Opposition To Plural Marriage and Apostasy
Sarah Pratt ended her marriage to husband Orson Pratt in 1868 because of his "obsession with marrying younger women" and condemned polygamy because:
| “ | completely demoralizes good men and makes bad men correspondingly worse. As for the women—well, God help them! First wives it renders desperate, or else heart-broken, mean-spirited creatures. | ” |
Pratt was one of the founders of the Anti-Polygamy Society in Salt Lake City. Pratt lashed out at Orson in an 1877 interview,
| “ | Here was my husband, gray headed, taking to his bed young girls in mockery of marriage. Of course there could be no joy for him in such an intercourse except for the indulgence of his fanaticism and of something else, perhaps, which I hesitate to mention. | ” |
In 1874 she testified for Utah candidate Liberal Robert Baskin, who accused his opponent George Q. Cannon of polygamy and said that his obligation to the Mormon hierarchy was superior to national law.
On her leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for which she was excommunicated on 4 October 1874, Pratt declared in 1875 that,
| “ | I am the wife of Orson Pratt...I was formerly a member of the Mormon church...I have not been a believer in the Mormon doctrines for thirty years, and am now considered an apostate, I believe. | ” |
Van Wagoner concludes, "Polygamy made her a radical....By making public Joseph Smith's overtures and resisting what she considered to be collective infidelity, Sarah Pratt was judged a threat to the safety of the Church and considered to have committed apostasy."
Read more about this topic: Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt
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