Joseph Smith had relationships with women so much younger than him, that it shows that he did not value them as intellectual or spiritual beings +3

Reasons to agree: +4

1. Joseph was 38 when he married Helen Mar Kimball who was only 14. She continued to live with her parents, and never married lived with Joseph. When she grew up she married someone else, and never seemed to have had sex with Joseph. They were trying to just seal people to each other, but still it seems weird that Joseph would seal her to him as a wife. Why didn't he just adopt her as a daughter?


2. Joseph Smith was 28 when he had an affair, or a plural marriage with Fanny Alger who was 16.


3. Joseph Smith was 37 when he married Sarah Ann Whitney who was 17 years old.


4. Statements by William Law and Eliza R. Snow indicate that the marriages included sexual intimacy.[121][122] "Joseph was very free in his talk about his women. He told me one day of a certain girl and remarked, that she had given him more pleasure than any girl he had ever enjoyed. I told him it was horrible to talk like this." - Joseph Smith's close confidant and LDS Church First Councilor, William Law, Interview in Salt Lake Tribune, July 31, 188. When Heber C. Kimball asked Sister Eliza R. Snow the question if she was not a virgin although married to Joseph Smith, she replied, "I thought you knew Joseph Smith better than that." - Stake President Angus M. Cannon, statement of interview with Joseph III, 23, LDS archives.

Reasons to disagree: -1

1. No DNA evidence exist that Joseph Smith fathered any other children than with his wife Emma. Most historians agree that Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, taught and practiced polygamy during his ministry, and married several dozen women during his lifetime, even though Smith, and the leading quorums of his church, publicly denied he taught or practiced it.[1][2][3] Additionally, after his death, several women were "sealed" to him.[4]