("Doctrine & Covenants," Section 132, verses 55, 62-63), "Joseph Smith also testified an angel with a sword came to him many times and commanded him to practice polygamy or else he would lose his life. Some outside the church have referred to the group as "the Kingston Clan" or the "Kingston Cult," although leaders believe that these terms are "inaccurate and derogatory." . Family members attribute the defects to the advanced ages of the mother and father -- he was 64, she was 45. Obviously, we would love to.. "Of all the arguments against incest, says Jorde, the likelihood that genetic abnormalities will be passed to succeeding generations is the most persuasive. . "Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called fumarase deficiency. "For us parents the future health and happiness of ourselves, our children and grandchildren are at stake. 'If you cross a Barlow and Jessop, you stand a high risk of getting this condition,' Tarby says. . Ron says the cults justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. Now, let's examine how "God-ordained" Mormon polygamy has wreaked unholy genetic havoc on its faithful followers: --Case Study on Polygamous Mormonism's Genetic Disease Striking Home: The Linda Walker Story. girl, born to John Ortell and Isabell Johnson, was not the product of an incestuous marriage. . That's the big problem.' "The genetic defect has been traced back to one of the community's founding patriarchs, the late Joseph Smith Jessop, and the first of his plural wives, according to medical literature, the Mormon Church genealogy database and residents of the community familiar with Jessop and Barlow family histories. [T]he one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people. One recent morning [John Ortell's niece and third wife, Mary Gustafson] defended her complicity in arranging her daughters' marriages to their half-brothers, sons of John Ortell and LaDonna. All are retarded, the neurologist told Salt Lake City television station KSL-TV. Jessica said she and other children of the Kingston clan a group also known as The Order, the Davis County Cooperative Society, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ dropped the N-bomb all the time, as did their parents. 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? The two were playmates when they were boys. ", -Prophet John Taylor, "Millennial Star," vol. 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. ". A scrappy white wooden fence runs the length of it along Canyon Street. Dawna's younger sister has a little boy with two clubfeet. "Marriages among first and second cousins have been common for decades in the community, where religious doctrine requires men to have at least three wives to gain eternal salvation. "Yet, Aleck says, some children are more seriously affected by the disorder than others. . He prepared urine samples and sent them to the University of Colorado Science Center's Dr. Steve Goodman, a professor of pediatrics who runs a laboratory that detects rare genetic diseases. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. 'Remember how Hitler was trying to breed a perfect race?' It's also still rape with a foreign object, I remind us both unnecessarily. the tight-lipped adult answer, 'We dont know,' seemed woefully inadequate. If the FLDS faithful believed that Jeffs was relying on science to determine marriages rather than divine revelation from God, he could lose control of the church. She knows that they're. "Outside, people don't die that often, and usually they're really old.". A loyal Order member for years, he lost his faith and ended up leaving the Order over a curse of sorts, leveled at his family by LaDonna. Wyler says he once saw a fumarase deficiency child suffer a seizure while she was sitting with her mother and two other children also suffering from the disorder. "Of even greater concern was the fact that the recessive gene that triggers the disease was rapidly spreading to thousands of individuals living in the community because of decades of inbreeding. [Andrea] Moore-Emmett [author of 'God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped'] contends that [in polygamy] incest, statutory rape, torture, physical abuse, forced marriages, and trafficking of girls is rampant. "Fast-forward . "Another of Rugg's full sisters, Andrea Johnson, died in 1992 of complications of pre-eclampsia, a condition of pregnancy that was not treated until after the young girl, swollen with toxic fluid, was rushed to the emergency unit at University Hospital. . . Faced with the forced marriage to an uncle, Rugg left the Kingstons. "Fumarase deficiency began to manifest in the community when three sets of Joseph Smith Jessop and Martha Moore Yeates' great-grandchildren married each other. I didnt even know the n-word was bad until I was like 15 or 16, she told Intelligence Report. 'Her body tried to miscarry many, many times.'. According to church lore, Charles "Elden" Kingston founded The Order after seeing Jesus in a cave. And, because this cult is so tight-knit and averse to strangers, the gene pool is rather limited. Structural Birth Defects. Recordings of church testimony given by various Kingstons serve as further evidence of the cults bigoted teachings. 'They have to outbreed,' Aleck says. Indeed, the group was founded during the Great Depression as a communal religious organization where members dedicated their earnings and possessions to building the Kingdom of God on Earth, as one church document attests. The chickens are coming home to roost. "In May, the girl said she was belt-whipped by her father inside a Kingston-owned barn in Box Elder County for fleeing the marriage, and was abandoned in the home of another of John Daniel's wives. Below are further horrific details of the Kingston clan's "God-given genetic calamity, brought to you courtesy of Joseph Smith's Mormonism, as reported in the "Salt Lake Tribune" article, "When Incest Becomes a Religious Tenet": ". The FLDS was formed by Mormons who refused to give up polygamy. . "For Colorado City and Hildale to avoid more fumarase, polygamist leaders must use their authority to make sure that those potentially carrying the fumarase gene are not allowed to marry, says geneticist Aleck. . Dawna asks me. Almost everyone here is some variation of cousin, and, until Warren was locked up and decided to put a hold on all marriages, most men and women were paired together in order to preserve certain esteemed bloodlines. . . He was kicking people out, too, who weren't obedient. In another, Order attorney Carl Kingston warns listeners about marrying up with Hams kids, a reference to the aforementioned Biblical curse. Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. . Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Youngs claims. "Researchers have identified a gene on the first chromosome that causes fumarase deficiency, but no test has been developed that could be used to identify individuals carrying the malady. From the "Phoenix New Timms" article, "Forbidden Fruit: Inbreeding Among Polygamists Along the Arizona-Utah Border is Producing a Caste of Severely Retarded and Deformed Children": "Colorado City resident Isaac Wyler says FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs is trying to create the 'perfect race.'. Mary Nelson, 23, tells "Whistleblower" host Alex Ferrer about how she escaped the Kingston clan, also known as The Order, . I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. . states that '[t]he [Utah] state legislature is consistently 90% Mormon . "'My mother should not have produced another baby," says Rugg, also Isabell and John Ortell's daughter and the baby's full sister. Everyone knows it's happening, few talk about it unprompted, it just sort of..is. Julie left the cult at age 19. Nothing has come of the raids yet, and the IRS refused comment on the matter when contacted by this publication. "Tarby believes the recessive gene was introduced by one of the community's polygamist founders. Dawna's husband is a brother to her older sister's husband, "but they're only half brothers, so him and I aren't blood-related at all, because he was from the youngest mother, which had no relation to us other than marriage, and then my sister was married to the older brother and his mom and my grandmother were full sisters.". . Early polygamy was rife with incestuous and eugenic ideas and practices as well. Jonathan Turner, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, hypothesized exactly that, in an article published by the ABC news network in 2008. Yeah, I believe in it, he said. . If such a test were developed, a community-wide screening program could be instituted that would identify those carrying the fumarase gene. "Today, six sons and two daughters of John Ortell and LaDonna have married at least 20 half-sisters, nieces and first cousins, giving birth to a family tree that twists and tangles, and, at times, withers with children born of genetic deficiencies. Moore-Emmett suggests that the heavily Mormon Utah government is unduly tolerant of polygamy and reluctant to acknowledge the abuses of many polygamous families. mating in a way that increases genetic diseases, that the public ends up supporting, it becomes a matter of public interest.'. Half and full siblings are marrying in religious ceremonies. Snow also remembered being taught end-time prophecies, with a cleansing wherein the streets of Salt Lake City would run red with blood. "They were called the Second Warders and we were called the First Warders; we weren't supposed to hang out with kids from the Centennial group because they were wicked for having left," she says. We're sitting in Ron's large kitchen, eating a meal of homemade tomato sauce and sweet Italian sausage that his wife Geria retired marriage and family therapist originally from Hurleyville, NY, who he met six years ago on Zoosk!has prepared in a slowcooker. . "Although it is a felony under Utah law for close relatives to have sex, only one Kingston--John and LaDonna's fifth son, David Ortell--has been criminally charged with incest. . . She's worked for lawyers who brought these cases to light and needed help with mormon terminology and ward politics workings. ". From the article, "Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints Genealogy and Polygamy Problems": "The gene pool is . sw. htm>. "Tarby said there could be hundreds of victims in coming generations. "For the first time, the faith-promoting stories about my great-grandfathers heroism for defying the federal government when they outlawed polygamy interested me. "Community historian Ben Bistline said most of the community's 8,000 residents are in two major families descended from a handful of founders who settled there in the 1930s. Which brings us back to the baby cemetery. . In the 1980s, the state of Utah sued John Ortell Kingston over welfare fraud related to his many wives. Those twoand a fifth boyalso suffer from the condition that all of this family's sons were born with: x-linked hydrocephalus. _____, --Petri Dishes of the Genetically-Destructive Effects of Mormon-Driven Polygamy: "Modern"-day Utah and Cross-Border Towns. "There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level. In order to maintain his familys superior bloodlines, Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. on a 1,600-acre ranch outside of Eldorado. ". Upon the creation of the LDCJC, most members of the DCCS . "Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy clans. Nearly all the Mormon founding families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to different degrees when the divine experiment began. 'I know this off the top of my head," Wyler says. This denial is hollow considering the record. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well. And during a recent picnic to honor the birthday of patriarch John Ortell Kingston, Order families descended on a Salt Lake Valley park, where hundreds of children of all ages blanketed the parks green expanse. Until the 1990s, there were only 13 known cases of FD in the world. In a letter to the Intelligence Report responding to allegations made by former members, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society, claimed that The Orders foundational principles include the Golden Rule, and that the church rejects any form of racism or bigotry. It has become the subject of increased scrutiny. thus marking the first time news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850s. I wonder aloud. "Roughly one in four Americans say 'most Mormons' support the practice of polygamy . "In 1996, the now 31-year-old Kingston mother of two slow-growing children sought explanations at Primary Children's Medical Center. But by 2006, Dr. Theodore Tarby, of Arizona, had discovered at least 20 more children living with the condition in Short Creek, all within just blocks of each other. 'I could choose, but it had to be a brother, uncle or cousin.' . 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