Paying a big price for polygamy
 
Letters From the Issue of Thursday, January 12, 2006
Phoenix New Times
 
I recall my sister saying when she was a public nurse covering the Utah side of the polygamous community that she had never seen so many birth defects caused from years of relatives marrying relatives. She also reported that the welfare system was supplying a large amount of money to the community 20 years ago in the way of checks and food stamps.

The public was paying a big price for polygamy.

I talked to her in her home in St. George, Utah, the other day about the fumarase deficiency children, and she said she thought more people than ever were going into polygamy, which was the worst news I could hear.

Polygamy was one reason I left the Mormon Church. I used to question my grandmother, who was raised in polygamy, about her life for hours on end. She was raised in Orderville, Utah, the last community in the United States to practice the "united order," where people shared a communal house for meals and were assigned different work tasks to benefit the whole community.

My great-grandfather was sickly when he married my grandmother's mother, his third wife, and she and her seven children lived in severe poverty.

The church sent a young woman to nurse my grandfather, and he ended up making her his fourth wife. They soon had children for his sons to help feed and care for. I wouldn't have respected this man had he been my father. I would have considered him an old knothead allowing his lustful emotions to rule.

I have always thought that those who buy the idea of polygamy cannot seem to reason as well as most. But we can't stop trying to inform this pitifully ignorant population of the costs of the polygamous lifestyle.

This terrible fumarase defect is just one kind of defect that inbreeding produces. I recall my own mother telling me over and over: "Never marry your cousins. You may not have healthy children." She had educated herself about these matters.

Thank you, John Dougherty, for an article that seems well backed up with facts and with testimony from those in a position to know. This is a painful subject, but the public -- including the polygamists -- needs to be informed of the facts of life.

Geraldine Hitt,
Phoenix
 
phoenixnewtimes.com
Originally published January 12, 2006
 
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