The Adam-God doctrine may be a “deadly heresy” in the current LDS church, but ideas that have their origins in this doctrine remain at the center of Mormon theology today. Let’s discuss how current temple worship and LDS teachings/policies regarding gender and sexuality continue to be influenced by ideas initially developed as part of Young’s polygynist cosmology.
The temple endowment has long been a tool that indoctrinates members to accept a hierarchy that exalts men by subjugating women. Perhaps then it is unsurprising to see the earliest uses of the proxy endowment ritual for the dead being used to do the same to deceased women.
In 1905, two apostles were pressured to resign from the Quorum of the Twelve over their opposition to the end of polygamy. They were merely being true to what Joseph Smith taught was “the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on the earth.”