Roy Moore and Joseph Smith

Three more on Moore:

“Roy Moore Loses the ‘He Said / She Said’”

“Moore Defenders Betray Conservative Women”

“Praying for a Sessions Write-In Candidacy: If you say you don’t have enough evidence to make a judgment, you are judging Moore’s accusers to be not credible.”

“If Roy Moore Were a Fictional Character: You’d Know He Was a Villain”

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I posted a whole slew of links relating to the case of Judge Roy Moore last night:

“Character Counts”

It was absolutely predictable — I was actually counting the minutes until it happened — that, given charges against Mr. Moore that he “sought a sexual relationship” (as more than one news report about the case rather chastely puts it) with a fourteen-year-old when he was in his thirties, critics of Mormonism would almost instantly cite the matter of Joseph Smith and the fourteen year-old Helen Mar Kimball.

And, of course, they did.

Moreover, it’s understandable that they did and that they would.  The cases are superficially similar.

There are differences, though — and they’re significant.

The news reports about District Attorney Roy Moore describe sexual assaults on very young women.  Note the word assaults.  These assaults were, manifestly, initiated by him and angrily or fearfully rebuffed by the unfortunate girls involved.

In the case of Helen Mar Kimball, by contrast, it seems that Joseph Smith did not initiate contact.  He did not seek any kind of relationship with the young woman.  Rather, he was approached by her father.  Moreover, even though a sealing did occur, it is arguable that the marriage was never consummated.  You could, in fact, describe the sealing of Helen Mark Kimball to Joseph Smith as something of a “dynastic marriage.”  A bit odd, perhaps, compared to the way we think today — and, I think, tied up with the same thinking that led to the nineteenth-century Mormon practice of “adoptions,” ended by revelation to Wilford Woodruff — but fundamentally and crucially different from the Roy Moore situation.

See, on this story, the work of Brian C. Hales, which is neatly summarized in the following short article:

“Helen Mar Kimball”

Moreover, while Mr. Moore seems very likely to have been prone to something that might be called at least borderline pedophilia, Joseph Smith does not seem to have been similarly inclined.

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In the course of their attacks on me over this particular issue, some of the critics have reached into their armory for one of their favorite weapons against me:  I don’t care about the truth or about a balanced point of view, they say, because I’m making heaps of dough from my apologetic work.  I receive regular and very large tithing checks because I defend Joseph Smith and Mormonism.

So, once again, I resort to my principal defense on this score:

I receive no salary whatsoever for defending Mormonism.  My salary comes from serving as a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University (where I’m about to head off for a committee meeting, immediately followed by Humanities 242, immediately followed by Middle East Studies-Arabic 250)

The charge is flatly and categorically false.

I would happily trade the portion of my salary that I earn from apologetics each year for what I earned during a typical month as a paperboy or for the average annual revenue of a sidewalk lemonade stand staffed by eight-year-olds.

With specific regard to the Interpreter Foundation, my wife and I are donors, not compensated employees.  Interpreter’s bylaws permit the president and the vice presidents of the Foundation to draw up to $500 per year as compensation for our work.  But, thus far, in more than five years of operation, none of us has ever taken so much as a single cent of such compensation.  And I foresee no change in this regard.

Still — and I very much appreciate the opportunity to mention this matter yet again — the Interpreter Foundation needs money to function.

You can read about our annual expenses here.  And you can learn about how to donate money to support our work here.

None of your donation — not so much as a nickel of it — will go toward buying platinum bathroom fixtures for my home or (sadly) securing a new Lamborghini for me.