More than 100 years ago, Smoot Senate hearings titillated the public

Utah Sen. Reed Smoot, R-Utah, was an apostle and U.S. senator. Too bad that too few of us recall the fierce, almost four-year U.S. Senate battle that resulted before Smoot was fully accepted as a senator. He served until 1933.

The Monica Lewinsky testimony had nothing on the Smoot hearings. The Mormon Church, with its alleged rampant secret polygamy, anti-government rhetoric, “lecherous” old leaders in white beards, captured the attention of a gossipy nation and crusading publicity-seeking pols. As Mormon historian Michael Harold Paulos points out in several essays, hundreds of political cartoons were published — most on the front page — during the tenure of the Smoot hearings. The then-anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune published more than 300 Smoot-related cartoons. Church President Joseph F. Smith, future president Heber J. Grant, and pols of that era, including U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, found themselves caricatured as part of the hearings’ commentary — most often with savage wit.

No topics were off limits. Secret LDS temple ceremonies were discussed on Capitol Hill. The Washington Times, on Dec. 14, 1904, published on its front page a photo of a man wearing Mormon garments and temple garb. 

To provide an example of the barbed hearings, here’s an excerpt of testimony between LDS Prophet Joseph F. Smith, who admitted to fathering children with his wives after the first LDS Manifesto on polygamy, from Paulos’ The Journal of Mormon History article, “Under the Gun at the Smoot Hearings: Joseph F. Smith’s Testimony”:

(Senate questioner) “Do you consider it an abandonment of your family to maintain relations with your wives except that of occupying their beds?”

(President Smith) “I do not wish to be impertinent, but I should like the gentleman to ask any woman, who is a wife, that question.”

The prophet had some wit, as that rejoinder shows. He also drew praise for candor, although it was a selective candor. As Paulos points out, Smith frequently obfuscated and avoided issues. He was a turn-of-the-century Alan Greenspan, often confusing senators. Smith shocked many Utahns when he stated under oath: “I have never pretended to nor do I profess to have received revelations.” That untrue statement may be a result of Smith’s long tenure in the LDS Church, fraught with longstanding distrust of federal authority.

Cartoons included references to Sisyphus pushing Mormonism up a hill, a tattooed Smoot covered with LDS liabilities on his body, and a Tribune cartoon that mocked Smith for his lack of candor on revelation. As Paulos explains, the era was a golden time of political cartooning, with most cartoons on page 1A, rather than the editorial pages. Readers can see several of the cartoons in the December 2006 Sunstone magazine, “Political Cartooning and the Reed Smoot Hearings,” authored by Paulos.

It seemed unlikely for a long while that Smoot would be accepted as a senator, but history records that after the long hearings, he passed Senate muster fairly easily. He owed that win primarily to President Roosevelt, who bucked popular sentiment and backed Smoot, whom the president genuinely liked. 

Another factor helping Smoot was that the original charges against him being a senator were lodged by anti-Mormons in Utah, who added one significant false charge — that Smoot was a polygamist. He was not; nor was he a strict LDS theologian. In fact, Smoot was chosen as an apostle and future senator due to his lack of interest in theology compared to politics and public service. In his speech to the U.S. Senate, which Paulos includes in an essay, Smoot is persuasive in both defending Mormonism and promising to separate his politics from his religion. Paulos suggests that current LDS politicians who seek political office should emulate Smoot’s frankness. That seems to be a critique of Mitt Romney’s “religion in the public arena” speech in 2008, one that failed to sway many voters wary of Mormonism.

Also read The seating of Reed Smoot

In 1904, LDS President Smith issued a second Manifesto against polygamy. It eventually led to the excommunications of apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley, who flaunted their polygamous lifestyles. Paulos opines that the Smoot hearings and the Second Manifesto were beginning steps toward the modernization and eventual secular power of today’s LDS Church.

The Smoot hearings cartoons are priceless, provocative mementos of LDS history. Paulos, and colleague Ken Cannon, have privately published a professionally bound, 90-page book on the Smoot hearings. One hundred copies were printed and the small publication was presented at a past Mormon History Association gathering. Many libraries have copies of the publication.

-- Doug Gibson

This article was previously published at StandardBlogs.

The Backslider reminds us that enjoying sex is part of the Gospel

It’s a pleasure to read Levi S. Peterson’s novel, “The Backslider” every year or two. It’s the tale of Frank Windham, a rural Utah young man in the mid-20th century who is a bit of a hell-raiser but heavily influenced by his Mormon religion. Frank is 20 and “one of those fellows who got bogged down making another man rich,” as Peterson writes on page 4 of the novel.

Out of spite, and soon after he is dumped by the college-gone girlfriend he loved, Frank seduces Marianne, the college-age daughter of his Lutheran employers, Wesley and his wife, Clara. When Marianne gets pregnant, she and Frank decide to get married, give the baby a name, and then eventually part. No one else really takes that pledge seriously except Frank, who has some real issues with enjoying sexual pleasure with a young woman, even if it is within the bounds of marriage.

“The Backslider” is a love story between Frank and Marianne, but it’s also a primer on how to love. Old-fashioned Mormon codes of sex, such as having relations with temple garments on, serve to bridge the old versus the new mores that Frank encounters growing up.

As the late Paul Swenson, writing in Utah Holiday notes, “Guilt, depravity and grace —, Cowboy  themes that Peterson finds fruitful to explore in The Backslider — are not exactly commonplace in fiction peopled primarily by Mormons.” 

“The Backslider” is a frank, sometimes comic novel with incredible depth, that gets into the guilts, resentments, pities, excitement, lust and exaltations that make up high and low points of our lives. Frank’s battles pit his desire to be pious versus his gut-wrenching need to hell-raise makes for wonderful reading, as does his struggle to accept adulthood and take responsibility of himself and his unexpected wife. 

Although Frank’s mother, Margaret, is a faithful Latter-day Saint, both Frank and his brother Jeremy have impressions of the church that are distorted, thanks in part to her, as well as the general culture of the novel’s setting, mid-20th century rural Utah. This leads to tragic consequences for Jeremy. One well-written, amusing passage involves Margaret’s uncomfortable observation that Frank and Marianne’s bed frame needs to be oiled to stop the loud squeaking at night.

Frank, badly affected by his brother Jeremy’s insanity and self-mutilation, finds it almost impossible to reconcile sex with his wife as anything other than a sin. Even her impending baptism doesn’t drive that obsession away until Frank receives a visit from a “Cowboy Jesus,” who tells Frank to stop worrying about these issues, that His atonement has paid the bill up in full. The Cowboy Jesus advises Frank to enjoy his wife and their carnal pleasures and comfort his mother-in-law, who is shook up about her daughter becoming a Mormon.

The whimsy of the final scenes underscore a serious message: pleasure is usually not a sin, although it frequently is assumed to be.

The Backslider can be purchased at many locations. The Signature Books website has it here.

-- Doug Gibson

Portions of this column were previously published in StandardBlogs.