Joseph Smith’s Polygamy (Brian Hales 2017 interview)

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This is a throwback episode with Brian Hales from 2017. Brian is the author of Joseph Smith's Polygamy, Volumes 1-3, and it's just in time for the Journal of Mormon Polygamy Conference this weekend at the University of Utah. Check out our conversation.... https://youtu.be/WVs0ypGKq5o Copyright © 2025 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission Canadian Polygamy – Should it be Legal? The Interview GT: Well I’d like to welcome everybody out here to Gospel Tangents Podcast. I’m really excited to talk to Dr. Brian Hales. He’s the expert on polygamy, or one of the experts I guess. I’m grateful to have you here and thank you for letting me take some of your time today. Brian: Rick it’s really a privilege for me to be here. GT: Well thanks. One of the things I’d like to do is to introduce you to my audience a little bit. Typically I try to talk to a lot of historians who are doctors but you are the first physician, although I have talked to a physician’s assistant as well. Could you tell us a little bit about your background, even in medicine? I think you’re a Utah man. Is that right? Brian: I am actually. I went to Utah State, grew up in Logan and got a medical degree from University of Utah, so I have a little bit of the Ute blood in me as well. GT: Aggie and Utah, ok. Brian: Aggies primarily. Then I had a member of my family who was involved with Mormon fundamentalism and that kind of steered me over into thinking about polygamy. This is back in 1989 so it’s been quite some time ago. At that point I was in a residency for anesthesia and I do tell people that my books are part of my full anesthesia services. You’ve probably heard me say that joke, but I got interested then in Mormon fundamentalism and published a book, co-authored a book in 1991 dealing with that topic but then later a couple of other books. People were asking me about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, and I didn’t have answers and really I would argue none of the books did. Todd Compton’s book has some things that were very helpful but he had written biographies and it wasn’t focused specifically on Joseph, so there was still a lot of room for research and to also try to figure out some of the historical aspects that really were just big question marks I think in a lot of people’s minds. So in 2006-2007 I hired Don Bradley who is a dear friend but also a remarkable researcher and he went out and did a lot of research for me, gathered documents, and I told him to get everything: anti-Mormon or supportive, whatever he could find. We wanted to get every known document, and it was interesting because after we had been going about six months, it became obvious that if we kept going, eventually we would be able to put either a transcript or at least a reference to every known document on polygamy within the volumes that we were putting together. So we got kind of excited about that but that was mostly Don Bradley’s work. But his help, I put together three volumes (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3) on polygamy. There’s been a few new things come out. This was in 2013 that they were published, but not a lot has come out but a few very important things that we can talk about. GT: Yeah we’ll definitely want to talk about that. Well great! I’m glad you talked about how you got interested in fundamentalist Mormonism, I guess. There are different branches. Could you just kind of briefly give a sketch of the main ones? I guess we’ve got the FLDS, AUB. Are there any others? Could you give a background on Mormon fundamentalism? Brian: Well do you mind if I just talk about what’s going on in Canada right now? GT: Sure, that would be great. Brian: I just got back last week, it was a week ago today from Cranbrook, [British Columbia,] Canada. That is where they are holding a trial right now for two leading polygamists: Winston Blackmore and J...

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