Announcing rDrama's latest, and best, ping group, for everything related to Philosophy: !sophistry

It varies.

As for Brigham Young, polygamy was an open thing. For Brother Joseph, it was not, and was actually his downfall.

Here's the story:

Joe came up with polygamy on the down-low. He initiated his closest friends to it, and in wanted a ritual to swear them to secrecy. He stole and re-wrote the Freemason ceremony, and proclaimed that it used to be a super-real and super-cereal Christian thing on eternal marriage and polygamy, but was corrupted over time, and that hos job was to fix and restore it to how it originally was (common Mormon motif, just like the Book of Mormon).

His doctrinal teaches expanded it to obtaining higher degrees of Godhood in the afterlife.

Here's the downfall part:

Joseph Smith was both the Mormon leader AND the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois.

One of his besties was on his inner circle, disagreed with him, and created a printing press and exposed all of it, including polygamy.

Joseph Smith mayo'd out, and used his mayoral political powers to destroy a free and independent press in order to protect his private religious enterprise.

The governor of Illinois felt that this was highly illegal and unconstitutional, so he issued a warrant for Joseph Smith to be arrested.

After trying to hide for a while he turned himself in. While jailed and awaiting trial, masked gunmen broked into the jail and shot him. Most likely these were former followers who realized the whole thing was a fraud at this point and wanted revenge.

The Mormon church calls it a martyrdom. The truth is much more boring.

!mormons