Note: This is a three-part blog series that explores the unique ramifications polygamy culture has upon queer Latter-day Saints written exclusively by Nathan Kitchen for Life Outside The Book of Mormon Belt. To learn more about the experiences in the queer/Latter-day Saint intersection, be sure to pick up his memoir: The Boughs of Love—Navigating the Queer Latter-day Saint Experience During an Ongoing Restoration published by BCC Press.

GUEST POST: In the fall of 2022, I ran into Carol Lynn Pearson in the Salt Palace. She recognized me and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. We were both late for speaking engagements. “Walk with me so we can visit for a moment,” she invited. Carol Lynn is a fierce advocate for LGBTQ Mormons, knowing many of us by name—even those who have long passed from this life. I shared that I was intrigued by her book, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men. “You know, Mormon polygamy haunts LGBTQ Mormons as well,” I observed. With an inquisitive smile, she replied, “I would like to know why you would conclude such a thing!” Unfortunately, our paths diverged before I could adequately finish the elevator pitch of my thesis.

Polygamy is always uncomfortably simmering just below the surface of Latter-day Saint consciousness. Occasionally, an event happens that causes it to boil over, causing this “specter in the shadows” to become visible. Polygamy’s latest jump scare appeared in a children’s storybook produced by the Church, explaining, on an elementary level, its existence for decades, God’s approval of the practice, and the reasons why the faith continued to participate in it even though it was against the law. It is important to note that no discussion on polygamy is complete without acknowledging the intriguing premise that Mormon polygamy also haunts LGBTQ Mormons. It is time for me to finish my conversation with Carol Lynn.

Cuckoo for Polygamy

Polygamy is the OG queer marriage in the Church. It is a form of queer marriage that is blessed and sanctioned by the Church, even though it is not currently authorized to be practiced on earth. Unfortunately, it is a brood parasite, being that large obnoxious cuckoo chick that happened to hatch first in the nest of queer marriage, only to violently push out the little same-sex marriage eggs before they could hatch and be accepted by their parents. There is only room for one queer marriage in the theology nest of the heavens, and it is polygamy.

What makes polygamy queer? Through the Middle Ages, Christian marriage invoked the blessing of God but mainly was a transaction of property and money arrangements enforced through human law and custom. For the poor, with no real property or power to transact, cohabitation sans ceremony was enough to signify marriage in the eyes of the law. When Pope Innocent III ascended to the papacy in 1198, he invoked ecclesiastical influence upon governments, citing that Christ commissioned St. Peter to not only govern the universal Church but the secular world as well. In this structuring of power, the Catholic Church had its eye on marriage and family—the most profound and powerful social constructs that humans undertake. During the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, marriage was listed for the first time as an official sacrament. This designation demanded that a church ceremony be required to legitimize a marriage. Under the sacrament of marriage, polygamy and concubinage were impermissible. Despite any family property deals or licensure by governments, church marriage was now necessary to ensure the legitimacy of offspring and inheritance. Marriage, as a sacrament, solidified the Church’s power (and interference) by “increasing the importance of priesthood in everyday family life.”[1]

At the beginning of the Restoration, the LDS Church did a very queer thing. It blew up this traditional legacy of ecclesiastical power in family life, declaring what aspects it would embrace, modify, or reject. In the case of marriage, it was the Church’s act of skipping over traditional Christian marriage—reaching back to the patriarchs to justify the practice of polygamy—that made the rest of the Christian world sit up and gasp at the fact that the Mormon Church was practicing queer marriage.

Although the LDS Church rejected the idea that polygamy is not a Christian practice, it embraced the idea that in this world of secular governments, the Church, by divine right, is supreme. These two positions set up a long conflict between the Church asserting the supremacy of God’s law to practice polygamy and the federal government asserting its supremacy to eliminate the practice. Consequently, the feder­al government began exerting every pressure it could bring to bear.

Digging Our Heels in Over Queer Marriage

In 1879, with the Latter-day Saints in its crosshairs, the Supreme Court upheld the 1862 Morrill Anti–Bigamy Act in Reynolds v. United States. As Congress continued to pump out anti-polygamy laws, protecting its practice of polygamy became a physical game of cat and mouse for the Church. Federal marshals swarmed Utah, relentlessly hunting down church leaders who dispersed throughout the territory to evade capture.

The Church spent some twenty-eight years vigorously defending its religious freedom to practice queer marriage in a society that found it immoral. Finally—exhausted, out-resourced, and facing the confiscation of its holy temples—the Church began to take official measures to stop the practice of polygamy through President Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 Official Declaration 1 manifesto and President Joseph F. Smith’s follow-up manifesto in 1904. What a humbling experience as a Church, contrary to its identity, to be brought subject to the laws of the land when God had confirmed the correctness and blessing of its polygamous marriages. LGBTQ people know precisely what it is like to be violated by laws and court rulings.

Turns out, eliminating the religiously learned sexual practice of polygamy from the Church proved hard to do. By 1909, Apostle Francis M. Lyman was chairing a church committee to investigate plural marriages to thoroughly stamp out the practice. The fervor and zeal to be polygamists was now being channeled into not being polygamists—all while the epic struggles, events, sermons, and posturing that vigorously defended polygamy before the Manifestos were still ringing in the ears of the Saints. The brethren now assumed the role of marshal, hunting down their own, dividing families, and excommunicating their fellow Saints who were still entering plural marriages, convinced of their divine correctness.

Recognizing this moment of transition away from polygamy, McKay Coppins writes in “The Most American Religion,” that the Church embarked “in earnest on a quest for assimilation” into American life.[2] To shake the stench of polygamy, it became the American model of the nuclear family founded upon one-man, one-woman marriage. It is remarkable how well the Church succeeded in fostering a culture of polygamy aversion within its ranks. In the 2014 book, Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics, national survey research revealed that 86% of Latter-day Saints said that practicing polygamy was morally wrong. More so than drinking alcohol, 54%, having an abortion, 74%, or sex between unmarried adults, 79%.

Transformation complete.

Because of this modern view among Latter-day Saints, it is easy to forget just how essential and revered polygamy was to the early Saints. It was a sincerely held religious belief coupled with practice, tightly tied to the doctrine of eternal marriage. Because polygamy was sanctioned in the Church before it was not, the Church cannot simply throw a whole generation of faithful, temple-married, polygamous Latter-day Saints under the bus. Backward compatibility in the doctrine must be retained and defended to accommodate the practice of polygamy as an exaltation-compatible configuration of marriage. This accommodation for queer marriage must be because, for Latter-day Saints, marriage survives in the heavens—including polygamy.

The Nest of Queer Eternal Marriage

In Protestantism, marriage is a holy institution that solves an earthly problem of concupiscence. It is a tool to preserve your soul. In Catholicism, marriage is a sacrament. It is a conduit of God’s presence in the believer’s life. For both Protestants and Catholics, marriage may be a biblically sanctioned earthly configuration but it does not exist in heaven, nor is it required to live with God again. You will live with God as a single person. In contrast, for Latter-day Saints, marriage is tightly woven into its soteriology. Marriage solemnized by those holding priesthood keys is required for exaltation. This form of marriage, commonly referred to as temple marriage, surrounds you in the direct presence of God in the afterlife and determines your location in the eternities. Only a temple marriage allows you to live together as a family for the eternities. In the Mormon theology of heaven, even God is married—you have a heavenly father and a heavenly mother.

Although nowhere to be found in today’s “Family Proclamation,” it remains an unspoken theological reality that polygamous marriage solemnized by priesthood keys is queer marriage grandfathered into today’s definition of eternal marriage. And it is one formidable cuckoo chick in the Church’s nest of queer marriage that was poised to greet the rest of the queer brood that began to hatch during the gay liberation movement in the mid-twentieth century.

~~Nathan Kitchen

Nathan Kitchen (he/him) served as president of Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends from 2019 through 2022. Nathan is a returned missionary, a dentist by trade, a sought-after public speaker, and the author of Boughs of Love. He lives in Arizona with his husband, Matthew. In his free time, Nathan likes to travel, read, and hold his five grandbabies.

Click the titles to read Polygamy is Queer Marriage (Part Two) and Polygamy is Queer Marriage (Part 3).

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[1] Cantor, Norman F. “The Peace of Innocent III.” Essay. In The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 419. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.[2] Coppins, McKay. “The Most American Religion,” 69. The Atlantic, January 2021.

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