Context: Meeting held January 16, 1980, 2 pm, between Michael Hicks and Elder Mark E. Petersen:
He asked if I sustained the
authorities of the church. "Yes." Did I sympathize with any other
claimants to that authority? "No." He asked a few doctrinal
questions, whose import I didn't quite understand. For example, he asked me, "Do
you believe that Jesus was married?" "It had never occurred to me
that he wasn't." "Are you willing to accept that it is the doctrine
of the church that Jesus was not married?" "Well, Elder Orson
Hyde said that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and
Martha." This angered Elder Petersen. He pounded his fist on his desk and
said, loudly, "Orson Hyde didn't know what he was talking about!" He
asked me again if I was willing to accept that Jesus being unmarried was
"the doctrine of the Church." Frankly, what did I care? My prosperity
was on the line over a snippet of history with dubious relevance.
"Yes," I told him. (Michael Hicks, Wineskin: Freaking' Jesus in
the 1960s and 70s–A Memoir [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2022], page 245 of 254, kindle ed.)
