Letters to the Editor
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Colorado City
Being from AZ, this is pretty big news story covered almost weekly. I was glad to see such an informative article on salon with actual interviews with the lost boys themselves - i've heard about there situation, but the newspapers i've read never bothered to actually speak to them personally.
One creepy detail that this article did not highlight: because of the plural wives and the command to pro-create as mush as possible by Jeffs, some families have 15-30+ children. This became disturbingly real to me as i drove through the town, and each house had a dorm like structure next to it to house all the children.
We stopped for gas, not because we needed it, but because we were morbidlly curious to stop in general, and my father pointed out a telling feature of the gas station: no newspapers were available. One easy way to stop the residents there from understanding what exactly the world outside their community is really like.
For some other great articles about this town and Warren Jeffs, interested people should check out the New Times of AZ article's archives, they've done a lot of research and written extensively about it.
-Robert
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polygyny
I thought that L Johnson's mention of "polygyny" was a misspelling until I went a-googling this topic and landed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter_Day_Saints, which defines polygyny as the many-women-one-man subcategory of polygamy. Nice vocab, L.
I ended up at Wikipedia because I had a hard time finding the New Times archives, and for some reason this topic fascinates me.
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Thanks Kimberley
This is some quality writing and original research. Journalism at its Salon best!
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Well done...
Thank you Salon for carrying this story onward. It seems as if, a month ago, the entire national media descended on Colorado City in hopes of catching the next Waco in progress, only to completely drop the story a few days later, leaving many of us wondering whether the feds had already caught Jeffs and why the precipitous drop in national interest. I still don't understand how a story like this can just fall off the radar screen so suddenly. I'm glad you're still digging. This is, I think, the first nice thing I've had to say about Salon all year.
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New Times URL
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/current/polygamy/index.html
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How hard are the Feds really looking?
It seems odd to me that with as much information about Jeffs that has been collected, including his brazen comings and goings, like Robin Hood, in and out of Colorado City this past 12 months, and the new city he's building in Texas, that he must leave a trail of obvious breadcrumbs behind him for the federal dicks to follow.
Jeffs' dimwit brother got pulled over in Denver last year and the cops got a windfall of goodies out of his vehicle including wads of cash, pre-loaded debit cards, pre-loaded phone cards, account books and all kinds of other stuff used to support his brother on the run.
You'd think that Jeffs would be lit up like a pinball machine. So why is this inbred cretin still performing weddings and running his empire?
Maybe it's because the fundamentalist Christians who are Bush's base are getting a little bit fearful that the persecution of fellow nut-job Jeffs might set a precedent for Big Gov coming down on their own racketeering and tax evasion schemes.
After all, they became visibly pale when they saw what Janet Reno did to the Branch Davidians. Maybe Alberto Gonzales has told Justice to tread lightly this election season. They can always scoop up Jeffs next December.
Actually as a Westerner, I'd find the whole Jeffs story to be high farce if it wasn't for his victims. He's our home-grown looney, popping up and disappearing like a
prairie dog while Elmer Fed chases around trying to whack him with a shovel.
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During the whole gay marriage debate
my take was always, "If marriage is a sacrament, then leave it to the churches and get government out of it; if you want government recognition of your marriage, get a civil union. Civil unions for everybody!" And by "everybody" I meant everybody, regardless of sexual orientation or even affiliation: If a man, his wife and his unmarried older brother want to declare themselves a household so that they can share their health insurance, why not? Or if five single mothers form a household so that three can work while two take care of the kids, or if two college buddies, sworn bachelors, want to be roommates for life and share ownership of a pad without going through the hassle of incorporating? Isn't what we need in this day and age more ties that bind, rather than fewer?
Then these FLDS bozos come along and throw a big fat wrench into my lovely theory. Sigh.
If Congress is really concerned about threats to marriage, it ought to go after forced marriages, underage marriages, domestic violence and intramarital coercion, not pick on gays.
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I just finished reading
Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krackauer, and what a revelation. I had lived in OR, and met three women who were from the main LDS church. Two were divorced and had unhappy stories to tell, one about being forced to have sex with other men by her husband so she left him. She had four children and was living in abject poverty, but she said she had been when she was married so it was no different, just without the forced sex. Another had divorced and signed her children over to the church to take care of until she got back on to her feet. She never saw them again. The third was married to a nice clean-cut Mormon man who sold cocaine to help ends meet. They did not drink coffee or alcohol, however (no coffee in Oregon, for God's sake). The LDS church and the FLDS church are similar in that LDS members do expect revelations from God, which is why there are so many offshoots and excommunications from the main church. There are so many men claiming to be the "one mighty and strong" and decide to do whatever God (the voice in their head) tells them. Another way the LDS and FLDS are similar is in that they both stress obedience mainly in women. This article was good as I have always wondered how the Mormons and FLDS have gotten away with so much for so long. Although the mainstream church pubicly decries the FLDS, they make allowances for them as you would a crazy uncle. Elizabeth Smart was returned to her home, but there are many girls in smaller sects that go missing who are never looked for. Yes, GW and his ilk are similar to the FLDS in that they use God to steal all they can get their hands on. Fundamentalism in any religion is a scary thing. The funniest thing of all is how most Christian fundamentalists view the mainstream Mormons and FLDS as devils. There's no greater outlet for hatred than religion, apparently. And lastly, I would like to add this to anyone who wants to equate polygamy with homosexual marriage. In a marriage between two men or two women, you are talking about consenting adults. In a polygamous marriage you are almost always talking about coercion from a young age. Also, according to JK's book, jealousy and abuse run rampant as you would expect in a family with more than one wife and mother. If you've ever had difficulty with a mother-in-law or stepmother, not to mention a distant uncaring father, imagine the turmoil of a plural marriage family. The show Big Love is pretty accurate concerning the UEB, I think, in a TV sort of way, but not the marriage of Bill Paxton and his bright, lovely wives. Like war and prison, polygamy in real life is way worse than it is in the movies. The sad fact is that there are polygamists in Missouri, Oregon, Arizona, so many places. So scary.