I read it over thirty years ago, but I’m positive it referenced her family. More than likely the church has revised it to soften the language, possibly even more than once given the Mormon Church is constantly revising, trying to rebrand to keep pulling in more people to their pyramid scheme of tithing, so they can buy up ever more malls, newspapers, and land.

Let’s assume you’re right, though? Are you saying coercion is not evil? That women should be forced to “cleave a man” under duress? Especially a man with dozens of wives, many of which he married before his “first” wife? Some as young as fourteen?

That sounds blatantly evil to me. No real God would attempt to strip a woman of her free agency.

Edit: I was born into the religion. I was a member for decades before someone with a good heart offered to pay me to read what I had blindly believed based on the cherry-picked lessons I was given while growing up. I’ve probably baptized more people while I held the priesthood, alive or dead, than you’ve “visiting teached.” I’m not parroting anything.

The Book of Mormon. Someone literally paid me to read it. It is so glaringly obvious that it’s tall tales by Joseph Smith it hurt to read from the cringe. And it was so dark, too! Most memorably the section titled “Doctrine & Covenants.” In chapter 132, verse 54, Joseph says Emma Smith, his ninth wife, would be destroyed by god, and her entire family destroyed for good measure, if she refused to sleep with him.

I don’t understand how Mormons can be so gullible, and in believing all of it, how they can believe a deity that threatens women for refusing to sleep with a sexual predator can be a deity they want to worship. It makes me sad to think about.