Bill Maher has made headlines in the past for his harsh criticism of Islam. On his show Friday, however, he attacked Mormonism, saying that the faith was based on “a sex cult.”
His comments came after the Mormon church revealed last week that its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, had somewhere between 30 and 40 wives, one of whom was as young as 14 years old.
“What I love is they said [Smith] had a revelation in 1831 from an angel who said, ‘Marry plurally. Get as many b—–s as you can up in there,'” Maher said. “Joseph Smith, [the church] says, resisted three times until the angel came down with the sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he obeyed. And you can’t argue with an angel like that.”
“This religion is based on a sex cult,” he continued. “It is plainly based on a 19th century sex cult. And I think if we didn’t have Mormonism, we would have to invent it because for all the religious people who need something to look down on because they believe something crazy, this fits the bill perfectly.”
Maher’s guests were milder in their criticism of the church, arguing that the church might be trying to acknowledge its own troubled history of polygamy as a means of moving past the issue. Andrew Sullivan, a blogger at The Dish and one of Maher’s guests, suggested that it was akin to the Catholic Church begrudgingly coming to accept evolution.
“It’s the dumb [religions] that can’t actually acknowledge that, get ahead of it, and start arguing absurd things, like the world was created 6,000 years ago,” Sullivan said.
“When there’s real historical evidence about Joseph Smith, you can’t keep saying that it isn’t happening because people find out,” he added later.
Maher himself didn’t seem to accept that explanation. In conclusion, though, he noted that the Mormon church had gotten one thing right recently. Click below to find out what.
