Such reports did little to ease Latter-day Saint fears. But, by the late 1850s, some Mormon leaders' views began to shift. As U.S. citizens debated how to address the Mormon system of plural marriage, Pratt and others asked the Saints to stand up to state governments by welcoming polygamous Muslim families into their cities and towns. "State laws," Orson Pratt claimed, threatened Muslim men with imprisonment should they refuse to "divorce all [their] wives but one." As a consequence their children would be "turn[ed] out … upon the wide world, fatherless and unprotected." These abuses, Pratt taught, must not be allowed to stand. Mormons held a duty to stand up for the religious rights of Muslims worldwide.