Public Opposition and Anti-Mormon Agitation
Opponents of the LDS Church found in polygamy a convenient cause célèbre. Opposition to the Church, especially among former Mormons, frequently focused, not upon the drawbacks of polygamy as a marriage system, but upon polygamy as a symptom of the depravity of Mormonism and Mormons in general. Former LDS Church member and prominent critic Fanny Stenhouse wrote in 1875:
It would be quite impossible, with any regard to propriety, to relate all the horrible results of this disgraceful system.... Marriages have been contracted between the nearest of relatives; and old men tottering on the brink of the grave have been united to little girls scarcely in their teens; while unnatural alliances of every description, which in any other community would be regarded with disgust and abhorrence, are here entered into in the name of God.
Read more about this topic: Latter Day Saint Polygamy In The Late 19th Century, Life Under Polygamy
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