genetic disorder runs rampant among polygamist community

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/polygamists-face-rare-genetic-disorder/20070614104509990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

COLORADO CITY, Arizona (June 14) - In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world's highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

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Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men -- John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop -- who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.
*snip*

:wow: speechless here.

:rofl:

mostly assholes and jerkholes win in this world, nice to know that this particular brand of assholery (polygamy) will eventually destroy all who practice it since we are unwilling to impose a legal solution such as sticking these child molestors and welfare cheats in prison

and the next day the school was practically empty.

You know, I don't know so much about Polygamy being wrong but in the sense that it could be possible to love more than one. But what these fundie Mormons (not to be confused with the mainstream mormons who abolished plural marriage) do is pretty disgusting. I'm not sure which makes me more ill - forcing underage girls into plural marriages, reassigning wives because the husband fell out of favor with their church or the fact that most of the boys get booted out of the church for very little reason other than to free up some wives for the pathetic old farts that run that religion. And some of these boys are kids with hardly any education forced out of the community and to live on their own.

I watch the HBO show "Big Love" and they hinted at the fact that the husband might have been banished when he was a boy. It'll be interested to see if they explore that route

He was about 15, I think. Standard procedure, according to them, so that the young men/boys don't steal away all of the young women/girls.

If it's polygamy the way it is practiced by the Hendricksons on Big Love, I don't have a problem with it. They're all consenting, unrelated adults who don't try to scam the system and are only legally married to the first wife. To each their own. Compound life, however, seems to have a ton of shady dealings and I definitely have a problem with under-aged girls being coerced and welfare fraud, among other things. I'm not sure how common "independent Mormon fundamentalists" like the Hendricksons are in real life, but I was reading that while exact numbers are, naturally, hard to come by, it's estimated that there are thousands of families. Wow!

The Hendricksons seem to have a good marriage since no one was forced into the marriage; although, I'm surprised that Roman hasn't tried to reassign Nikki (2nd wife who happens to be Roman's daughter).

Inbreeding causes defects. Thoroughbred dogs are sicker than the healthy Heinz 57 mutt.

Outbreeding, which is scorned in humanity, in the terms half-breed, mixed blood, and such are genetically superior. It's called hybrid vigor.

Reminds me of the "they had it coming" crowd from the fundie right when HIV/AIDS hit the US gay male community.

Or maybe I'm just reading other people's post wrong.

There's a lot I don't like about the polygamist community in Colorado City (AKA Short Creek), but I can't gloat over this. It was other religious fundies who isolated them and that led their cultural practice to backfire on them.

perpetrated in the name of religious beliefs.

to "marry" young female relatives below the age of consent.

I know it may seem hypocritical to some, but I have no problem with the crime of bigamy if consenting adults are the ones involved.

They throw out the teenage boys so the older men can have 6 wives (sometimes as young as 13) and 50 children. They keep repeating that process and YES they did it to themselves. They have severely limited the male gene pool through their own greed for more women.

I don't like the practice of expelling young males from the community either. From what I understand most land in extended families, but some are really on their own/on the streets.

and they buy into it.

They are married before they know any better, without education or knowledge of anything else. The one thing they DO know is that if they disobey the men they will be thrown out without their children.

You are talking about a community ruled by one man with an iron fist who at the drop of a hat decides you are no longer married to your husband and he is giving you to some one else, whether or not you want to. These women tolerate their sons being tossed out because if they protest they can lose their other children. They have almost no knowledge of outside laws that would give them custody.

Yes, many are married young (too young if you ask me). but that happens outside of Colorado City too.

They do have knowledge of the outside laws. They have TVs and drive to St George and Cedar City.

But you are correct that many don't feel like they any choice to stay, but thats an issue for many women in many relationships that have nothing to do with polygamy.


Again, my point it to not so much to promote the FLDS (although I am sympathetic to them), but that people on DU are gloating about a terrible genetic disease outbreak.

social caste system that promotes both incest and enslaves women is "nice work."

Holy shit.

They never asked to be born into this contaminated and shallow gene pool. Yet they're the ones that end up paying the price. And what a horrible price they're paying.