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about Mormons’ own alternative
marriage practices.”
The history of the Church of
Latter-day Saints is a story of marginalization and persecution, one
driven in large part by its founder’s
unorthodox views on marriage.
In the 1820s, Joseph Smith, the
son of a farmer living in western
New York, said he had unearthed
and translated a book of solid gold
pages that had been buried in a
nearby hillside for 1,400 years.
The published work, the Book of
Mormon, intrigued some people
and provoked anger and skepticism
in others. “There was an appealing simplicity to the book’s central
message, which framed existence
as an unambiguous struggle be-
HUFFINGTON
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tween good and evil,” wrote Jon
Krakauer in Under the Banner of
Heaven, a book that intertwines
Smith’s story with an account of a
1984 double-murder committed in
the name of God by two Mormon
fundamentalist brothers.
Smith was a charismatic leader
and a brilliant storyteller. He was
also widely considered a charlatan, and as he and his followers
searched for a place to establish a
communal Mormon utopia, outsiders threatened them with mob
violence and sometimes attacked.
The strife grew more intense after Smith said God had revealed
to him t