Item Detail
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30415
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0
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4
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English
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Assessing the Criticisms of Early-Age Latter-Day Saint Marriages
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Interpreter : A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship
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31
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Provo, UT
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The Interpreter Foundation
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191-232
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Critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have accused Joseph Smith and other early Latter-day Saint men of pedophilia because they married teenaged women. Indeed, they have emphatically declared that such marriages were against 19th-century societal norms. However, historians and other experts have repeatedly stated that young people married throughout the 19th-century, and such marriages have been relatively common throughout all of US history. This article examines some of the accusations of early Latter-day Saint pedophilia and places such marriages within the greater historical and social context, illustrating that such marriages were normal and acceptable for their time and place.