How I See Joseph Smith in Relation to Plural Marriage

I have been asked about Joseph's practice of plural marriage many times in my life, and most people who asked wanted the answer to be simple and concise.  I have not been able to give them that kind of answer, as I believe it was complicated, evolving and impossible to stereotype or describe in simple terms.  The following is my attempt to summarize my view as succinctly as possible - acknowledging that it only scratches the surface of how I view this issue: 

1) Joseph instituted and practiced "plural marriage". The LDS Church states that openly in its manuals, and the evidence is over-whelming.

2) Joseph didn't institute or practice polygamy as it was lived under Brigham Young and as it is understood by almost everyone today when that word is used, and that also is indisputable. He didn't live with multiple women, splitting his time with them. He didn't have traditional marriages with them, in which children were born and supported. There are allegations that he might have fathered as many as three children with women other than Emma, but there is no proof of that - and some of the previous allegations have been dismissed. It's an open question still, but so is just about any other unprovable allegation, so I don't see it as a productive discussion, personally. He was sealed to already married women. He allowed women to be sealed to multiple men. At the last stages of his life, he seemed to be focused exclusively on dynastic and communal sealings, rather than the earliest moves into polygamy.

3) Joseph experimented with multiple forms of marriage / sealing arrangements. That also is indisputable. Emma denied everything until the day she died, but Joseph absolutely wasn't constrained by the social morals of his time with regard to marriage arrangements. Personally, I believe he saw the next life very differently than his followers and others and was trying to approximate his view in this life - and I also believe he was a highly physical, charismatic man who liked and was attracted to women.

4) Joseph was sealed to a very few young teenagers (only three under the age of 17), and they receive the focus of most discussions, but he also was sealed to far more older women who were not "temptations" in a physical way (with three being over 50). His "marriages" defy typical patterns, and I believe they reflect his evolving view of marriage and, even more importantly, sealing much more than anything else.

5) There is no evidence that there was a sexual component with any particular type of woman to whom he was sealed - but there is evidence that such a component was more prevalent in the earlier sealings than in the later ones. I also see that as a manifestation of his evolving views.

6) I believe Brigham Young didn't share Joseph's personality or "vision" of the next life in ways that are specific to plural marriage and community sealing, so he instituted the model he understood - the traditional structure of classic polygamy.

7) I loathe coercion of just about any variety, and that feeling is most intense when sex is part of it. I don't like the angel-with-a-sword accounts, whether Joseph believed them or not (and I'm not convinced at all that he made them up, since I can believe he believed them without believing they came from God). I don't believe all "visions" are good or of God, and I believe the issues surrounding all of this might be one major reason he was told that his name would be had for good and evil.

8) I love Joseph and admire him greatly, but I don't believe he was infallible - and I believe when he made mistakes, they tended to mirror his great achievements.

9) I believe people can love multiple spouses deeply and equally, and that simple fact alone keeps me from dismissing or rejecting the concept of some kind of plural marriage arrangements in this life and the next - for those people who would choose such arrangements. I also know enough of history to know of situations where catastrophe decimated male populations and gave rise to polygamy - and, while that is NOT the case in our modern Mormon history, those situations also keep me from condemning plural marriage arrangements in totality.

That's my short version.