It has pleased most to presume that Joseph Smith delighted in marrying women and enjoying the intimate benefits of marriage. Believing Mormons point to the scriptural admonition to produce seed. Those who don’t believe in the God of Mormonism suggest polygamy was invented by Joseph to justify sex with whichever woman he desired, no matter how young or how married.
A closer look at Joseph Smith and his trusted contemporaries, however, suggests they rarely consummated plural marriages prior to Smith’s death. This closer look also exposes the depravity of the “unauthorized polygamy” or illicit intercourse that unknown numbers of Mormons were led to embrace during 1841-1842.
The tension between these two forms of polygamy can be seen to inform and deform the institution of marriage as practiced by Mormons until the 1890 Manifesto, which called an end to Mormon polygamy.