Dewey Finn. I was afraid someone would ask me that. Answering questions about mormon doctrine as an ex-mormon is like tap dancing through a minefield on this board. So, disclaimer: Whatever I am about to post will be immediately refuted as bullshit/nonsense by some True Blue Ultra-Devout Believing Mormon. It will happen; it always does. (See Also: The ‘Ask the ex mormon missionary’ thread. Mormons popped in and started citing apologist, non-canon sources, and IMHO, really detracted from the voice of the former mormon, most of whom are still trying to recover from what we viewed as membership in a cult.)
That said, I particularly enjoyed that discussion on Big Love, because the points that Bill brought up – and the references he cited – are absolutely accurate in my opinion. The claim that Joseph’s Myths’ wives were all widows and orphans is simply not true. I wholeheartedly believe that the LDS church still attempts to whitewash the polygamy of the early church, and that they also turn a blind eye to what they started, which has really grown in the southwest. Remember, the LDS and the FLDS differ only in the official list of successive prophets. They both use the same canon as scripture: the Book of Mormon. As much as they try to separate themselves from each other, the bottom line is… it’s all the same doctrine. The FLDS merely live it the way it is written and the mainstream LDS eschewed polygamy in order to gain statehood and attain mainstream popularity. Sometimes Bill spouts doctrine or makes choices that make me go hruh? and then I go look up the scriptures he’s basing his decisions on and I realize that the mainstream LDS sort of spun the doctrine for me as a teenager. Once I read it as an adult, I can see why the Hendricksons interpret certain principles the way they do. (That and Barb was raised mainstream LDS, but Bill was raised FLDS, so their particular family doctrine seems to be a weird hybrid of both.)
You can go to familysearch.org and look up Joseph’s Myth’s ancestral record file. It lists some, but not all of his alleged wives, which included 14-year-old Fanny Alger, who was brought into the house as a babysitter/housekeeper but ended up being told that if she didn’t marry Joseph’s Myth, then her entire family would be consigned to Outer Darkness (mormon hell) forever and ever unto eternity, amen. She was not an orphan because her parents and siblings were threatened with damnation if she did not submit and marry. There’s diary evidence of this. What is a 30-something year old man doing marrying young teenagers?
Again, look up the myth that the average marrying age was much lower in the 1830s. Simply not true, the average age in the mid-19th century (for first marriage) was around 18 or 19.
Some of Joseph’s Myth’s wives were already married (you can trace their records through his at familysearch.org) to other men at the time he married them. He sent their husbands to England “on missions” and married the wives while they were gone.
Anyway, Bill Hendrickson cited several authors (I think he said “Read Brodie and ___” I missed the second author) from which his assertions came, which only proved to me that A) some of the Big Love writers are either active mormons, ex-mormons, or really, really, really know their shit, and B) these authors are not completely out to lunch, making up crap out of whole cloth.
I think you can find info about Joseph’s Myth’s wives at:
No Man Knows My History - Fawn Brodie
In Sacred Loneliness - Todd Compton
Insider’s View of Mormon Origins - Grant Palmer
There are a lot of people who know much more about this than I do – I’ll go fishing for some links at the Exmormon Foundation’s website if you’re interested. Polygamy was not my mountain to die on in regard to disagreeing with mormon doctrine, so I am parroting back to you what I’ve read there. I think I can come up with really precise arguments, complete with citations, for Bill’s assertions to the Evil Dreaded Baptist Preacher. I just have to go digging. Stop me if you don’t care that much; I have carpal tunnel.
“Baptists are all scary, honey.” 
