June 14, 2005

• News-filter. Forgive my thoughtlessness.
• but what does this have to do with sperm?
• Well, sperm was involved at some point, and the article is about men who will go to some lengths to make sure that others cannot spread their seed ... But, no. Not really sperm-related at all.
• Everything is sperm-related in its own way.
• Brilliant!! So how do I implement such a plan in Greenville, SC? And this has everything to do with sperm...
• Hey, at least those boys got out. Who's helping the women - the ones being forced to marry the old guys, the ones who believe they are equal to only 1/3 of a man? Who's going to tell them that they could be so much more than a baby factory?
• oh and BTW, here's the original article from the LATimes. the Guardian just rewrote it. i hate it when they do that.
• Ahem, Guardian. Via LA Times Much better and more detailed story, printed a day earlier.
• and let's see if we can't bring some sperm into this thread, shall we?
• yeah what sidedish said.
• and let's see if we can't bring some sperm into this thread, shall we? Ok, one second. Just a little more. Uhhh...there you go.
• Perhaps federal agents will soon help those inside. Just hoping they learned their Waco lessons.
• /gasps, giggling, shouting, cries /security personnel drag flagpole away from office with pants down his ankles But, but... SideDish told me to... hey! HEY!
• BWHAAAAAA!
• Holy fuck this is terrible. And thanks for the link to the original, Dish. "Once children are expelled, the FLDS forbids parents from visiting them, and violating the rule can result in eviction from their church-owned homes, say state authorities and former town residents. Many parents sever all ties to their sons." "Girls are rarely banished for improper behavior; but there have been several high-profile cases of girls running away to avoid arranged marriages or escape sexual abuse." Back in the 80s I spent six months working in Springdale, Utah, the closest town to the polygamist community of Colorado City. There were a lot of dark stories about what happened there, though I never was sure what to believe. Once we took a drive to Colorado City, it was a strange place, with all the houses not-quite-finished (to avoid taxes apparently) and no public facilities of any kind, despite having quite a few residents for a town in that remote part of the world. When we came into town, some men got in a car and followed us until we left.
• This has Waco (which makes ya think of wacko for a reason!) written all over it... We sure do love our fundamentalists here in the good old us of a, unless they are TOO fundamental that is. The primary difference between Warren Jeffs and many of the fundamentalist christian leaders is that poor Warren is part of a non-mainstream religion. The treatment of children in many "christian" homes is not much less abusive. The treatment of women doesn't lend itself to praise either...(have we forgotten the Promise Keepers?)... bottom line... our friend Mr. Jeffs just took it one little step too far.... but, I'm guessing that, eventually, Christianity will catch up with him and he'll be back in the fold... If the feds don't burn the place down first!
• The heck with dropping them off on the side of the road... Just send them to Neverland... say $250,000 per? No messy trials, and MJ gets all the fresh young boys he can handle... What Would Jackson Do?
• I can't imagine a God strong enough to make me voluntarily sever all ties with my sons. He certainly wouldn't be worth worshipping, though.
• Haven't these people read Gate to Women's Country? Don't they know that excessive polygamy leads to an imbalance of unmarried boys and girls, and to very bad inbreeding? It's an essentially unstable system for a small community. In the places I can think of where polygyny (or practical polygyny, such as concubines in traditional Han Chinese culture) has been practiced for millenia, most men seems to have only had one wife, because that is all they can support. Only a few, richer men would have multiples wives or concubines. Maybe there are other places with majority polygyny, where it works - can anyone think of some?
• I wonder if having a lot of kids (like say, 8 or 9 sons) makes it easier to part with a couple. That sounds so stupid even writing it out, but I'm reminded of how it seems somehow more tragic when parents of only kids lose them. No support or apology for the practice described intended.
• Also, I think if I were one of these boys, I would go back with a school bus to get the rest of my siblings, especially my sisters.
• I think in any context, having lots of unmarried disenfranchised young men roaming about is a bad bad thing. I'd be more worried about a few of these Lost Boys getting together and getting drunk, then I would of the Authorities. Especially considering the rather liberal gun control laws in the States. And in religion, I thought the rule was you never tell someone that they're out of paradise, then they've got nothing to lose. You always have to give them a chance, or else you'll lose control.
• There's nothing more dangerous than a young Mormon with nothing to lose... JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME AND STEVEN SEGAL IN TWO FOR THE ROADSIDE: THE RETURN!
• monkeyfilter: lots of unmarried disenfranchised young men roaming about
• And some older ones can get quite strange, too... /cheap, low, religion-intolerant threadjacking shot
• monkeyfilter: lots of unmarried disenfranchised young men roaming about *shifts in chair - feels vaguely uneasy
• monkeyfilter: lots of unmarried disenfranchised young men roaming about SideDish wins the Grand Prize! ...I was just about to compare these people's 'surplus males' problem with your average internet dating site... not that I'd know first-hand...
• Maybe there are other places with majority polygyny, where it works - can anyone think of some? Well, I don't know enough about the history to know if it was very common, but I remember reading about polygamy in the Hmong community after a woman in St. Paul, MN stabbed her husband to death because he was going to take a second wife. The article indicates that it's still practiced, although Hmong leaders downplay it.
• Any stable culture that practises polygyny is probably pretty agressive and war-focused, because the only way of avoiding lots of angry men without wives is: 1. Taking your neighbors wives. 2. Getting those surplus males killed in a non-shameful way. The only example that comes to my mind is Alexander the Great's army though.
• ...excessive polygamy leads to...very bad inbreeding... Speaking as one who grew up on the outside of the inside: It sure does, even several generations back. Home-grown Utah Mormons are finding it harder and harder to find any of the same to marry that they aren't related to, sometimes in several different ways. And of all the families I know who have damaged children, something like 90% are Mormons. (Though this may be due in part to their anti-abortion policy; they generally bear anything they conceive.) The kids next door produced a real run of inbred problem children, including a pair of twins with microcephaly who had the good sense to die, but it didn't slow the parents down; they just went on having them and having them and having them. If you want the real lowdown on the FLDS, read Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven. Enough to make you vomit. Finally and again speaking from first-hand experience, even the mainstream LDS Church is very tenacious about hanging onto viable females. I had the misfortune to be "born into the Church" (my father's side of the family started out as Mormons, though my grandparents were "Jack Mormons" and my father formally apostatized), and the aforementioned aunt and the Church hierarchy moved heaven and earth to get me baptized and married off. Goddess be thanked for my Jeffersonian-freethinking, agnostic father; when he put me on the train to go down to Stanford, he said to me, "Don't come back to Utah. There's nothing here for you." It was a source of considerable bitterness in our family that my sister, who is a borderline pituitary dwarf and probably not capable of bearing children, was left alone by the Brethren, whereas I was regarded as a healthy young heifer who was refusing to do her duty to the lord.
• LaGatta... that was chilling.... glad you escaped that...
• elrick33, also the Yanomamo famously studied by Napoleon Chagnon fits that pretty well. Although I'd take his writings with a block of salt.
• As long as these Lost Boys include Corey Haim and Corey Feldman I'm all for it.
• tracicle, I've studied under Prof. Chagnon. I'd take his writings with enough salt to choke a cow.
• The Angel Maroni must have attacked my link. Try this one to get to Under the Banner of Heaven. Girls are rarely banished by the FLDS, but they are regularly gang raped to teach them proper respect.
• Shit. It's humbling when these shows of intolerance and butt-headedness remind us how much we, as a species, still have to advance to earn the 'civilized' label. /quietly puts sperm jokes away

• The only example that comes to my mind is Alexander the Great's army though.

  You may have heard of these people called "Jews", who practised polygyny (and some odd customs; eg what happens when your brother dies without your sister-in-law having had his children) for the majority of their history. Mind you, the majority of that history appears to involve the whole warlike society bit, until they got kicked out of Israel by the Romans. Polygyny ended in the medieval period for European Jews, and persisted longer in North Africa (eg, accounts of Jewish merchants amongst the markets of the Barbarry slave trade who had multiple wives) Bands of unconnected men; Laudrie's “Montaillou” (a descripion of a 14th century village life in the south of what is now France, drawn from Inquisition records from the time of the Catholic Church's genocide against the Cathars) describes the classes of men (eg shepards) who, thanks to rigid primogeneture, never gain the wealth required to marry. That's hardly a localised phenomenon; you can read plenty about Victorian bourgoise men working themselves almost to death to earn enough to get the approval to marry a sweetheart.
• rodgerd - what I was wondering was how many wives men on average had. Muslims in some countries are allowed to have up to four wives, and rich men would, but most have only one. Certainly multiple wives were not required. And 8 (which does happen in the FLDS church) seems excessive.
• rogerd: It sounds like you are an apologist. This is sickening. I'm glad the Attorney General is bringing criminal charges.
• When Jed Clampet was asked how he felt about the Sheik having 10 wifes, he answered, "I recon if a fella has that many wifes, he's bound to come home to at least one in a good mood". One of my favorite "Hillbillies" lines. I do not support or condone polygamy.
• On a ligter note, there are other drawbacks to plural marriage. There were other drawbacks to plural marriage. Per Artemus Ward, on a visit to Brigham Young: "I saw his mother-in-law while I was there. I can't exactly tell you how many there is of her--but it's a good deal. It strikes me that one mother-in-law is about enough to have in a family-unless you're very fond of excitement."
• By the way RogerD: just kidding. Unless you are for real. In which case, we will surely get you.
• If you've lost track of your sockpuppets, perhaps you should desist from using them...
• "I can't imagine a God strong enough to make me voluntarily sever all ties with my sons." I know. Imagine how wigged out Abraham must have been when God was all, "Kill your only son for me!" Sons don't fair very well in Christianity it seems. One of them even got sent here with the expressed purpose of being murdered. Damn.
• Jews (formerly). Muslims to this very day. The Chinese upper classes (formerly). Many African cultures. Polygamy or concubinage is pretty common. Most societies that allow polygamy require the men to be able to support their wives and offspring, which pretty much rules out the variant discussed here, which is only possible by cheating on welfare. What jb said. What this case shares with the "normal" polygamous pattern though is the underlying assumption that women are chattels, essentially one of many assets owned by their men. It's a bit sad that the attention is drawn by these poor young men, who if nothing else now have their ticket out of this sick little petri dish, whereas their sisters are doomed to a narrow and oppressed existence still. These aren't Lost Boys. They're Found Boys. It's their sisters and mothers who are still lost - to the rest of the world. PS: the Prophet fixed the maximum number of wives at four. One would be lonely. Two would quarrel in rivalry. Three would always lead to two ganging up on one. And four wives is enough for anyone. This demonstrates the essential humanity of Islam...
• The treatment of children in many "christian" homes is not much less abusive. The treatment of women doesn't lend itself to praise either...(have we forgotten the Promise Keepers?)... I would submit that the difference between the treatment of women in the FDLS and in the more mainstream evangelical churches are, while having some similarities, different enough in degree to be considered different in type. I grew up around the so-called evangelical community, and while I have no truck with it for many reasons, it is nothing like what this article and others I've read say the FDLS is like. And as icky as the PromiseKeepers may be, their ideals for women bear little resemblance to the baby factories the FDLS desires. I guess one thing this article does not answer for me is why the treatment of these boys does not rise to child abuse or abandonment. Can't these parents be arrested for dumping a minor in the middle of nowhere and refusing subsequent contact with him? And if they can be arrested/charged, why haven't they been?
• And of course, the FDLS mentioned in my above post is referring to the FLDS. So much for proofreading.
• wow, lagatta. just... wow.
• I, too recommend Under the Banner of heaven by the previously mentioned John Krakaur. A lot of insight into a truly crazy religion where the leader "talks" directly with "god" and can pretty much make up ridiculous laws their followers take as god's word. deadcowdan: a big reason the parents aren't brought in on charges is that in towns like colorado city, the whole place is mormon and things like polygamy and leaving sons roadside are just ignored by the authorities. supposedly towns like this prosper based on our welfare system which they've learned to completely take advantage of. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th wives are technically single mothers who often don't have jobs. When they have a bunch of kids the welfare checks start rolling in.
• This is really sad. Religion - especially the weird fringes of religion - far too often ends up with groups of people (like these boys, and their sisters) being treated so badly. Stories like this make me happy that I worship only the one and only true savior: Ted Jesus Christ GOD. I want a sign to put on my front door, one that says simply "We are not interested in joining your cult." Then the next time the Witnesses or young, preppily dressed Mormons come a-knocking, I can just point at it and shut the door again. "Have you found Jesus?", they ask. Yes, I have. He is on my refrigerator.
• Girls are rarely banished by the FLDS, but they are regularly gang raped to teach them proper respect. posted by LaGatta at 01:46AM UTC on June 15, 2005 This just makes me want to cry.
• Betcha precisely no action will result. Utah votes highest percentage of all states for the Bush cabal. Which means "hands off!" to law-enforcement, especially the social services that would be appropriate here.
• If you've lost track of your sockpuppets, perhaps you should desist from using them... ZING! [everything else] *shudder*
• btw, who exactly are the latter day saints? Is he one of them?
• I like to have fun with religious people who come door to door (full disclosure: I was raised Southern Baptist, and now consider myself to be a liberal-to-radical left Christian ... who has formally left the Baptist church). I like to offer Mormon missionaries a short rest complete with junk food, chocolate and coke (all forbidden to them) -- or, if they're old enough, a beer. I like to have theological discussions with Protestant evangelicals (I have a philosophy and theology minor). I like to greet all others at the door in only a towel (ok -- this only happened once, to some poor old lady Jehovah's Witnesses. But it was really funny.) I saw a good bumper sticker today: I'm for the separation of church and hate.
• Sorry, I'm from Texas. Coke = any type of caffinated soft drink.
• This is anecdotal, but when I did public health work with runaway teens in San Francisco in the 1990s, many of the kids I met were from LDS families who had them incarcerated in private "hospitals" when the kids showed signs of being gay. The ones I remember were girls. I'm with a few commenters upthread - hope these young men take their sisters with them.
• Gack. NYT, reg. probably required. Via fmh.
• That's sickening.