JOEL - After having lived the principle at some sacrifice for half a century, many devout Latter-day Saints found ending plural marriage a challenge almost as complex as was its beginning. How do you suddenly break up families that are dependent on each other for survival? Were they all supposed to just divorce all their wives and leave them on their own with kids to take care of? They knew the manifesto ending polygamy was from God but it took some time for them to be able to change their lives in order to comply with it.

A few who could not easily give up the doctrine performed some Plural marraiges without authorization from Church leaders after the Manifesto was issued. It is easy for us now to ask why they didn't quit immediately, but we did not live at that time. We cannot pass judgment on something that we did not experience.
Since 1904, it has been uniform Church policy to excommunicate any member either practicing or openly advocating the practice of polygamy. Those who do so today, principally members of fundamentalist groups, do so outside the Church.

The doctrine of plural marriage is an eternal doctrine that God has commanded His children to practice at different time in history to fulfill His eternal purposes. Because it is an eternal doctrine it was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith with all the other doctrines and ordinances.

At the moment we have not been commanded to practice it and we have no reason to believe that God will ever command us to practice it again in this life. Called the "New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage" it is an eternally binding ordinance that will of course continue in Heaven for those who were practicing it here on earth.