But that's not what Joseph Smith told Helen Mar Kimball. From the wikipedia article on Helen Mar Kimball, which seems to be based on Todd Compton's book:
"Helen took 24 hours to respond to this request, and consented after Smith explained to her that it would ensure her eternal salvation along with that of her family. Helen was sealed to Joseph Smith in May 1843."
Before you go claiming outrageous statements, please cite your information.
Sorry. Today is a crazy day for me and I was in a hurry. I try to be better about posting sources in the future. As I said in a later post, Todd Compton's book In Sacred Loneliness is an excellent resource on polygamy in the early Mormon church. There is an introduction about polygamy and then one chapter devoted to each of Joseph Smith's wives. Compton relies heavily on primary source material (letters and journals written by the wives and those close to them) and is good about quoting his sources. Unfortunately, the copy I read was borrowed through Inter Library Loan and so I don't have it on me anymore. (You can, however, read parts of Compton's book at the web site for Signature Books. I don't have enough posts to post links.)
Here are my original claims, with the best online source I can find right now. Again, I believe all of this is covered in Compton's book.
Joseph Smith married other men's wives.--From Compton: "
However, the remaining eleven women (33 percent) were married to other husbands and cohabiting with them when Smith married them. "
He coerced a teenager into marrying him by telling her that her family would obtain exhaltation if she did. (See above quote about Helen Mar Kimball. She was still 14 when she married Joseph Smith.)
He married women behind his first wife's back and then lied about it. Brigham Young taught that a man had to have at least three wives in order to achieve the highest level of exhaltation and--these two I am having a hard time finding online evidence for right at the moment.
that a woman could righteously leave her husband if she could get a man with a higher level of priesthood to marry her.--From Compton "
Another relevant doctrinal statement comes from an 1861 speech by Brigham Young: The Second Way in which a wife can be seperated from her husband, while he continues to be faithful to his God and his preisthood, I have not revealed, except to a few persons in this Church; and a few have received it from Joseph the prophet as well as myself. If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the preisthood with higher power and authority than her husband, and he is disposed to take her he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is ... there is no need for a bill of divorcement ... To recapitulate. First if a man forfiets his covenants with a wife, or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God, and his preisthood, that wife or wives are free from him without a bill of divorcement. Second. If a woman claimes protection at the hands of a man, possessing more power in the preisthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to rescue her and has obtained the consent of her husband to make her his wife he can do so without a bill of divorcement."
He sent a man off on a mission and then married the man's wife and moved her and the sons she had with her first husband to Utah.--From Compton "
In the case of Zina Huntington Jacobs and Henry Jacobsoften used as an example of Smith marrying a woman whose marriage was unhappythe Mormon leader married her just seven months after she married Jacobs, and then she stayed with Jacobs for years after Smith's death. Then the separation was forced when Brigham Young (who had married Zina polyandrously in the Nauvoo temple) sent Jacobs on a mission to England and began living with Zina himself." There is more about this in the chapter on Zina.
