We didn't intend to pass through Colorado City, the center of the polygamist FLDS cult, but because of missing a sign, we ended up passing right through it on the way to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was a pretty poor looking place.
We didn't stop. It's amazing to me that the same crowd that insists that "one man, one woman" is narrow minded are generally not prepared to accept polygamy--which has a far longer history behind it than same-sex marriage. But then again, a lot of what drives polygamy in groups like the FLDS isn't just the desire for a guy to have multiple women. From the June 14, 2009 Denver Post:
Brent, the 26-year-old nephew of Warren Jeffs, the convicted felon and former prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is determined to make known the extent of what he describes as his Uncle Warren's evil.
...Brent wants people to know that forced underage marriages were not the only horrors under Warren Jeffs.
Brent years ago filed a civil lawsuit against Warren Jeffs in which he alleged that his uncle had raped him several times when he was in kindergarten and first grade.
Warren Jeffs used church tenets to satisfy his own perverse sexual appetites and to control every aspect of members' lives, Brent claims. As prophet — the title the sect gave its leader — he banned almost all music and all literature except the Book of Mormon and the Bible. He even banned dogs and, most infamously, ejected many young boys from FLDS families.
With Warren Jeffs now in the Utah State Prison after conviction on two counts of being an accomplice to rape, the sect's towns, such as Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, are coming back to a semblance of normal life, Brent said.
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