Is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Transparent about their history?

   

From what I understand, some people feel that leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have kept hidden that Joseph Smith had more than one wife. They claim that the Church did not want to "tarnish" Joseph Smith's reprutation by openly admitting that he was a law breaker and a polygamist. 

 Let's take a look at these claims. First of all, the United States did not even have a law against polygamy until the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act was passed in on July 8, 1862. I think most of us just assume that polygamy was always illegal in the United States, but it wasn't. Therefore, since Joseph Smith died on June 27, 1844, he could not have been breaking the law, because this law didn't even exist until eighteen years later.

Questions about Joseph Smith and Polygamy

As the article, It’s Official: Mormon Founder Had Up to 40 Wives by Laurie Goodstein printed November 10, 2014 in The New York Times, Ms. Goodstein asks several questions. I've wondered how I could answer; Yes, No, maybe, sort of. Real life is rather complicated and simple answers don't always fit, so I'll give you the information and let you decide for yourself.

Have leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really tried to keep hidden about Joseph Smith's plural wives?

Plural Marriage

When you hear the word "polygamy" don't you think of a dictatorial patriarch of a sect in Southern Utah or Arizona who controls everyone and divvies out young girls as rewards for compliance?

Don't we have visions of harems of scantily clad beautiful young women lounging on pillows who are kept just to satisfy the lust of some man? Shocking!

Mark Twain shattered this titillating fantasy of polygamy with these words when he visited Salt Lake in the 1800's, "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." (Roughing It)

Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage

Apparently there is a lot of flurry over an article posted November 10th on the front page of the New York Times. This syndicated article has appeared in many other newspapers across the nation.
The author, Laurie Goodstein, of  It's Official: Mormon Founder Had Up to 40 Wives begins her article by making a "startling disclosure":

"Mormon leaders have acknowledged for the first time that the church’s founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, portrayed in church materials as a loyal partner to his loving spouse Emma, took as many as 40 wives, some already married and one only 14 years old."

The article goes on to say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now responding "with openness to the kind of thorny historical and theological issues that are causing some to become disillusioned or even to abandon the faith".

She even throws in an emotional quote by Utah woman blogger, Emily Jenson, to "substantiate" her claim. Ms. Jenson says that members are saying on blogs and social media, “This is not the church I grew up with, this is not the Joseph Smith I love.”

A Jewish friend of mine, a New Yorker, posed a question to me. She asked why, though appearing "objective", would this article try and destroy the founder of an American church and "undermine the faith of thousands of people, saying basically that they have been duped all these years?"

That is a very good question. Why? What is going on here?