“Joseph Smith having sex with his wives doesn’t hurt my faith.” Response: That’s not the point anyway.

Mormon Stories Podcast recently had an episode discussing the evidence related to sexual relations between Joseph Smith and his wives.

One of the responses listed all kinds of evidence that Joseph Smith was busy and watched by Emma etc that he wasn’t having a lot of sex with them. Then said that having sex with them didn’t weaken his faith anyway.

Why does Mormon Stories Podcast care about this topic?

Why do apologists care about this topic?

Is it even an important topic?

Does knowing whether there is evidence he had sex with 20% or 60% of the claimed wives have any real importance in Mormonism?

My response: The discussion isn’t really a “smoking gun” that is sure to lead people out of the church. That’s true. It’s that people in relation to the church want to know the true history. There are apologists who for their own reasons I don’t understand want to say the evidence for sex is only a few limited wives. There are apologists who want to say no offspring occurred so they don’t there was sex?? So it’s a legitimate discussion.

Learning information about Joseph Smith’s life can help someone judge whether they think his claims to have talked to God are credible. He claimed an angel threatened to murder him if he didn’t have marriage relations with multiple women.

I think that’s the point. People are trying to judge his claims and MULTIPLE pieces of information are useful in that. People are interested in the source of the information and trying to judge its validity. Mormon Stories Podcast offered information on the sources and their judgment of the record.

So logically the exact number of wives he had sex with I wouldn’t expect makes a difference in people’s faith.