 What can you tell us about Joseph Smith and the beginnings of plural marriage? Where did the idea come from? Well, the first thing to understand about the introduction of plural marriage in the early period of plural marriage is that we have very, very few records. There's very little, especially in Joseph Smith's voice or in the first-hand voices of participants at the time that helps us to understand what they were thinking, how they were feeling, what the experience was. And so it's difficult to answer that question in many ways, and we wish we knew more, but we just don't have the sources to say definitively. What we understand is that Joseph came across the principle and the practice of plural marriage in the Old Testament when he was working on the translation of the Bible, probably in the very early 1830s, not long after the church was organized. He began introducing the practice of plural marriage when the saints were in Nauvoo, and he said that he had been commanded multiple times, that it was time for that practice to be implemented and restored among the Latter-day Saints. As Joseph Smith is teaching this practice of plural marriage, how do people react? In general, when he taught the principle to someone, he invited them, encouraged them to pray about it, to receive their own witness and confirmation. And while most of the people who he taught plural marriage to during this period initially were very shocked and maybe even resistant, we also have many accounts of men and women receiving manifestations, receiving testimonies for themselves, that this was something that they should do. So it's introduced confidentially, and Joseph invites people to seek their own spiritual confirmation before entering the practice. Yes. Over time, many people have associated plural marriage more with Burgum Young, the church's second prophet, than with Joseph Smith. Why is that? I think it's because Joseph Smith introduced the practice very quietly and very gradually and among a very small group of people in Nauvoo. And it wasn't until the Saints got to Utah that Burgum Young publicly announced and acknowledged the practice of polygamy. And from there it became a nationally known and controversial practice that was associated with the Mormons in Utah.