_______________________________________________________________
 |
 |  http://mutants.lege.net/
 |  http://mutants.lege.net/mutants.txt
 |
 |
 |  The first grandson of former LDS Church president Ezra Taft
 |  Benson, Pulitzer-prize winner cartoonist Steve Benson posted
 |  this on the Internet February 19, 2004.
 |
 |  Steve Benson
 |  February 19, 2004
 |  Subject:  Mormons boast that they are healthier because they
 |  don't drink or smoke, but polygamy has made them a colony of
 |  genetic mutants.
 |
 |  For all their incessant bragging about living a healthy
 |  lifestyle free from tobacco, alcohol and coffee, the LDS
 |  Church continues to ignore growing evidence that its
 |  "revealed" doctrine of polygamy is responsible for a plague
 |  of genetic disorders that afflicts Mormons to this day--and
 |  will well into the future.
 |
 |  So argues Linda Walker, in her article, "Fatal Inheritance: 
 |  Mormon Eugenics."
 |
 |  http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/walker.html
 |
 |  Whenever you hear Mormons intone about how they are
 |  healthier than everyone else because of their Lord-inspired
 |  Word of Wisdom, remind them that it is their Lord-inspired
 |  practice of polygamy that has been responsible for
 |  historically deforming, debilitating and killing them and
 |  their children.
 |
 |  Excerpts from Walker's article:
 |
 |  [ Editor:  Here Steve included large excerpts from Walker's
 |  article.  Instead we are here showing the FULL article WITH
 |  notes.  Steve's version are the italicized portions of the
 |  text at http://mutants.lege.net/ ,  and can also be studied
 |  at:  http://mutants.lege.net/stevebenson.txt ]
 |
 |
 |  FATAL INHERITANCE: MORMON EUGENICS
 |  by Linda Walker
 |  Fall of 1991 and updated summer of 1999
 |
 |  Source: 
 |  http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/walker.html
 |
 |  My cousin Lucky and I were looking for four leaf clovers in
 |  the grass. The early blue summer sun warmed our backs, not
 |  too hot, just right. This weekend visit with my cousins was
 |  a perfect end to the school year. Soon Lucky's sister,
 |  Julie, joined our lazy search for the magic clovers.
 |
 |  Many summer passed and Lucky, Julie and I all grew up to
 |  marry and start families of our own. Then, while still a
 |  young man, Lucky died of nephritis, the fatal family
 |  inheritance. Each family member in their own way carried the
 |  burden of Lucky's failing kidneys. His father donated one of
 |  his own healthy kidneys, thus prolonging Lucky's short
 |  adulthood with his wife and small children. Fear began to
 |  overwhelm me, for the future, and for my own son. Lucky was
 |  the first to die in my generation.
 |
 |  I remembered the studies conducted on my brother and I as
 |  children at the University of Utah (U of U) when doctors
 |  pronounced us, a special and important family. In the
 |  1950's, research doctors thought we were one of the few
 |  families in the world with this form of nephritis, known as
 |  Alport's syndrome.[1] By 1980, this theory changed
 |  dramatically as many other Utah families accepted the
 |  diagnosis. Our ancestral destiny meant we might give birth
 |  to sons who would die at maturity or daughters who would
 |  carry the trait to the next generation of sons. These
 |  defects could be life threatening like nephritis and spinal
 |  bifida, or merely debilitating like asthma. Childbirth would
 |  be fraught with despair and guilt for me and for many family
 |  members. We participated in the study but never received
 |  counseling regarding the results of this research. I never
 |  knew if I carried this deadly disease or if any preventative
 |  measures would halt its insidious march. This lack of
 |  information upset me as a child when to my fervent, ``Why?''
 |  the tightlipped adult answer, ``We don't know'', seemed
 |  woefully inadequate. I promised myself to find out the truth
 |  when I grew up.
 |
 |  When Lucky died my childish vow surfaced and I began to look
 |  into my family history for some answers. My great
 |  grandfather, like scores of English immigrants eager to
 |  escape a life of poverty, listened when Mormon missionaries
 |  offered passage to America in exchange for Mormon baptism.
 |  Soon he joined the Mormons in Zion, the new Promised Land,
 |  trading a life of mining for religious hope.
 |
 |  A few years later Lucky's sister, Julie, [Steve: A family
 |  member had] died of multiple sclerosis, also leaving a
 |  family of small children behind. Same family, second child,
 |  same period of life, a different fatal disease; was there a
 |  connection? My aunt and uncle outlived two of their five
 |  children and two more may have nephritis. What was going on
 |  in my Utah pioneer family? Surely, there were too many
 |  deaths. Could my childish intuition that, `the adults and
 |  doctors lips were sealed', against my questions, involve
 |  family secrets; secrets relatives took to their graves
 |  rather than betray? Or was it true no one knew the answers,
 |  because they could not be known, because no one wanted to
 |  know?
 |
 |  For the first time, the faith promoting stories about my
 |  great grandfather's heroism for defying the federal
 |  government when they outlawed polygamy interested me. Family
 |  lore indicates he was a courageous fighter for religious
 |  freedom and found himself unjustly incarcerated for
 |  continuing his polygamy lifestyle after its outlaw by
 |  federal and state statute. Previously I paid little
 |  attention to Mormon history, rejecting that belief system
 |  primarily because of political differences with the Mormon
 |  leadership over civil rights and peace issues in the 1960's.
 |  This great-grandfather married two sisters which meant the
 |  twenty-two known children were double cousins or as
 |  genetically similar as brother and sister. I began to think
 |  polygamy might be a genetically unsound marriage practice.
 |  Not only were there possibly too few fathers making it
 |  easier for defects to clump in the large interrelated
 |  kindred but succeeding generations of children from these
 |  isolated rural Mormon towns married within a few kindred as
 |  well. Throughout the world, most polygamy is exogamous, or
 |  breeding outside the group. Breeding within, as Mormons did,
 |  endogamous polygamy, is virtually never practiced. Had these
 |  defects clumped in my own family as it seemingly appeared to
 |  me?
 |
 |  While discussing health problems at a family gathering with
 |  some of my cousins' wives, we discovered astonishingly that
 |  three out of four of us, all polygamy descendants, had borne
 |  a son with a clubfoot. Fortunately, this genetic deformity
 |  is correctable with proper care, is also a common defect,
 |  but not that common. One outspoken Mormon matriarch who
 |  attended the same Sunday meeting for fifty years commented
 |  about the health of the polygamous descendants versus the
 |  monogamous descendants, ``You see it in the obituaries. So
 |  many young people.'' [2]
 |
 |  Another woman revealed how frustrated and angry she was over
 |  her brother's death, a brother who died because of
 |  undiagnosed epilepsy, possibly needlessly. ``My parents
 |  would never face it. First, he had a car accident during a
 |  seizure, yet they could not admit he was not perfect. While
 |  swimming he had another seizure and drowned. We are
 |  hierarchy children. The tendency is not to admit it if
 |  anything is wrong, since we are supposedly perfect.'' [3]
 |
 |  The [Steve: Mormon] `hierarchy children' are from the
 |  `elite' first families of Mormonism and these families
 |  started polygamy in America. Nearly all the Mormon founding
 |  families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed
 |  relations to different degrees when the divine experiment
 |  began. The Twelve Apostles of Mormonism then acted to
 |  increase this familial relationship by marrying other
 |  relatives until in 1877, at the end of Brigham Young's reign
 |  as Mormon Prophet and King, the polygamous hierarchy became
 |  100% interrelated.[4] D. Michael Quinn, former Brigham Young
 |  University Professor, states ``The Mormon practice of
 |  polygamy enabled men to marry daughters, nieces, cousins,
 |  granddaughters and former wives of other General
 |  Authorities''. [5] Did this practice affect my family and
 |  other Mormon pioneer families adversely, possibly even in
 |  other momentous ways? Mormon folklore claims otherwise.
 |
 |  Genetics is the study of how traits pass from parents to
 |  offspring. Epidemiology is the study of the spread,
 |  prevention and control of disease in a community or group of
 |  persons. Some people mistakenly think genetic disease
 |  encompasses only birth defects and this is far from the
 |  truth. Genetic disease can occur at any age including birth,
 |  onset of puberty, early adulthood, or middle age. Inherited
 |  diseases are extremely varied from protein metabolism to
 |  connective tissue problems to vital organ failure, and among
 |  the most expensive to manage financially both for the public
 |  and for the individual family. These diseases endure as the
 |  most difficult, time consuming, and emotionally traumatizing
 |  for everyone involved in the care of someone who will not
 |  improve, but worsen and die.
 |
 |  The Mormons, well known for genealogical record keeping,
 |  maintain birth, marriage and death information at church
 |  libraries and now on the Internet.[6] Since polygamy
 |  remained a hidden and illegal practice, disguised family
 |  records occurred. The records of the marriages sealed at the
 |  Nauvoo Temple before the general exodus to Utah in the
 |  1840's, may be the most important ones of all; yet, these
 |  are stored in a vault, unavailable to researchers. During
 |  this early period, polygamy was practiced secretly by the
 |  Mormon leadership, men who covertly preached and expanded
 |  polygamy while publicly deceiving the general Mormon
 |  population about the practice. These wives sometimes became
 |  known, sometimes not. For instance, Quinn writes, ``over
 |  twenty General Authorities were married to such lesser known
 |  wives'' [7]. `Lesser known children' hidden in families
 |  sympathetic to polygamists might remain ignorant of their
 |  genetic kinship. And the Genealogy Department advises
 |  genealogists to follow only their direct line; in this
 |  instance meaning only the wife who is their mother, not
 |  other wives of their father.[8] This is inadequate
 |  information for purposes of establishing the true incidence
 |  of consanguinity within a family or community.
 |
 |  Genealogists and especially epidemiologists must be
 |  scrupulous in identifying all the wives and children of any
 |  polygamist man. Branches of the polygamist man's family left
 |  out of the genealogy will change the incidence of common
 |  ancestors and potentially mask the true disease risk and
 |  incidence in the community. Gradually, I realized the
 |  practice of polygamy, especially in Mormondom, might be a
 |  prescription for genetic disease. People most at risk likely
 |  lived and married within the same small communities their
 |  ancestors founded. This seemed to apply in my own kindred
 |  because those of us who left Mormonism and married outsiders
 |  are less riddled with the deleterious genetic legacy than
 |  relatives who married within the ancestral Mormon gene pool.
 |
 |  Parents who share a common ancestor are consanguineous.
 |  Consanguinity causes aggregate clusters of deleterious genes
 |  to collect in families, which then express themselves as
 |  rare recessive disorders like nephritis, cystic fibrosis,
 |  biliary artesia, albinism, short stature and many others.
 |  Consanguinity also causes rare recessive disorders to mask
 |  as dominant. Consanguinity is a reason why families bear
 |  children of only one sex - all sons, or all daughters.
 |
 |  Mormon Prophet Hebrew J. Grant determined to keep marrying
 |  until he found a woman to bear him living sons. He did not
 |  consider this lack of sons might be his genetic inheritance,
 |  not his multiple wives. Current scientific knowledge
 |  indicates Grant's lack of sons resulted from his own genetic
 |  defect, since only men carry the male Y chromosome to make a
 |  son.[9]
 |
 |  Another problem in polygamy is a man's breeding years are
 |  expanded sometimes into his eighties by the taking of new
 |  wives. As people age the chances of children inheriting
 |  mutant genes increases. Readily accepted as a problem among
 |  mothers past the age of thirty-five, it is rarely discussed
 |  as a problem when fathers are over thirty-five, let alone
 |  eighty.
 |
 |  Sterility is another consequence of consanguinity and the
 |  evidence of many sterile polygamous wives is overwhelming.
 |  The adoption of children among family members sometimes
 |  disguised sterility. This is a humane coping strategy
 |  devised to deal with a dilemma that devastated a woman
 |  taught from birth her only value was in the number of
 |  children she bore for the Kingdom of God. Yet, this practice
 |  may hide the actual genetic kinship and can further
 |  exacerbate genetic problems.
 |
 |  Recently, another cousin fathered a child born with spinal
 |  bifida, inherited paralysis, an anomaly related to
 |  nephritis. He also married a woman descended from polygamy.
 |  This child belongs to a family branch that used to be in the
 |  U of U nephritis study. This branch, now living in Arizona,
 |  is no longer a part of the ongoing familial studies.
 |  Dropping a branch of this family from the studies may result
 |  in a reported disease incidence which is lower than family
 |  experience indicates. It appears my kinship group is
 |  suffering from clusters of rare recessive genes. Not one
 |  defect, but many.
 |
 |  This gene cluster effect happens when people with common
 |  ancestors marry and bear children. Polygamy today is
 |  comprised of early Mormon polygamy descendants and these
 |  families are now interrelated by a factor impossible in
 |  monogamy. Evidence exists that this gene pool foments a
 |  genetic and human catastrophe. Mormons can now see why
 |  American citizens passed laws intended to stop polygamy, a
 |  relic of unwise prophecy, laws continuously disregarded in
 |  Utah, a state controlled by the Mormon Church, if they will
 |  only look. In addition, the Mormon Church touts itself as
 |  the quintessential traditional family values church,
 |  advertising via expensive television campaigns. They are
 |  quick to point out to reporters that they no longer practice
 |  polygamy and excommunicate members who continue to do so.
 |  This denial is hollow considering the record. They offer no
 |  support, no exit route, and no programs for the people
 |  trapped inside polygamy endeavoring to escape these closed
 |  polygamous communities, or compounds.[10]
 |
 |  The discoveries and research within my own kindred so
 |  alarmed me that I studied other descendants of polygamy to
 |  see if their families also suffered from crippling
 |  illnesses. I am convinced they do. As bad as this past is,
 |  the mounting evidence is far worse. In 1991, I first became
 |  aware of the Latter Day Church of Christ (a.k.a. Kingston's
 |  and The Davis County Cooperative Society), a Mormon
 |  polygamist offshoot and determined to interview within this
 |  virtually impenetrable closed polygamist group. One 1980's
 |  leader, John Ortell Kingston, married thirteen wives and
 |  sired over sixty-five children, many of them deformed. His
 |  wives included five nieces. One disillusioned former member
 |  claims ``babies are born as blobs of protoplasm'', and
 |  ``brothers marry sisters in an effort to build up a royal
 |  priesthood.'' [11] I endeavored to publish this information.
 |  Editors suggested it was unbelievable. If only that were
 |  true.
 |
 |  Then in 1998, a 16 year-old girl limped seven miles to a pay
 |  phone and called police. Bruised, welts covering her body,
 |  and a broken nose, at first she was reluctant to speak with
 |  authorities. She told investigators her father took her to a
 |  remote area and belt whipped her for running away from a
 |  forced marriage to her uncle, her father's brother, as his
 |  15th wife. Removed from school like so many polygamy
 |  children, she told social workers she wanted to finish high
 |  school. [12]
 |
 |  Finally exposed in the news, the facts of life inside this
 |  religious/cult compound are stunning Mormons, Utahns, the
 |  nation, and the world. Half and full siblings are `marrying'
 |  in religious ceremonies. Escaped members report some
 |  patriarchs believe it is their duty to give a daughter her
 |  first marriage lessons. This is the equivalent of a
 |  religious rationalization for the practice of incest. [13]
 |  Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or
 |  death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy
 |  clans. Utah officials fall all over themselves in an effort
 |  to explain why they have done nothing before and what they
 |  now propose to do.[14] Unfortunately, the answer is clear as
 |  they embarrass themselves inventing new ways to say they
 |  will continue to do nothing and wait for the media to change
 |  the focus.
 |
 |  Alongside the medical tragedy, other social and legal
 |  problems emerge. Currently, thousands of children are born
 |  into these closed authoritarian patriarchies. Indoctrinated
 |  from birth that they are better than others, exalted, and
 |  lacking outside education, understanding nothing about
 |  democracy; they not only believe government is corrupt, but
 |  then frequently use that rationalization to engage in fraud
 |  schemes that bilk the public. As early as 1985, John Ortell
 |  Kingston, in an out of court settlement agreed to pay
 |  $250,000 to the Utah Department of Recovery Services for
 |  child support. Four wives and at least 29 children collected
 |  hundreds of thousands of dollars in public assistance.
 |  Judgments entered for more than $100,000 against ten other
 |  Kingston clan members made on behalf of over 40 children.
 |  Recovery Services thinks this is a fraction of the money
 |  involved.[15]
 |
 |  The Kingston clan is a fraud masquerading as a religion. A
 |  fraud scheme organized to promote the wealth of the Kingston
 |  men at the expense of all men, women and children who are
 |  not blood. There is no reason why law enforcement cannot
 |  dismantle this group by enforcing existing laws.
 |
 |  Until quite recently, the Kingston leaders did not even pay
 |  wages to their captive members but paid them in script for
 |  working in the cult businesses. Members then used the script
 |  to purchase goods at clan owned stores. Reputedly, this
 |  cults net worth is over $300 million. It is certainly
 |  difficult to leave a cult that holds all the money, property
 |  and takes the children if you attempt to leave. Utah courts
 |  and social service agencies threaten or remove parental
 |  rights from women who want to leave polygamy and then give
 |  the children to other polygamous households.[16] What
 |  emerges from this record is a system that protects men and
 |  violates the rights of women to live in liberty, all
 |  supported by the Mormon Church.
 |
 |  Throughout 1998 and 1999, the Salt Lake Tribune lifted the
 |  covers on the many crimes committed in polygamy. Using
 |  resources for a major expose; thus marking the first time
 |  news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare
 |  accurately since the 1850's. News articles describing the
 |  incest within modern polygamy suggests these communities of
 |  forgotten people suffer horrifically.[17] This article
 |  focuses primarily on the genetic impact of polygamy;
 |  however, the reasons behind polygamy are frightening and
 |  misunderstood.
 |
 |  These [Steve: Some of these polygamist] groups are white
 |  supremacists, and inbreeding is an essential doctrine in
 |  keeping the bloodline pure.[18] Convinced they are breeding
 |  a pure white master race; they blame the mother if a
 |  deformed baby is born, then preach she was unrighteous or
 |  unclean. It is these discredited ideas that foster this
 |  genetic legacy. Early polygamy was rife with incestuous and
 |  eugenic ideas and practices as well. Brigham Young, the
 |  second Mormon leader, preached, ``The time is coming when
 |  the Lord is going to raise a holy nation . . . a royal
 |  priesthood upon the earth, and he has introduced a plurality
 |  of wives for that express purpose.'' [19]
 |
 |  Every person carries some lethal genes. Most populations
 |  outbreed and so these lethal genes rarely match to cause any
 |  serious diseases. When a group inbreeds, as polygamists
 |  have, more and more lethal gene matches occur. Children
 |  inherit disabling illnesses. Child life is destroyed.
 |
 |  Some family members and Utah geneticists disagree with these
 |  conclusions. I think I owe my children and all children who
 |  risk becoming the next unwitting victims of this tragic
 |  genetic legacy, the best information regarding the
 |  prevention of this lethal family inheritance that I can
 |  find. Thus, over the first fifty years of Mormonism, a
 |  highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through
 |  their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. At the time
 |  this inbreeding took place these prophets preached and
 |  practiced modern `eugenic science', the science of
 |  controlling the traits of future populations through
 |  selective breeding for idealized traits like blond hair,
 |  blue eyes, and tall stature. One hundred years later,
 |  eugenics is a discredited science, yet some followers still
 |  believe. Historian B. H. Roberts, notes an eugenic attitude
 |  regarding polygamy:
 |
 |  It was in the name of a divinely ordered species of eugenics
 |  that Latter Day Saints accepted the revelation which
 |  included a plurality of wives. Polygamy would have afforded
 |  the opportunity of producing from that consecrated
 |  fatherhood and motherhood the improved type of man the world
 |  needs to reveal the highest possibilities of the race, that
 |  the day of the super man might come, and with him come also
 |  the redemption and betterment of the race. [20]
 |
 |  It is important that Mormons fight the tendency to discount
 |  history and the actions of their leaders in favor of a faith
 |  promoting history while neglecting important facts. It is
 |  important the American public recognize that polygamy was
 |  outlawed for valid reasons; and not as apologists claim
 |  because of outmoded Victorian moral ideas. It is difficult
 |  to assess less than perfect family background when men are
 |  revered as `prophets,' `apostles,' and `kings.' If
 |  descendants of polygamy do not look critically at the ideas
 |  of their ancestors, Utah children may be increasingly at
 |  risk. If two descendants of hierarchical polygamy marry, the
 |  chances for genetic defects increase if the families were
 |  ever interrelated. This means it may be genetically unwise
 |  for children of the early leaders to marry other children of
 |  early leaders, even now; yet, this tendency still exists in
 |  Mormonism.
 |
 |  One pediatrician at the U of U, stated he asks only, ``Were
 |  your parents related?'' This is not enough genetic
 |  background information to ascertain the facts regarding
 |  health risk and may be a reason why health statistics in
 |  Utah have significant errors. One newspaper article
 |  describes a baby with a disorder previously unseen, ulnar
 |  mammary syndrome.[21] Now a new disease classification
 |  enters the medical literature and a certainty that even more
 |  health care dollars will be allocated towards high tech
 |  solutions to preventable problems. These new disease
 |  classifications belong at the door of the Mormon Church
 |  leadership. They are coming out of polygamous communities
 |  proliferating in Utah because Mormons are unable to face
 |  their history or follow sound marriage and childbirth
 |  practices.
 |
 |  Within Mormonism, large families are coveted and honored.
 |  Often these families do not have the resources to prosper.
 |  In polygamy this is exacerbated. Women do not have the
 |  freedom to consider how often she can give birth and
 |  maintain her health. Men make all decisions affecting her
 |  health. One nurse confided, ``We see too many trisome 13 and
 |  18 babies.'' [22] This is a rare disorder and medical
 |  descriptions of trisome infants are too dreadful to describe
 |  here. These babies usually do not leave the hospital and die
 |  as infants.
 |
 |  This nurse has a polygamous background, so does her husband.
 |  Three of their children suffer from serious inherited
 |  disorders. One child born with an incomplete liver died. If
 |  both parents are descendants of polygamy, the children may
 |  be at even greater risk. These disturbing accounts offer a
 |  look inside the lives of some early Mormon descendants. They
 |  can be dismissed as merely anecdotal. It takes maturity to
 |  face the truth, especially if the truth is painful and
 |  challenges the family tradition and religious belief
 |  structure.
 |
 |  Utah news articles often feature geneticists' and the LDS
 |  Church furthering science by applying modern genetic
 |  analysis to the vast genealogical database. It is likely
 |  flawed. These same articles suggest the Utah population is
 |  healthier than similar non-Mormon populations. Mormon
 |  descendants of monogamy are probably healthier than a
 |  similar non-Mormon population because of their good health
 |  habits. I doubt Mormon descendants of polygamy are healthier
 |  than non-Mormons. Many of these articles read more like
 |  public relations than news. The news may be that descendants
 |  of polygamy are at greater genetic risk than the average
 |  population, especially if any direct relative was a member
 |  of the Mormon hierarchy.
 |
 |  In early 1990, the incidence of nephritis in the general
 |  population was revised from an 1 in 10,000 incidence to 1 in
 |  5,000. There are a limited number of health care dollars.
 |  The allocation of those dollars is a public issue.
 |  Prevention is a more humane and cost effective way to manage
 |  these catastrophic illnesses, than the current medical
 |  emphasis on technological cure. I am not against curative
 |  measures, just the current emphasis. One nephrologist at the
 |  U of U admitted to me, ``You may be right.'' With medical
 |  grants, careers, and tenure to be lost, few doctors will
 |  risk raising the most difficult questions. When ancestors
 |  are revered as prophets and kings, it is difficult to admit
 |  or examine the possibility of this legacy.
 |
 |  For us parents the future health and happiness of ourselves,
 |  our children and grandchildren are at stake. We cannot
 |  afford to neglect the possibility our ancestors practiced a
 |  form of marriage that was unhealthy and debilitating to our
 |  children, to us, and to society. The Salt Lake Tribune
 |  focused on one polygamist group, The Latter Day Church of
 |  Christ, a.k.a. Kingston's, this past year. The information
 |  about this group is outrageous and shocking. It would be
 |  nice to think this is the only incidence of a polygamist
 |  group practicing incest as a religious rite. Unfortunately,
 |  that is not so. There are many similar outlaw groups in Utah
 |  and surrounding states. This is why the state and federal
 |  government enacted legislation against polygamy. This is why
 |  those laws need to be enforced. To date Mormons have only
 |  paid lip service to stopping polygamy.
 |
 |  Linda Walker started Child Protection Project, a web site
 |  dedicated to exposing this institutionalized incest and
 |  child abuse. Linda works as a legal consultant on civil
 |  cases involving child abuse and the church. This essay was
 |  written in the fall of 1991 and updated summer of 1999.
 |
 |
 |  NOTES
 |
 |  [1] McKusick, Victor A., Mendelian Inheritance in Man,
 |  Seventh Edition, the John Hopkins University Press,
 |  Baltimore and London, 1986. This is Kindred P listed under
 |  classification 10420 and 30105.
 |
 |  [2] Interview, Fall 1991.
 |
 |  [3] Personal communication, Fall 1991.
 |
 |  [4] Quinn, D. Michael, Organizational Development and Social
 |  Origins of The Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932, Master Thesis,
 |  Department of History, University of Utah, August 1973,
 |  Table 8, page 69.
 |
 |  [5] Ibid.
 |
 |  [6]
 |  http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=af/search_AF.asp&clear_form=true
 |
 |  [7] Quinn, op cit., page 63.
 |
 |  [8] For an idea of just how married these self designated
 |  prophets were go to:
 |
 |  http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=af/search_AF.asp&clear_form=true
 |
 |  And use the Ancestral File Number Search (AFN) to view
 |  Joseph Smith Jr. (AFN: 9KGL-W2) founder and prophet with 24
 |  wives listed; other researchers count as many as 84; Brigham
 |  Young, 2nd Prophet, (AFN: 3ZD8-KC) lists 38 wives; Heber
 |  Chase Kimball (AFN: 41K9-D8) lists 47 wives.
 |
 |  [9] click custom search tab, click ancestral file, then
 |  Heber Jeddy Grant (AFN: 2F6Z-DM)
 |
 |  [10] Salladay, Robert, ``Mormons now target California'',
 |  San Francisco Examiner 04/07/1999, page L1
 |
 |  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/04/marriage04.dtl
 |
 |  The LDS Church is urging members in California to support
 |  financially and politically a ballot initiative banning gay
 |  marriages, following the Church's donation of $1.1 million
 |  to anti-gay-marriage ballot measures in Alaska and Hawaii.
 |  Claiming it is a moral duty to support monogamous
 |  heterosexual marriage, why then do they not spend one dollar
 |  to help their relatives trapped in polygamy?
 |
 |  http://newsnet.byu.edu/noframes/show_story.cfm?number=11225
 |
 |  [11] Tanner, Gerald and Sandra, private letter written by a
 |  defector from the Kingston cult, Fall 1991.
 |
 |  [12] Burton, Greg, ``Father Is arrested for Beating Daughter
 |  Who Fled Marriage; 16-year-old says she was 15th wife of
 |  father's polygamous brother; Father Charged With Beating
 |  Daughter, 16'', Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah,
 |  06/03/1998, page B1
 |
 |  [13] Interviews with survivors of polygamy and incest. See
 |  http://www.childpro.org
 |
 |  [14] Fahys, Judy, ``Prosecuting Polygamists Not a Priority;
 |  But Leavitt says the state will not tolerate civil-rights
 |  abuses; Leavitt Says Polygamy Might Be Constitutional'',
 |  07/24/1998, Page, A1.
 |
 |  Rivera, Ray, ``Hatch Joins Leavitt In Game of Twister Over
 |  Polygamy Issue; Polygamy Issue Has Politicians In Verbal
 |  Tangles'', 08/29/1998, Page, A1.
 |
 |  [15] Wells, Ken, ``A Utah Polygamy Clan is Rich, but Women
 |  Draw Welfare Benefits'', Wall Street Journal, 02/12/85, page
 |  1.
 |
 |  [16] Jorgensen, Chris, ``Polygamists Can Adopt Children,
 |  Rules Split Court'', Salt Lake Tribune, 03/27/91, page, B1.
 |  The Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday a Utah polygamist
 |  family cannot be excluded from adopting children because
 |  they practice plural marriage.
 |
 |  [17] http://www.childpro.org
 |
 |  [18] Rivera, Ray, ``Church Makes Incest Doctrinal
 |  -Inbreeding key to doctrine of keeping bloodline pure'',
 |  Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, April 25, 1999.
 |
 |  [19] Faux, Steven, ``Genetic Self Interest and Mormon
 |  Polygyny'', Sunstone, Salt Lake City, Utah, July-August,
 |  page 38.
 |
 |  [20] Roberts, B. H., A Comprehensive History of the Church
 |  of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century 1, 6 volumes,
 |  Salt Lake City, Deseret News Press, 1930, 5:297.
 |
 |  [21] Siegel, Lee, ``U. Researchers Home In on Gene Defect'',
 |  The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 10/12/95, Page,
 |  A6. And ``Utah Team Finds Gene for Rare Birth Defect;
 |  Discovery Provides Insight on Genesis of Limb
 |  Malformation'', The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah,
 |  06/27/97, Page, A18.
 |
 |  [22] Interview with a polygamy descendant who is a
 |  registered nurse and mother, Spring 1991.
 |
 |
 |  (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
 |  material is distributed without profit to those who have
 |  expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
 |  information for research and educational purposes.)
 |______________________________________________________________