LDS Polygamy Denier Excommunicated - Women Leaving Workforce In Droves?

Karen Hyatt, a "polygamy denier," was excommunicated from the LDS Church according to her own video. Are women leaving the workforce in droves? What does this say about traditional families and gender roles? What are women in the church taught?

 Raw Transcript

Welcome to the inaugural broadcast of Quick Show Today. This is a show that will take current events, run them
through a faithful gospel lens with the commentary that you've been used to me
giving for eight years now. Uh, of course this is something we've always done with Quick Show, but this will be
more of a close to a daily type of a broadcast that will cover today's
events, picking two, possibly three different items
uh to be put out each day. This episode of Quick Show today is brought to you by
Go Travel and the three continents tour. This is something Bruce Porter and I will be doing. This is next April 28th
through May 9th, 2026. We will be going to Turkey. We'll be there in Istanbul,
Ephesus, uh the the traditional house of Mary, which is close to Ephesus there.
We'll be then going to the Greek isles of Potmos where John the Revelator received the book of Revelation and
Santorini and Cree and then going on to Athens. Uh then we move to Cairo, Egypt.
So, we're going to be walking in the footsteps of prophets and apostles such as John, Paul, Abraham, Joseph of Egypt,
and Moses. So, fantastic trip. You're going to hit three different continents
in one trip. Europe, Asia, and Africa. April 28th to May 9th. Go to
quickdia.com cwycia.com trips and events at the top and then scroll down to the three continents
tour. All right, so today what are we covering? Well, Karen Hyatt uh known by
many as a polygamy denier came out in a video yesterday and said that she had
been excommunicated last Friday. I want to talk about this a little bit. Um
Karen and I met face to face uh back in August when I was at the fair conference
um there at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi and stood in the parking lot for about
an hour and a half and talked and Karen likes to talk and she wants to very much talk and about the fact that Joseph
Smith never practiced polygamy. And I listened and we had a very cordial
discussion. She's a lovely woman and she gave me a a
loaf of bread also while she was there. She brought that with her and then dropped off her book uh to me and gave
me some links and whatnot to check out. I also met with Jeremy Hoop Hoops for a couple of hours there at Thanksgiving
point on a on a separate day. But uh I I want to cover this a little
bit. Now, I've talked about the polygamy denial movement, which is essentially just saying polygamy did not happen with
Joseph Smith. He never preached it. He preached against it. Um, and then it started off with Brigham Young. Young
and Hebrac Kimble primarily and they brought this about and that it was not from God and that that continued for a
while and then finally was removed starting in in 1890.
And there are are some issues here that I have with this. Uh I don't think it's the best scholarship. Now, I'm going to
say that they do have evidence. You you need to consider this. I'm not saying there's no evidence for this. There is
evidence for this. Think about going to a trial and you have the prosecution and
you have the defense and both are going to bring their evidence to the case.
Right? The polygamy denial movement has evidence. There are things there. There is Joseph Smith denying uh that he
practiced polygamy that he he spoke against polygamy. The original section
101 in the doctrine of covenants spoke about monogamy and against polygamy.
This there are several different things that you can look at. Now there are is evidence on the other side which is the
church's position that Joseph Smith did practice polygamy and that that was then
basically handed off to Brigham Young and Hebrew C. Kimell and then the rest
of the prophets, right? John Taylor and Wilfrid Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith. Those four prophets all
practiced polygamy. And then today we have President Nelson
who while didn't practice temporal polygamy, right, did get sealed to a
second wife uh Wendy here on Earth after her first wife had passed away. And President
Oaks, current president Oaks uh also after his wife passed away is
sealed to a second woman. So there is the idea of of additional ceilings in
marriage, right? In a marriage ceremony or we call it a ceiling, but it's it's a
marriage ceremony in the temple. And
this is what seems to have happened with Joseph Smith. Most historians, the consensus with most
most church historians is that Joseph Smith was sealed to several women.
And now we don't know that there was any that he consummated any of those marriages. In fact, there's zero evidence for it really. I shouldn't say
zero, but there's very little evidence. If there is evidence, it's secondhand. And so that's kind of something that the
polygamy denial movement kind of supports uh where it supports their side.
Here is the issue. Here is the real problem that I see with all of this and I think what leads up to the
excommunication of Karen Hyde and others is that
when you preach this and that's what she's doing and she's very unabashedly pushing this forward.
You're going against the position of the church number one and and preaching a doctrine
that is against the position of the church. Number two, and I'm sorry, but without fail,
it is a claim that Brigham Young and the
succeeding prophets were off the rails, especially Brigham Young, and that they
were practicing something that was basically purely from a carnal desire
that they canonized section 132 simply to justify this carnal desire.
that essentially they were adulterers, right? They were adulterers and then
used the cannon and their preaching to support their adultery.
And that's the issue. And and so it's not, and she makes this very clear, she
was not excommunicated because she believes that Joseph Smith didn't
practice polygamy. Uh I I think it goes further than that. It's because she's preaching
the whole the whole salad, right? It's not just the dressing. It's not just the lettuce.
It's not just Joseph Smith didn't practice polygamy. It's that these things were never from God. And
therefore, the conclusion must be and is and is unabashedly spoken by those that
are in this movement that Brigham Young, John Taylor, uh Lorenzo Snow, Wilfrid
Woodruff, Joseph F. Smith were all practicing adultery as as prophets,
right? and that they were doing this because of a carnal desire or at least Brigham Young. Young and Hebrac Kimell
and those the cabal that was around them at the time was doing this and
supporting it through preaching and canonizing scripture. That's pretty off base. And that's uh
when I say off base, I mean that that's that for a prophet to be doing that, that's pretty off base.
and and and those are some pretty uh serious accusations
against the church and and the brethren and you know the prophets etc. And I think that's where the problem comes in
as far as excommunication goes. It's you're preaching something that undermines the succession of the
prophets. And they won't say that. They don't agree with that. They think they were just outside of maybe Brigham
Young. They were and Hebrew C. Kimble and a few others that they were just kind of misled and had some bad information is what they kind of use as
their Mott and Bailey approach to this. But it it undermines everything and and
you see this over and over again that there are people that leave the church not just excommunicated. There are people that leave the church over this.
It undermines the authority of the prophets completely.
Uh look at again President Nelson and President Oaks in in multiple ceilings
to women. It is it creates quite a problem and I think a
paradigm shift of the authority of the church and that is the real issue. It leads
people away and undermines their faith. Now I have zero problem with somebody believing that Joseph Smith didn't
practice polygamy. Zero problem. I don't think that's true. I I think that at a minimum he was sealed to several women.
Uh were any of them consummated? Perhaps. There there's no evidence real good
evidence of this. Uh but
you you you're undermining the authority of the prophets when you do this and
you're moving yourself back to a position of the RLDS church versus the
Latter-day Saints. that that's exactly what you're doing. I mean, if you were preaching this back in
1845 and 1850 up through 1860 and beyond, where the RLDS churches begins
in 1860, this is you would be on the RLDS side. You would be against Brigham
Young. That's what you have to look at. You would be with the RLDS. That's the
faction that you would have gone off with. And it's the same exact arguments that are used here. the same exact arguments
that are used today that were used by the RLDS church
back in the 1860s and beyond and and those that formed the RLDS church in the
1850s. Exactly the same. I've got an episode coming out on this where I show a lot of
what this is back in the 1850s. What's happening with this in the early 1860s?
It's the same thing. It is Brigham Y Young, you know, the Brighgammites.
It is polygamy and it is the temple to some degree, the temple. But it's mostly Brigham Y. Young and polygamy.
And it's the same argument. It's the exact same argument. So I think that when you look at this and you say, well,
maybe this is true. I wonder if this is true. Look at these documents and look at the narrative that's been put together here. Uh I you need to consider
okay if I was there in the 1850s 1860s I would have chosen the RLDS church
because I certainly wouldn't be following a fallen prophet who is committing adultery. Right?
You have to consider that with this. Now I want to put this up here. This is uh
Karen here talking to uh my friend Steven Pineker
about uh about this whole ordeal that that she's gone through. And I think it's
important to hear what she has to say here. My leaders made it very clear over and
over. This is not about what's true and what's not true. It's about whether what you're promoting aligns with the
church's position. It's a good point. So, you know, when you say that out loud that that is what
you're prioritizing, then we're kind of done because I prioritize truth because
to me when Jesus says I am the truth, right, I take him literally. So, I think
truth and Christ are synonymous. So, if you tell me it's not about truth and you're telling me it's not about Christ and for me it is all about Christ.
Okay. So, again, here's, you know, first of all, I think it's important to understand that this is not about
believing something here. I think that we have to allow that even if it's against the church. You know, if you
believe something, then then you've got to be able to believe it. There has to be discussion. You don't have to be part
of the academic uh narrative and consensus. I that would be really wrong,
right? And I think most most academics would believe that. But uh when she talks about she puts
truth above everything else. Well, this is her truth. This is what she has concluded. which is different from what
the church has concluded and that's the problem and then she's promoting that
opposition elsewhere. So again, very clear she is not ex excommunicated
because she believes in in uh polygamy denial, right? But because she is out
preaching a stance that is different from the church, and I believe part of that stance, if you look at what she has
said and others say, is is she's preaching against the prophets and
claiming that they were practicing adultery, right? And and that's that's a pretty
big deal, right? That that's a pretty big deal. And her truth when she says she puts truth at the top and Christ at
the top, well well so does the church and and so do members of the church that aren't part, you know, the 99% of the
church that are not part of the polygamy denial movement. They do too. Uh she has
a certain truth that she believes in. I don't think it's true, but she's going directly against the church because of
it. And and that's the problem. She had also talked at the very beginning of this uh episode with uh Mormon Book
Reviews that she had followed a a a man she had come across a feed. This is why
this is the issue right here. This is how it spreads. She'd come across a feed in her YouTube channel or in her YouTube
account where a video came across by Rob Fatheringham. And Rob Fatheringham is
someone who also used to be a church employee, worked on the gospel library app, but was also excommunicated a few
years ago about the time that Karen started watching this and she heard these things. She, you know, for her it
sounded true and she started following that. But again, you're following someone who has been excommunicated for
this. And and if you know that, right, when you know that already and then you
pursue it regardless, just from a wisdom standpoint, I don't know, you know, you
might want to rethink that. Now, again, she is completely converted
to this idea and so she believes she's preaching the truth, but this is the reasoning behind her excommunication,
right? And and ultimately if you go through Fatheringham's uh um videos, right, you you see that
Brigham Young and Hec Kimell were early, according to him were old early
adulterous practitioners of spiritual wifery, right? That was shaped by the
Cochranites and the and some Masonic ideas. And this is what they bring into
the church and into the temple, right? And they seize the narrative control when Brigham. takes control of the
church. They doctor the history including canonization, right? They pin
uh they pin polygamy then on Joseph as if he practiced it, right? As if he
practiced it and and that that's a disastrous narrative
to begin with. It's a disastrous narrative. So anyway, just my thoughts on Karen Hyatt. I wish her the very
best. She's a really nice woman and uh I I think she's wrong in what what she's
doing and and in and in what she believes. Those are two separate things. I believe she's wrong in what she's
doing and I believe in she's wrong in what her beliefs are. All right. More on this in another episode. All right. Now
for our next topic, next current event. In the Desireette News a couple days ago, we had an article published by
Mariah or Maria Mariah Monsos. Uh, and it's called women are leaving
the workforce in droves is the push to have it all dead. I think this is an extremely important topic because we are
in a position now as a culture in the west and especially in the United States where we have
move from a traditional family and traditional roles like we have in the family
proclamation to women need to do it all and a lot of this is because of
third-wave feminism right where it's like no career is number one family is number two but everything for me as a
careerist and to be fulfilled in my life I need power I need status and
fulfillment comes from work and that's very difficult difficult to to remove
right from from the social fabric today because it's so embedded with women especially
and I think it needs to happen h somehow. I don't know how we'll get there. I don't know if we ever will. I
maybe we've gone too far down the road there. But the idea that you can do all of this and if you want to be a mom and
you want to be a wife and and you can have it all as the mantra for women and
career number one as a mantra for women is a is a huge mistake. I mean we see higher levels of anxiety, higher levels
of depression, higher labor levels of other mental illness and uh uh medication right for for women in
these depression etc. It's you can't always have it all. And the problem is
is there are a few amazing women that do appear to have it all sometimes.
And that's a mistake, I think, to hold those women up as the role model for the
majority of people and the ideal. It's not. That doesn't mean those women don't
deserve to have what they have or what they want. And and if they're real high capacity women, great. wonderful for
them. Hopefully, they're fulfilled with what they do. But for most women, I don't believe that
that is the ideal at all. And I don't think it's the ideal for society. I don't think it's the ideal for families. It's not ideal for the church.
And yet, even within the church, this is what we seem to see. Now, let's go to the the article here in the Desireette
News and take a look at what we've got here.
Okay. Hey, women are dropping out of the workforce in record numbers. What is the future of work for women? And this is
how it starts off. Emboldened by the promise that they they could have it all, women climbed corporate ladders and
advocated for wage parody with their male colleagues, which by the way is almost identical up to the age of 35,
right? Why do you think there's a change and a disparity that grows after the age of 35? Pretty simple to understand. They
joined year-long daycare wait list, meal planned, carpooled, and optimized family logistics to make sure nothing slipped.
Then the pandemic hit. And as child care centers and schools closed, kitchens and closets turned into offices and children
became companions on conference calls. The impossible juggle reached a breaking point. By May 2021, March 2021, nearly
2.3 million women had exited the workforce in what economist dubbed the
she session. Maybe you remember hearing that a few years back. Okay, so that is
something that happened. You go all the way back uh after after the pandemic, however, this changed and we ended up
last year in 2024 with more women back into the workforce than we've ever had before. So the article title is really a
little misleading because in 2024 it would it had gone back up but in 2025
it started to change. Now why is that? Well technology is something the uh the
the corporations and companies have put back strict laws about hey we want you back in the office because that's
usually the way things run better. And that's hurt women who have wanted gotten
used to the flexibility during the pandemic and want to work from home or sometimes from home. And so that's
changed, right? But uh 2025 sees the the numbers slide down where a lot more
women are now going out into uh the home force, so to speak. They're working from home. They're doing flexible jobs on the
part a part-time and moving into roles where they can add to the income of their families or if they're alone to
their children and still be able to spend time with their children and take care of the responsibilities of being a
mother which is important right very important the most important thing I
believe and many of you would believe that that a woman should be doing who is
who's got kids right Okay. So, I want to go over this then now I want to say something else. It
in I was at a let's understand something here. Women
have been leaving the church the last several years much higher numbers than men. Yes, the numbers are up all across
the board, including in the United States, but the m though in terms of new
baptisms, right? But in ex with ex the existing numbers of members, women have
dropped and have become inactive and men have actually reactivated so that now
you see an equal number of more or less an equal number of men in the pews as you do women in the pews across the
United States. That's in Christianity as a whole, not just within the church. Something is happening. This thirdwave
feminism has gone deeper and deeper into our social conscious so that it's I
don't need a man. My my career, my my education and my career are first and
foremost. Uh I'll put off having kids till much later. I'm going to have fun.
I'll have numerous sexual partners and and then eventually I'll get serious and
settle down and and be a mother so that I'm not alone in my life. Right? That's that's what's happening. On the other
side of the coin, you have men that yes, are returning. They want more traditional values. They've seen the
woke madness that's happened over the last decade, and they're like, I want no part of this. I need to find order and
structure again. And by the way, when I'm in in school and and going to university and and in many places in in
the corporate world, I'm treated like garbage. I'm at the bottom rung of the ladder.
And they no longer want that. And so they find a little more purpose in religion and order and looking for a
structure of family even. So that's what's going on right now in in with the dynamics of Christianity.
However, men also have problems. They're going to church, but the porn problem is
not going away right now. Right? Gaming, taking a a it's an addiction for many of
I know women who have left their husbands, right? The women I know, all three of
them cheated on their husbands with someone else because their husbands were so busy with gaming
that they had no time for their wives. And and that's that's that just dominated their life. They went to work
because they had to. their whole world was about gaming and and they ended up getting divorced and then, you know,
going off with somebody else. And so you've got you've got these other issues. You have men that have a are
being no longer challenged that are being told they're not great
and that they're they're masculinity is toxic and they cower to some degree,
some men. And so you don't have men that are as strong. You have a feminized
male in America today that that is not very appealing to women. And some men
think that they're being friends and they're being more like the women and that's going to make them like them. No. Women want strong structures. They want
security. They want a strong man in the sense that he is going to help provide
and he's going to lead. And that's being rooted out of men in
our culture. So, it's not just all the women and fe and and feminism, right? It
it's what's happening to men and and this is a problem on both sides. But
I'll tell you the solution is not to have
women held up again as examples of yes, you can have it all. And here's where
the church for example is is in in
let's just say in in AC the church academia is getting it
wrong. They are stuck in this still where they want the women to have it all. You can go to BYU women's conference. You can go all these places.
You're going to hear how to have it all. You can go out and do this. You can go out and do this. here. Women have been
crying for so long about the perfectionism problem and everything that's been loaded on them and now they
want to load some more. You know, that's that's a that's a number of the messages that they receive from inside the
church, from BYU, from other women's conferences
and from influencers. You can have it all, right? Pile all of
this on. Your perfectionism isn't enough. We're going to add to it. Oh, and maybe we should have the priesthood,
too, and we can take on those responsibilities, also. It's ridiculous.
So, I'm at a conference back in August, and there's a a fairly high-profile
influencer on uh who's who's speaking, and she says some really important things that I've been saying for several
years now and looking at the data and the numbers throughout Christianity and the church. Women are falling away from
the church. Right? So she gets up and corroborates that, goes over that and then and then
she proceeds to go and bring in four members of a panel of women,
the editor of Desireette News, the dean of the Marriott School of Business, a
faculty member at BYU Law School, and another BYU faculty member. I think
those were the four if I'm not mistaken. and puts them up as a, hey, look,
this is the solution. Let me show you how great women can be within the church. And I'm just like, my head
explodes as I'm watching this. And I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. Yeah, these are four incredible women.
Good for them. Let them rise as far as they're able to rise in their in their careers. Let them do what they want to
do. But to pretend like the problem for female Latter-day Saints is that they're
not being shown enough how they can become successful at work is ridiculous.
It it's it's it's going completely against what women are asking for and
why women are leaving the church. And it's really too bad. It's really too
bad that this is the message that that some seem to think needs to get across because it's not the problem. We need
stronger men in the church and we need to show women how important motherhood is
and and how important it is to run a family from within the home and then
make everything else work around that, not the other way around.
And this is something that nobody wants to talk about. You know, we talked about the family proclamation. people that are
more on the conservative side, they want to talk about the gender. They want to talk about, you know, how things are pulling family apart. I do that all the
time, but nobody wants to talk about the gender roles. They see we seem to be afraid to talk about the gender roles.
Men need to lead. Men need to lead. That is different. And
then we always move down to, well, they're equal partners. Yeah, they're equal partners, but the men need to
lead. And we're stripping them of doing that. Most women that I know who have been
married for a while and have kids in the in the church, if anything, they lean more toward, I
want my husband to lead more. I want him to lead our family more.
And they want that burden taken off of themselves. And that masculine
role that men would have allows the women to be more feminine.
It allows them to find their own feminine strengths instead of being burdened with the
masculine strengths. And we don't talk about that enough. We're afraid to talk about it. It's like
the last line there that, oh, I I'll go with everything else, but I don't want to talk about that. And and we've got to
talk about it. The ideal, and this isn't for everybody.
I'm not saying it's for everybody. Again, those four women, amazing. I can I can name a dozen other women that are
do everything and they're incredible and nothing should be held back from them, right? They should have the option to do
what they want to do. But is holding up the ideal and the solution to the
problem of women leaving the church. If you think it is careerism that needs to be shown that, hey, we're not fuddy
duddy polygamous wives in in polygamous dresses. We are modern amazing CEOs and whatnot.
I that's that's quite a stretch and it's not the solution
and yeah I can say that even as a man that's not the problem.
So in the article here, women that are trying to find something and I understand economics is another issue.
It it being able to buy a house is very very difficult these days. Saving up to be able to have kids and and have the
insurance and everything else that's required and the resources that are required to run a family. It it I it's
very hard, right? It's a lot harder than it was when I was young. However, there
is nothing more important. There's nothing more important than doing this. And so I think we need to
hold up the ideal constantly, right? We need to hold up the ideal of
of the gender roles and a mom, a a woman, a wife being a mother first if
she's got kids, being a mother first if she's got kids.
And that's my two cents on the topic. Let's look for different solutions than
careerism for women within the church. And let's understand the practicalities
here and the importance of those precious children and their lives and and who's spending
time with them. All right, that's enough for today on Quick Show
today. We'll talk to you later.