Letters to the Editor
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One of the real evils of polygamy
While it may be indeed biblical, polygamy and its adherents biologically require alienation of younger males-- otherwise, considering humans are born at rates of roughly 50% males, and 50% females, the account just doesn't balance when one man gets 30 females. And single, adolescent and post-adolescent males become a population problem.
In "Under the Banner of Heaven", Jon Krakauer describes the Colorado City bunch, as well as a couple of others. Krakauer successfully divines the real problem with all such cults-- mainly the incumbent result of any faith that relies solely on personal revelation to generate dogma and practice. As Lily Tomlin so gamely said, 'you talk to God-- we call that prayer. God talks to you-- we call that schizophrenia."
Next time you need more evidence how corrupting such belief systems can be, look no further than to the President of the U.S. Putting aside the polygamy, the belief systems of Warren and G.W. are not that different.
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The U.S. Taliban
The only people I feel truly sorry for are the children. They are born into this community with no hope of breaking the indoctrination they will be subjected to. The only way a society like this can maintain its order is by banishment and utter isolation. It amazes me that we have sects like this in our country while we wage wars to end this type of rule in other nations. People like Jeffries are just pedophiles who have a convenient way of indulging in their desires.
A story like this just illustrates how much of a crap shoot life really is. You can be born a starving orphan in Estonia, a child forced to fight in wars in Africa or a socially retarted kid in a religous cult located right here in the U.S of A. If your reading this letter then consider yourself one of the truly lucky few.
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Warren Jeffs didn't start this
There are some factual discrepencies in this albeit incredibly informative and important article about Warren Jeffs and the "lost boys." It is, firstly, unfair to compare the FLDS to The Church of Latter Day Saints by saying there is only "one key difference." Although polygamy is the most extreme difference between the FLDS and The Church of Latter Day Saints, there are myriad other important differences that distinguish the two. For example, many Fundamentalist Mormons believe that each person - not just the head (or prophet) of the Church - is able to receive direct communication from God. Joseph Smith "received" this message from God and this revelation is included, I believe, in the Mormon book called Doctrines and Covenants. Non-fundamentalist Mormons of the Church of Latter Day Saints believe that the president (prophet), currently Gordon B. Hinckley, is the only person fit to receive communication from God. This distinction between the FLDS and the Church of Latter Day Saints is a huge one, and one that has guided many Fundamentalist Mormons to extreme action, as pointed out in Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."
Sevcik says that "Jeffs banned holiday celebrations, forbade followers from listening to music except for the droning spiritual chants that he himself records, and prohibited all forms of worldly entertainment, including sports -- bowling, football, even snowball fights. Colorado City was run like a theocracy, with Jeffs its ayatollah." It should be noted that Jeffs' methods are not new to Colorado City, Ariz., nor are they new to the FLDS, which also boasts a large and polygamous community in Bountiful, Canada. Jeffs' predecessor, his father Uncle Rulon, was not much gentler a leader. Although Jeffs is even more rigid than the most recent predecessor, the idea of ratting out one's neighbors or excommunicating those whom the prophet didn't like or whom acted or spoke in ways the prophet deemed against God or the Church, are not ideas Jeffs invented, as Sevcik's article suggests by attributing this vicious behavior to Jeffs alone. Jeffs follows in a long line of extremist men who, as prophets, married young girls off to older, not-so-distant male relatives as soon as the girls reached puberty; barred members of the FLDS from reading newspapers or books from "the outside;" and, as was the case with Brigham Young himself, convinced their followers to engage in bloody battles with non-Mormons for preposterous and often invented reasons.
Of course the complex history of the FLDS, even in the last 30 years, cannot be fully unleashed in Sevcik's article. However, I thought it important to point out that Jeffs is not some newly outlandish radical amidst what was previously a gentle religious practice. The FLDS has been an extremely radical and remarkably Taliban-like group for decades. What is even more remarkable is that it has only been in the last few short years that the government in Utah and the federal government have begun to take action against what is essentially a religion-run community feeding off of public funds. I'd like to think Krakauer's book created a bit of an impetus for this, as I found his book to be a tour de force and explosive for any secret FLDS community.
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do the math
Hello,
I read your article with great interest. However, as someone for whom marriage is impossible under the law - my "marriage" to my same-sex partner of 20 years has no legal status - I was hoping to read more about that other danger to the definition of traditional marriage: polygyny. Your article was about the progeny a fundamentalist sect where the leader married 30 of his late father's youngest prettiest wives. Whenever I read about these polygynous sects the numbers never add up: if one man gets to marry 30 women, what do 29 other men get? The article answered this question though I wish the real reason for the banishment of these surplus males had been made more explicitly. That reason, in addition to that other prickly issue - the virtual enslavement of women and girls in polygynous sects for the purposes of sex and childbearing - is why same-sex marriage and polygmamous/polygynous marriage are worlds apart. Yet, the defenders of traditional marriage have been getting away with putting same-sex marriage just inches above polygyny on the slippery slope that leads straight to a future where marriage could be one man married to his goldfish.