Krakauer starts begins this book with the story of the 1984 Lafferty murders when two brothers, claiming to be commanded by god, savagely murdered their youngest brother's wife and baby girl. He then delves into the history and practices of fundamentalist mormonism. It is no less than shocking. He talks about small towns in Arizona, Utah, and Canada where everyone in the town answers to one man, the head of the fundamentalist LDS church. He controls everything and everyone; The mayor, the police force, and everyone else. Everything is owned by the church. Girls are married by the age of 14, sometimes to men that they are related to and are at least twice their age. Krakauer gives an example of a town in Arizona where the head of the FLDS church married girls as young as 13 and 14 when he was in his mid-eighties. Basically, the women are seen as property. He also reports cases of sexual abuse.
The towns that Krakauer discusses are polygamistic societies. Some of the men mentioned in the book have married more than 50 women and fathered even more children. How is this possible when polygamy is against the law? Well, the men will marry one woman legally, recognized by the government. The subsequent marraige isn't recognized by the government but is by the FLDS. These women are recognized though, as single mothers by the government. Because of this they can get all kinds of financial support.
I won't even get into the founding father of mormonism, Joseph Smith, until a later. Looking at what I've read already and things I've seen on the news, such as the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, it's easy to see the immoral and frankly sickening practices of fundamental mormons. Is it right for a man in his fourties or fifties to "marry" a fourteen year old girl and then have sex with her? Doesn't it make that man a pedophile and how can any decent human promote this sort of thing? It seems like the religion in some ways is there to try and justify these sexual deviants.
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I agree, although I don't necessarily blame the Mormon religion. Every religion has its lunatic fringe, and the loonies are always using religion as an excuse to commit crimes and do immoral things. But all Mormons are not polygamists/sexual abusers and not all polygamists/sexual abusers are Mormons. And all religions have a violent past. Islam, I believe, also allows polygamy and definitely allows abuse(ok maybe I'm wrong about the abuse but you sure hear a lot of negative stuff about that religion)and definitely has a violent past(as well as present, but that's an entirely different topic).My point is you can't judge any religion by the fundamentalists because the fundamentalists don't represent the religion, they represent themselves while using religion to control, abuse, and take advantage of everyone and everything. Unfortunately, the police in Utah and in other states with polygamists don't have anywhere near enough resources to go after them all, and some policemen and other law enforcement officials have been discovered to be polygamists or bigamists also. It's a huge problem. I agree with Krakauer about what the solutions should be. The state and local government need to find a way to stop these idiots from collecting welfare that they don't need and that the men are only getting rich on.
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