Curse on Canaan: Black people, Mitt Romney and Mormonism

July 14, 2012 / Posted in  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), Evangelical Christianity, GOP, Republican Party

The Mormon religion (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) is decidedly anti-Black.  It is hostile to any other interpretation of the “will of God” than that issued by Joseph Smith (1805-1844) since 1830 and continued past the days of Brigham Young, with special hatred focused against Black people.

Brigham Young is among the most anti-Black bigots in the Mormon religion.  He wrote: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” (Read: Young, Brigham. Journal of Discourses Vol. 10, pp. 110-111: Salt Lake City, March 8, 1863; cp. Young, Brigham, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, pp. 290-291). 

Brigham Young was not an original thinker.  Most of what he vented against followed the raw racism of Joseph Smith and the Smith family.  The Smith family members held divergent views about organized religion, and used religion as a tool to assure conformity. 

The Smith religion in the nineteenth century went from the extreme distance of rejecting to embracing the most untenable tenets that bordered on masochism, sadism, and insanity.  All members of the Smith family fervently believed in visions, mystical beings (basically angels) and prophecies.  According to all primary sources, all members of the extended Smith family engaged in folk religious practices typical of the era.

One of the most common scenes was that of a Smith family member being visited by an angel or group of angels, usually the Seraphim who had wings of fire (an ancient allegory for a fast running messenger) who had six wings and stood near the Throne of God: two wings to veil their faces, two to cover their feet, and two to “bear them up” (Isaiah 6:2 ff); all Seraphim were naked, as was required by the ancient gods for priestly service in the presence of the Almighty (Isaiah 6:2-6; cp. Numbers 21:6; Isaiah 14:29; the details suggest that they were flying serpents or dragons). They match the Babylonian Sharrapu, a name for Nergal, the fire-god, or with the Egyptian griffins (séréf) which are placed at Beni-Hassan as guardians of graves (cp. Enoch 61:10; 71:7).

Ezekiel 10:12 talks about angels who are covered with eyes: on their wings, backs, hands, and everywhere to see the evil being done.  God demanded total surveillance (cp. Revelation 4:6) as no one was to be trusted and everyone, following the Babylonian tradition of Job 2:1 ff, was to be tempted so as to be punished.

It was an angel (Moroni) that directed Joseph Smith to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Christian history of ancient American civilizations.  These plates would lead to the writing of the Book of Mormon.

In addition to the golden plates, Smith claimed that he discovered the breastplate worn by Moses’ brother Aaron, and a set of silver spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones (the Urim and Thummim: האורים והתומים‎ used for divination).  According to 1 Samuel 14:41 these seer stones were used to determine who was a sinner.  The Books of Samuel are not originals, nor focused strictly on the life and labor of a people who were to become known as Israelites, instead they include Hittite, Babylonian, and Samarian lore.

Urim and Thummim have their origin in non-Hebrew ancient Babylon as urtu and tamitu, meaning oracle and command, respectively.  Both were basic to witchcraft.

Joseph Smith used these stones, he claimed, when his head was buried into a hat to ensure privacy.  Like the golden plates, the stones, and the hat had been hidden in a hill near his home, with the hat being very much like the all-knowing “sorting hat” found at Hogwarts in the writing of J. K. Rawlings. 

In 1830, Smith published the contents of the golden plates as the Book of Mormon.  When the book was questioned, and requests were made to see the plates, the response was that the golden plates were lost and with them any proof of their authenticity or that of the religion invented by Joseph Smith (Quinn, D. Michael (1998), Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (2nd ed.), Salt Lake City: Signature Books, pp. 4-5).

Far from being a religion of charity or compassion, the Mormon religion is as bigoted as the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) or even Paulinity (that today is defined, in error, as “Christianity”; this is because the writings  by the various authors of the Letters of Paul, have next to nothing in common with the sayings of the New Testament Jesus: they are judgmental in contradiction to Matthew 7:1, divide people in opposition to Acts 10:34, separate genders (mechitza in Hebrew, based on  Zechariah 12:12-14, cp. Greenberg, Blu (1981). On Women & Judaism: A View from Tradition. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America) and marginalize women (1 Corinthians 14:34; 2 Timothy 2:12 the objection being that women

are to submit to men, a message used also in Islam and found in Judaism; in Islam, women are required to pray either in separate columns away from men, or behind men, so that when “submitting in prayer” to Allah, the men are not distracted by “looking at their backsides”–cf. Qur’an, 24:30-31), and so forth.  The scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints read as a racist diatribe–similar to the Bible, the Koran,

and other quite unholy books.  Mormons segregate themselves from People of Color (primarily Blacks), but do allow white women to worship with white men.

The main attack in Mormon literature is rifled in against Black people, taking many cues from the Christian and Jewish bibles. For example, in 2 Nephi 5:21, we read “…wherefore, as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a sin of blackness to come upon them.”

The Book of Mormon is not only racist and hate-filled, but historically untrue, lacking all variability and found its way into print in 1830, only when Smith was able to raise sufficient capital by begging and borrowing from friends. With the publication of the Book of Mormon Smith and his colleagues could point to the page containing 2 Nephi 3:6-13, to prove the authenticity of Smith’s claim that he was a descendant of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, after whom he and his father were named. 

Unfortunately for Smith, he was neither a Biblical scholar nor a linguist, as in the original text Smith had the Mormons descending from the tribe of the Ephraimites. If this was fact, than Smith and his family were part of ancient Israel.

Smith styled all other white (or Euroamericans) as Gentiles.  If these Gentiles joined the LDS church as “repentant Gentiles” they would be “grafted” to the House of Israel and become “Abraham’s seed” (Mauss, Amand L. (2003). All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 343 p.).  Only through such grafting would the Gentiles be saved.

Smith considered himself to be a senior Ephraimite: coming from a group of Israelites who fled Jerusalem around 600 BCE and miraculously “traveled” to the Americas.  According to Smith, the lost tribe of Ephraim was quickly divided into two groups: the Nephites who were seen a righteous “white” people, and the Lamanites “who were cursed” with “a skin of blackness” to resemble the dark appearance of evil.  The Book of Mormon reads: “And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark and loathsome and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations (1 Nephi 12:23).

The “Lamanites” are a people without a history.  No concrete evidence exists that they ever lived, but according to Apostle Spencer W. Kimball, who later became president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, wrote in an article, entitled “Of Royal Blood”:

 

“a Lamanite is a descendant of one Lehi who left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ…and landed in America. And Lehi and his family because the ancestors of all the Indian and Mestizo tribes in North and South and Central America and in the islands of the sea…Now the Lamanites number about sixty million; they are in all the states of America from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Point Barrows, and they are in nearly all the islands of the sea from Hawaii south to southern New Zealand”

(Ensign [the official LDS church magazine] July 1971, p. 7). This includes Polynesia and Tonga, Samoa and the Sandwich Islands (Juvenile Instructor, vol. 30, 1868, p. 129).

The fabled “curse” of Noah is further developed in the Book of Mormon.  Read 2 Nephi 5:21:

“and he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing … wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them”.

Black skin was a sign of sin:

“Behold the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins”

(Jacob 3:5). 

The angel Moroni, whom Joseph Smith claimed was the son of a Nephite prophet and military leader marshalled his people in the twilight of their existence for a great (“final”) battle between light and darkness: an Armageddon between white and black men.  Moroni’s father was known as Mormon who, furthermore, warns that black skin pigmentation is contagious:

“O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skin will be whiter than yours [that will become darker than black], when ye shall be brought before the throne of God” (Jacob 3:8).

Joseph Smith did not define further the curse, nor explain why the curse was made.  That is easy to understand. Joseph Smith was neither a theologian nor a student of any Bible save the bibles he dictated as if he were the Wizard of Oz hiding behind a curtain (Howe, Eber Dudley (1834), Mormonism Unvailed: Or, A Faithful Account of that Singular Imposition and Delusion, from its Rise to the Present Time, Painesville, Ohio: Telegraph Press, p. 14). 

Noah did not curse Ham. He could not curse his son as Ham had already been blessed (Genesis 9:1)–and once blessed the recipient of the blessing could not be cursed.  That prohibition stopped the numerous writers of the Book of Genesis from having Noah curse his blessed son.  The curse had to fall unfairly, cavalier and capriciously upon Noah’s grandson, Canaan (Genesis 9:25; today the word Canaan has been supplanted by the original name of Palestine, an area that later Hebrews would steal in warfare under the leadership of Joshua whom, it is claimed, had been given the land by the Hebrew god (Joshua 1:3-5) but geography varies in Hebrew lore: Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47).

The reason for the curse is clear (Genesis 9:20-24): Ham had seen his father drunk (and/or may have supplied the alcohol) and naked (Habakkuk 2:15)—and “stayed a while” with the drunkard, implying a marginal possibility of sodomy (ref. Jordan, M. D. (1977). “The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology,” The Chicago series on Sexuality, History and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press).  Sodomy is not a strong possibility as the penalty for such an act was to be stoned to death.  A more plausible answer would have been that Ham saw his father have sex with another person with whom he would not have been married: adultery; but, adultery also carries with it the death penalty.  That leaves the only option of for the cause of the curse is masturbation.

In the original Hebrew, the word for nakedness is ervah (it means genitals) and being seen in the act itself would have been embarrassing enough to solicit a curse.  In ancient Hebrew witchcraft (e.g. Exodus 22:18) the curse would lead to a black scaling of the eyes that saw the semen shoot out of the penis of a parent.  Scaling was actually a reference to eye lid coloring that would enhance or change the appearance of the eye.  This passage indicates that the writers of the Noah story were attacking their ancient Egyptian roots and belief-system that also included the worship of a gold calf (Yah), and sex.

It was common in Egypt, and was an especial adornment for worship services, a practice carried over to ancient Israel when the tribes (mercenaries in Hittite pay) moved against the Palestinians to steal “Canaan”, and used in Qadesh (Qedesh, Kadesh, Qetesh, Qudshu) services.  She was originally a Semitic deity (her husband was the Syrian god Reshep), and her worship services required the priests to be nake–as she, herself, is portrayed, was imported into Egypt during the New Kingdom from Canaan (it was later transferred to Islam, where Qada (abstinence) was prescribed for the Ramdan).

Regardless of the reason for the curse of Noah against Canaan, the mythology of the story has led to the enslavement of Black people through the nineteenth century.  In some fundamentalist Christian nations in Africa, it is still recited as the reason to enslave conquered or kidnapped Black people.

The Book of Mormon, further states:

“And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression, and their rebellion against their brethren…who were just and holy men…and the Lord God set a mark upon them, yea, upon Laman and Lemuel, and also the sons of Ishmael, and Ishmaelitish women [Arabs and Palestinians]. And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that … thereby the Lord God might preserve his people that they might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions…” (Alma 3:6).

Not only are Black people to physically suffer “for ever”, but even in the “last days” they are to be damned even when “the gospel will be taken again” to the Lamanites, for “that the seed of this people may more fully believe his gospel, which shall go forth unto them from the Gentiles; for this people shall be scattered, and shall become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been amongst us, yea, even that which hath been among the Lamanites, and this because of their unbelief and idolatry.” (Mormon 5:15).

In various other tomes tepidly translated by Joseph Smith (he had little to no education, no languages or linguistic skills, was unable to translate or interpret what he allegedly read, and as many have concluded, was a fraud) to be copied by loyal scribes, we read in the Book of Moses [Pearl of Great Price published by the LDS Church in 1842; it was canonized as scripture and equal to the Bible in 1880 by the Mormon prophets]:

“…there was a blackness upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people…” (Moses 7:8). A few verses further, it is written: “And … they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the Cain[ites] were black, and had not [a] place among them (Moses 7:22; cp. Taggart, Stephen G. (1970). Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, pp. 62-63). 

All Southern fundamentalists, including the quasi-closeted racist Jane Pitt of Springfield, MO, base their hatred for Black people, with a special venomous hatred for Barrack Obama who is condemned for being a Black man leading a nation they believe was reserved for white people, on the myth of the Curse of Noah on Canaan (Genesis 9:20–27) and on LDS scriptures.  There is not a single document in the forging of the USA or in subsequent acts that declared the USA to be a Christian nation, nor a Mormon, Jewish, Hindu, or other denominational entity. While the Constitution of the USA did not recognize Blacks as equals until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Mormons rejected any similar recognition until 1978.

The Mormons attempted to strengthen their racist arguments based on Noah’s curse by including the fiction of the curse on Cain–the alleged son of Adam and Eve, then couple it with the curse by Noah on Canaan–at best a distant “relative” of Cain. Once the genealogy is confirmed by Smith, the curse of Noah takes greater urgency: “…from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land.” (Abraham 1:24).  This necessitated the intertwining of the myth of Abram (Abraham) who  not only married his sister (Genesis 20:12) but also sold her into sexual slavery three times to gain wealth, but laid the foundation for polygamy that was openly practiced by Mormon then and now among fundamentalist Mormons.

Concerning Abram, we read the incorporation of ancient Egyptian theology that is older than anything in the Torah–and is distorted:

“Now the first [sic] government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham [in ancient Greek theology, she is known as Aegyptus (Ancient Greek: Αἴγυπτος) is a descendant of the heifer maiden, Io, and the river-god Nilus; Aegyptus fathered fifty sons, who were all but one murdered by the fifty daughters of Aegyptus’ twin brother, Danaus, eponym of the Danaids; ref. Euripides, Hecuba (Ἑκάβη) 886, who reverses the order],… Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth … but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood [of Melchizedek who was King of Salem and made himself “priest of the Most High Lord” (Genesis 14:18)].  Now, Pharaoh being of the lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood… (Abraham 1:26-27). 

(On Melchizedek, read: Brodie, Fawn M. (1971), No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (2nd ed.), New York: Knopf, p. 111; Roberts, B. H., ed. (1902), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1, Salt Lake City: Deseret News, pp. 175-176).  Smith promised his “Elders” that their power would be equal to that of the original Apostles: Prince, Gregory A (1995), Power From On High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood, Salt Lake City: Signature Books. pp. 19, 115–116, 119.  Smith saw himself as the equal to the Biblical Moses, and as the only person other than Moses who could issue commandments: Phelps, W.W., ed. (1833), A Book of Commandments, for the Government of the Church of Christ, Zion, IL: William Wines Phelps & Co., p. 67:  “[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses”).

Joseph Smith “translated” the Book of Abraham from a papyrus that he bought from a vagabond (In History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 236, Joseph writes, “I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hierglyphics [sic: hieroglyphics], and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham”).  While the papyrus says nothing about Abraham, nor makes any reference to Black people or slavery, Smith claimed it did and created another work of fiction for faithful followers. 

Egyptologists John A. Wilson and Richard Parker noted in identifying fragments found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, that the text Smith claims is the testament of Abraham is actually a late mortuary tract known as a Book of Breathings.  Abraham is not mentioned.

The Book of Breathings was copied for a Theban priest named Hor (second half of the 25^th Dynasty, circa 712–664 B.C.E)—its sole purpose was to ensure a blessed afterlife of the deceased individual and it was claimed to have been created by the goddess Isis (“The ‘Breathing Permit of Hor’ Thirty-four Years Later”, Dialogue, Vol. 33, no. 4, Winter 2000, pp. 97-99, 115).

A translation of the scroll (known as PJS 11) that Smith claimed justified his theology has been published by Professor Richard Parker of Brown University (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1968, p. 98).  The right side of the scroll reads:

Line 1 — [. . . .] this great pool of Khonsu
Line 2 — [Osiris Hor, justified], born of Taykhebyt, a man likewise.
Line 3 — After (his) two arms are [fast]ened to his breast, one wraps the Book of Breathings, which is
Line 4 — with writing both inside and outside of it, with royal linen, it being placed [at] his left arm
Line 5 — near his heart, this having been done at his
Line 6 — wrapping and outside it. If this book be recited for him, then
Line 7 — he will breathe like the soul[s of gods] for ever and
Line 8 — ever.

The left side of the fragment begins the series of spells to be recited.  Joseph Smith was not a translator and there is nothing authentic in the LDS canons or Book of Mormon.

The only way that Black people can be saved, according to the inventor of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, is that Black people become devout Mormons (a task nearly impossible to complete because of their skin pigmentation) “and then shall they rejoice, for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God; and their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be[come] a white and a delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:6; cp. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1855, p. 143; cf. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 336, and later repeated by B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, vol. 3, Deseret News, 1909, p. 291).  The “scales of darkness” is an ancient Egyptian phrase for “awakening to truth in the Blessed Trinity of Osiris-Isis-Horus.”  It is the acceptance of one’s frailty and need for salvation that comes with the Triune IS-is-RA-EL (goddess of creation, god of the Sun [son of the goddess], and her husband (which is what the word El means) who is a god).

While Joseph Smith forbade any change or modification of his scripture, the word “white” was permanently changed to “pure” in 1981 (it does appear once in the 1840 edition, but few copies of that edition exist, and is actually rejected in 3 Nephi 2:15 that reads: “And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites”), as the Mormons today, like most other religions modifies to meet the need of raising capital by any means including transmogrification of holy writ. 

Unfortunately, in the nineteenth century, there were no laws against plagiarism.  Joseph Smith, like many college and university students throughout the world (and especially in Latin America and Florida), “cut-and-paste” is not only a way of life, but a cult that teachers and professors who are unfit for their positions overlook and sometimes encourage.  Joseph Smith was among the great plagiarists of his day, taking liberally from the Christian and Jewish Bibles, much in the way as the Remembrancers “borrowed” from both books, with Christianity borrowing from Judaism, and Judaism copying Babylonian and Egyptian texts in an effort to make its interpretation of the Jewish tribal/agricultural god unique.

In an effort to retain control over people of color, the LDS is creating illusions that those who do convert to Mormonism are seen by the white believers as slowly changing the color of their skins.  This is a common fantasy, as with the preaching by the Twelfth President of the LDS Church Spencer W. Kimball (March 28, 1895 – November 5, 1985), who spoke to the LDS General Conference in October 1960:

“I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people…they are fast becoming a white and delightsome people…. For years they have been growing in delightsome[ness], and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised… The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation”

(Spencer Kimball, Improvement Era, December 1960, pp. 922-923).  Such statements are painfully rejected for their outright racist connotations, as seen in numerous letters to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (cp. Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 1990, pp. 6-8). 

DNA studies have regularly disproven the myth of Lehi and his migration from Jerusalem (read: Dan Egan, “BYU Gene Data May Shed Light on Origin of Book of Mormon’s Lamanites,” Salt Lake Tribune November 30, 2000, sec. B, p. 1; cp. Murphy, Thomas W. (2002). “Lamanite Genesis, Genealogy, and Genetics.” American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon. Signature Books, p. 68). 

Murphy (born 1967) wrote that he “failed to find anything that supported migration of Jewish people before Columbus,” and found “no reliable evidence supporting migrations from the Middle East to the New World.” Furthermore, Murphy noted:

From a scientific perspective, the BoMor’s origin is best situated in early 19th century America, not ancient America. There were no Lamanites prior to c. 1828 and dark skin is not a physical trait of God’s malediction. Native Americans do not need to accept Christianity or the BoMor [Book of Mormon] to know their own history. The BoMor emerged from Joseph Smith’s own struggles with his God. Mormons need to look inward for spiritual validation and cease efforts to remake Native Americans in their own image.

(cp. Southerton, Simon (2004), Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church. Signature Books (Southerton a one-time bishop in the LDS Church resigned his commission and membershipand left the Mormon church). Southerton’s blog is simonsoutherton.blogspot. Southerton, a native Australian geneticist,  specializes in DNA and the Book of Mormon).

Not only was Joseph Smith and the Mormon community racist, but they were pro-slavery of both Blacks and American aboriginals (Indians). Joseph Smith and the LDS Church were decidedly against freeing the Black slaves in the USA, as he stated in 1838: “…we do not believe in setting the negroes free” (Smith, Joseph. History of the Church, Vol. 3, p. 29). 

It must be granted that Joseph Smith did slightly modify his original denunciation of abolitionists near the end of his life, but only in temperament, not in content.  Joseph Smith wrote on January 2, 1843: “Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization” (Smith, Joseph, History of the Church. Vol. 6, pp. 217-218).

Like Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee in 2012, Jane Pitt the mother of actor Brad Pitt of Springfield, Missouri, and Keith Ratliff of West Des Moines, Iowa, Joseph Smith was from his earliest days a fraud, a bully, and a charlatan. Texts were distorted and invented.  The family structure was squeezed into narrow channels and the concept of a unit transmogrified into a bonding that frequently led to suicides, murders, and abandonment within the family (Smith recognized the earthly family, but in his tract New and Everlasting Covenant, he argued that there was a spiritual family of many wives and children in the afterlife to come; to achieve that celebration, man was urged to take many wives as a sign of his election for a higher station in the other world. Plural marriages, Smith taught, allowed an individual to transcend the angelic state and become a god (Bloom, Harold (1992), The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (1st ed.), New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 105), accelerating the expansion of one’s heavenly kingdom (Foster, Lawrence (1981), Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 145) where nothing would be denied; polygamy became a right for all white men by 1831), while words of damnation were applied to those who had no recourse and no one to defend them or their ideas, nor anyone willing to take up the challenge and expose their duplicity. 

The plurality of wives was happily practiced by the sixth president of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: Joseph Fielding Smith (November 13, 1838 – November 19, 1918).  Joseph F. Smith, on April 5, 1859, Smith married his sixteen-year-old cousin Levira Annette Clark Smith.  Having no children by her after seven years, Brigham Young ordered Smith to take a plural wife.  Smith married Levira’s friend Julina Lambson, at a wedding Levira attended (she later renounced plural marriages, divorced Smith and moved to California); it was the beginning of his numerous marriages.

Joseph F. Smith claimed that plurality of wives was Biblical (Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:1-3), while Jacob married his first cousins (Genesis 28-29) and his brother Essau married his cousins, etc: marriage has never been about one man and one woman equalling marriage in the Bible, Koran, or elsewhere), but made no comment about there being no reference to Jesus of the New Testament marrying or even having an intimate lady companion.

In politics, Smith ran for president of the USA in 1844, arguing for a theocratic monarchy as the ideal form of government (Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005), Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, New York: Knopf, p. 522) with himself as the king-priest and  declared that he would be one of the instruments in fulfilling Nebuchadnezzar’s statue vision in the Book of Daniel: that secular government would be destroyed without “sword or gun”, and would be replaced with a “theodemocratic” Kingdom of God (Brodie, Fawn M. (1971), No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (2nd ed.), New York: Knopf, pp. 356-357) where he would issue divine judgments on all matters like a new Solomon.  Pure and devout wives were expected to write to relatives and those with whom they were in correspondence to encourage them, in the same way that Jane Pitt published her apologia in the

Springfield, Missouri News-Ledger, to work for the election of a family man of faith after “prayerful” considerations, even if the man running was a Mormon, as the Mormon faith would heal the sicknesses of the nation, and keep Black people down under the heel of the superior white race; Pitts pandering was rejected by her actor-son Brad and his common-law wife Angelina Jolie, although Jolie’s father, actor Jon [Jonathan Vincent] Voigt, sides with Jane).

Joseph Smith, a freemason and member of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge (Quinn, D. Michael (1994), The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, pp. 114-115),  who was tried for treason and imprisoned, favored a strong central bank and high tariffs to protect American business, opposed imprisonment of convicts except for murder, preferring efforts to reform criminals through labor; he also opposed courts-martial for military deserters. He supported capital punishment but opposed hanging, (Roberts, B. H., ed. (1902), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1, Salt Lake City: Deseret News, p. 435) preferring execution by firing squad or beheading in order to “spill [the criminal’s] blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God” (Roberts, B. H., ed. (1909), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5, Salt Lake City: Deseret News,  p. 296).  In 1836, Smith wrote an essay in favor of slavery (Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005), Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, New York: Knopf, pp. 289, 327–28) although that was tempered in his last years after being jailed in Illinois, but throughout his life opposed miscegenation (Bushman, Richard Lyman (2005), Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, New York: Knopf, p. 289). 

Nephi 12:23, explains why “the devout son” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), Willard (Mitt) Romney feels compelled to preach hatred in his campaign appearances, as he did in his speech to the NAACP in July 2012.  Romney told a gathering of Black citizens of the USA that not until all Blacks refused handouts from the federal government, they would never be equal to white people. 

The reaction was expected.  Those who applauded Romney, were paid to attend and show support for the one-time governor of Massachusetts.

Romney’s Black “supporters” included Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carroll (Florida’s highest-ranking black politician, the first black female lieutenant governor, handpicked by Gov. (Voter I.D.) Scott himself.  Carroll is currently embroiled in a lesbian sex scandal that has revealed the 52-year-old married mother of three adult children actively encourages “nepotism” and that her office is a virtual playground “for sexual escapades”). 

Carroll confirmed that the Romney campaign paid Carroll’s and other black conservatives‘ expenses to travel to the NAACP convention and show vocal, demonstrative support for the putative Republican Party presidential nominee. The NAACP was not impressed with Romney’s speech (read here and here with photos and commentary here).

Smith’s views match those of the Koch Brothers especially in the area of keeping taxes low and allow the president to send in troops in case or riots by workers, Jane Pitt’s quest to have a kingdom of god on earth and opposition to families that prohibited or controlled births, the Tea Party and their hatred of Black people and especially Barrack Obama, and Mitt Romney and is a catch-all of ignorance for white students at Brigham Young University (watch video here). 

 Joseph Smith, like Mitt Romney, was never a man of peace.  Smith, based on experiences with non-Mormons, argued that his faith’s survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons and Mormon traitors (apostates), and meet them on their own turf (Quinn, D. Michael (1994), The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, p. 92), and promised to exterminate those who disagreed with him (Remini, Robert V. (2002), Joseph Smith: A Penguin Life, New York: Penguin Group,, pp. 131–133) and created a private army along the order of the modern al-Qaeda. Romney also claims he will end the “tyranny” of government intrusion into the lives of people–who support him, but wants government to oversee and determine what a woman can do with her body, what children learn, how dissidents are treated, and so forth.  To this end, Romney would have no qualms about going to war, sustaining a war, or exterminating any enemy.

When Romney spoke to the 103rd annual NAACP convention in Houston, he, like all past Republican presidential candidates, did not go to listen to what its members felt were critical issues in their lives.  Romney went to the NAACP to tell its members what he felt were critical issues in their lives. Universal health care (“Obamacare”) would be eliminated, programs to ensure Black literacy would be cut back, government assistance for the poor, ill and uncared for would be turned over to private charities.  The issue of Obamacare is critical with Black voters who fought for it harder than any group, and Black people seldom have adequate health care and few have respectable insurance coverage. To most of the NAACP members meeting in Houston, Romney was rhetorical semantics–and said nothing new. The concept of a united States remains an illusion.