I'm sure someone will come along with a thorough response. I've read through most of this and it's quite easy to point out all the fallacies.

For instance Hales says about the fruits of the spirit, "This observation is somewhat paradoxical because many Church members who lived this practice had great faith, experienced longsuffering, and through their gentleness and goodness were, by their own accounts, blessed. "

1) What faith? The faith we're meant to strive for is IN CHRIST, but he's talking about people who were faithful to the principle of polygamy. And we can easily point out a large number of people who weren't and wanted nothing to do with it. And we can also point out people of other faiths, like Heaven's Gate, who were faithful to the principles of their religion. If that type of blind faith in (whatever) is considered a good thing, proof that (whatever) is inspired, he just undermined himself.

Fail.

2) Hales' abuses the meaning of "longsuffering" here. See this explanation of what the word means as related to the original greek and how it's also translated as "patience" depending on the edition of the bible.

http://www.ucg.org/christian-living/fruit-spirit-longsuffering-fusion-patience-and-power/

The word "longsuffering" here does not imply that the Spirit will compel people to experience misery for the sake of, but that people will be slow to anger and have patience. Not easy to rile up, etc.

Fail again.

3) He says people were blessed through their gentleness and goodness. Ok, great, what does that have to do with polygamy? Was their gentleness and goodness caused by polygamy or in spite of it? Good grief, Todd Compton, a faithful member titled his book SACRED LONELINESS! Hales would have you believe that polygamy was just awesome and participants loved it, and this is just absurd. While there might be a few weirdos who feigned happiness, it's without dispute that this was a miserable experience for those involved. Nobody reasonable is arguing that people were happy with polygamy and felt that it was blessing their lives. And even if they did, we'd have to understand what they mean by that. They are blessed because they think they're going to heaven after they die? That's not a blessing. For this argument to make any sense we need observable blessings, the ability to see for ourselves that these people were happier. They were nicer, etc. But the evidence doesn't show that. Polygamist wives were miserable. And even the men weren't all that happy. There are countless examples of guys like Brigham Young telling women to shut up and quit whining about polygamy.

Epic fail.

From beginning to end the whole article is like this.

He continues.

In response to, “How else would Heavenly Mother be able to give birth to billions of spirit children, unless she did not have fellow women to help her?,” he says, "We would argue this statement is false. It does not reflect any official teaching and is based upon speculation."

Amusing response given that this is Hale's speculation that was being referred to. BTW, what are the "official teachings?" Would love to see those myself. In the past however there have in fact been lots of official teachings put forth by guys like Brigham Young, John Taylor, Bruce R. McConkie, etc. And by their interpretation Hales is wrong. And also leads into Hales' obfuscation of D&C 132. He would like to promote a nuanced reading that doesn't mandate polygamy for salvation, etc., except the problem is that all the aforementioned prophets interpreted it in a way that agrees with Kirk Allen. So even if Hale's is right, this shows that Allen isn't wrong. Hales may interpret it a different way, but Allen's interpretation is reasonable and historically accurate. If Kirk is wrong, so was Brigham Young.

Hales says some stuff that truly perplexes me.

He says, "The logic here is puzzling. God is a covenant-making God, but Van Allen seems offended by the thought. Part of being righteous is accepting ordinances. No ordinances equals no blessings. Obtaining saving ordinances allows God to fulfill His part of the covenant in our lives. Non-covenant makers are not blessed or respected. "

I confess that I don't understand what Hales is saying here. This sounds like he's saying to hell with the atonement or grace, we all buy our way into heaven. He sounds like a fundamentalist. As a lifelong member his explanation is foreign to my understanding of the gospel. I have always been taught that ordinances are purely symbolic, but he seems to think some magic voodoo is taking place when someone gets baptized. I think even a lot of hard-core TBMs would take exception with what he's saying here. And going back to the history again, many, including prophets, have interpreted the verses to mean just as Allen has interpreted them - that entering the celestial kingdom requires marriage. And Hales really doesn't even dispute that, but simply argues "no big deal" cause we'll do temple work for Mother Theresa. He's missing the point of Van Allen's argument, which is that it simply makes no logical sense for someone to be condemned to hell despite all the good they did because they didn't get married in the mormon temple.