One of the nice things about polygamy was that there is plenty of evidence that old widows were taken in as wives but not expected to have sex.
While it may seem weird to say this was a good thing, this was at a time when those widows would've not been taken care of by their communities and would've died.
Joseph Smith is accused of having 30+ other wives. If he was sleeping around with all these women (in the days when contraception was nonexistent), where are all the children? There isn't evidence of even a single child from any "wife" of Joseph except his first wife. Curious.
I'm amazed there are still Mormons who doubt he practiced polygamy. The records are on the church genealogy database and in books written by the official church historians. There's a nice article about it on FAIR.
The revelation about polygamy (D&C132) specifically says it is because they should multiple and replenish the earth. Quite a few of his 'wives' were married to other men, which would cover children, and one of the top guys back then was a doctor with links to abortion. Several of his wives claimed the relationship was more than platonic, and he was caught in bed with a couple of them.
Mormons: Why did Joseph Smith take wives that did not belong to him and keep it a sec
