Abstract: Critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have accused Joseph Smith and other early Latter-day Saint men of pedophilia because they married teenaged women. Indeed, they have emphatically declared that such marriages were against 19th-century societal norms. However, historians and other experts have repeatedly stated that young people married throughout the 19th-century, and such marriages have been relatively common throughout all of US history. This article examines some of the accusations of early Latter-day Saint pedophilia and places such marriages within the greater historical and social context, illustrating that such marriages were normal and acceptable for their time and place.

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Conclusion

This essay does not attempt to justify past marriages, including plural marriages, among the Latter-day Saints, which involved young brides. A primary concern about the recent discussion of such unions is the apparent lack of context regarding 19th-century marriage patterns. As portrayed in the pedogamy series, the men were seemingly libido- driven pedophiliacs and the women gullible pawns. Further, pedogamy was implied as predominantly practiced by members of the Church in Nauvoo and Utah during the 19th century. Such one-dimensional depictions are not really that useful or knowledgeable, even if applauded by a host of online commentators and Facebook posters.

A more accurate view of history demonstrates that our modern understanding of what constitutes childhood and proper age of first marriage has drastically changed from earlier times. This, then, results in a more nuanced view of the topic. What shocks and offends 21st century sensibilities was accepted, sometimes even expected, in the centuries leading up to at least the later decades of the 19th-century.

As a number of non-Latter-day Saint historians and researchers have demonstrated, early-age marriages were a part of the wider American social fabric in the mid-1850s — the same period ostensibly examined in the pedogamy series. They have demonstrated that time, place, economics, demographics, and culture all played a role in determining the marriage ages of both females and males. Places where land and work were readily available encouraged early marriage, as did a high male-to-female ratio. The frontier almost always provided the right circumstances for early marriage, and the frontier was constantly in flux.

Moreover, Nauvoo of the 1840s, on the edge of the western frontier, exhibited many of the characteristics of frontier society; and Utah was certainly a frontier setting through much of the latter 19th century. It is understandable that marriages in both Nauvoo and Utah would reflect frontier marriage patterns, resemble patterns of other western and frontier states and territories, and would not reflect marriage trends of most states in the non-frontier eastern portion of the United States.

So rather than Joseph Smith’s and other Latter-day Saints’ marriages to teens being out of the norm or an evidence of pedophilia, these marriages seem to fit comfortably into the culture and setting of that period.143 Despite the concerns and possible good intentions of those writing about 19th-century Latter-day Saint marriages, writers and commentators may find themselves spinning the historical data rather than accurately reporting it when they fail to take the greater historical context into account.