That is Completely UN Scriptural

Quoting the online article at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2009-06/11/content_8273771.htm

MOSCOW – An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week, killing all 228 on board, has died in a car accident, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.

Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from the Bolzano-Bozen Province (South Tyrol), and her husband Kurt, were vacationing in Brazil and missed Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1. The couple took a flight to Europe later that day.

The car veered off the road near Kufstein, Austria, killing Johanna.

A Reprint of the Original 1903 Article

 

AS TO MEAT EATING

by

CHARLES FILLMORE

 

HE subject of diet is attracting more attention every day among metaphysicians. At one time it was only necessary to quote, ”Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,” to dismiss the whole matter. But the revised Bible puts an entirely new phase upon this familiar quotation. It says, “Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink.” It was a treatment against anxiety as to the provision of God that Jesus was giving, and not an injunction to take no thought about food.

It is found that food does have a part in body struc ture, and that the metaphysician must take it into account if he would reach the higher substance demonstrations. The argument that we are putting power where no power exists, in the material, is a contradiction in itself. We eat to sustain life in the organism, therefore life is the object of eating. Every form in existence is a manifestation of life, and the life idea that pervades it is its source. If that life idea is for a moment withdrawn the form collapses. Hence we do not eat matter, but life.

This puts a new phase upon eating. If we are daily eating aggregations of life ideas hid within the material forms, we should use discrimination in choosing those forms. Our food should be full of life in its purity and vigor. There should be no idea of death and decay connected with it in any degree. The vegetable should be fresh and the fruit radiant in its sunny perfection.

I have in years of experiment tested the effect in mind and body of meat-eating and non-meat-eating,

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and I feel that I am more competent to judge of the effects than one who theorizes about the question.

Some sixteen years ago {1887} when I began the study of Truth I was told that it made no difference what I ate if I was in the right thought. This seemed to prove true up to a certain point in my experience. While my spiritual development was confined to the conscious mind there seemed no special need of food discrimination. But grad ually a new phase set in. I found that I was having vibrations in the sympathet ic nerve centres — the subconscious mind was being quickened, and I was becom ing a conscious vital battery. The vital currents gradually grew stronger and stronger until I could hardly control them. Appetite, passion, emotion, etc., were greatly increased. Then my prayers for guidance were answered and a system of communication set up with the higher realms of consciousness. I was shown that the food that entered the organism had to pass through a process of re generation every day before it was in condition to be built into the new body in Christ. Just how to carry on this re generative process in the various subconscious centres was also shown, and here is where I discerned the effects of food in body building.

The vitalizing element in food is con tained in the cell, which may be termed a mind battery vibrating with intelli gence, force and substance. These ele ments are present in the living cell — dead cells are those in which intelligence and force have withdrawn and inanimate substance only re mains. Man appropriates these cells and they become part of his consciousness according to his capacity to use them. Those who have not developed the ca pacity to conscious ly regenerate the cells get but a small part of their energies. Sufficient force is extracted through the automatic functions of the organism to build up and sustain a physical body for a few years, but the thread of life is frail and its texture coarse. In man the bulk of the cells are deposited in the

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refined seminal seed, ready for regeneration, but seldom used to that end – rather dissipated in ignorant sexual indulgence. In woman the menstrual flow relieves the system of the life elixir, which should have been regenerated and thrown onto the higher plane of consciousness.

Personal experiment has proven to me that there is but very little change in the character of the food until it passes through that refining process called re generation. The stamp of individual identity is put upon it only through a concentrated effort of the I AM, in spiritual mediation and affirmation. It is true that all those people who are much in prayer and conscious spiritual states are constantly drawing upon these reserve cells in the seminal ducts and regenerating them. But the process is not well sustained until man consciously co-operates with the law and seeks daily re generation and purification of all the cells in the organism. Then a system is established and the new body built up as designated by Jesus Christ in the symbology of the New Testament.

With this understanding of  the process of body building and body substance, both physically and psychically, we can see the necessity of discrimination in choosing foods. If the cells pass into the blood and glands essentially the same as they were formed by the animal or the vegetable from which they came, it is highly important that their character be of the highest and purest.

We eat the flesh of the animal for the life it contains, yet the fact is that life has disappeared in its highest degree — there is left only a lot of corpse-cells in various stages of corruption and de cay. These are really a burden to the organism because of the disintegrating tendency which has already set in. Instead of the vigor and force of the animal that once animated that flesh there is left a festering mass of dead cells without a single animating principle. Before upbuilding life can be put into those cells

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they must pass through earth and the vegetable kingdom to the animal. Yet ignorant man loads his system with these elements of discord and decay and expects to get life out of them. No wonder his body dies.

Again, it is proven by experiment that certain negative states of consciousness peculiar to the animal ac companies its flesh in all its journeys through the body of man. All the upbuilding life goes out with the soul of the animal when it gives up its body, but the fears, the violence, the ignorance, the anger, the lust, and all that pertains to the error side of consciousness hovers around the dead cells. In San Francisco a few years ago many people were made violently ill from eating meat bought at a certain shop. Physicians investigated and they found that the carcass of a certain steer was the source, and it was presumed that it was diseased. Further inquiry developed this to be an error — the animal was unusually healthy and vigorous — in fact so vigorous and forceful that he fought for his life for over an hour after the attempt to kill him began. He was in a frenzy of terror and anger; his eyes were bloodshot and he frothed at the mouth while the butchers were trying to slay him. The physicians decided that the anger and terror of this steer poi soned his meat in manner similar to that of the angry mother her milk, which is well known makes the infant sick.

This instance was but an exaggeration of  conditions that exist in a milder form in all animal flesh offered for food in our markets. Before they are slain the poor brutes are maltreated in ways almost beyond enumeration. Visit shipping pens, stock-trains, stock-yards and packing houses, if you want evidence of the sufferings of the poor beasts of the field. And these very sufferings are through the law of sympathetic mental vibrations transferred to the flesh of those who eat the bodies of these animals. The undefined fears, the terrors

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of the nightmare, and the many disturbances in stomach and bowels that man endures may be in a measure traced to these un suspected sources.

The argument that life is destroyed in eating fruits and vegetables is frequent ly used to excuse the slaughter of beings having intelligence, affections, and apparantly souls almost equal to man’s. It is so far-fetched that a moment’s sincere thought ought to disclose the fal lacy to anyone. The fruit, and the vege table have completed their life course and have apparently been prepared by a wise creator for food, as we are told in Genesis 1:29, “Behold! I have given you every herb yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Here is plainly in dicated a vegetable and fruit diet for man. When these abundant products of nature are found spread upon her green-gar nished tables everywhere, why should man dye his hands with the life-blood of beings that resent the carnage, and cry out and bellow in terror when his cruel knife is raised against them? This is direct opposition to the Divine Law of freedom and right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all of God’s creatures. Man is today suffering in his body and mind the results of this trans gressed law, and he will continue to suffer until he observes in its fullest degree the command, “Thou shalt not kill.”

We rejoice that progressive metaphysicians are giving this question experimental attention. It is so easy to theorize and argue – the ranks are well supplied with these voluable wise ones, – and it is a real pleasure to find the results of the test of non-meat eaters in our metaphysical ranks. In a recent issue of The Nautilus, William E. Towne, one of the editors, has an excellent article on this subject, from which we quote:

 

“Capt. G. E. Diamond of San Francisco, is now one hundred and six years old, and engages in physical culture and cycling exercises. He has totally abstained from animal flesh foods for over eighty years. He is as straight as an arrow and richly enjoys life. It is both an illusion and a delusion to think that one must eat animal flesh ‘to keep up the strength.’ There is more

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nitrogen, more muscle, more strength in one pound of browned peanuts than in a pound and a half of beef steak.”

 

Evidently if the practice of vegetarianism produces weakness of brain and body it has taken it a long time to get in its work on Capt. Diamond.

This reminds me of an old story about a temperance crank who tapped an old gentleman on the shoulder as he was about to quaff a glass of whiskey and said: “My friend, did you know you were drinking slow poison?” “Is that so?” was the reply; “it must be very slow for I’ve been drinking it for sixty years.”

Dr. Peebles is himself almost eighty-two years old, yet he rises at four o’clock every morning and works from twelve to fourteen hours of each day. He has abstained from meat eating for many years and says of himself: ” I eat no animal flesh, use no liquors, nor wines, no tobacco, no coffee nor tea, I have no aches nor pains, I can bat a ball, run like a sixteen-year-old lad, swim like a fish, and dance the ‘Highland Fling.’ At the propressive Lyceum picnic in Melbourne last year, five hundred witnesses on the ground, I ran a foot race and took the prize.”

Dr. W. R. C. Latson, a recognized authority upon diet, has this to say about meat in his book on “Food Values”: “So far from being a ‘strong food,’ flesh meat is, strictly speaking, not a food but a nutro-stimulant. The meat of the animal contains food and poisons. The food we can use. The poisons we must excrete, and in the effort to get rid of these irritating poisons the organism is thrown into a state of excitation which is mistaken for strength. As a matter of fact it is like the ‘strength’ which come from alcohol.”

Dr. Latson goes on to say that it is a fact that the heart of the habitual meat eater will beat ten more per minute at least than the heart of a person living on a pure diet. He says further: “The strongest argument against the use of flesh meat is that to eat the animal’s flesh is to eat the animal’s execreta, which is inseparable from it.”

It is a fact that at least seventh-tenths of the population of the globe never eat meat. In his book on “Physical Education” Dr. Felix L. Oswald says: “The strongest men of the three manliest races of the present world are non-flesh eating.”

In his book on “Food Values”, Dr. Latson presents various tables and diagrams in relation to the amount of nourishment contained in every-day foods, and these tables show conclusively that flesh meat is less rich in food materials than many other common articles of diet.

It is a fact that “during the heroic periods of Greek and Roman history the food of the soldiers was entirely vegetarian. The Greek athletes were trained upon vegetarian diet.”

It is a fact that the most successful athletes of the day are those who abstain from meat entirely or at least during their

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periods of training. Bernarr MacFadden, formerly a successful athlete and now editor of several physical culture magazines, has this to say regarding meat eating in his book, “Strength From Eating”: “But the most startling evidence in favor of vegetarianism is the fact proven in my own athletic experience, and in the experience of many others, that the vegetarian diet gives one far greater endurance than the meat diet.”

The italics in the preceding quotation are my own. Further on Mr. MacFadden says, “There is no doubt that a better quality of blood is made from a vegetarian than from a meat diet.”

In the light of practical experience, facts, and such as those I have here set down, I think we can safely agree with Dr. Latson, who in summing up the question of meat eating, says: “So far from being a ‘strong’ food, flesh meat is a very ‘weak’ food; and proportionately to its bulk, imparts very little energy.”

In line with the foregoing I print the following interesting item of news, clipped from The Youth’s Companion: The youth of America discovered long ago that peanuts are uncommonly filling and four students at Norwich University at Northfield, Vt., have for several months been putting that discovery to practical use. A young man working his way through college, who found it needful to pare expenses, demonstrated that a quart and a half of peanuts provided all the sustenance he needed for twenty-four hours, and when he bought the nuts by the sack his “board” costs him just a dollar a week, as against the three dollars and a half he had been paying at a fraternity house. Soon three other students joined the experimenter, and since early in March these four have stuck to the peanut diet, the only variation from the original plan being that on two days in the week each man eats three eggs “to supply the need of albumen.” The correspondent who tells the tale adds that three of the four peanuters are identified with the athletic interests of the student body, and affirms that physically as well as mentally they are in better condition than ever before. In the last twelve weeks the men have increased in weight, on an average, fifteen pounds. Let the lean, the feeble, and the wise women who run boarding-houses make a note of it.

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EDITORS NOTE:

 

The original typewritten manuscript for this article ended with a final paragraph from the “Words of Truth”. Since this portion of the article was probably never published, Unity School of Christianity retains the copyright. Truth students are referred to the original manuscript at the Unity Archives for the unpublished portion of this article by Charles Fillmore.

 

This article was originally published in the October, 1903 issue of Unity Magazine, Volume XIX, No. 4. This article is in the public domain and no longer protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. Access to the manuscript and the published article was generously provided by:

 

Unity Archives

Unity School of Christianity

1901 NW Blue Parkway,

Unity Village, MO

64065-0001

 

Let me preface this with – honestly, I’ve never met what one might call a “bad” person in the Mormon faith. I found an interesting article though.

FATAL INHERITANCE: MORMON EUGENICS

by Linda Walker

My cousin Lucky and I were looking for four leaf clovers in the grass. The early blue summer sun warmed our backs, not too hot, just right. This weekend visit with my cousins was a perfect end to the school year. Soon Lucky’s sister, Julie, joined our lazy search for the magic clovers.

Many summer passed and Lucky, Julie and I all grew up to marry and start families of our own. Then, while still a young man, Lucky died of nephritis, the fatal family inheritance. Each family member in their own way carried the burden of Lucky’s failing kidneys. His father donated one of his own healthy kidneys, thus prolonging Lucky’s short adulthood with his wife and small children. Fear began to overwhelm me, for the future, and for my own son. Lucky was the first to die in my generation.

US”>I remembered the studies conducted on my brother and I as children at the University of Utah (U of U) when doctors pronounced us, a special and important family. In the l950’s, research doctors thought we were one of the few families in the world with this form of nephritis, known as Alport’s syndrome.[1] By l980, this theory changed dramatically as many other Utah families accepted the diagnosis. Our ancestral destiny meant we might give birth to sons who would die at maturity or daughters who would carry the trait to the next generation of sons. These defects could be life threatening like nephritis and spinal bifida, or merely debilitating like asthma. Childbirth would be fraught with despair and guilt for me and for many family members. We participated in the study but never received counseling regarding the results of this research. I never knew if I carried this deadly disease or if any preventative measures would halt its insidious march. This lack of information upset me as a child when to my fervent, “Why?” the tightlipped adult answer, “We don’t know”, seemed woefully inadequate. I promised myself to find out the truth when I grew up.

US”>When Lucky died my childish vow surfaced and I began to look into my family history for some answers. My great grandfather, like scores of English immigrants eager to escape a life of poverty, listened when Mormon missionaries offered passage to America in exchange for Mormon baptism. Soon he joined the Mormons in Zion, the new Promised Land, trading a life of mining for religious hope.

US”>A few years later Lucky’s sister, Julie, died of multiple sclerosis, also leaving a family of small children behind. Same family, second child, same period of life, a different fatal disease; was there a connection? My aunt and uncle outlived two of their five children and two more may have nephritis. What was going on in my Utah pioneer family? Surely, there were too many deaths. 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? Or was it true no one knew the answers, because they could not be known, because no one wanted to know?

US”>For the first time, the faith promoting stories about my great grandfather’s heroism for defying the federal government when they outlawed polygamy interested me. Family lore indicates he was a courageous fighter for religious freedom and found himself unjustly incarcerated for continuing his polygamy lifestyle after its outlaw by federal and state statute. Previously I paid little attention to Mormon history, rejecting that belief system primarily because of political differences with the Mormon leadership over civil rights and peace issues in the 1960’s. This great-grandfather married two sisters which meant the twenty-two known children were double cousins or as genetically similar as brother and sister. I began to think polygamy might be a genetically unsound marriage practice. Not only were there possibly too few fathers making it easier for defects to clump in the large interrelated kindred but succeeding generations of children from these isolated rural Mormon towns married within a few kindred as well. Throughout the world, most polygamy is exogamous, or breeding outside the group. Breeding within, as Mormons did, endogamous polygamy, is virtually never practiced. Had these defects clumped in my own family as it seemingly appeared to me?

US”>While discussing health problems at a family gathering with some of my cousins’ wives, we discovered astonishingly that three out of four of us, all polygamy descendants, had borne a son with a clubfoot. Fortunately, this genetic deformity is correctable with proper care, is also a common defect, but not that common. One outspoken Mormon matriarch who attended the same Sunday meeting for fifty years commented about the health of the polygamous descendants versus the monogamous descendants, “You see it in the obituaries. So many young people.” [2]

Another woman revealed how frustrated and angry she was over her brother’s death, a brother who died because of undiagnosed epilepsy, possibly needlessly. “My parents would never face it. First, he had a car accident during a seizure, yet they could not admit he was not perfect. While swimming he had another seizure and drowned. We are hierarchy children. The tendency is not to admit it if anything is wrong, since we are supposedly perfect.” [3]

The ‘hierarchy children’ are from the ‘elite’ first families of Mormonism and these families started polygamy in America. Nearly all the Mormon founding families were relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to different degrees when the divine experiment began. The Twelve Apostles of Mormonism then acted to increase this familial relationship by marrying other relatives until in 1877, at the end of Brigham Young’s reign as Mormon Prophet and King, the polygamous hierarchy became l00% interrelated.[4] D. Michael Quinn, former Brigham Young University Professor, states “The Mormon practice of polygamy enabled men to marry daughters, nieces, cousins, granddaughters and former wives of other General Authorities”. [5] Did this practice affect my family and other Mormon pioneer families adversely, possibly even in other momentous ways? Mormon folklore claims otherwise.

US”>Genetics is the study of how traits pass from parents to offspring. Epidemiology is the study of the spread, prevention and control of disease in a community or group of persons. Some people mistakenly think genetic disease encompasses only birth defects and this is far from the truth. Genetic disease can occur at any age including birth, onset of puberty, early adulthood, or middle age. Inherited diseases are extremely varied from protein metabolism to connective tissue problems to vital organ failure, and among the most expensive to manage financially both for the public and for the individual family. These diseases endure as the most difficult, time consuming, and emotionally traumatizing for everyone involved in the care of someone who will not improve, but worsen and die.

US”>The Mormons, well known for genealogical record keeping, maintain birth, marriage and death information at church libraries and now on the Internet.[6] Since polygamy remained a hidden and illegal practice, disguised family records occurred. The records of the marriages sealed at the Nauvoo Temple before the general exodus to Utah in the 1840’s, may be the most important ones of all; yet, these are stored in a vault, unavailable to researchers. During this early period, polygamy was practiced secretly by the Mormon leadership, men who covertly preached and expanded polygamy while publicly deceiving the general Mormon population about the practice. These wives sometimes became known, sometimes not. For instance, Quinn writes, “over twenty General Authorities were married to such lesser known wives” [7]. ‘Lesser known children’ hidden in families sympathetic to polygamists might remain ignorant of their genetic kinship. And the Genealogy Department advises genealogists to follow only their direct line; in this instance meaning only the wife who is their mother, not other wives of their father.[8] This is inadequate information for purposes of establishing the true incidence of consanguinity within a family or community.

US”>Genealogists and especially epidemiologists must be scrupulous in identifying all the wives and children of any polygamist man. Branches of the polygamist man’s family left out of the genealogy will change the incidence of common ancestors and potentially mask the true disease risk and incidence in the community. Gradually, I realized the practice of polygamy, especially in Mormondom, might be a prescription for genetic disease. People most at risk likely lived and married within the same small communities their ancestors founded. This seemed to apply in my own kindred because those of us who left Mormonism and married outsiders are less riddled with the deleterious genetic legacy than relatives who married within the ancestral Mormon gene pool.

Parents who share a common ancestor are consanguineous. Consanguinity causes aggregate clusters of deleterious genes to collect in families, which then express themselves as rare recessive disorders like nephritis, cystic fibrosis, biliary artesia, albinism, short stature and many others. Consanguinity also causes rare recessive disorders to mask as dominant. Consanguinity is a reason why families bear children of only one sex – all sons, or all daughters.

US”>Mormon Prophet Hebrew J. Grant determined to keep marrying until he found a woman to bear him living sons. He did not consider this lack of sons might be his genetic inheritance, not his multiple wives. Current scientific knowledge indicates Grant’s lack of sons resulted from his own genetic defect, since only men carry the male Y chromosome to make a son.[9]

US”>Another problem in polygamy is a man’s breeding years are expanded sometimes into his eighties by the taking of new wives. As people age the chances of children inheriting mutant genes increases. Readily accepted as a problem among mothers past the age of thirty-five, it is rarely discussed as a problem when fathers are over thirty-five, let alone eighty.

Sterility is another consequence of consanguinity and the evidence of many sterile polygamous wives is overwhelming. The adoption of children among family members sometimes disguised sterility. This is a humane coping strategy devised to deal with a dilemma that devastated a woman taught from birth her only value was in the number of children she bore for the Kingdom of God. Yet, this practice may hide the actual genetic kinship and can further exacerbate genetic problems.

US”>Recently, another cousin fathered a child born with spinal bifida, inherited paralysis, an anomaly related to nephritis. He also married a woman descended from polygamy. This child belongs to a family branch that used to be in the U of U nephritis study. This branch, now living in Arizona, is no longer a part of the ongoing familial studies. Dropping a branch of this family from the studies may result in a reported disease incidence which is lower than family experience indicates. It appears my kinship group is suffering from clusters of rare recessive genes. Not one defect, but many.

US”>This gene cluster effect happens when people with common ancestors marry and bear children. Polygamy today is comprised of early Mormon polygamy descendants and these families are now interrelated by a factor impossible in monogamy. Evidence exists that this gene pool foments a genetic and human catastrophe. Mormons can now see why American citizens passed laws intended to stop polygamy, a relic of unwise prophecy, laws continuously disregarded in Utah, a state controlled by the Mormon Church, if they will only look. In addition, the Mormon Church touts itself as the quintessential traditional family values church, advertising via expensive television campaigns. They are quick to point out to reporters that they no longer practice polygamy and excommunicate members who continue to do so. This denial is hollow considering the record. 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.[10]

US”>The discoveries and research within my own kindred so alarmed me that I studied other descendants of polygamy to see if their families also suffered from crippling illnesses. I am convinced they do. As bad as this past is, the mounting evidence is far worse. In 1991, I first became aware of the Latter Day Church of Christ (a.k.a. Kingston’s and The Davis County Cooperative Society), a Mormon polygamist offshoot and determined to interview within this virtually impenetrable closed polygamist group. One 1980’s leader, John Ortell Kingston, married thirteen wives and sired over sixty-five children, many of them deformed. His wives included five nieces. One disillusioned former member claims “babies are born as blobs of protoplasm”, and “brothers marry sisters in an effort to build up a royal priesthood.” [11] I endeavored to publish this information. Editors suggested it was unbelievable. If only that were true.

US”>Then in 1998, a 16 year-old girl limped seven miles to a pay phone and called police. Bruised, welts covering her body, and a broken nose, at first she was reluctant to speak with authorities. She told investigators her father took her to a remote area and belt whipped her for running away from a forced marriage to her uncle, her father’s brother, as his 15th wife. Removed from school like so many polygamy children, she told social workers she wanted to finish high school. [12]

US”>Finally exposed in the news, the facts of life inside this religious/cult compound are stunning Mormons, Utahns, the nation, and the world. Half and full siblings are ‘marrying’ in religious ceremonies. Escaped members report some patriarchs believe it is their duty to give a daughter her first marriage lessons. This is the equivalent of a religious rationalization for the practice of incest. [13] Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy clans. Utah officials fall all over themselves in an effort to explain why they have done nothing before and what they now propose to do.[14] Unfortunately, the answer is clear as they embarrass themselves inventing new ways to say they will continue to do nothing and wait for the media to change the focus.

US”>Alongside the medical tragedy, other social and legal problems emerge. Currently, thousands of children are born into these closed authoritarian patriarchies. Indoctrinated from birth that they are better than others, exalted, and lacking outside education, understanding nothing about democracy; they not only believe government is corrupt, but then frequently use that rationalization to engage in fraud schemes that bilk the public. As early as 1985, John Ortell Kingston, in an out of court settlement agreed to pay $250,000 to the Utah Department of Recovery Services for child support. Four wives and at least 29 children collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in public assistance. Judgments entered for more than $100,000 against ten other Kingston clan members made on behalf of over 40 children. Recovery Services thinks this is a fraction of the money involved.[15]

US”>The Kingston clan is a fraud masquerading as a religion. A fraud scheme organized to promote the wealth of the Kingston men at the expense of all men, women and children who are not blood. There is no reason why law enforcement cannot dismantle this group by enforcing existing laws.

US”>Until quite recently, the Kingston leaders did not even pay wages to their captive members but paid them in script for working in the cult businesses. Members then used the script to purchase goods at clan owned stores. Reputedly, this cults net worth is over $300 million. It is certainly difficult to leave a cult that holds all the money, property and takes the children if you attempt to leave. Utah courts and social service agencies threaten or remove parental rights from women who want to leave polygamy and then give the children to other polygamous households.[16] What emerges from this record is a system that protects men and violates the rights of women to live in liberty, all supported by the Mormon Church.

US”>Throughout 1998 and 1999, the Salt Lake Tribune lifted the covers on the many crimes committed in polygamy. Using resources for a major expose; thus marking the first time news media reported this human and civil rights nightmare accurately since the 1850’s. News articles describing the incest within modern polygamy suggests these communities of forgotten people suffer horrifically.[17] This article focuses primarily on the genetic impact of polygamy; however, the reasons behind polygamy are frightening and misunderstood.

US”>These groups are white supremacists, and inbreeding is an essential doctrine in keeping the bloodline pure.[18] Convinced they are breeding a pure white master race; they blame the mother if a deformed baby is born, then preach she was unrighteous or unclean. It is these discredited ideas that foster this genetic legacy. Early polygamy was rife with incestuous and eugenic ideas and practices as well. Brigham Young, the second Mormon leader, preached, “The time is coming when the Lord is going to raise a holy nation…a royal priesthood upon the earth, and he has introduced a plurality of wives for that express purpose.” [19]

US”>Every person carries some lethal genes. Most populations outbreed and so these lethal genes rarely match to cause any serious diseases. When a group inbreeds, as polygamists have, more and more lethal gene matches occur. Children inherit disabling illnesses. Child life is destroyed.

US”>Some family members and Utah geneticists disagree with these conclusions. I think I owe my children and all children who risk becoming the next unwitting victims of this tragic genetic legacy, the best information regarding the prevention of this lethal family inheritance that I can find. Thus, over the first fifty years of Mormonism, a highly inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their illegal marriage and childbirth practices. At the time this inbreeding took place these prophets preached and practiced modern ‘eugenic science’, the science of controlling the traits of future populations through selective breeding for idealized traits like blond hair, blue eyes, and tall stature. One hundred years later, eugenics is a discredited science, yet some followers still believe. Historian B. H. Roberts, notes an eugenic attitude regarding polygamy:

US”>

It was in the name of a divinely ordered species of eugenics that Latter Day Saints accepted the revelation which included a plurality of wives. Polygamy would have afforded the opportunity of producing from that consecrated fatherhood and motherhood the improved type of man the world needs to reveal the highest possibilities of the race, that the day of the super man might come, and with him come also the redemption and betterment of the race. [20]

US”>It is important that Mormons fight the tendency to discount history and the actions of their leaders in favor of a faith promoting history while neglecting important facts. It is important the American public recognize that polygamy was outlawed for valid reasons; and not as apologists claim because of outmoded Victorian moral ideas. It is difficult to assess less than perfect family background when men are revered as ‘prophets,’ ‘apostles,’ and ‘kings.’ If descendants of polygamy do not look critically at the ideas of their ancestors, Utah children may be increasingly at risk. If two descendants of hierarchical polygamy marry, the chances for genetic defects increase if the families were ever interrelated. This means it may be genetically unwise for children of the early leaders to marry other children of early leaders, even now; yet, this tendency still exists in Mormonism.

One pediatrician at the U of U, stated he asks only, “Were your parents related?” This is not enough genetic background information to ascertain the facts regarding health risk and may be a reason why health statistics in Utah have significant errors. One newspaper article describes a baby with a disorder previously unseen, ulnar mammary syndrome.[21] Now a new disease classification enters the medical literature and a certainty that even more health care dollars will be allocated towards high tech solutions to preventable problems. These new disease classifications belong at the door of the Mormon Church leadership. They are coming out of polygamous communities proliferating in Utah because Mormons are unable to face their history or follow sound marriage and childbirth practices.

US”>Within Mormonism, large families are coveted and honored. Often these families do not have the resources to prosper. In polygamy this is exacerbated. Women do not have the freedom to consider how often she can give birth and maintain her health. Men make all decisions affecting her health. One nurse confided, “We see too many trisome l3 and l8 babies.” [22] This is a rare disorder and medical descriptions of trisome infants are too dreadful to describe here. These babies usually do not leave the hospital and die as infants.

US”>This nurse has a polygamous background, so does her husband. Three of their children suffer from serious inherited disorders. One child born with an incomplete liver died. If both parents are descendants of polygamy, the children may be at even greater risk. These disturbing accounts offer a look inside the lives of some early Mormon descendants. They can be dismissed as merely anecdotal. It takes maturity to face the truth, especially if the truth is painful and challenges the family tradition and religious belief structure.

Utah news articles often feature geneticists’ and the LDS Church furthering science by applying modern genetic analysis to the vast genealogical database. It is likely flawed. These same articles suggest the Utah population is healthier than similar non-Mormon populations. Mormon descendants of monogamy are probably healthier than a similar non-Mormon population because of their good health habits. I doubt Mormon descendants of polygamy are healthier than non-Mormons. Many of these articles read more like public relations than news. The news may be that descendants of polygamy are at greater genetic risk than the average population, especially if any direct relative was a member of the Mormon hierarchy.

US”>In early 1990, the incidence of nephritis in the general population was revised from an l in l0, 000 incidence to l in 5,000. There are a limited number of health care dollars. The allocation of those dollars is a public issue. Prevention is a more humane and cost effective way to manage these catastrophic illnesses, than the current medical emphasis on technological cure. I am not against curative measures, just the current emphasis. One nephrologist at the U of U admitted to me, “You may be right.” With medical grants, careers, and tenure to be lost, few doctors will risk raising the most difficult questions. When ancestors are revered as prophets and kings, it is difficult to admit or examine the possibility of this legacy.

US”> For us parents the future health and happiness of ourselves, our children and grandchildren are at stake. We cannot afford to neglect the possibility our ancestors practiced a form of marriage that was unhealthy and debilitating to our children, to us, and to society. The Salt Lake Tribune focused on one polygamist group, The Latter Day Church of Christ, a.k.a. Kingston’s, this past year. The information about this group is outrageous and shocking. It would be nice to think this is the only incidence of a polygamist group practicing incest as a religious rite. Unfortunately, that is not so. There are many similar outlaw groups in Utah and surrounding states. This is why the state and federal government enacted legislation against polygamy. This is why those laws need to be enforced. To date Mormons have only paid lip service to stopping polygamy.

Linda Walker started Child Protection Project, a web site dedicated to exposing this institutionalized incest and child abuse. Linda works as a legal consultant on civil cases involving child abuse and the church. This essay was written in the fall of 1991 and updated summer of 1999.

[1] McKusick, Victor A., Mendelian Inheritance in Man, Seventh Edition, the John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1986. This is Kindred P listed under classification 10420 and 30105. [2] Interview, Fall 1991.

[3] Personal communication, Fall 1991.

[4] Quinn, D. Michael, Organizational Development and Social Origins of The Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932, Master Thesis, Department of History, University of Utah, August 1973, Table 8, page 69.

[5] Ibid.

[6]

[7] Quinn, op cit., page 63.

[8] For an idea of just how married these self designated prophets were go to:

And use the Ancestral File Number Search (AFN) to view Joseph Smith Jr. (AFN:9KGL-W2) founder and prophet with 24 wives listed; other researchers count as many as 84; Brigham Young, 2nd Prophet, (AFN: 3ZD8-KC) lists 38 wives; Heber Chase Kimball (AFN: 41K9-D8) lists 47 wives.

[9] click custom search tab, click ancestral file, then Heber Jeddy Grant (AFN: 2F6Z-DM)

[10] Salladay, Robert, “Mormons now target California”, San Francisco Examiner 04/07/1999, page L1

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/04/marriage04.dtl

The LDS Church is urging members in California to support financially and politically a ballot initiative banning gay marriages, following the Church’s donation of $1.1 million to anti-gay-marriage ballot

measures in Alaska and Hawaii. Claiming it is a moral duty to support monogamous heterosexual marriage, why then do they not spend one dollar to help their relatives trapped in polygamy?

http://newsnet.byu.edu/noframes/show_story.cfm?number=11225

[11] Tanner, Gerald and Sandra, private letter written by a defector from the Kingston cult, Fall 1991.

[12] Burton, Greg, “Father Is arrested for Beating Daughter Who Fled Marriage; 16-year-old says she was 15th wife of father’s polygamous brother; Father Charged With Beating Daughter, 16”, Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 06/03/1998, page B1

[13] Interviews with survivors of polygamy and incest. See http://www.childpro.org.

[14] Fahys, Judy, “Prosecuting Polygamists Not a Priority; But Leavitt says the state will not tolerate civil-rights abuses; Leavitt Says Polygamy Might Be Constitutional”, 07/24/1998, Page, A1.

Rivera, Ray, “Hatch Joins Leavitt In Game of Twister Over Polygamy Issue; Polygamy Issue Has Politicians In Verbal Tangles”, 08/29/1998, Page, A1.

[15] Wells, Ken, “A Utah Polygamy Clan is Rich, but Women Draw Welfare Benefits”, Wall Street Journal, 02/12/85, page 1.

[16] Jorgensen, Chris, “Polygamists Can Adopt Children, Rules Split Court”, Salt Lake Tribune, 03/27/91, page, B1. The Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday a Utah polygamist family cannot be excluded

from adopting children because they practice plural marriage.

[17] http://www.childpro.org

[18] Rivera, Ray, “Church Makes Incest Doctrinal -Inbreeding key to doctrine of keeping bloodline pure”, Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, April 25, 1999.

[19] Faux, Steven, “Genetic Self Interest and Mormon Polygyny”, Sunstone, Salt Lake City, Utah, July-August, page 38.

[20] Roberts, B. H., A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century 1, 6 volumes, Salt Lake City, Deseret News Press, 1930, 5:297.

[21] Siegel, Lee, “U. Researchers Home In on Gene Defect “, The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 10/12/95, Page, A6. And “Utah Team Finds Gene for Rare Birth Defect; Discovery Provides Insight on Genesis of Limb Malformation”, The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 06/27/97, Page, A18.

[22] Interview with a polygamy descendant who is a registered nurse and mother, Spring 1991.

The Human Nature Review © Ian Pitchford and Robert M. Young – Last updated: 28 May, 2005 02:29 PM