Hypocrisy and a pointed lack of morality with Mormon religious leaders

Fawn Brodie helped unearth info about Smith's horn dog and womanizing ways. http://wivesofjosephsmith.org/

He liked them young and also simultaneously married to other men. His second brain apparently gave him revelations all the time about women his "god" intended him to meet and marry. Brigham Young had a similar proclivity. Here's Mark Twain's comments on Young's wives:
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/roughingit/roughingit15.html

"...Brigham Young’s harem contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared for in the henery..." - from Roughing It chaper XV

Also "...Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically 'homely' creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'"

...as from Roughing It chapter XIV
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/roughingit/roughingit14.html

Maybe Young's wives were homely, although perhaps when they were younger they looked better. But in any case the morality of Smith & Young is a stark contrast to the crazed puritanism of people like Spencer Kimball & Boyd Packer, and Kimball's hate filled book Miracle of Forgiveness - used as a virtual bible for all young Mormons to help them learn to fear normal human sexuality.

Review: http://www.amazon.com/review/RTF9W8850RNTE

"This book is a negativistic, manipulative, hate-filled waste of paper and ink, written by a guy who had no professional training in Religion, Philosophy, Divinity, Psychology or any other field that might qualify him to provide counseling for individuals who are going through some sort of crisis. In short, Mr. Kimball is only capable of repeating lame nineteenth-century folk superstitions as solutions to real problems in life. This man's advice, as codified in this book, has ruined countless peoples' lives - some to the point where they completely lost hope and killed themselves. What kind of counseling is that? If you have a personal moral or spiritual dilemma, go to a trained professional: avoid this garbage and save your sanity and your life."

Damn fucking right.

Related bio on David Koresh:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0466205/bio
"...Koresh got married to a 14 year old girl but decided that he could have a 'harem of many wives' as he wanted..."

Carl Sagan is much more refreshing. Too bad many religions don't let you be intellectually and emotionally honest while simultaneously being a member.