On January 8, 1986, Loyd Blankenship published "The Conscience of a Hacker" (also known as "The Hacker Manifesto"). I first read that in 1994, and it became part of me, still very much with me, and something I think about often in 2026. I even had it memorized at one point and still can do 50-60% of it from memory.

I present to you “The Conscience of a Fundamentalist Mormon”:

Another one got caught today. It’s all over the papers.

“Polygamist Arrested in Secret Marriage Case.”
“Fundamentalist Mormon Family Under Investigation.”
“Man Charged After Plural Wives Discovered.”

Damn zealots. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your courthouse morality and television-documentary brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the polygamist? Did you ever wonder what made him believe, what books shaped him, what prayers may have molded him?

I am a Mormon fundamentalist. Enter my world.

Mine is a world that begins with church. I heard the stories before I could read them. Prophets, pioneers, deserts, temples, covenants, sacrifice. Men and women who crossed the plains because God’s word mattered more than comfort, reputation, or law.

Damn fundamentalist. They’re all alike.

I’m in Sunday School, or seminary, or sitting in the back pew. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how brave the early Saints were. I understand it.

“No, Brother Jensen, I’m not attacking the Church. I’m asking why the thing they suffered for is now treated like a disease.”

Damn kid. Probably reading forbidden books. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found the old sermons.

Wait a second, this is real.

Not rumor. Not anti-Mormon lies. Not enemies making things up. The words are right there. The names are right there. The doctrine is right there. Men we still sing about, quote, praise, and frame on chapel walls lived something we are now told only monsters would defend.

And the books don’t flinch.

They don’t tell me to stop asking.

They don’t smile politely and change the subject.

They don’t call history sacred on Pioneer Day and embarrassing the rest of the year.

They just sit there, ink on paper, waiting for someone to read them honestly.

Damn kid. All he does is dig up old doctrine. They’re all alike.

And then it happened. A door opened to a world.

Not the world you show on the news. Not locked gates, child brides, stolen welfare, and men ruling by fear. Not prairie dresses and prophet-kings. Not abuse dressed up as revelation.

A different world.

A kitchen table after work. A prayer circle. A house full of children and noise and unpaid bills. Adults who chose each other. Women who can speak for themselves. Men who believe priesthood means responsibility, not ownership. Families trying to live a principle they believe heaven never repealed.

“This is it. This is where I belong.”

I know everyone here, even if I’ve never met them, never prayed with them, may never see them again. I know the man reading yellowed books at midnight. I know the woman tired of being pitied by people who never asked what she believes. I know the family smiling in public and measuring every word.

Damn polygamists. Hiding again. They’re all alike.

You bet we’re all alike.

We’ve been spoon-fed a faith with the bones taken out of it when we hungered for the whole feast. The pieces of history you did let slip through were softened, footnoted, explained away, made safe for visitors and Sunday lessons. We’ve been managed by the embarrassed, corrected by the comfortable, and warned by men who praise sacrifice so long as nobody actually sacrifices anything.

The few who had something honest to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now.

The world of covenant and consequence.

The world of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Brigham, and all the uncomfortable names you still honor while condemning those who remember too clearly.

We build families, and you call us criminals.

We read history, and you call us deceived.

We seek after eternal law, and you call us dangerous.

We refuse your caricature, and you call us secretive.

We live as consenting adults by a religious conviction older than your statutes, and you call us immoral.

You sell lust, divorce, betrayal, and loneliness in every form the market can package. You laugh at fidelity, profit from broken homes, and bless every arrangement except the one that demands duty, patience, sacrifice, and permanence. You praise freedom until someone uses it to obey God instead of appetite.

Yes, I am a criminal.

My crime is covenant.

My crime is believing the old words still mean what they said.

My crime is judging a family by its fruits, not by whether it fits inside your paperwork.

My crime is loving in a way you cannot regulate without first pretending you understand it.

My crime is remembering what you worked so hard to forget.

I am a Mormon fundamentalist, and this is my manifesto.

You may stop this individual. You may shame this family. You may print another headline and call it justice.

But you can’t stop us all.

After all, we’re all alike.

The question of whether Jesus married has resurfaced many times over the centuries, yet most discussions assume a single spouse at most. When we look closely at ancient Jewish culture, early Christian writings, and the intimate relationships described in the Gospels, another possibility quietly emerges: Jesus may have had three wives, traditionally identified as Mary Magdalene, Martha of Bethany, and Mary of Bethany.

Exploring this does not require rejecting traditional theology. Instead, it invites us to consider whether the family structures known among ancient prophets and patriarchs might have continued into the first century without fanfare or controversy. Scripture presents Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and others in households far larger and more complex than modern Western readers expect. In that light, the idea of Jesus having a family life shaped by older patterns of covenant relationships is not as radical as it first appears.

The Social Expectation That Rabbis Married

Jesus is called rabbi repeatedly throughout the Gospels. In the Jewish world of that era, respected teachers were expected to marry. A man who remained single into his thirties would have faced social criticism, suspicion, or claims of irresponsibility. Jewish teachings held that a man was not complete without a wife and children. Most men married by eighteen. Later commentaries state directly that living unmarried was improper for a righteous man.

Yet the Gospels record no criticism of Jesus on this point. His opponents attacked him for many things, but no one accused him of shirking marriage or family. Silence in a culture that was quick to judge men who avoided marriage suggests that Jesus fulfilled the expectation rather than defied it.

The Wedding at Cana: A Closer Look

The wedding at Cana offers a striking detail. Mary is not acting like a normal guest. She behaves as if she has responsibility for the event, directing servants and managing the crisis when the wine runs out. This is the posture of a woman connected to the groom’s household.

In Jewish custom, the groom’s family provided the wine. This explains why the master of ceremonies praises the bridegroom for the quality of the wine, even though Jesus produced it miraculously. It fits neatly if Jesus was either the groom or someone in the groom’s immediate family.

This moment also aligns with something Jesus and John the Baptist consistently say: Jesus is the bridegroom. Many interpret that only symbolically, but metaphors often grow from lived reality. If a man literally fills a covenant role in his household, the symbolism becomes richer, not weaker.

Early Christian Writings Hint at Intimate Partnerships

Outside the New Testament, several early Christian texts show no discomfort in portraying Jesus in close companionship with specific women. The Gospel of Philip refers to Mary Magdalene as his companion, using a word that can denote a spouse or partner. Other texts speak of unity and marital symbolism as central images of entering divine life. This suggests some early believers understood Jesus within the framework of marriage, intimacy, and covenant relationships rather than abstention or isolation.

These writings do not prove anything alone, but they demonstrate that ancient Christians found nothing strange about imagining Jesus in familial roles similar to those of earlier prophets.

A Human Life That Included Covenant and Family

If Jesus experienced hunger, exhaustion, grief, pain, and affection as part of his earthly life, then marriage and fatherhood would not be out of place. Ancient Jewish thought considered a man without a wife and children incomplete. If Jesus came to fully live the human condition, it is not unreasonable to see marriage as part of that path. Rather than viewing family life as a distraction from holiness, ancient believers often saw it as part of a covenantal pattern stretching back to Israel’s earliest leaders.

The Bethany Household

The family in Bethany adds another layer. The Gospels say Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in a special and intimate way. Martha’s tone when she complains to Jesus about Mary resembles household frustration more than a disciple criticizing a teacher. The titles they use when speaking to him were commonly used by wives for husbands in that cultural setting.

After the resurrection, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene. In a world where family ties were sacred, this aligns with the idea that he would seek out his closest covenant companion.

Even Isaiah 11:1 speaks of a branch from the line of Jesse that will bear fruit. Many interpret that fruit spiritually, yet nothing in the prophecy restricts it to symbolic meaning. A lineage, after all, is something rooted in real families.

A Pattern as Old as Scripture

When all these pieces are placed side by side, a picture forms that matches much of the ancient world’s understanding of covenant households. Prophets and patriarchs often lived within family structures larger than a single pair bond. These were not viewed as deviant or scandalous but as part of a sacred order meant to expand lineage, posterity, and covenant responsibility.

If Jesus followed the pattern of earlier holy men, marrying and forming a household that included Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Mary of Bethany would not have been unusual, controversial, or even noteworthy to his contemporaries. It may simply have been the continuation of an ancient, divinely patterned way of life that his earliest followers took for granted.

The cultural expectations, textual hints, early Christian writings, and relational dynamics offer a pretty coherent picture that makes the possibility not only plausible but remarkably consistent with the ancient world Jesus lived in.