damage to the truth without us, as readers, catching on to what is happening. One prime example is the whole Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hennings thing. If you don't know the story, Sally Hennings was a slave, owned by Thomas Jefferson. Sally was of mixed race and she gave birth to a child that has been proven to have been fathered by one of the Jefferson men.

A few years ago, it was widely and loudly publicized that Thomas Jefferson had been proven to be the father. No such proof exists. There were seven Jefferson men who are known to have stayed at Monticello during the time period in which Sally Hennings could have become pregnant. What the evidence proves is that one of these seven men fathered her child. There is no way to know which one. Yet, depending on what you may have read a few years back, it would have appeared that there was incontrovertible proof that it was Thomas Jefferson.

Even assuming it was Thomas Jefferson, I have never understood the need to dig up dirt on great people from the past. If you were looking for dirt on Jefferson, he was a slave owner. That, obviously, was not good. I also haven't understood the need to overemphasize known dirt, as if somehow that makes it okay for us to behave poorly because great people from the past weren't perfect.

The fact that Joseph Smith did some weird things and made some mistakes doesn't shake me up. He was a human being. He was called to be God's spokesman. He wasn't called to actually be God.

I heard a joke once that claimed that Catholics have an official doctrine that the Pope is infallible, but no Catholic really believes it. Mormons have official doctrine the Prophet is a human being, subject to human frailties. But the members don't believe it. Sadly, IMO, this kind of thinking causes people to have their faith shaken when they learn of imperfections.