anyway, it's, it's a horrible thing to have in the back of your mind that this might, that God might just capriciously command this one day like he did for those 38 years in Utah, right? Yeah. It's a crazy idea. It damages your impression of God. He says he's unchanging and yet he's like, oh, it's an abomination today. Oh, it's a commandment now. Oh, it's an abomination again. That's not an unchanging God. That's really damaging to faith. It's really damaging to the, your impression of the character of God. It's totally confusing about Joseph Smith and what a prophet is and how a prophet should act. And if I hear one more person saying, well, Joseph slept with all these women behind Emma's back, but nobody's perfect. You shouldn't have a prophet upon a pedestal. Hello, if my husband was on a pedestal that low, we would have been divorced ages ago, right? You can't marry other women and just call it imperfect. That's not cool. Okay. And I'll just say Dan Vogel has strong opinions about the stuff you were just saying, but we'll will adjudicate that somewhere else. Okay. So, but I've been now back to your story. There's steps you take from like, and this is really what it's going to come down to when you're actually communication. I'm guessing the truth is the church doesn't care what members privately believe. want them showing up paying tithing or being serving and keeping quiet about any problems they have. Right. So talk about your journey into being vocal. I needed to tell everybody this because again, it's the best news ever. I think it's the best news ever. It makes sense of everything that was confusing. So I started telling everybody and like I said, once I was released, I was already released by then at the end of 2020. I think that we're released from our callings. So this is a couple of years later. No, just everyone, you know, there'd be game gals at my house. And I'd be like, "Guess what you guys? Did you know what the Joseph Smith Papers project is?" No. Oh, it's the coolest thing. It turned out Joseph never taught or practiced polygamy. And one of my friends says, "But you can go to the Church History Museum and see the pictures of his wives." And I'd say, "Yeah, but guess what? It turned out not one of them said anything until decades after he died. One of them made any journal entries or anything like that." And they're like, "Oh, wow." And so they'd be interested. And a lot of them would be happy once in a while. Someone, you could see it would make them nervous, you know? Uh-oh. What does this mean for, I don't know, bring them young or whatever. And so I just crank it back. I don't care if it's not bothering them, then it's fine. They don't need to know it, you know? But most of my friends, I think, have been happy to at least understand this even though maybe it makes them nervous about other aspects or, again, bring them young. I, you know, my, my faith was never in bring them young. I can't even say my confidence was in bring them young. You know, he's said really harsh things. The more I read about him, it's just he said some of the worst things, right? He taught that blood atonement doctrine. I mean, so many things that he taught are already disavowed by the Church. Adam God theory, blood atonement, all the racist garbage, super misogynistic things against women. Yes. And the, and he taught that polygamy was essential for exaltation and the Church has disavowed that. Right. So polygamy's halfway on the pile already. And I give it a little kick. And even believing historians would probably agree that he was at least involved in the mountain metals massacre cover up. If he, if not ordering it, but I know they're open to that now. Definitely. So, so, okay, you're saying bring him young becomes very problematic for you. We have a pile this high of his false doctrines, you know, that we've disavowed. This is one of them. It's not that big a leap. And it's such good news too. I just don't get the reticence. You know, I just don't understand it. Why do you do? Yes, you do. I get what people tell me, but I can't get on board. Okay. Well, can we talk about that? Yeah. Yeah. Because I think this is the crux other than being vocal. Yeah. I mean, because I was just going to say like the weird thing about the LDS church in 20, you know, O five and beyond is that the LDS church can simultaneously sponsor the Joseph Smith Papers project. You know, say publicly that they want members to really publish the gospel topic. Says say, say publicly with Ballard that they want members to read the gospel topic. Says and know them. But if you were to go to a relief society, luncheon or teach relief society or teach elders quorum and actually teach the stuff that's in the gospel topic. Says says or in the Joseph Smith Papers project, you could possibly be actually communicated because the church is very uncomfortable with members actually learning and sharing and talking about the actual history. Am I wrong? Well, you can talk about the gospel topic. Says you can part those off anytime you want. Well, but the things that go against it that are from the Joseph Smith Papers project partially funded by the church. If you bring those up, that's not okay. I think that if you think you start talking about, okay, maybe I'll give you my opinion. Yeah. If some relief study president or some elders quorum president said, what we're going to do now is we're going to just do an in-depth study of the gospel topics essays for the next six months. That person would get released and ultimately because they weren't sharing the official curriculum, which is the cum balamine manual. No, you're right. But also, let's just say somebody decided that for the next 10 years, every fast and testimony meeting, they were going to share their favorite part of the difficult history of the gospel topics essays. What would happen to that person? You're right. I see where you're going with this. You're saying that if we, because they're kind of quietly snuck in there. No, intentionally. Right. They're published so that the church can have plausible deniability that they're deceiving people. But the church does not want members actually reading and learning from them and discussing them pervasively. And I think they've even gone on record saying, I think Stephen Snow said, we soft release the gospel topics essays, but did not feel comfortable with the general membership. Really, really reading them again. I was all right. Isn't it smooth or even snow? Is it snow the one you followed? No. The church historian that followed Marlon Jensen was snow. He's an attorney and he's on record as saying, we soft release these gospel topics as they can tell you, I've interviewed 10 years worth of former Mormon bishops who were Mormon bishops after 2015, who during the entire time they were Mormon bishops, not only didn't read the gospel topics essays, didn't know about that. They were there. And that's intentional on the church leadership's part in my opinion. So anyway, what I'm saying is is like, where in this you were caught in the weird situation, where you're like learning this history that the gospel topics essays and the Joseph Smith papers project all would back up. Not the gospel topics essays. They say the opposite. They say unequivocally that Joseph was a polygamist. They doubled down on that this summer. I was so sad. I'm saying I guess the historical documents that the gospel topics essays cite, you're trying to talk about the source documents. Right. And all I'm trying to say is in spite of the church starting to acknowledge source documents and some of them in the gospel topics essays and some of them in the saints book. Right. And then in the Joseph Smith papers project, the church didn't want you or others actually talking about them. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. It's not a true, right? Yeah. They only talk about certain parts of the JSP in the gospel topics essays. Those quote, "Brigum" from 1866, but they won't quote, "dross of from 1835." Because they want a faith promoting discourse. Yeah. I think this is so faith promoting. I just can't get over it, John. I really, it really is. I mean, what could be more, what could be more faith promoting than it turns out our founding prophet was telling the truth and was faithful to Emma. And was not a sexual predator. I can't get over it. Right. Yeah. Well, I never thought of him as that because if you believe that God commanded it, then you can't use that label, right? If you believe the happiness letter came from Joseph to commence Nancy Ritten to practice polygamy, or if you believe the just made two 14 year old girls, it's just the language, obviously, that's inflammatory where they would say, God asked him to live this hard principle. You know, it's crazy. So it's like whatever. I'm just saying your position exonerates Joseph Smith as not being a predator. Yeah. No one can even think that about him anymore. And it's just honestly the best news. So yes, I was very, very vocal. You're leaving something out. You know what you're leaving out, right? What am I leaving out? Probably. Well, the problem is, and I'm sure I don't want to hear your conversations. But the implications of everything you believe and are talking about is that a prophet, Syrian revelator, and not just bring him young, but maybe several after him, were corrupt. So okay. So I will totally give him my take on this. All right. I think it's really simple. It's not difficult. I don't understand. I really don't understand the reticence once you think about it. If most people have it lined up as a domino effect, right? The Book of Mormon. They know that's true. They can feel it. So they believe that that Joseph Smith is a prophet. I think that's reasonable because that's his fruit. So I don't think God would give us the Book of Mormon through an evil person I just don't. So those make sense to me. Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith. But then you have this domino effect. Well, if Joseph Smith then, Greg and young and John Taylor came, "Thurn, we know, and will for the world," you know, Lorenzo Snow and all the things. It's like, so those are assumptions, right? Jesus never said, "Yees shall know them by their unbroken line of authority." He never said that. That would have been a lot simpler for us to identify of true prophet. Is this unbroken line of authority if it existed. He didn't say that. He said, "Yees shall know them by their fruits." So if you want to look back in church history or currently and find out who's a prophet, look at their fruits. It's as simple as that. We have a story in the Book of Mormon about King Noah. Okay, this is a really important story. You've got King Noah. It says, "When he got to be king, he put down all the priests that his father had consecrated and put new ones in their stead, who were idolatrous and lazy and had many ones." wives and concubines. Okay. So we have this. There is no unbroken line of authority to keynote his priests. He got rid of the ones that you could argue were in the line and he chucked them and put new ones. No line of authority, no unbroken chain there that you can't argue that. And yet one of those priests who did not have a demonstrable line of authority anyway, you know, maybe there's something that we're not being told, but you can't argue it from the scriptures. One of those wicked priests, Alma, runs off, repents, and is given power and authority from God to lead his church. That's a key central story in the book of Mormon. There's God called him because of his repentance and desire to follow Christ. He didn't call him from some line of authority. So why do we have to have that? Why is it a big deal if Brigham Young and some people think Brigham Young was deceived. He made a mistake. Whatever however you want to explain the fact that he really did do polygamy. Again, I'm not going to attribute motive. But if he turns out to be a king Noah who was wicked and didn't have power and authority from God, but did all these things. So what? Take him out of it. That's fine. All the subsequent leaders of the church judge them by the way Christ says to buy their fruits. I don't know why it's complicated. Doesn't that put the church in apostasy if it's led by corrupt prophets, though? How do you know they're judge them today? Judge the ones today by their fruits. It does not put the church between 1844 and let's just say 1915 in apostasy because they're led by prophets, there's a revelators who are hiding and lying. See, like we talked about before Joseph F Smith, for instance, was he lying or did he? I mean, he did lie to Congress. That's not disputed, right? But so yes, he did lie here. But was he. Yeah. But was he lying about pulling me see he we already have discussed that Joseph F Smith was the one saying, let's gather up the evidence that Joseph was a polygamist. Well, you don't say that if he're one of the insiders. He believed it. You're saying he was he believed he was raised by Brigham and Heber and it's my opinion. He was higher higher son. Right. He was four years old when Hiram was killed. And so he was effectively raised by Heber, C. Kimball and Brigham Young to hard core polygamists, right? The the the worst we had. So I think that he believed them that Joseph really did practice this. He could well have believed that this was a holy principle. I don't know. But I know that God judges us by what we truly believe. And you know, so I don't know he's in a different category to me than Brigham Young. And so anyway, you've got to judge them by their fruits and not by some line of authority. You know, so if either a direction, do you say I mean, you don't throw them out because they're all in a line and you don't keep them all because they're all in a line. I mean, honestly, what you're saying right now is consistent with what the church is teaching in 2025, which is stop expecting your Mormon prophets to be perfect. They're they're even willing to say that cautiously and rarely. But that's actually the church's official line right now is there's no such thing as prophetic infallibility. Right. So I mean, in some sense, I think the church agrees with you, which is weird because you just kind of communicate it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I absolutely do. What you're saying is actually consistent with what it's totally good. Oh, you wouldn't believe you want to talk consistency. I read them words at my ex communication, my counsel. I read them words from present Nelson from Russell, I'm Nelson, and that we're just like searing. I mean, against what they were doing to me, they flew in the face of it. We're going to talk about that. So really quickly. So two, two other things though. So again, that a pro we shouldn't expect perfection from our prophets. Not just that, but some of them might not have been prophets. That's fine with me. Like go and judge, look at their lives, look at their writings, whatever. And you'll find some that weren't some that weren't, you know, some that you could like, I can believe he was a prophet or some that you're like, that's not okay. Well, weirdly, I don't think bring him young or any prophet until David only came called themselves any other president called themselves prophets. Rarely. It was rare. Okay. When they said the prophet, they were, they were talking about Joseph Smith. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The prophet. Okay. Two other problems then. And then I want to get just fully into your story and the disciplinary council stuff. But one is that I think in their minds, there's this teaching that was drilled into all of our heads from very young, which is the prophet will never lead the church astray. And I think in many Mormons minds, the church leaders today are afraid that if Mormons were to learn and believe that prophets got it wrong on major things across multiple prophets, across multiple decades, that that goes against that teaching that a prophet will never lead a member astray. That's the first problem. For sure. What do you think about that? Oh, I hate that, that saying. And it's so funny, because Brigham said it. But the most famous example of where that comes from is Wilfred Woodruff from the 1890 manifesto. So if you can put yourself back there, here are all these people who have sacrificed everything. Some have been disowned by their families for following the Mormons, you know, and having multiple wives and doing all these crazy things, right? So they've sacrificed their happiness. These women were by, I mean, the vast majority of women living in Pollygamy were miserable. That is their private journals. They were miserable. And so they've sacrificed so much to live what they were told was this unchanging commandment that was required for your exaltation. And then Wilfred Woodruff gets up and says, not doing it anymore. So some of them were like, what? And it was really hard. So he said, look, this is from God. God will never permit me or any other president of this church to lead a stray. That's where we get that. Okay. And the kicker is in the manifesto. It says, we are not permitting any persons to enter into polygamous relationship, right? And they were. They still were. And that's again, well documented. They still were doing new polygamous marriages up and through 1904 and beyond. And lying about it. And then lying to Congress about it. Oh, no, and the world and the world. Sure. And so it's super painful. Like that phrase that they can't lead you a stray came from a statement which was patently false. And he knew it was false. So do you believe that the prophets can lead the church's story? Of course, anybody can. Of course. Okay. Cool. Like that. That should be a given. My goodness. Is there a human? Yes. If you can, if you say they're infallible, then of course they can say something that's not correct. It depends on, I guess it depends on what your definition of lead a stray is. But if Bruce McConkey says the blacks will never get the priesthood to the millennium, that's that's not true. The first presidency signs a statement saying the curse of King priesthood ban is doctrine. Yes. And Mark Peterson says they're not worthy of, you know, whatever. There's so many quotes from quote, profit, seeage and revelators with, I would say a capital P profits capital because that's their title, right? They're perhaps working toward being prophetic, but it doesn't mean that they are prophesying, right? So anyway, I just, I didn't grow up in that. I think it's important that I didn't steep in this as a child for all those years, right? I hopped in when I was 17. I was almost an adult. And I just, it's okay with me that some of them aren't prophesying when they speak. Or are, are we flawed or are we? Or are we an era like a king Noah? Or just an evil. And that's my, would you say evil? Brigham? Oh, yeah. Oh, there's no. Yeah, if someone, if someone thinks I'm crazy for saying that Brigham is wicked, they haven't read his words. Like the journal of just discourse is almost closer, isn't pick a page. I mean, it's really bad. So the thing is that you feel similarly about John Taylor will for Woodruff, Lauren. No, I haven't studied them so much. You know, for sure, John Taylor, John Taylor, see, again, we have a record of him being in Europe telling the people that they weren't practicing polygamy when we are, yeah, when he already had several wives. He was deceiving, um, converts in England. Yeah. That, that the church didn't practice polygamy while he already had plural wives. Correct. And that's pretty evil. To me, absolutely. So again, I really refrain from judging how God sees them. I don't know what's going on in their lives, whether they think it's the right thing to do to lie because they think they're serving God. Like Paul, we have Saul, right? Saul is putting Christians to death, believing that he's doing a trade, you know, until Christ appears to him. I mean, that's important that we have that story. So I, it's not to me to judge their eternal salvation, but I can judge that their actions. I can say unequivocally, yes, John Taylor was lying when he said that they weren't practicing polygamy because he had wives. There's, you can't, and that is pretty evil. Like that's, I think that borders on trafficking. If you knowing. You agree? If you convert a bunch of poor, young European women in the 19th century to come poor, not to speak English, to leave your family come to America, to then be groomed in and siphoned off to old, powerful, rich, Mormon men to be pluralized. Yeah, it's hard to believe that they really thought that that was from God. So that's not my, you know, that's not, I don't think that they thought it was from God. So you're okay saying that borders on trafficking territory. That's me. Absolutely. I mean, that, it's hard to get someone to admit that, but I think it's I mean, I mean, that is what, that is what happened to some of them. And you can't, and people are going to be, oh, not my grandmother, she liked or something. I don't know, or she made her own decision. That's fine. But when you tell somebody your eternal exaltation is at stake here, if you don't do this, are they really making that decision of their own free will and choice, or are they being coerced? I mean, I think it's pretty obvious. So not all of them were, some of them really did, you know, believe that it was of God and they entered into it willingly. But again, there was this thread that was always practiced, preached to them that it was essential, or you're keep, you're holding your husband back from his glory and his exaltation, you know, and it's just, I just can't get that that's not coercion. Part of what's hard is that, as I read the novel expositor, these are the very allegations that William Waw was making about Joseph and the Naboo leadership. So you're basically saying, yes, all that happened and was trafficking, but it started with the Brigham, not Joseph. Ding, exactly right. I always say that, look, the sympathy that you feel for these women, absolutely, that is warranted. You're just aiming at the wrong guy. Do you believe Brigham and John Taylor were practicing clicking me before Joseph's death? 100%. You do. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, we have, I mean, there's, no, 100%. We have Brigham on record. He married Augusta Cobb. So in addition to his current wife, he, he was in Maine and he married this woman. She left her husband and some of her children to come with Brigham. And that was in 43. And a few years later, her husband sued in court for divorce on the grounds of adultery. And he won. So that's on record. I mean, there's no, if Brigham young was secretly practicing clicking me, not telling Joseph. Yeah. And then allows it all to be pinned on Joseph. That's super evil stuff. Of course. And people go, well, how could the church have gone off the rails that soon or whatever you want to call it, right? How could polygamy have gotten its way in here if it wasn't real? Look at the parable of the wheat and the tears. When were the tears sewn? Josh, John, John, when were the tears sewn? They were sewn immediately, you know, it wasn't like, oh, the wheat was flourishing for a long time. And then the tears got in. Now they were planted at the same time. And we were told that the tears couldn't have been plucked out without ruining the wheat. I don't know how that works. But all I know is the parables right there. They were both sewn at the same time. And now is the time. It's, it says, pretty soon you'll be able to tell the wheat from the tears finally. And that's where we are. Like, that's where we are. And I, you know, I was continually told, can't you wait on the Lord's time? Can't you stop preaching this? Can't you stop? Can you put everything away? And just wait for the Lord's timing. I'm like, this is the Lord's timing. Things don't change because time passes. Things change because people do things during that time. And this is what he's doing. He's made this available. All of us said, oh, I bet we'll have answers to polygamy someday. It's today. We have answers today. The answers you've been waiting for are there? I love it. Okay. The last thing I was going to say is I think they're biggest concern. And I think this is probably their biggest concern with you and with Michelle and others is the easy conclusion that modern Mormons will make that if the brethren ever got it majorly wrong on big issues like Blacks and the Presid polygamy, etc. That the leaders that the members today will stop believing and/or obeying and/or unquestionably following the current church leaders. So just to summarize, their biggest concern is that your position on Brigham Young being corrupt would allow members today to stop believing in Russell and Nelson or Dalin A. Jokes and to obey and follow them because that they could get it wrong. Then how do we know that Dalin A. Jokes and Russell and Nelson today aren't getting it wrong about LGBT people or about whatever else pick your topic. Believe me. Sure. Sure. And I mean, that's their biggest worry. Right. Well, it shouldn't be because people have discernment. You're supposed to have discernment. You're supposed to not shut your brain off and be like, good thing I'm getting driven to the celestial kingdom by who's ever at the head of the church. That is not how we're supposed to do things. We're supposed to have a relationship with our Savior and know Him personally and be able to discern truth from error as we study and have faith by study and by faith, right? And so all these things can be made known to us. What's true and what's not? I often hear and I'm sure you've heard that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not a smorgasbord. You can't pick and choose the parts you like in the parts you don't, right? Have you heard that? Oh, yeah. And I think some people are calling you above a Mormon in the chat. Yeah. I'm sure. And so that statement, I agree with 100%. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a smorgasbord. You have to take all of it. But you know what is a smorgasbord? Church teachings. I mean, can you think of a better word? Right? Like no, blacks weren't not valiant in the pre-existence. That's a twinkie. Leave it. Right? And it's okay. That's okay. So when someone speaks, I mean, Joseph Smith taught that when someone speaks, you need to compare it to the acknowledged word of God. And if it doesn't match, they're an imposter. So that's important. Joseph Smith, but you're also saying even the acknowledged word of God, like DNC 132, is also questionable. But see, those saints should have questioned that against the acknowledged word of God at that time. Right? So you're right. The actual scriptures can get changed. And of course, we're taught that that's the ethical faith. Right? We believe the Bible is as much as it was translated correctly. But that's the Bible, not the DNC in the world. Yeah, that's immune. But you know, that's the point is that the word of God is more than just the scriptures. It's the spirit confirming things to you. It's the alma test as a huge one. And so do that. Actually plant the seed. And if it makes you feel horrible and destroys your marriage, it's not good. Cast it out. And so it's, this is this way with everything. Or if it causes generations of people to leave the church. There you go. There's things, you know, I'm happy, even today, I'm happy to still listen to general conference and sort of default to it's probably correct what they're saying. But if something clanks, then I'm not going to accept it. So for instance, I will pin one down and they can, you know, crucify me in the condiment section. It's okay. But Dale Renland gave a talk a few years ago. I called the runway talk. I think it was called a framework for personal revelation. I think that was the name of it. And he talked about how you're allowed to get revelation on your personal stewardship, you know, on your who to marry, where to work, things like that. But you can't get revelation outside of that. You know, each of us has our own runway, he said. And that just didn't ring true. And I looked at the scriptures and sure enough, you've got Marone, I 10, five that we are all familiar with. By the power of the Holy Ghost, you may know the truth of all things. And we have Alma 12. He who will not harden his heart to him will be given more of the word of God until he knows the mysteries of God in full. We have Amin in Alma 26. We have Amin saying, you know, after they've converted so many laminites. And he says, "Whosoever shall repent and exercise faith and bring forth good works and pray continually to such it will be given to bring thousands to repentance and to reveal things that never have been revealed." Do you see an asterisk on there saying, "If you have a certain position, no." And to me, the kicker is in 3rd Nephi 26. The Savior has been teaching the people for days. And it says, "The children's mouths were opened and they taught their fathers greater things than the Savior had taught." That's incredible. And it puts to rest the idea of this runway that you can only receive certain kinds of revelation. It's not true. And as we said, the kicker is, I'm not trying to, I'm not a hyrum page. I don't have a seer stone. I'm not claiming to get new revelation. I am just highlighting stuff that the church said they wanted to be transparent with. So that's the amazing part. But all revelation, all knowledge is available to us if we will keep the commandments and do what's right. So that's it. So when you hear them speak a conference, you use your discernment. You just don't blindly follow. We're taught not to blindly follow, right? Yeah. And I think that I love that. That's a mature perspective that empowers the members. I think the brother and her afraid at the consequences of people feeling empowered. Just like Joseph was with Iron Page. Or Oliver. Yes, but he was, I don't know. I don't know what Iron Page was doing. What he was receiving through the stone, whether it was true or false. Like I'm happy to assume it was false. I don't know. But all I know is I just think we're being underestimated. I, if the church suddenly said, look, new information has become available. The origins of polygamy are unclear, but it looks like Joseph Smith may not have taught it. I do not think there's going to be a mass exodus quite the opposite. I think most members, the vast majority will say, what did Joseph practice? Polygamy, I never heard that. I don't think they will care. There will be a small contingent that's mad because they really were looking forward to polygamy. And there's going to be quite a few who say, thank heavens, like I did and want to be doing cartwheels. It's possible. It's possible. I think, and I don't want to get to real. I want to give out your story. But they're arguing against what you just said as a community of Christ's RLDS church. And they started changing their official narrative in the 60s and 70s. They lost like two thirds of their membership. What? What? Look at it closely. In fact, Michelle did a really good episode because people are, don't you know, even the RLDS admit Joseph was a polygamous? They were built, right? They stayed back. These are the people that didn't go with Brigham. And their story, the whole time for 100 plus years was Joseph did not practice polygamy. Do you know what happened? The minute they started saying Joseph did practice polygamy, what happened? It wasn't the change. It wasn't that they changed. It was what they changed to. 100 percent, John. I have friends who were there at a meeting of hundreds of people and their leadership got up and basically said, look, we're going in this new direction. The polygamy thing wasn't the only change, but it was a huge one. And it was also women and priesthood, some other things, but polygamy was a big part of it. And they basically said, look, this is our new direction. And they kind of said, you know, if you don't like it, you can leave. And she was there. This was in the 80s. Hundreds of people got up from that meeting and left and never returned. I mean, it is repulsive. And what did happen to them? They went bankrupt. All their most tight paying members left because they do believe Joseph. They stuck with the original doctrine. And they changed. They left that. And they had to sell all their stuff to us. They literally went bankrupt. So no, I don't believe it for a second. The church I could imagine is going to follow that if they keep up this polygamy narrative. Because it's out now. People can see it for themselves. They can look at these documents and say, oh my goodness, this did not happen the way I thought Joseph is innocent of this. And if the church doubles down on it, I'm afraid of what will happen. I'm so sorry. You know? I think they're damned either way. I think if they really don't, I honestly don't. I'm not an apologies for the church. They've kicked me out. If they pilot tested this, like surveyed people to see what the results would be. Like if they benefit them to do it, don't you think they do it? So what they have to move away from is the domino theory. Okay. I get that that's kind of in everybody. It's like, I mean, that's what Stephen Smith says. That's what Brian Hale says. They accuse us of motivated reasoning. You just hate pulling me so much. Well they actually have said out loud that it's most important to figure out what this would mean for the church today. I was like, whoa, that's not scholarly. That's not scholarly. So they're the ones absolutely using motivated reasoning. Say, I can't accept that Joseph didn't do that because what would that mean for Brigham and all the rest of the prophets? Like, I don't know what it would mean, but who cares? Like, let's just figure out what's true and false and go from there. So I just, you know, we're guessing, like you and I are both guessing, our best guesses, but I do not think that if they came and were transparent with how Joseph and Emma and Hyrum all fought against polygamy and that it wasn't a thing and that these other testimonies all came from decades later. I just don't see it being bad. Let's just embrace truth and let it lead us wherever. Well, if the church ends up agreeing with you someday, they're going to have to issue an apology to you for what they've been doing. I'll hold my breath here I go. All right. Let's go back to your story. Okay. Okay. You start telling release society members in your ward about everybody. What happens next? They love it. So honestly, they, they, this is how it usually goes. Like they love it. They're kind of like really they're skeptically hopeful that it's true because we all hate pulling me. So they're like, and I'm like, yeah, I got documents. So I would have people over to my house. I'd say come over Friday and watch the movie. So we'd have people over or if they just wanted the link and I just go watch it on your own and then they get back to me like, wow, that was mind blowing and things like that. So it was cool. And then, you know, of course, it's like, oh, what does that mean about Brigham? You know, like, it just doesn't bother me. But so I tell them my take on it. And that's fine. I mean, the bulk of my ward understands where I'm coming from and they haven't come at me with with pitch forks. You know, I just think, I'm really blessed, John, because I have a very Christlike ward. And I can almost empirically show you that. But, but I'll spare you the details, but they are special. They are not, um, they haven't pushed back. They haven't been rude to me. They haven't shunned me anything like that. They love me. And even after I got excommunicated the Sunday right after they loved me, they hugged me. It's been amazing. So I appreciate that very much. And I'm not going to say that all of them are on board with this, but they all are on board with being Christlike. And so they've been so nice. I love that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. And so I'm not going anywhere. It was a point at which I had to, you know, I had to say, do I need to distance myself from the church? That was a valid question. And so I wanted to know if like people's complaints, you know, the SEC violations, right? The hotline that goes to Curtin, McConkey, instead of help, the, all the things you can list. The child sexual abuse coverage. Cover up the offering $300,000 to the mom and her daughter to please not talk about this. All those things are real. So I had to say, do I need to distance myself and not come? And I went to testimony meeting that Sunday that I've been thinking about this. And see, nothing makes me sad or cry about this whole thing, but this might make me cry because it was so sweet. That was my question on my heart. And I went to the testimony meeting and these people got up and they testified of Christ and they testified of what he did for them that week. They testified of being downtrodden and how he lifted them miraculously. One lady testified as she told the story about being on a river raft trip and how they were thrown out of the boat. And she explained that she's been on lots of trips. She's never been thrown out of the boat. The reason she was thrown out of the boat was because the guide had told them, don't paddle. I'm going to be the only one paddling through this rapids. And they got thrown out and she said, that's not how it's supposed to work. One person doesn't paddle and the rest of you just sit in the boat. We're also supposed to be paddling. You can see where she's going with this. The whole testimony meeting was beautiful. And the last one to bear her testimony was this 15 year old girl that said, I want to bear my testimony about this ward. And the whole time I'm just feeling God's answering my question, do I stay? And he's answering it affirmatively. And for her to get up and say that at the very end, I want to bear my testimony about this ward. She said, I am an introvert, but I've never felt uncomfortable in this ward. And when our girls went to state girls camp, our word got so many compliments on how Christ like and united we are. And I was just a mess. And it was a very, very, very clear answer to me to the question that I had. Should I stay? I'm staying. So I knew from the get go, I'm not going anywhere. I'm still attending. They can erase my name of some ledger in some file cabinet somewhere. I don't care. It's not going to change my life. I'm also computer record of this. Yeah, I think a type type type. And I'm gone. I don't care. I'm staying. So I love my word. I love worshiping Christ with these people who also believe Joseph Smith in the book of Martinum and the restoration. And it's a pleasure to worship with them. Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. So you concluded that no matter what you were going to stay. Maybe we can start talking about the opposition. You started receiving from members or that's a quick story. It really is a quick story. I put out my movie on October 10th. Was that did you start a channel first or? I had nothing. There was nothing on my channel. There. Okay. Yeah. Nothing. Okay. you need a movie. You had the Sunday guys. movie. Oh yeah, that only right. It was very engineering. And you had to look closely at the oriles, the documents were it needed to be better and it needed to not better, better's not the word more comprehensive. That's the word. So he treated several documents, but there's so much more. There was so much more that are just zingers that just are so powerful. So it's like we have to compile all these in one place. And is this video this movie you're about to talk about? Is it available right now? Absolutely. It's called WoW unto you scribes. What's your channel called? Karen Hyatt. Karen H Y ATT. Yeah, if you type WoW unto you scribes. Oh, there I am. So that second one down there is me explaining my ex-communication. I highly recommend that. That will give you detail that I won't give you all of today. And right down there. Okay, WoW unto you. So we're just going to make sure this is included. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And I have a website called Joseph told the truth.org. And it has all the links to all the documents. It has a PDF interactive. You can go read it and click on everything. It'll take you right to the documents in the Joseph Smith papers or journal of discourses or Brian Hale's work wherever it's found scriptures. Okay. So I decided to create a video to provide all the reasons and documentation. So the things that I felt were the most important within reason. I mean, you could do a 10 hour video easily, easily. But I had to pair it down. And this was when? When did you really see that October 10th of 2024? So this was a little over a year ago. Yes. Okay. So I put that out there. And I put it on there. And my my intent was to say there you go, everyone done. Wash my hands of it. I move on. And move on. And it was like, the views were crazy. It got like 10,000 views in a week. And it's up to 60,000. Yeah, it's up to 60,000 now. But it got like 10,000 views in its first week. It was crazy. And I naively thought it will just snowball and keep doing that. Well, no, over time, the views decline. So I realized, I have to do like, try to do something akin to what Michelle was doing. Although she's a master at her research. She really is so good at her research. And doing her podcast, she's so good at it. It's such a loss that we don't have her doing that right now. But someday. So I was like, oh my gosh, I have to do episodes. So your goal. What's your goal? With the release in the video? Get rid of this out of every woman's head. You wanted all church members. All we'll say 17 million for fun. All 17 million Mormons in the world to no longer believe that Joseph Smith practiced playing. Yes. If they ever believed me to be with. And to know that wasn't. Just clear. Most of the members would have to learn that he did practice for me or after learned that it many people believe that he did before they would have to unlearn it. Because most don't think he did to begin with. So that's part of the interesting thing. Most. I don't know. You would have been educating people about the possibility of Joseph Smith's polygamy for them to then be able to not believe it. In many cases. In many cases. But it's funny. But but let me say the more important thing is that it's not of God. I mean, that's far more important than whether Joseph did it. The polygamy wasn't of God. Yes. That's what you wanted. 17 million Mormons to believe. Yes. Okay. This can be gone from your head, not back on the shelf, not plaguing you, not haunting you, gone. He will never require this of you. It's not him. So he will never ask your husband to break your heart. It's such a crazy thing to have to say. But that's that's what it is. Yeah. So that was the goal. So if you so if you didn't have at least 17 million views, you were you were done. So I had. So I realized, okay, every time I would do a small episode on one aspect of it or something, I would do the episode and the views to that video would go up. So I was like, gosh, dang it. I have to do these. You know, so I wanted to do them weekly. I just can't. I really don't I don't know how Michelle did it. She didn't sleep much. Let's put it that way. But she was amazing to put out her stuff every week, week after week. I can't. So I put my mine out every two or three or four weeks, whatever. And I'd put them out and I'd watch the views to the documentary go up. So it was okay, I got to keep doing this and they made Peter off in between and I do another episode and they'd increase. So that went that way. Anyway, for a year, John, it was up there a year and nobody had bothered me. I had talked to my I didn't like set an appointment to talk about this to my state president or anything. I don't feel that that's necessary. Like if they want to talk to me, they're welcome to talk to me, but I don't need to talk about this. But I did want it off his wife's mind. So I gave them a link to it. Said, guess what? Here's this cool information, just like I would with anyone else. So I gave them that they didn't care. And you know, it wasn't it was they didn't care. So that's fine. That's my old stake president and my old bishop, you know, they was just like, uh, that doesn't they weren't sure about it. So, but nobody bothered me. So my video was up for a year without anyone saying a word to me. Negative, you know. And on the one year anniversary, I was invited to a screening of the Helmut Hubener movie, Truth and Treason. So what was this? This was October 10th of this year. We're talking two months ago. Okay. And I went to that and that for anyone that doesn't know what that's about. It's a teenage kid in Nazi Germany that was typing up little flyers. And he and his friends would distribute them trying to wake people up to how bad the Nazi regime was. They put it in coat pockets or mail slots or put them on car wind shields and just distribute these all over the place. All the Nazis finally caught him. They tortured him and they executed him. And this was extra poignant for me to see it on the anniversary of my movie because in some small tiny way, I'm doing something similar to what he was doing. And he sacrificed his life to stand up for the truth. So to me, the message was very clear from God. You are not going to compromise anything. You're not going to cave for anything if it ever comes to it. And you will stand up for truth no matter what as well because you're not paying the ultimate price like he did, you know, how dare you value your true membership or whatever over that. So that was a clear message. Good thing because the next day for the first time, I get the state president wants to meet with you in a text, you know, I was like, are you serious after a year? So all right. So I go in that Sunday and meet with the state president. And he's like, well, do you know why you're here? And I said, well, I presume it's the movie, but it's been out for a year. So it's kind of weird. And he said, well, I'm, you know, fairly new. He had just put it, been put in in January. So that's why I've been getting my feet under me. But, but he in some area authorities and others had been counseling about what to do about this for quite a while before he called me in. You know, the previous state president served 10 years or if he was a little early because he went on a mission. Okay. But um, sometimes they send people on missions because they want to replace them. He would, he would have gone long. He was fun. He would have asked me if they asked me to. Yeah. No, no question. And people are always like, I bet you there was a strengthening the church members committee spy in your ward and things like that. I was like, if there was, he had the easiest job on the planet because I was very open with this. I shared it with everybody. So no, that's not. Okay. But they, but absolutely, and I think I mentioned this before. There was a general authority that visited in January. And I had an opportunity to give him my book. So I outed myself, you guys. It's all good. If you want to say, I don't mind. It's, I don't think he would mind. It's elder carpenter, Matthew Carpenter. And um, he's area 30 or general authority. Okay. So general authority 70. I don't know if there's differences between these things. But anyway, so, um, yeah, I just, I had made a comment during his lesson that he really liked. And at some point, he referred back to it a couple of times during his lesson. And all of a sudden, I realized he is going to walk over to me after he's done. He's going to shake my hand and he's going to thank me for that comment. And I'm going to be able to put this book in his hands. And that's exactly what happened. And so it was a miracle to me. So I don't regret doing that by any stretch. I was glad to be able to do that. And I was trying to go through quote the proper channels. I already told you I mailed up a copy of my book to every apostle. And I, I don't know what else to do, you know, you've got the stream of credentialed historians all saying one thing and this little old nobody saying they're leaving stuff out. You need to see it. So it's just impossible. Anyway, so I met with the state president and it was always congenial. It was always fine. He was very respectful. He would listen to what I, he would ask questions and then he would thoroughly listen. He would refer back to things that I had said in previous interviews. So I know he was listening. And I was very grateful for that because not every state president acts that way as, as we all know. So, um, but right off the bat, he said, this is not about finding out what's true and what's not true because history's tricky alarm dig dig dig. So this is about whether what you're promoting aligns with the current, with the church's teachings. So, but it is current teachings. Yeah, and he didn't specifically say about he did later, but I was like, and of course to me, it's like, how could not be about the truth? But I didn't, I knew he'd meet again, so I didn't push back at that time. But, but I did kind of say what I've been saying several times during this interview right now is that I wouldn't even call it the church's teachings, at least at that time I wouldn't have. And I certainly don't in my book. I do not lay this at the feet of quote the church. It's this historians who are knowingly suppressing information. They know it and they say things like, well, this isn't new. This has been out forever. I'm like, I know which begs the question, why don't we know it? Very irritating. That is the whole point that you guys know it and we don't. So I, and I, we've already talked about this an hour or two ago, but it's the church leaders that paid the salaries of the church's history. For sure. Indirectly, absolutely. I'm told with you, but I don't want him to be burdened with that. And you don't have to really go there. It's like, look, this, historians should be saying this. So this is history that should be said. So anyway, but his thing, but see what was good about me pointing that out is he specifically said, well, but on their gospel topics, essays online and elsewhere, they are tacitly agreeing with this. So I said, agreed. Okay. So when I tell people, I never heard of someone being asked communicated for disagreeing with the gospel topic. So it is bizarre. Because they're not doctrine. They're not. But do you know, I think you know, I'm sure you know this in the handbook, the definition of apostasy now in the handbook includes opposing policy. Yeah. Yep. Yep. What? Yeah. So policy changes and the gospel topic, testing has changed all the time. And so, so right away, I was, so he, you know, I'm seeing where he's gone with this and I'm fine. And again, I'm fine. Do what you want. It doesn't matter to me. It has nothing to do with my life. It's not going to change. So I'm answering his questions and I said, Hey, speaking of like getting excommunicated, I said, do they still, you know, convene the high council and have six for you and six against you like the doctrine of governance lays out? And he says, no. And I said, they really don't. And he says, no, he says maybe for a high profile case, but you'd have to get special permission. And I said, you have to get special permission to do it the way Joseph Smith put in the canonized scripture. Hey, listen, if you can get us a DNC 132, they can get us in the parts of DNC that talk about this one our council. Right? That's all we can say. Only if you say it didn't come from Joseph. So, so anyway, so on our second interview, you know, I, we were real. I was real chill on the first one. And he would be meeting again. I didn't want him to feel cornered or, you know, attacked or anything like that. Did he warn you in that first one? Or did he hint at that? Which is why it brought it up. You know, he was like, and so on the second interview, I said, you know, I hope that you can grasp how surreal it is for me to be told that I have to conform to this moving target of whatever the gospel topics as they say that month or the handbook that they don't even print out at changes so often. That's the things all the time. Yeah. And to be told that I have to conform to all that wherever it goes, but we take canonized scripture in DNC 102 and just set it aside. And he was like, well, I can see, you know, he acknowledged, but he says, well, that's why we have people that receive revelation for these things. And I said, okay, so is the theory that someone has received revelation that we don't do it this way anymore? And he was like, oh, well, I don't make these decisions. Okay, fine. So what I reiterated several times was that, you know, this whole, it's not about truth. It's just about whether it's conforming to the current position. I can't get there. To me, when Christ says, I am the way, the truth and the life, I believe him literally. And so I believe that he's saying he is truth. That's what he said. I think it's a title for Christ, the truth. So if you're saying, it's not about truth, you're saying it's not about Christ, I just can't do it. So for me, he's at the top and everything else is below that. This is where I had my eyes opened because I, I believe that him, let's say what is truth is the first gem. Yeah. Mormonism taught me the truth, trumps everything, right? Yes, standalone if you have to. But what I learned is that, you know, they're true. You know what's true when their mouths are moving. In other words, what's true is what they're saying right now is true. Oh, I see. You're saying anything else. It should be discarded. But a more direct way of sharing with you, what I concluded is that the most sacred thing in the modern LDS church is modern priesthood authority. In other words, whatever makes sure that current members believe in the current leadership, that's the most sacred and important thing in all of the LDS church. And I guess that's because they're afraid of people leaving the church. Yeah, I mean, well, afraid of, okay, this is what I've heard it described that, well, if we don't have everything come from one, because it was like, well, whatever the current church presence says, that's what we have to, if he doesn't say it, then we don't do it or we don't say it. And I'm like, that sounds exactly like the head saying to the feet, I have no need of the right was just precisely Christ warned against doing. And so I think we're all the body of Christ, and I do not think that if we sort of step back and say, we are all the body of Christ, it's okay. I don't think it's going to split into a million pieces. Because I do believe the Spirit will inspire us and lead us all in the right direction. So I don't think there's a fear that there's going to be a million splinters if we acknowledge that we all can receive revelation and we all can teach each other. And it doesn't always have to, you know, just because the president of the church isn't teaching something doesn't mean maybe we shouldn't be teaching it. Do things of your own free will and choice. What does it say? Anxiously engaged in a good cause, not commanded in all things. Don't be a slothful servant and wait to be commanded. This is what we preach. And then you do it and it's like, there's the door. So it's hard. It's really hard. And this is your story, but I do like dialogue and I'll just say this, that's a viable perspective. I think it's a faithful perspective. I think it's a reasonable perspective. It is speculation. It's an opinion for sure. I've been studying these issues for 30 years and I've been watching people and talking to people leave for 20 years, actually 30 years, but I've been doing the podcast for 20 years. Probably there are many people on the planet who's spoken with more ex-mormons than me. And I would say that if the church were to go your route, they would experience mass apostasy. And I'm not saying you have to believe me or even agree or disagree. I'm just saying I can see why they are fearful and conclude differently than you. But what I know for sure is that they would say, that's above your pay grade care and buy it. They would say it's our job to know what's best for the church, not yours. And we conclude that more people are going to be harmed by following you in Michelle Stone. Then they will by following the gospel topic. So it says, you know, of course, I'm over here sort of uncomfortable with these like my, when you say my, if they do it my way or whatever, my route. I'm like, this is really my route. This is just truth. Do you know what I mean? Like you're framing of your review of the evidence. Yeah, I suppose. And anyway, and I definitely don't want followers, quote unquote, you know, I know. I know. Go subscribe to my thing, but do not follow the evidence is what you have. Please, please just allow everyone to look at the documents objectively. And anyway, so, okay, so we meet three times altogether. You know, and what happened after the second? What was this conclusion that you weren't going to have for the second? And these meetings were over what time period? October 10th through December 5th, like I guess, uh, maybe a week. So within a month, you had three meetings. Okay. Weeks or something like that. What do you say after the second meeting? Like did he worry you? Did he? Yeah. So, okay. So the, um, let's say that's a whole other thing. So the second one, we'll go ahead and say real quick, because it doesn't take a long time. I knew, I, something told me obviously I just knew he would be taking my temple recommend away at our next meeting. I just felt strongly that that's probably what was happening in the third meeting here in the second. So after the first meeting, you know, it was just chill and I gave him my book and he promised me that he would not take action unless he watched my movie first, which is very good of him. And he kept his word. That's rare. It is rare. And I told him how appreciative I was. He did also say that it wouldn't make a difference because of what we just said, because it's not about what's true and what's not true. It's about whether it conforms to the current position. So no matter what the book says, even if it's compelling, it's not going to make a difference, right? So he did say that. Um, but he did keep his word and he did watch the movie. So okay. So he encouraged me to consider taking down everything. And by everything, I am the most vocal of this by far. Michelle had her weekly, she was the most diligent doing this every week. But I have a website, the points to the movie, the video that we put everywhere. And we have billboards up and down, not up and down, but we do one billboard a week, somewhere along I 15. How long have you been doing billboards? Ever, I think it's fourth of July, a brilliant friend of mine said, I'm going to rent a billboard in Provo for the stadium of fire weekend. When Michelle start getting. She took her stuff on February or March. Okay, you didn't even mention what that did to you when that happened. How you felt about that? It was, I was spending so long on it that, you know, for me personally, like we laugh because it's like, okay, you know, I was about dying because it's, it's a lot to edit her stuff because she has documents to be put in there and everything. You were helping her. Oh, yeah, boy, we skipped that shoot. After I saw the Rob Fallingham video, other stuff would pop up in my feed. And here comes this lady, Michelle Stone, we're watching some of her. She has these long form videos every single week, you know. And at one point, she talks about how her bishop is getting these like messages from strangers saying she and her minions are leading people out of the church. So without even looking at her stuff, he's calling her in and calling on the carpet for this because some stranger he never heard of is emailing him without looking at her stuff himself. So I was living it. So I tracked her down online, went to her house the next day in Gavra hug, you know, introduce myself. So then a few months later when it was she was having trouble uploading your video, I found out that her son that was doing it for her was a little overloaded. So I said, do you need help? I'm happy to help you. So that's when I started. So I was like episode 81, I started editing for her. So I ended up half her videos. You're a video editor. So I mean, yeah, I had some experience previously just a little just a little. Oh gosh, we've already talked about it anyway, it doesn't matter. The point, the point, where was the point? So you're helping her a lot. So I'm helping her get in. Let's just say he's. Yeah. Well, you felt what? Oh, wait, so your video was already out. No, she took her stuff down way before before you release. You're right, you're absolutely right. I put mine out in October. She stopped posting February or March. So you put your video out before she started really getting shut down. I hope I have that date right anyway. Yes, yes, correct. Okay. As she promoted it on her channel, she had me on for an episode or two, you know. And the reason why I'm asking is because then when she starts getting heat in early of last year, this year, this year, of early of this year, you would see, oh, maybe the writings on the wall. My video's up. If she's getting heat, the writings on the wall, I might get heat too. Surely you thought about that February. Exactly that except for the, uh-oh, I didn't care. Oh, wow. I really didn't care. No, I knew that I knew God had helped me. He helped me do the video. He helped me compile it. He helped me. He brought things to my mind that I need to include and remember. And he helped me every step of the way. So I was confident in his approbation for what I was doing. So I didn't care. Well, it's old. It was, I was very confident. It was a beautiful place to be total peace. I've had peace the whole time. I've never been, um, I've never been without feeling peace on this matter. And it's been the greatest blessing. So, so, um, okay, so fast forward. So there we go. So three meetings with him and. Yeah, I knew he would be taking my temple recommend away on the second interview. I just felt like that's what was going to happen. And what's funny is I have never done baptisms for the dead because I joined so late that I just never done that. And it was kind of always on my like, I'll do that someday list. And I was like, Oh, I guess it's like today because recommends going to go bye bye next Sunday. You know, so we went and I just was curious. Like baptisms for the dead is mentioned in the doctrine of covenants mentioned in the Bible. So like that seems to have a leg to stand on. So I was like, okay, I want to go and see. You know, is there anything I'm going to be missing, Lord? Right. So, um, so I went to the temple. I went to the temple one last time to for an endowment. And then the next day I went and did baptisms for the dead. And, um, long story short is that I just, I know God can come in with you anywhere in our own Bible dictionary. It says, only the home can compare with the temple and sacredness. I've always felt the truth of that. I didn't doubt it. I know he can come in with you anywhere. And I was assured on these two temple visits that it was fine. That my recommend be taking my it's not going to hinder my connection with God at all. So I was very grateful for that. So I went in Sunday and yes, he did take away. You know, he said to have you considered taking it down like will you take it down? I was like, I can't take it down. I'm like, I, I have been asking God about this. And I feel strongly that Joseph and Emma and Hiram are very, very happy that their names are being cleared. That the correct history is being taught. I can't take it down. And he was very polite. And he just said, well, I understand why you feel that way. And I said, well, I understand why you feel like you have to do what you have to do. You know, so he's like, so, um, we met one last time. I didn't know that we would, but I got the, you know, he wants to meet with you one more time. So I went in and met with him that third time. And he said, I just want to give you, you know, one more, I'm going to ask you one more time to take it down. And, you know, if you, if you don't, then there will be a membership council. And I said, that's fine. I'm not taking it down. So, so go ahead. And it was just kind of like, well, how's next Friday for you? Is that a good day to get to me? Yeah, Friday works for me. It was just, it was a very surreal conversation. So Friday, December 5th at 10 a.m. And so then I, he had delivered a letter. Uh, the Monday before and said, Oh, and that's when you asked me to bring it's not, it's not a big deal. I mean, it just says you could come, but I was glad. You read the letter. But they're okay. Okay. Wait. So you in your third meeting, I'm sorry, I lost track. In your third meeting, you lost your temper, I recommend your second meeting. Yeah. He asked you to take it down. You said no. Yeah. So the third meeting was just kind of give me one more chance before scheduling the council. Okay. The membership council. So the third meeting, it was like, will you take it down? I was like, I can't know. I'm not going to. Did he ever try and like, oh, and he had you reason, like with evidence, give you reason for why your position was misguided. Yeah, no, it had nothing to do with that. He refused to not refute. He just, he was like concerned. Yeah, he didn't, I mean, he let me talk. I told him lots of this. And so, and I, I know that he found some of it compelling because he said, well, I bet the truth is somewhere in the middle, you know, of your story and their story. That's fine. But he did keep his promise. So by the time of our third visit, he had watched the movie. He said, I watched all two hours and 13 minutes is cute. But he didn't try and. No, they're, they're never going to be able to discuss the issues like someone like with you or with me. They'll never be able to do that. It didn't enter into it. And the truth is, they're advised not to. They're advised to go into that conversation with a apostate. Say, we're not going to discuss the issues. Oh, interesting. They're going to say it's about, are you aligning with the brother or not? That's it. Well, then he was extra generous. It's not about truth. Yeah, he was extra generous because he didn't. He let me say everything I wanted to. He never coming off. He didn't engage in the evidence. No, correct. And he, but, but at least he was forthcoming. Like that was from the get go. He said, that's not what it's about. Yeah, it's not about. Yeah, it's about following the brother. It was like appalling, but at least it was truthful, right? You know, he didn't ever try to pretend like it was or that. And so anyway. So that third meeting. Yeah, was that. That was that. And he said, well, they'll be a membership council and you'll get a letter. So he had delivered the letter. And, and he knew, he knew that I wanted the full high council, you know, the six and the six. Like it's laid out. And so. And apparently you're allowed to request it. Yes. And he said he would request it. But I could tell on the third meeting, I don't think I'm incorrect. That I don't think he ever did request it because he knew very well that they would not approve it. And I knew very well they would not approve it. So that's fine. It wasn't that big a deal that he didn't request it. It's okay. Because yeah, they wouldn't have approved it anyway. But. And by the way, just for this, you want to know, I'm pretty sure the reason why they do that is. Every time there's an apostasy trial. And they bring someone like me or Jeremy Reynolds or Bill real or you or Natasha or whoever. To plead their case. They're basically taking the 15 top leaders. 15 of the top leaders have an entire stake. And potentially infecting them. Not just with evidence, but with oftentimes a really credible thoughtful person heart voice. And I think they decided we're going to throw into the garbage the parts of the doctrine and covenants, which is canonized scripture that require that all 15 people be present. We're going to throw that in the garbage because we're concerned about tainting or infecting our top leaders in our wards and stakes with the truth or with really credible spokespeople, right? And that may be, but I will be on record as saying I do not impute motive. I don't know why they don't do that anymore. It could be convenient. It could be anything, but you may be right, but I'm not going to ever say this is why they do what they do. I don't know why. Yeah. Well, it's very dangerous. I'll just say it's very dangerous. Yeah. So the letter, though, I was very happy to see that I could bring people. So I didn't know if that would be the case. I just thought it would be the stake presidency and me and my husband, frankly. So it was cool to find out that all these other people could be there. So my bishop was allowed to be there, my relief society president was allowed to be there. And then it said that let's see how it's exactly worded. You may also invite such persons to speak to the council in your behalf if approved in advance by the stake president. So that was cool. So I invited four people. One of them couldn't come, but three people were there for you. A lot of the call witnesses. Yeah, just to speak on your behalf to explain the case a little better. Yeah. Sure. And one of them, one of them was on the high council. So that was so I had at least one high council member there. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, he's a good guy. And he and the stake president have talked since then and just been straight about it's okay, whatever you believe. Because he was very bold. He was super cool. He was very bold. He was like, look, I agree with her. And I don't think it's right that she be excommunicated. But so if you have to remove me from the high council, that's okay. So that's why. And hopefully, hopefully he won't get pressure to do that to this guy. I'm not naming him. He's not open. I mean, he doesn't have a website. He doesn't have anything. So he's just a good guy who believes Joseph. So the stake president, he and the stake president have recently talked and they're cool with that. So, you know, as long as he doesn't have billboards. So anyway, or a YouTube channel or a YouTube channel. So, you know, be respectful and that's really it. It's insane to much more. You know, we're, we hope you feel our love. And no one's going to believe me. Like no one's going to believe me. But I was perfectly fine with how I was treated the entire time. And I actually said that at my council. I said, I have no complaints about how I've been treated, which sounds crazy because they kick me out of the church. But as far as how I was treated and listened to and respected during our meetings, zero complaint by your stake president. And at the council, by the whole stake presidency, they were awesome. So by the way, it used to be that bishops and the bishopric, excommunicated women because they didn't have the priesthood. And so women weren't even important enough to get the attention of the stake president. So that's actually different. In my experience, the year stake presidency was even involved because you're a woman. That's interesting. But I know that yeah, bishoprics, excommunicated women, stake presidency's, excommunicated, melchistic priesthood holders, historically in my experience. Anyway. Okay. So here's a deal. We, it was scheduled for 10 o'clock. And I'd invited these three friends. And so we all got there at 10. And we were like, hey, in an hour when this is over, we'll go out for brunch, you know, who was me and my, the friends that came on my behalf. So the three of them plus my husband and me was it a Sunday? Mm-hmm. It was Friday, Friday, morning, Friday morning, Friday morning. Yeah. Okay. We're so these guys are taking off work. So I hope people will watch my video, the last video I did about this because I explained it in detail. They were, these are not men that simply want that are looking to get people out of the church that they don't agree with. If it was that, they have marching orders. Well, it was, but, but I'll tell you the rest and you can decide if you really think that that's the only reason, you know. They really tried to do what they thought was best. I am convinced of that. I don't agree. I don't think it was best, but they thought it was best. And if you are doing something because you sincerely think it's the right thing to do, I just know God takes that into consideration. And that's the impression I had and I'll tell you why it was not an hour. This was a Friday morning. They're all missing work. It was four and a half hours. That's, that's longer than I would have guessed. That's a long time. It's a lot longer than any of us guessed. So we thought we were going to go there for an hour. It just a formality. We already know and goodbye. And we'd all, the few of us would go to brunch at 11 o'clock. That's not what happened. Because if it was a foregone conclusion, a kangaroo court should have been an hour. It would have been an hour or two at the most. That's what I think. That's what I really think. Unless they know that and then made it longer. But you don't do that to yourself. That's really messed. Yeah. They came fasting. They were fasting when they came. Like this is, they were trying. And like you say, so many people have steeped in this idea that whatever the president says, you just can't say anything. You can't stray from anything the church says, right? And if that's what you believe, that's what you believe. So they were very, they act, they behaved very well under that assumption. Okay. That's all I can explain it. So. So what? So you arrive with your three witnesses is your spouse with you? So she and your husband and three witnesses. And what happens? And the bishop and the relief society president. Okay. They were allowed to be there too. Did they make you sign something at the beginning saying you would not record? Yeah. So we all had to put our phones into the clerk's office and lock them in there during it. That's fine. So you locked your phones in the clerk's office and you signed a legal document promising. I get it didn't seem like a legal document. It was written. It had typos and it wasn't written very well. So I was like, I don't even know what it is. I just glanced over it, whatever. But it's a document. I'm pretty sure saying you promised not to record. Yeah. Something I it was long and I skimmed it and I signed it and I put my phone in the office. It's all good. Okay. Okay. So. So I was allowed to have, I was allowed to speak for 20 minutes, which was longer than I thought I would have. Did he start by laying out the charges or would I call or welcome everyone? And is everyone in the room? Are your witnesses all in the room? Were they invited in separately? Was your husband in the room with you? Yes. So who was there the whole time? Was the state presidency a clerk? My bishop, relief society president and me and my husband. We were always there. And then they had one couple come in and testify and then they were excused. And the other guy. No, no, no, no. For you. Yeah. My friends. By the way, this is the first time I've ever heard of a relief study president being included. So that's new. This is great. For in my opinion. Yeah. In my experience. I've never heard of that before. These are good job church. At least have one other woman there. Yeah. I mean, I that's. And the attention of the state presidency. Like you said, that's cool too. Yeah. So. Okay. So you. Okay. So that's who is there. And then they brought in, you know, two of the friends a couple at once. And they, you know, their message was, look, she doesn't shove this down. Anyone's throat. She just presents it and says, here's documents. If you want to see them, see them. And one of the counselors is like, okay, so not combative at all. And they're like not even a little. One of your witnesses. Did he start by laying out the charges and the evidence against you? Yeah. Every time. Don't skip that. Can you go over that? As best as I can recall. But he, and that's what took some of the time was this housekeeping stuff. Because when we were in there, he starts out like I want to explain what this is about and what it's not about. Right? What was that? It's about whether it aligns with the church's current position on this issue. It's not about is she correct or is, and it's funny when they say that because I'm like, I'm not even in my book in presentation. I'm not even saying I'm correct. I'm saying, here's documents. That's it. So, oh my goodness. It just cracks me up. I'm like, I'm not even, I don't even have a premise exactly other than to say, can we look at these documents and consider the Joseph me. I've been telling the truth. It's not even anyway. So you even said like asserted publicly, Joseph's been never practiced, Plegamy? I don't say that in the movie. I don't say that. Just say, look at the evidence. If you ever said, your review of the evidence leads you to the conclusion that Joseph never practiced, Plegamy? Something like that. Let me, I mean, it's right here in the intro. This is, the book is almost verbatim. The movie, it's a little truncated. The movie's fuller and has more examples of things. But it says, okay, the purpose, let me read the purpose of this presentation is to increase faith and understanding among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-East Saints and those of other faiths by sharing information about Joseph Smith and his alleged practice of Plegamy. Aronius ideas about this topic have caused confusion among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and created stumbling blocks for friends of other faiths for decades. Some have understood that Plegmy only began in the West at a da da da da, early church leaders taught that Plegmy was necessary for exaltation and so the unspoken dread of future Plegmy is really troubling essentially. While most of us including busy church leaders have typically got in our history filtered through professional researchers we can now I had to say researchers and not historians because Brian hails is technically not a historian that's why that's in there. Filtered through professional researchers we can now examine thousands of original and contemporaneous documents meaning documents created during Joseph's lifetime for ourselves thanks in large part to the Joseph Smith papers project. These documents demonstrate that Joseph Smith consistently opposed Plegmy as an abomination that he denied ever having taught or practiced it and that contrary to the narrative perpetuated by well-meaning historians Joseph was in fact telling the truth. So the documents demonstrate that is my premise okay so that's it. You've been so careful. I tried to be very careful. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that like thank you for saying that because I tried and also your heart is in trying to strengthen faith. Yes. You're trying to strengthen faith and build build the church not tear down or destroy it. There's an old Milton Freeman video where he's trying to help a lady understand she has a wrong position and he's trying to help her understand it better and at one point he says I'm on your side but you're not and we have laughed at that so many times. That's a great quote. It is a great quote and it's just like if they could understand but it's okay anyway. All right so be that as me. So he accuses you of basically not being on the side of the brother. Yeah I think part of it was like discrediting. Oh here's something that I did not mention on my video and I wrote that I probably should have thrown this in. One of their complaints was that it was causing division. And I'm like truth does that. Like Christ says I came with a sword. I mean that is what truth does. Well it's like you can't put that on me. I beg. They're so sick. My listeners are so sick of me begging them. Please share it nicely. Please don't be in anyone's faces. Please be kind. If someone's not interested, please crank it back and lay off. So I have begged people to be kind about sharing this but people will be people and some people are very vocal. Not just vocal but grumpy about it in both directions. And so they said they told me and I was glad he repeated it in my council to everybody that in some words not in our stake but in some words there had been reports that there had been fighting about this subject to the point of Fistakuffs. He used that word. I was like someone hit somebody. He said not in our stake. So I guess in some word they were so angry about this as somebody hit somebody. Now I don't know who hit who or like star Fistakuffs can mean starting to get to that point. Well that's why clarified and apparently was a yes. And so like our easy is someone hits someone and so but you're right maybe not technically I don't have an answer for that but they were that close to fighting I guess and I don't know who was attacking whom or it was mutual or whatever but that is I will say that that's the thing that breaks my heart more than anything is if I find out that someone in my camp is you know being very rude about it or you know kind of weaponizing my work to say you should care about this and don't you know and you're a sheep and you have your head in a sand this kind of thing that just that one will get to me that one will make me sad that's the only aspect of this that actually makes me sad the rest of it I don't care you take it or leave it it doesn't bother me kick me out whatever you need to do I'm unbothered but that's the only thing so okay so so the charges were teaching something different with the brother and her teaching currently causing tension in wards and the other and they laid it out specifically how I was promoting it which is the video the website that points to the video and then billboards and I think they he because I after our first visit I thought he's gonna flip out when he knows that I have billboards you know but it turned out he already knew so they had already discussed that they they were well aware so he's like you have billboards you have bumper stickers you have t-shirts I do so again but and people I've had people say like well couldn't you like just kind of not do all that so I'm like that's not the point if it's not important let me shut up about it if it's important I'm gonna use every avenue of my disposal of course yeah and so if I think it's important that's what I'm doing so yes every way I can all right so they listed all that and it was just this and it was this housekeeping thing you know and it also for not stopping when you were asked I'm sure they list correct correct yes repeated that's one of the best is repeatedly promoting it when asked to stop yeah that's part of the definition of the rest to see yeah you're right good memory so that was repeated every time so it was repeated and then when they brought my two friends in at first he repeated all that again what do you mean so he said that in for each witness uh-huh and it was like couldn't we like gather together do this once so whatever reason they did that so he repeated it for when the friends came in and then they were excused to go home and the other friend was brought in and repeated it all again and then he was excused to go home and then yeah and at the first thing they would give you a written version of the charges that's a good question I don't think so you don't want to isn't that wild that they'll read it a gazillion times hold on and now that might not be all right let me look I have the official well let me finish the store okay so so after everyone has testified you know I've been allowed to speak for for 20 minutes or whatever it was and he got comments from my bishop and really said president who were just like do you have to do this can't now that you've got the ball rolling can you just set a decide and just stay in the ward because you know we need you and my release that president is so sweet she's like I need you as a ministering sister and I said you know what I'm right here if someone needs help you tell me and I will help them I don't need a piece of paper I don't need a ministering assignment just let me know I'm not going anywhere so I tried to assure them that nothing changes it's all good so anyway everybody speaks everybody's done and so then they're gonna read your letter what you read yeah yeah let me read a little bit of it okay whatever do you want me to read the whole thing I sure will mind okay okay so this is what you read for your testimony and I won't read it I took longer than this because I expounded a little bit when I found out I had 20 minutes so I'm not gonna take 20 minutes so I will and you know what I've said most of this right but I would love you to okay deliver the emotional impact of oh usually okay all right in our first meeting president blank told me who's addressed to um is there like two everybody there there's nothing on there like dear president or whatever no I brought this okay yeah it wasn't it wasn't officially delivered to them okay it offers yes so I'm saying this out my council because what I was when it was my turn to speak said in our first meeting president blank told me that he knew that I had a testimony of God the Father his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as well as a testimony of Joseph Smith the Book of Mormon and the Restoration I was so glad that he knew that about me but it was also very surreal that someone like that could be excommunicated but I do love truth Jesus said I am the truth I believe it's one of his titles I've been told that this isn't about figuring out what's true or not true but about whether what I'm proclaiming aligns with current church teachings as found in the online gospel topics essays and other places it astonish it astonishes me that anything least of all ever changing historical essays written by very fallible scholars would ever be prized more highly than the truth but here we are president Nelson wisely noted that good inspiration is based on good information the church historians are not providing good information who will shall we wait for them to correct themselves the church relies most heavily on Brian hails's work yet he's not a trained historian but are he's tired anesthesiologist his work is atrocious I've been asked to quit speaking about this and to be patient things don't change merely because time passes things change because of what is done during that time the church leaders don't have a crystal ball they've made that clear elder ballard said when the church leaders have a question they turn to experts except sometimes the experts are wrong lester bush was not a historian but he could read he saw that the historical record did not match what was being taught by the church historians concerning the racial priesthood ban some of the apostles opposed him his article that he wrote helped bring about the lifting of the priesthood ban. And I expounded a little on that President Kimball's son Edward was convinced that Leicester Bush's article about how Joseph had not had ordained men to the priesthood and the band did not start with him. That that was helpful in moving the needle and helping President Kimball have the courage to to lift that. That's a fascinating parallel by the way. It is exactly a parallel. Because it's something we just assumed Joseph did but really it was Brickham. Forever for 100 and whatever years. It's like we're doing it again. Okay. Leicester Bush was silent by the way. Yeah, he was quietly disfellowshipped. I don't know if you know that but his wife found that out and they didn't even know. All right. I hope this information will filter up to the church leaders in the same way. But that will not happen if those of us who have studied this topic shut our mouths and keep the information to ourselves. I spent years gathering this information and another year turning it into a concise video and some months turning that into a book that I could send to church leaders. I sent one to each apostle. I heard nothing back. I was provided a miraculous opportunity to give one to Elder Carpenter when he visited our stake and gave him my contact info at his request. I talked to the previous stake president. I talked to the previous bishop. I've gone through all the proper channels with zero response until October 12th when I met with president blank who kindly asked me to stop promoting this information and wait for the church leaders to speak on this even if it takes decades. To me, that sounds like the head saying to the feet. I have no need of the I think it's interesting that we are often told that we can only receive limited revelation for our lives where to work, who to marry, etc. I don't see any such restrictions in the scriptures. I quoted the scriptures that I read earlier, that I quoted earlier to you John Morone, I 10, I'm a 12, I'm a 26, third Nephi 26, which says you can know the truth of all things. The incredible irony of this situation, however, is that I'm not claiming to have received new revelation. I'm not hyrum page claiming to be receiving revelation for the church through a sea or stone. 90% of my movie comes straight from the JSP, the Joseph Smith Papers project, a project funded by the church as part of an effort to be more transparent. That was literally their stated goal to be transparent and make the history more accessible. So I take that history and highlight it and suddenly I'm accused of promoting ideas that go against church teachings. What's even worse is that a lot of prominent church members are starting to be public about their take on polygamy, which is that it was never commanded by God, but that Joseph and Brigham were both wrong to do it. These are people like Patrick Mason, who holds one of the most prestigious positions among church historians, the Leonard Earrington Chair of Mormon History, and Carolyn Pearson, who has been a beloved LDS author for decades and who has mentioned in the Gospel Library app dozens of times. This destructive narrative will surely lead many more people out of the church. We need the true history now more than ever. Not only that, but being told that I can only believe these things privately goes completely against Christ's teachings in Dr. and Covenants 123 that we should waste and wear out our lives bringing hidden things of darkness to light wherein we know them. Something the historians are paid to do I might add, but at which they are failing miserably. I certainly never anticipated spending these years of my life correcting historical inaccuracies about polygamy. It's a ton of work and I'd love nothing more than to do something else with my time. I could simply be grateful that I now know that Joseph and Emma, that I now know what Joseph and Emma really taught, that the specter of polygamy has ceased to haunt my marriage, that my testimony of a truly unchanging God has been cemented and my faith in Christ bolstered. I could keep that to myself and enjoy my newfound peace. But if I did that, I would be a hearer of the word only and not a doer, exactly what Christ warned against. In Luke 8, he teaches that no man, when he afflited a candle, cover it with a vessel or put it that under a bed, but set it on a candle stick that they which enter may see the light. One of the most interesting things I noticed is that in Matthew 16, the risen Lord first shows himself to marry and a few other women and sends them to tell the apostles, but the apostles don't believe them. And when Christ later appears to them, he chasens them for not believing the women. It's an incredible message. I would like to end my remarks with counsel from President Nelson. We need women who know how to make important things happen by their faith and who are courageous defenders of morality, of morality and families in a sin sick world. My dear sisters, whatever you're calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out. We need women who have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and who will use that understanding to teach and help raise a sin resistant generation. We need women who can detect deception in all of its forms. Sisters, please never underestimate the extraordinary power within you to influence others for good. It is a gift with which our Heavenly Father has endowed every covenant woman and as a covenant daughter of God, you have receptivity to the spirit and an enhanced moral compass that give you the capacity to receive personal revelation and to discern truth from error. Sisters, we need your voices teaching the doctrine of Christ. We need your ability as women to detect deception and to articulate truth. We need your inspired wisdom in your family, ward and state councils as well as in other places of influence throughout the world. This is precisely what I'm trying to do. So beautiful, so powerful. Thank you. You come across his pure heart. Thank you, John. I appreciate that very much. I really appreciate that. I have total peace. I'm so I'm fine. We are all excused and they said they would deliberate. So the three stake presidency members deliberated and again, we thought they'd be out in five or ten minutes and they were in there for a good half hour, maybe 40 minutes, who was a long time. Again, that shows me that they're struggling, that they're thinking that they're trying to do what's right and they're pulled into different directions, of course. So we're called back in, me and my husband and the bishop and the relief study president. And they expressed their love and but said that they had unanimously decided to withdraw my membership. And I was 100% fine. And I saw the bishop get misty and I saw the relief society president get Terry. And I was like, it's okay. It's my life doesn't change. I promise. I'm reassuring them. It was so funny. Later, my husband later, he said, it felt like a funeral. He's all for not just the obvious reason that you're getting cut off. But he's like, I'm in my suit on a weekday. We did go out to eat after. You know, he just said, it's just kind of the whole thing just felt like a funeral. And I said, that is so interesting because I imagine out of funeral that the deceased person is probably the only one running around going, it's okay, everyone, it's okay. While everybody else is Terry. So it was a very cool experience. I'm I didn't anticipate being devastated by it. And I wasn't. So I'm very glad about that. And I just feel like I've had only father with me the whole time. And you know, I can do all things through Christ which strengthened with me. I've lived it. You know, it's it's been a very cool experience to go through. So you didn't feel devastated or betrayed or any of that stuff? No, I really. I'm even abused. No, no. And maybe by some faceless people, I just think there's a lot of confusion. You know, you don't. Anybody can rise up in the ranks of this church, right? And at no point do you get told all the real you don't get pulled aside and told all the real history. I mean, I guess I can't. You know, I don't know that for myself. But I just don't think that's how it works. I think everyone takes their misconceptions up through the ranks with them. And so in the same way that a abyship could, you know, be convinced that you can't know anything. If the prophet doesn't know it, no one can know it, right? I think that can go up all the way to the top, I guess. So I don't have animosity. I don't. I just don't. And I have total forgiveness. And they know not what they do. It's really okay. So I'm good. I'm still going. I love my words so much. They've been extremely kind. And I'm going to. to throw this in there. I have it easy. I have a tiny, tiny family. I don't have siblings getting on the family chat. She's ripping the family apart. She's, you know, none of this that I know some people get. I don't have any of that. I don't have any siblings pushing back on me. I only have one sibling and two half siblings and they're fine. And my mom's fine. And my friends are fine. It's, it's okay. My children are fine. They're grown. They get it. We've always learned together. It's just, it's okay. So I'm not experiencing that. And I have utter sympathy for people whose families turn against them when they do something like this. And I'm really blessed to not have that challenge. So I appreciate it. How's your husband? If you want to share? He's awesome. In terms of how we felt like Margie attended my communication. And she is not like a rowdy, cantankerous person. She resigned the next day just because she experienced the disciplinary counsel slash, actually, communication process is being kind of psychologically and emotionally violent and abusive. How did your husband experience the disciplinary counsel and the verdict? His remarks, I wish I had them. He did so good. He was firmer with them. And he really wanted them to realize that they're making this decision and they cannot undo it. You know, your ex communicated the stake level, but you cannot be reinstated at the stake level that has to come from the first presidency. So you just wanted to reiterate that this is their decision. So he was more firm and he said other things that were just, you know, they were like, you know, we can't know everything in this life. And sometimes it's just has to be patient. And he sort of reprimanded them all for that. There was a couple of people that said that. So he addressed each of them individually. And you could tell the spirit was with him because he methodically remembered what they had said and took it apart. Said, you know, we're told to ask and you shall receive. And this whole church was founded on a question. So no, you don't always have to wait till the next life. He is so eager to answer our questions. But if we don't ask them, we won't get the answers. He did so good. But no, he has, he's, I can see he's forgiving him too. There's no animosity. He's, we're fine. I have to say before I forget, it is such a good point. Patrick Mason on this very podcast said that to him, polygamy looks a lot, Joseph Smith's polygamy looks a lot like sin. So I guess he's different than you. He's not claiming that Joseph didn't practice polygamy. He's claiming that Joseph Smith's polygamy was a sin. Yeah. Yes. So I don't know if you know, but faith matters a few weeks ago, did a whole week on polygamy. Yeah. I watched it all. I did too. Yeah. And it was like, and it was, you can imagine, it was just so frustrating for me. There's Patrick Mason. There's Carolyn Pearson. There's Bill Turnbull. There's Bethany Spalding all saying this was not of God. Joseph was wrong to do it. Brigham was wrong to do it. And somehow, did they say it that explicitly? Yeah. It was, I mean, I guess I'm not going to say yes because, but you go listen to it and you tell me if that's not what they said. They're just like, and Patrick has has openly wished for us to excise it from our scriptures, for instance, because he's like, as long as it's still canonized, it's still about thing. And there was a whole discussion about can't should and can one 32 be removed from the DNC. And Bill Turnbull bless his heart. He read an article about an alternate interpretation for Jacob 230, the supposed loophole. And you can tell Bill doesn't believe that's a loophole any longer. So like I love that, but that it's okay to say Joseph wasn't wrong and Brigham was wrong. And somehow it's not okay to say Brigham was wrong, but Joseph didn't do it. It is surreal. And it's just, it's a little mind boggling, but that's okay. It's weird. So I'm like, if this, if that narrative that they were both wrong, that it never came from God, but Joseph did all this behind him is back and it wasn't even from God. If that starts taking hold, people will be elbowing each other for the exit door in my mind. I mean, that's not going to fly. That's not cool. If the narrative that Joseph was doing all that behind him is back without even God's sanction, that you're wrong. They're going to be like beating a path to the exit, right? That's not cool. So I'm like, you need this narrative. You need this real one to come out and combat that. And it's right. You're admitting that you can't believe, Joseph Smith was a polygamist per the current prevailing narrative and still believe the church is true. You're pretty much acknowledging. I don't know what I mean. So I stopped long ago saying, quote, I know the church is true. Because that's like saying a friend of mine said, that's like saying, I know this pencil is true. I don't know what that means. Like I don't know what that means. I've never meant I think every single thing that's taught in this church is correct. I've never meant that. I can believe, I can believe that God still has a work to do through this organization, but it requires. I mean, an organization has to repent just like people, individuals repent, right? If we can, you know, finally we got rid of the blacks and the priesthood, you know, the, the ban. And finally, a couple of years ago, they sneak that little book into Deseret book that says, oh, by the way, it wasn't even from Joseph or God, it was all Brigham, right? That's in there now. And people still don't know that. But the church has quietly admitted, acknowledged that it came from Brigham. So I'm like, we are repenting of stuff. If we can get this one out, I, I mean, maybe God still can work through this church. I don't know. But all I'm saying is, let's just go with the truth, let the chips fall where they may. In fact, that's, that's right here at the beginning of the book. It says, oh, shoot, sorry, of course, not this copy. Oh, there it is. I don't darn it, John. If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed. If we don't have the truth, it ought to be harmed. That's Jay Ruben Clark. Okay. That, that is what we should live by. It's okay to examine it. So anyway, this is a bone. I, you know, here I am thinking I'm throwing them a bone. Like here's a get out of pulling me free card for you guys. We can change the narrative, fix this and they double down, you know, dang it. Yeah, it's so weird. And really, I'm guessing that so how do we explain Carolyn Pearson and Patrick Mason not being excommunicated, but you being excommunicated. I think part of it is effectiveness. I don't think Carolyn Pearson's book reached the level of impact that you and your billboard Michelle Stone did. And so the most members, not near the number of members have know about in a red carol Carolyn Pearson's book as have been influenced by you and Michelle Stone and others. You back. Oh, sure. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Carolyn Pearson's book is a niche book for liberal progressive Mormons. And I think it's, yeah, there's no way it's come anywhere near the views, the total views and total subscribers of your combined channels you and Michelle Stone and the other guy. Maybe. I think it's true. And then Patrick Mason too, his stick isn't denying Joseph Smith practice obliging me. And his one little obscure comment on more of his stories, isn't going to get him in trouble because that's not what's influencing people to stop believing the brethren. Right. It's Michelle. And he said that elsewhere, by the way, he said on several several rivers that he's been on. And it's just amazing to me. I mean, he was on Michelle's show, you know, so. Wait, Patrick Mason. Yeah. Yeah. And he sure did. So did. And you and he was fine. But and on that episode, he's one of the ones that said, I have not looked into the polyming documents myself by trust dealers. Right. And they just keep saying it. They just keep saying it. Brian Hales has looked into them. And he was on her show. I think you know that that Brian Hales was on, because she wanted him on so that they could talk about these documents. How does high rooms, a statement just weeks before his death, you know, how do you reconcile that with the story that he was converted to it a year or two before? So she wanted to talk about the documents and all he did was come on with a presentation about how she's on the road to apostasy. It was the least scholarly thing you could possibly do. It was atrocious. Okay. Well, it's the Church of follow the brother in 2025. The alias church is the church of follow the brother. If it wanted to be, you know, I really don't want it to be. I want it. And I guess individually, we can make it that way or we cannot. Right. I spent my whole life telling people that this is not a cult. You know, all of a sudden, these people come out of the word work and it's like, oh, you're turning it into a cult. You know, if you are like, well, whatever they say, like, whatever they say, that's what I'm going to do. I, my son has a friend that said he would lay down in traffic if they told him to. I'm like, okay, well, congratulations. You are in a cult. I'm not. I mean, you know what I mean? I was not an occult because I just was like, like, let me weigh it for myself whenever I can. So as soon as the documents came out, I was like done. Regardless of what the church narrative is. So you can make it occult or you cannot, but you can definitely stay in without partaking of the cultish nature. And I don't, I know people would disagree. You know, there's a lot of people would be like, it's totally occult. I just don't think it is unless you make it that way. So I'm not. (laughs) - Yeah. - Yeah. And people get a kick out of this because I was exhumingicated on Friday and Saturday morning, I cleaned the church and Saturday afternoon. I helped somebody move. Now that, that's the real litmus test, John. Am I right? I'm still Mormon, would you agree? - Yep, that's it. - Okay. Just to clarify. And RFM, that little pill, he called me a doormat for still cleaning the church. All right, thank you for that look. It's like, dude, did you let them take away your humanity? Like if I don't clean it, someone else has to. That's just the way it is. So of course I'm gonna clean it. And I don't mind and it's fun to be with the people. No, and he, you know what? I say he called me that. He kind of said it under his trap. - He's pretty. - He just said it. 'Cause Rebecca, Rebecca Bibliotecke, you know, they were talking about this for like nine minutes the other day. And she mentioned that because she thought it was funny. And he just kind of mumbled doormat. And I was like, oh, like don't let them take away your kindness or humanity, you know. That's your choice. As somebody who's been actually communicated which R.F.M. hasn't, that takes a particular level of strength and courage and resilience to go clean the chapel this same week you've been actually communicated. That's admirable, really. - Well, I don't say that for that reason. I'm just saying, I think it's funny. Well, you're sweet. I just clean it because you know, that's they have the members clean it. It was my turn. I just can't get over that God has that sense of humor, right? I didn't, those didn't, I had been on the schedule to do that. This is already, and he just knew it and followed the day after I just think it's hilarious. He's awesome. - You don't have to answer this, but someone's asking if you're gonna keep paying Tything. - I'm not allowed to. - That's right. They say you can't hold on. - Hold on. - And you can wear your garments either. - Hold on. (laughing) - Who's, no, I'm kidding. - You also can't wear your garments. They tell you that. - Yes. And the day someone dictates to me what underwear, yeah, it's all good. I'm like, you know what? And yeah, I gave a, I talked about, - I hear, I hear what you just said. - I talked about this the other day and I gave a little speech as something, these sweet friends held like a funeral for me the other day. It was super funny. We actually had like 150 people there. And so we all gathered together and I spoke. And at some point, you know, I described, I said, well, I got the letter. No, I got the email telling me I'm officially excommunicated and telling me what I can and can't do. And I kind of giggled and they busted up. They just thought that was so funny because it is absurd to tell you what you can and can't do, you know, and as far as underwear or paying, it's, nobody has this kind of power. I'm gonna tell you one thing real quick that I didn't wanna leave out. I forgot one of the counselors after they came in, gave the verdict at that point. One of the counselors was in tears. It just had his glasses off wiping his face 'cause he was absolutely in tears. - Can you have been one of the ones that made it last so long? - That's what everyone concludes. And I can almost guarantee you that that's not the case. - Oh. - But I have no way of verifying it. But my impression is that I think that he believes, that he truly believes that with the stroke of a pen, they have separated me from all of my blessings and my relationship with God. - It's basically a trial damnation. - And torn my family apart. I think he really believes that and that's why he's crying. If you see what I mean. So I think he's the most, like if the prophet doesn't say it, you can't do it, you know? And that's where that led him was this extreme sadness. And like, it's so, so I, yeah, I was like, it's okay, it's all right. I still come, everything's fine. I love my family, we're good. - And you think in heaven, you're gonna be just fine. - Yes, the Sikh president said something like, I'll see you in the celestial kingdom or something, it was very sweet. Like I. - He said that after your communication. - And so, I mean, he just said that. And so I'm not gonna pin him down like, oh, you believe, maybe he, and he may be saying that, thinking, I hope you repent someday. - Mm, right. - And come back and get rebaptized, you know? - Really creepy. - I have to ask. - Yeah. - Before I forget, do you believe this was a local decision or do you believe the Sikh president was basically told or influenced by area authorities, general authorities - Influx for sure, yeah, I was told that. - So this was not a local decision. - He would say, I'm confident that he would say, it was his decision because it does the ultimate decision. So he would say it was, but when you use the word influence, that's the perfect word because they were counseling about me before he called me in. So yes, for sure, this was a big powwow or whatever, or a small powwow, you know, about this and what should we do? - It also is. - So yeah, so they counseled together and concluded unanimously, you know, whatever. - And that's on the brethren for directing these communications, but for trying to create the impression, the false impression that it's always a local decision. - It's definitely a gray area, isn't it? - Yeah. Okay. Who? Can I ask you a few questions? - Sure. - Just before we end. Okay. - You can ask whatever you want. I'm not saying I'll answer any of them. - You don't have to. Okay. So this is just kind of like a technical question, but I was trying to get a sense for, well, when you were talking about what does it even mean to say the church is true. I want to get a sense for your testimony or beliefs around the restoration, but specifically, the authority and the exclusively trunous of an Orthodox perspective on the LDS restoration, which is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-East Saints is the one and only true church on the face of the earth with priesthood authority that matters in heaven. That's a, B is there are lots of different ways to heaven and to Christ. The church is one of many. Let's just say I give you option A or option B. Are you comfortable with either of those options? - I kind of am. I kind of will go with option B. I don't really have qualms about that. - Okay. - Christ, his definition is not ours. The church today teaches so many things about the church's current teachings do not match Joseph Smith's. Joseph Smith said, "Mormonism embraces all truth no matter whence it comes." That was his creed. That has morphed into Mormonism has all the truth and you can come get it. I mean, when Brad Wilcox gave that controversial fireside, he's given it multiple times where he was like, "We are the only church with the whole piano. Other churches might be able to play chopsticks, but we're the only ones with the whole piano." I mean, it was so tremendously offensive and it flew in the face of what Joseph taught, which would have been, "Hey, you guys come and play and we'll come and play and we'll just all make beautiful music." I mean, that's what Joseph Smith would have taught. And it flies in the face of that whole talk that Brad Wilcox gave. I'm sorry to call him out, but it was, I was going to make a highlight reel of the things I found problematic and I went through it. It was the whole talk. That was the one where he said, "People ask, why didn't the black people get the priesthood till 1978? A better question is, why didn't anyone get it until 1830?" You know, it's like telling, that's what made the news. Is that he made that kind of insensitive comment about the blacks and the priesthood, but there were so many other things in there that were just, he literally said, "I'm glad I don't feel the spirit every day because what would that be like?" You'd wake up and be like, "Oh, oh, oh." And then you'd pour your captain crunch, "Oh, oh, oh." I was like, "What are you talking about?" You're not describing the spirit in the least. It seems so harmful. That blew me away. And he went out multiple times giving that fireside. That was so disturbing. That was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. So your question, that was so dear to you. I love to do your questions. You answered it. Did I? Oh, for sure. Okay. The next question then is, so you don't believe the church went into a apostasy after Joseph Smith. You basically believe that prophets can lead the church astray. No, no, I've never said that. Oh, no, I wouldn't call for him a prophet. I'm happy to own that I would not call bringing me on a prophet. I just wouldn't. And people will get after me with that, but that's okay with me. I mean, he doesn't pass the know them by their fruits test at all, like not at all. But-- So what? I don't want to need this. So what I mean, that's a totally different narrative that the churches restored to Joseph Smith, but then it didn't have a prophet for several days. decades. It wasn't one by a prophet. Right, but what happened when, you know, when Samuel the lame night came and he left, what happened when they killed a benedite? It's not like, oh, there was a successor to a benedite. I mean, God chose Alma, you know, but meanwhile, there's a whole nother church going on that Alma wasn't part of and they finally joined up together. So there wasn't like a lie. I just this line of succession thing. I don't see it in scripture anywhere. The notion of keys. And again, I'm okay with people, you know, coming at me, I don't mind because you can believe whatever you want. Just study, just study it out and come to your conclusions. But if you have a knee, your reaction, she's the worst. I don't care. So, so then people are asking in the comments, do you believe that there was a apostasy before Joseph Smith or I do. I do believe that. I think I mean, I'm okay calling it an apostasy for sure Joseph referred to it as a restoration, you know. And so he restored truths that had been lost and he brought forth the book of Mormon as evidence of the fruit, you know, of that's his fruit. That's the evidence that you can see with your own eyes and examine and pray about in order to know if Joseph was a true prophet. So I believe he was a prophet. My husband likes to explain the story of Moses, Aaron and Miriam were kind of ticked off like, hey, we're prophets too at one point. And God made it clear that yes, there are prophets, but Moses is special because I talked to him face to face. So he's like, I can make my will known to prophets, but to to Moses, I talked face to face and it's exact same thing with Joseph Smith. And so when people came to Moses and said, there's people in the camp prophesying, he said, great, he said, I wish everyone could prophesy. But I mean, I take that seriously. Yeah. Like I really take it seriously. So yes, if you want to look at the 15 today and just look at them and look at their fruits and decide if there are prophets among them, if they all are whatever you decide, you know, but by that definition, and I'm not arguing with you, I love, we like, I love expansive, inclusive theologies. So I like everything you're saying. I'm wondering if you've even considered the idea that there were other prophets between Jesus and Joseph Smith. Who knows where we're going to go. Like we can completely find records. Yes, totally open. There were LDS church associates. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what I think of when I think of an apostasy, the way the church teaches it is between the death of the Jesus's apostles and Joseph Smith, God took everything from the earth. And that's not a thing. I mean, even they praised Martin Luther in conference, right? They praised. So you don't believe in an apostasy per se. It depends on your definition. I guess I believe, let me just say I believe in a restoration. So I believe Joseph for example, many stories that was lost. Absolutely. But not that there was a dearth of prophets or God influencing people between not that there couldn't have been anyone inspired by God. Yeah, I think that's over the top. I don't even know if anybody believes that. Do they? I mean, I feel like the church maybe used to teach that in the discussions and the official, but I don't think that's in there anymore. I don't want to know if you ever had Sybathes or beliefs in kind of for lack of a better term snufferism of the remnant movement. Is that something you've ever identified or affiliated with? No, but, but, but some of his blogs are fantastic and his insights are fantastic. So I'm not going to throw him under the bus or be like, I'm not a snuffer. I don't want to. I'm their lovely people and his insights are absolutely amazing. And so again, taking all the good from wherever it comes, that is absolutely the key. Okay. And speaking of keys, the book of Mormon mentions keys one time. Do you know what it is? Tell me. It's the keys to the treasury that Laban had. Now that's interesting to throw into the mix, right? And I'll just leave it there. And go read where he talked about keys and read it without the preconception. And you get keys of knowledge, keys of understanding, that kind of keys. It's super interesting. So, you know, I'm not making assertions, but I'm saying there are interesting ways to see things. And we don't always have to see them the way we've been taught. We don't have to see Jacob 230 as a loophole just because we've been told it's a loophole. We don't have to see keys as we've been taught them. Look at the scriptures and see other scriptures talk about keys. But there is authority. I am going to absolutely go on record saying there is such a thing as authority from God because Alma had it. He what it says he was given power and authority from God. And Christ calls his apostles and gives them authority. And so, absolutely, he could set somebody apart. But why does he? Does it have to do with the chain of authority? That's where I would disagree that he can choose whoever he wants. Okay. Okay. This is kind of the one really big question that I have. And we can make it really short. But this is the one wish that I really, really had. This is going to be a critique. That's time. This is going to be an observation that, you know, it really hit me in your story when you're like, when you're when you're like, it was the, it was the Josephine playing me thing that like really woke you up to a problem in the church. But the truth is, is that there have been lots of people who have been finding lots of problems with the church and lots of credible problems with the church for a long, long, long time. And whether that's Joseph's miss folk magic and treasure digging, whether that's Book of Mormon, historicity and saccharisms and the scientific challenges to the, or the plagiarisms in the Book of Mormon, whether it's the Book of Abraham and the false translation, whether it's the changes to the doctrine and covenants, whether it's the Masonic stuff that made it into the temple ceremony. The racism, there are some people think the racism, even in the Book of Mormon itself is a deal killer. So I could list so many what I believe to be really credible challenges to the church's truth claims aside from polygamy that are almost, I don't think there's anything, maybe the only thing bigger than polygamy is the cover up of child sex abuse, like if we're talking about just real damage. But like if we're talking about the church's truthfulness, Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, changes to the doctrine and covenants, lots of big stuff. And every time, like when I talk to Michelle, when I, when I talked to others who can really go deep on polygamy, they're like, I didn't, I haven't really looked into the Book of Abraham stuff. I haven't really spent much time on the treasure digginger. And they, they, what, what a bunch of us are thinking and feeling is like, why are you stopping a polygamy? You don't need to be there. So any other really big things. So you don't have to even answer any of that in detail, because that's not what we're here for. Right, right. But you get the mega question right? Absolutely. I do. And I'm so glad you asked it actually, because there was something I wanted to say and this has to do with it. So take the Book of Abraham. The re, I think one reason that that's not on our radar as much is because there's just not as much documentation behind it. This, there's tons. This is a 50 page book. And it's show, and it's got 80 plus references at the back. I mean, there's tons of documentation on Joseph's polygamy or his monogamy, rather, that are out there. So this deserves, you know, scrupulous study. The Book of Abraham, you know, to me, there was no outright claim that this piece that we have now is exactly what was supposed to be in the, in the doctrine governance in the Prolet Break price. Like it's not, we assume that. And that's okay. And I get that you could make a case that it doesn't match. That's fine with me. But some of it is your best guess. Some of it is kind of connecting dots. And again, I'm cool with wherever someone lands on that issue. But let us take off before we look at any of these issues, like the multiple accounts of the first vision and the Book of Abraham and the changes in the doctrine and components. Before we look at those, can we please take off the Joseph was a liar glasses that our own church gave us to wear? We, that is why the polygamy issue is so important because it outright says Joseph taught all this in public and said he didn't have any wives, but he did. And he lied for his own good reasons or because God wanted him to or you name it. But he had reasons to light. Brian Hale says these are the words of someone trying not to lie. like this is the story that he was lying when he said these things. Okay, it's not true, but the church gives you those. Joseph does lie and you put those glasses on. Now you look at the first vision accounts. You have a completely different impression of it. You look at the book of Abraham, completely different impression. So I'm totally cool examining all those thoroughly. I'm fine with wherever you haven't yet. Is that what you're saying? I've looked into I've looked into the book of Abraham. I'm not finding it compelling, but I will continue to find. You're not finding what compelling that it wasn't that it doesn't match. It was he said it was said something and it didn't. Have you heard of rubber in there? Okay, I haven't looked into it. No, no, no, no, I don't know that name. I don't want to I don't want to be contentious at all. No, no, I as you may guess, John, I can take it. I'm totally fine, but no, if there's something I could look at, I will look at it. I'm totally happy to look at it. I don't care where it leads. Again, I don't care if it turns out Joseph Smith was flawed or did lie, but he didn't lie about this. So take those glasses off for starters, and then you can look at least objectively without already going into it going, well, I already know he's a liar. So let's look at what he said. Yeah. Yes. And this will just be a I'll just share a perspective. And another perspective is Joseph Smith claimed to be able to find buried treasure long before he ever did polygamy. Before he ever came out of the book of Mormon, he claimed to be able to find buried treasure that he never found. So and he even ended up in court as breaking the law for treasure digging, which was illegal. Do you know who stood up for him in court? Yeah, I do. The guy that hired him. No, I know. No, I know. Does that carry like to me that carries some weight. It's like, okay, that guy didn't feel defrauded. So I'm not sure we're getting the whole story. The men who brought their 12 year old wives to Warren. Sorry. The men who brought their 12 year old daughters to Warren Jeff's. Sure. Would testify on Warren Jeff's behalf in court. Sure. But this was before, I mean, this would be for any of that. This was like, but he believed Joseph had, he believed Joseph had special powers. Yes, he did. Yeah. So, so yeah, that carries a little weight with me. You know, I'm like, okay, like they accused him of tons of stuff and almost none of it stuck. So the fact that people are like, well, they he was in court so many times. Like so, like I've been exhumated. Did I do anything wrong? It's hard. You know, so I'm like willing to I'm willing to say maybe he had a gift. I mean, there's such a thing as waterwitching that blows my mind. You know, today in 2025, people use water witching to find water. That's extraordinary to me. I can't believe that. But so it is. So I'm like, I'm willing to keep an open mind either way. And the reason the reason that we don't get into these things a lot is because what does my life on a day to day basis change? Whether, you know, whether any of these things turn out to be true or not, that doesn't change my behavior from day to day, whereas polygmy does, that makes you miserable. You know, that puts a wedge in your marriage. It harms your marriage. It harms you feel like God thinks you're a piece of property. I will give them to another. He says supposedly, you know, it's that's not God. So that absolutely has bearing on my day to day opinion of myself, how I look at my spouse, how I look at God, his character. I can't have a correct impression of God's character thinking he's like that. So if they'll, those other things impacted my daily life in that way, you bet I'd do a movie on those. Well, I also, so I love it. You've already answered the question. I do, I, you know, I care about all this stuff too, as much as you. It's just that I care about more issues. Yes. So I haven't been able to go as deep in any one of them. But I have spent 30 years really digging in. And I will say for sure that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon have as many if not more problems than just as mispluging me for sure. And so that's, that's just all I'll say is that for me and many, many, many, many credible people, there are several issues that are credibly at least equally as problematic as Joseph Smith's polygamy. But, you know, but yeah. So I want to, I want to meet, I have to talk about those. I said, we have to meet again and talk for another freaking five hours. It's okay. It's okay. I do want to meet, I do want to meet the Michelle Stone or the Karen Hyatt, who's listened to the entire the us discussion series and who is considered the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham and the treasure digging stuff and other things as deeply as they have polygamy. But that might take a lifetime. I guess that's basically a good titter. Michelle is your girl. She's such a good researcher. No, no, she's admitted to me. She hasn't really looked at me. No, but I'm saying she could like a sign. Yeah, over time. When you have over time to fill your empty hours. Okay. Well, I think, well, I think, can I say one thing? Sure, sure. When you, all these other things, but when you put the, the cover-ups of the sexual abuse, that is huge. I, oh, my goodness, I condemn that. Like, this is ridiculous. I have friends who are told, well, let's not ruin his life. You know, that was a long time ago. Really, you know, someone has abused someone and it comes out years later and they are like, well, you know, he's in good standing now. And I'm like, that's not okay. This is not how we repent. You cannot gloss over something like that. So that, uh, that's a whole nother issue. And I am appalled. I'm going to be the bitch. That's going to be the biggest. It is. I mean, Jesus said, I had children, right? Milestone. Something about a Milestone. And it's so interesting. I have a friend who was like, well, this plague me thing shook me up. But then when I started seeing about the sexual abuse cover-up, that's put me over. She goes, I think I'm going to take my name off because of that. It wasn't, the plague me thing wasn't going to make her do that. It's this. So I agreed. That's huge. So, you know, I hope people are on this. I know some people are trying to try to make things like. Help maybe a swage your disappointment at the communication. No, no, there's totally separate for me. If there was child abuse in my ward, that'd be a different thing, you know, um, and I have a friend in it is. She's I have a friend in Missouri. There that stake is off the rails. They have so many red flags over there. I was like, you need to move out of there. But in my ward, as I said before, I, to me, the capital C church of Jesus Christ of Latter-to-Saint's where the capital C is not where my loyalty is. It's in the church, the little C church, the body of Christ, as Christ described it. And that is what I find in my congregation. So that's the reason that I, the rest, I would happily, you know, fight against the sexual abuse cover-up in anything else, but because it has nothing to do with my ward. And so I completely support my ward, but I don't support all the things that are done by, you know, Curt McConkey and this kind of thing. They're separate. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Beautiful. Wow. Well, can I just say, you have such a good attitude about it, but I'm so sorry they did that to you for one. I'm so sorry. I think you're so lovely and thoughtful and smart and evidence-based and good-hearted and pure-hearted. Like I'm just, I'm not ending the episode yet, but I'm, I just have to say, I'm so impressed and so privileged to both meet you and to be able to help you share your story. This is a real privilege for me. John, that means a lot. That really means a lot. Yeah. And I, I just can't thank you enough. That just, that just touched my heart. Thank you. Likewise. And I felt similar to Michelle. But that also, I just want to say, like, everyone that gets ecumindicated, the church doesn't really want to own up to why they're doing it. So I was speaking out against the church's position on same-sex marriage. I was, you know, supporting women maybe getting the priesthood and talking about, you know, the church hiding its history and problems with truth claims. And they wanted to make it all about some random thing I said on a podcast one time. They didn't want to own up to why they were doing it. They didn't want, they didn't want to make it look like they were silencing me. That was the big thing because they literally said, take the podcast down or we'll actually communicate you. And I'm like, I can't take the podcast down. But, but in the public record, they're like, we don't silence anyone. We're not for censorship. And they wanted to say it's because this one thing I said about Jesus or the atonement when I was having doubts. And, but, but, but then each time they've done it, it's like, okay, well, John, it's because you talked about truth claims. But then Natasha, Helper comes along. And all she's talking about is like the way the church treats children and the abuse stuff. Well, she called them patriarchal pricks. And that's why. Okay, well then Sam Young. Well, no, but like you're so whittled down in terms of their justification because you weren't even criticizing the brethren. You weren't even you weren't even stating that you disbelieve things that that are part of the temple recommend. interviewer, core Mormon doctrine, you were literally just saying, read the, I still believe it all, really, just read these documents and then decide for yourself what you think about pleading me, which is the doctrine that now the church basically disassociates itself from, and they still communicate you. So really, all they care about is that you obey the current brethren. It's hard to argue with that. You're like the perfect test case for that. And you agree with me? I can't argue that, yeah, it's very surreal. And I tell people, you know, I tell people this, I mean, I'm very forthcoming, of course. And they're just always like, what? And it just, they're having a hard time wrapping their head around it. I mean, I saw a friend that I haven't seen in a couple years. Of course, people are seeing this who haven't seen me for a long time, and all of some of my names popping up over all over YouTube all over Mormon circles and YouTube, right? If you time my name into YouTube, you get a whole lot back. So I, you know, had a friend, well, I'll tell you two things. On Sunday morning, I woke up to a text that says, well, I was scrolling through TikTok late last night and saw this Mormon content creator name you, as somebody who had recently been excommunicated with another person or two. And I had a Google, it just see if I heard wrong. And she said, thank you so much for bringing the stuff in the Justice Smith papers forward. I didn't know about it. And she said, polygamy's always bothered me. And I'm so excited to be able to get real information. I haven't been coming to church. And that's one of the reasons why. And again, like, this is going to help ultimately, you know, and, you know, Fist of Cuffs, notwithstanding. So another person I saw after I haven't seen her in a couple years. And I just went, oh, hey, and I just gave her a hug. And she gave me this kind of extra tight hug. And I was like, oh, no way. And sure enough, she was first, I've been watching your stuff. And I love it. I was like, this is awesome. You're going to get a lot more of those now, by the way. After today. Yes, yes, I'm wherever that. And I'll get the other side too. And I'm totally cool with that. I get it, you know, I understand. And I don't mind. And if someone's like, I don't care, you know, that's bad. He totally did it. That's fine. Really, I'm not going to wreck that pummel you. And be like, you must look at this, you know, but honestly, if you just, if you want to respond intelligently, and coagently, look at the documentary first, at least do that so that we've all seen the same documents. And then we can talk about it. That's all I ask. What do you, do you even have a way, do you have a way to estimate how many active, faithful church members are in share your and Michelle's perspective, that Joseph Smith did not practice pleading me anyway of knowing? No, I don't know. But I do know 10,000 more. Yeah. 50,000. Okay. So my videos got 60,000 views. And that's not always, you know, YouTube counts weird and stuff. So we can't say exactly 60,000 people have watched. But if you go look at the comment section, it's probably 95 to 97% positive. And I get numerous emails from people. Thank you so much. You know, I struggle with this my whole life. I'm so grateful to be over it. And Michelle, when she was home, I goodness, when she was doing her episodes, the sweet lady, who was like 71, it's like, I've suffered under this since I was 13. And we're just like, oh my gosh, 58 years of being tormented by this. So she was so grateful. So here it is. I think a lot of it has to do with how it's presented. If you lower your voice and say, guess what? It turns out, Brigham made it up. Right? If that's your focus, people are going to run screaming like no one, no one wants to mimic that. No one wants to look conspiratorial or negative or anything. I never do that because it's not how I feel. I feel like it's excellent, wonderful news. And I go, guess what you guys? And so people laugh at me because I've got bumper stickers all over my van. I've got, you know, everything. I've got t-shirts and I'm just so happy about it. No pest control salesman can leave my porch without a card in his hand. I've passed long cards, you know. And it's like, one of them just happened to mention, I said, oh, you know, you're doing a great job. Are you doing this for the summer? Well, I'm getting ready to get married. So I needed some extra money. Oh, you're getting married? Are you LDS? Yeah, here. Here's a card, you know, because I don't want it plaguing their young marriage. I want it to be gone right from the get go. So I mean, store clerks, everybody, I'm just like, guess what? It's wonderful. And you seem like a nice person. I bet you'll appreciate this. And I just give it to them. So there you go. It's just share it nicely back off. If they're not interested, don't shove it down their throat. It's all good. I got the sense that maybe, well, let's just let's put it this way. There were people that were against K Kelly and ordained women because they didn't want women or people getting communicated for advocating for the priesthood because then if people would feel like they couldn't advocate for the priesthood. In other words, take it up to the point of getting asked communicated, but stop short of that because it hurts the movement once the church starts executing people. So were you at all worried that once you got communicated and spoke publicly about it that she didn't have to do that it would make people go, well, I got to stop believing this because otherwise I'll end up like Karen. Right. And I do know that some people hold that. And some people, and it's more than it's more than one. It's more than than the obvious, but some people have been threatened with excommunication, but have chosen to take their work down in order to still have that cred of being a member of the church because of the people you're describing. Right. The minute you say, this isn't excommunicated person, some members will just plug their ears, la la la la, and that's it. And so I get that that those exist. And so I'm glad that some people are taking, are preserving their membership and able to and able to still say, I remember the church and good standing. That's fine. However, that's not my target audience. You know, I just decided early on that's not my I'm not going to do that. I'm going to say the whatever the truth is that I want. And if someone, you know, if I get excommunicated, yes, there will be some people that dismiss me, but that's not my target audience. My target audience people. But what if it works against your goal? If your goal is to have 17 million Mormons stop believing in Joseph mispluging me. Yeah. What if your excommunication goes against you? Decreases the likelihood that people are going to be willing to believe. No, it's a great ice-suitcing. And in that case, I'm a blame God because I have felt him every stuff the way. So that I swear, John, I this is not what I wanted to be doing. So I would have stopped long ago if I had thought that it was an option. And I just feel like he wants this out there. And so I'm happy to do that. So it's all good. So I'm trusting in God. I am absolutely trusting in God. That's a good answer. Okay. So do you, I don't think you have a crystal ball, but like there is an apostasy. You know, there is this chance that whenever the church goes after the leaders, like with Kate Kelly and Orden Women or with me or Jeremy Reynolds or Natasha or Sam, anytime the church chops off the head of a sizable group, they risk an apostasy of all the people that support that person who's helping lead it. Do you foresee this potentially leading to a large number of people leaving the church? I hope not. If we can stay, and I'm not telling anyone what to do, I get that sometimes you're like, I can't be associated and I have to step back. I 100% understand that and understand that. So however, if you can stay, if your ward isn't problematic, if you have a nice ward, please just keep going because if we who are excommunicated can still just interact pleasantly with our ward members and worship with them and truly do treat them in a Christ-like way and continue to serve them and do everything we can, that takes the sting out of excommunication, right? That takes the stigma out of excommunication ultimately. So it's going to take more than one person, but if we can just say, you know what, erase my name, type out my name, whatever you need to do, backspace it out of there, but I'm still coming and I'm still going to be a disciple of Christ. That's going to go a long way and God will bless that and make it powerful. I've gotten so many more views to my video since I've been excommunicated. It was dwindling. Like I say, between, it'll leap up to 200 views a day and then it'll dwindle down. So it had dwindled down to maybe 80 views a day, 80 to 100 views a day and after I got excommunicated, it's been between 300 and 700 every day. So it's like, that's cool. What if the church tells you you can't come to church anymore? I absolutely know that's a possibility and I've known that from the beginning and I, you know, that'll be sad. So yes, that would make me sad. So if their goal is to make me sad, that's what they'll do, right? But my stick president said that that was not happening. So I'm glad of that and he was like, just don't don't promote this at church. And I'm like, that's fair. Absolutely fair. Because I'm now on their turf, right? When I'm at church, I'm a guest. It's not my church anymore. So I'm happy to be quiet now, you know, that I at church now. So if someone asked me, I'll just be like, you know, talk to me later. It's some good news, but I'll talk, you know, whatever. Like I have ideas on Joseph Smith. I'm not sure if it's putting me thing, but we can talk later, not here. So that's perfectly fine. And and and again, it's, it's theirs. So they can make the rules how they want, right? So I've been told that as long as I don't promote this stuff at church that I'm allowed to come. So there you go. And ultimately question, I think, do you have any reaction to like Jasmine Rappoli or Jacob Hanson or Greg Mattson, those Mormon apologists? I mean, you've already told us what you think of Brian Hales. Any other thoughts on the sort of younger, hip-hop, YouTube apologists who have responded to this movement and to you slash Michelle. Yeah, they've just, you know, they're, they're saying the same old thing without looking at the source documents again. Like Jasmine Rappoli, she and her husband and Steven Smoot all went on together. And the episode was called debunking the polygamy deniers, a look at the source documents. It was something really close to that. And here's a quiz for you. Okay. How many source documents did they put up? I watched that, but it wouldn't be a lot. It was one top. The one that they put up was a type written excerpt from William Claims Journal. It wasn't even his real, it was like, that's a look at the documents. And it was so great because I can always point to that. This is them looking at the documents. They don't. So I talked to Greg Mattson. I don't know if you know that, but he was awesome. I, I saw him on with Brian Hales. He had Brian Hales on it was just like Brian Hales just cast slide the whole time. So in frustration, I emailed Greg and I said, can I please, please just put this book in your hand. And he said, I'll be at Thanksgiving point tomorrow, you know, six o'clock, whatever, eight o'clock. So I was like, no way. So I go, it was just curt like that too. It was funny. So I go and meet him at Thanksgiving point. And it turns out he didn't even know who I was until after he had agreed to meet with me. He didn't even know my name. He hadn't heard of it. He just heard of me at all. So he agreed with, to meet with some rando that was going to give him a book. He didn't even know why. Like kudos to the guy for that, you know. So we stood out on the sidewalk at Thanksgiving point for an hour and a half and talked about this stuff. And he would ask me questions and I would give my best answer, but I put my book in his hand. And I don't know if you ever watch the movie, you know, it doesn't seem like it from what he's still saying. But hey, you know, he let me do that. That would be what I would ask of Jasmine Rappley, anybody, all of them Jacob Hansen. I would love it. But they're so insolated like I really want to talk to Bill Turnbull. If someone can put me in touch with Bill, I would be so grateful because he seems so reasonable to me to be like, hey, I don't think Jacob two thirties a loophole because I read this article and it was made a really good point. I was like, whoa, you know, that's, that means a lot to me just to have somebody open minded that much. And I again, I don't need them on my side. I just need to share it so they can see it. That's all. They just don't want to get it. It's communicated. Yeah, be quiet about it. That's all you got to do. You can quietly believe it. It's crazy. Okay, last question. Remind everyone the name of your YouTube channel, the name of the video, the name of your book and how they can buy it and how they can contact you. Okay. So I think I'm embarrassed. I think the YouTube channel is just Karen, I need to rename it. I know, right? And the, but the video, what you want to type into YouTube is wall unto you scribes that will bring it up immediately. So it's called, well, unto you scribes, the hidden history of polygamy. And you can also see it at Joseph told the truth.org. That's where you'll be able to see the movie. You'll be able to see the ad free rumble version. If you don't have ad blocker, you can see the PDF get a free printable PDF if you just want to monetize. No, it's not monetized. But see, YouTube puts it peppers it with ads, even if it's not monetized, I was ticked. Because I purposely didn't monetize it, but they still put ads all over it. But rumble is an unlisted video. So you can't find it in a search, but the link is at my website. If that makes sense. So just go to Joseph told the truth.org and you'll find a ad free link if you need that. Also, yes, as you mentioned, the, the written form of it is available. And I just put it up for cost on the Lulu bookstore. So again, there's links to that in all the description boxes. I always have the links to the book and whatever you want. How to email you and email me at woe unto you scribes at gmail.com. All right. Well, Karen, hi, we went five hours. I shot. I laughed. I said, they go, you're going on there? What like Michelle did? I said, no, no, no, three hours is my ultimate limit. And then I saw your info sheet was like, we're aiming for two hours. I was like, oh, cool, guys. And then I looked at my phone at 230 and just about freaked out. I, I'm so sorry. I feel like I apologize into people. I'm not sorry, though, but I feel like appolishing to everybody else. I'm like, oh, my gosh. There's still 550 people on the light. How am I this long winded five hours? It goes by. This will reach tens of thousands of people. Maybe a hundred thousand people. Anyway, now I just think people should be able to tell their story. I agree. And tell it in as much time and care as they want. That's why we do this. So you're amazing. I just can't believe I got to get a t-shirt. Like I lasted five hours on John the Lynn. I don't know what to say. That's amazing. That flew by for me. I'm sure it didn't for everybody else. They're like, talk faster. I hope everybody put it on double speed. But anyway, we got one super chat and the whole thing. And it's Eric, I learned all. He says 300k can't wait for this celebratory video. So thank you. So Eric, yeah, the Eric, reminding people, thanks for the super chat Eric. And please subscribe to YouTube. Please help us on the Mormon stories podcast channel. Reast 300,000. Also subscribe to Whoa, no, to Karen, hi, YouTube channel as well. Because that also deserves to be subscribed to. Anyway, okay, oh, the conference and the journal journal of Mormon polygamy conference March 20th and 21st. Go to journal of Mormon polygamy.org and get your ticket there. There's only 400 spots they are going to go. So get them, get them sooner rather than later. I want to kind of part of me unless you go to that. You should go. It's got a good lineup. I don't think they've officially announced the speakers yet except for the controversial one. But but there's going to be speakers that people are going to be super happy to hear from. So that's all I can say. All right. I can, I think I'm allowed to say I'm going to be on a panel. So that'll be fun. All right. Well, so thank you Karen, hi, this has been amazing. Thank you, Michelle, Stone and just I y'all just y'all represent like the best of the Mormon people to me. Do you have his right? Let the consequence follow. I do know what you mean. And Rob fathering him whose video I saw came onto my channel and just drop that comment. And it got like 350 likes. That's all he said. But also he said, oh, say what is truth? It is the first gem, right? It's stand up be, you know, stand up alone if you need to. All the things that we say we need to do. So anyway, thank you, John. Thank you so much. Well, thanks for standing for what you believe to be true. And for fighting for evidence and for good scholarship and science. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. And for letting people make their own decisions. Absolutely. All right. What an honor. Well, thank you, Karen, hi, thanks to Brooklyn, Julia for everything they do behind the scenes. Thanks to all our donors. We couldn't do this without you. If you are not a donor and you want to, we need your support. Go to mormerstories.org/donate. Become a donor. Is there a way to support you and help pay for billboards or whatever? People have asked just contact me through the website. I'll be happy to do that. I don't solicit them, but people donate all the time. So contact me through the website and and I'd be happy to have your help. And Dan Vogel says good job, Karen. Oh, oh my gosh, can we go to lunch? Dan, can we go to lunch? I'll buy you lunch wherever you name the place. That is so sweet. And Dan, we love having you in the comments. And if anybody wants to re-rot watch, you can see all sorts of commentary of all sides of the spectrum in the live chat. You can re-watch that. Anyway, thank you, Karen, hi. Thanks for joining us today on mormerstories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of mormerstories podcast. We're at four minutes, four hours, 59 minutes, and 41 seconds. We'll stop before we hit five. Thanks, everybody. Take care. We'll see you all soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]