TUCKED away behind the mountains, cut off from the outside world save for a narrow pass and gravel-strewn road, a dictator rules his people with a steely resolve and terrifying power. His domain is not much to look at -- a desolate and windswept plain where grass has long since disappeared under trampling hooves and human ignorance -- but his authority is unquestioned and absolute. He answers to no one, and the rest of society, prevented by a vast and deep gorge from challenging his will, silently waits for his world to crumble from within.
This isn't the story of some Afghan warlord. It is a story rooted in America, borne by fanaticism and tempered in injustice. Its participants profess that theirs is the only true God and the local despot is His prophet on Earth. Welcome to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) and its polygamist haven, Colorado City, Arizona.
That all was true until a year ago, when Mormon FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was captured near Las Vegas as an FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive. Charged with unlawful flight, sexual conduct with a minor and as an accomplice to rape, on Tuesday he was found guilty and now faces possible life imprisonment. But why did it take so long to go after this guy? At all levels, the lack of concern for those Jeffs held captive is contemptible.
Colorado City is home base for the FLDS cult, the largest and most fanatical of several polygamist sects that splintered off the Mormon Church after it banned the practice in 1890. Almost entirely isolated from the rest of Arizona by the Grand Canyon, it is a lawless town. Until Jeffs's capture, the Church owned almost all property there -- a situation that prevented dissidents from speaking up for fear of losing their homes. Some estimates placed the value of these holdings at over $100 million.
Jeffs, who himself is claimed to have seventy wives, personally arranged marriages between all residents, dispensing girls as young as 13 to men in their eighties. As punishment, wives were often "re-assigned" to other men, many of whom have ten wives or more and children by all of them. And to keep the male-to-female ratio down to a level suitable for plural marriages, he frequently expelled large numbers of men from his community, none of whom knew anything about the outside world -- television is banned and books censored in Colorado City, if they are allowed at all.
But they were the lucky ones, really. Meanwhile, their female counterparts were raped and beaten with nowhere to turn for support -- the police and courts, too, obeyed Jeffs's tyrannical rule. And because FLDS men legally married only their first wife, additional wives who had children qualified under tax loopholes as single mothers and received over $6 million a year in federal welfare -- not a penny of which served its intended purpose.
Polygamy and Colorado City's small population have, predictably, ensured a bad gene pool. The girl who finally came forth and accused Jeffs of misdoings, precipitating his whole arrest and trial, was forced into a marriage at 14 with her first cousin. Such pairings are not uncommon. Because of this inbreeding, children there now have the world's highest rate of fumarase deficiency, which causes severe mental retardation. The gene has been traced back to one of the wives of founder Joseph Jessup, to whom 80 percent of the town is related, and has plagued families ever since.
Today, Warren Jeffs sits in jail, but his community remains clouded in misery and oppression. His conviction is a step in the right direction, but more must be done, whether it's freezing FLDS assets or sending in the National Guard. The power vacuum won't last very long. Just as Jeffs succeeded his father Rulon, someone wil succeed him.
Meanwhile, citizens of Colorado City receive nearly eight times the amount of federal aid as the average Arizonian. Just outside of town, a new airport serves FLDS elders on official Church business, courtesy of $2.8 million from the federal government. Another $1.1 million went to road and utility upgrades. But these measures are not the right ones. What really needs doing isn't being done. The government's inaction is stupefying considering the amount of suffering and abuse and terror the FLDS has wrought. These people have a right to be protected from themselves -- that is, the psychological disorder that is their so-called "faith," professing their devotion to Jeffs and his cult, knowing nothing of the free America and basic dignity of human life.
For mainstream Mormonism, whose diaspora led the hardworking and pious to the shores of Salt Lake and whose tenacity weathered the desert and gave rise to Utah, the black mark of the FLDS is especially discouraging. It is a bitter irony that the polygamist fundamentalists who so despise the Church for going astray are themselves the ones who have fallen by the wayside.
In a fanatical cult like the FLDS in Colorado City, where saintliness is as absent as the grass is on the plains,, one truly hopes they are indeed nearing their latter days.
Alex Lane is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer. He is a first-year student.
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