I read this this weekend! Also several related Wikipedia articles. 80 wives! Now I want to watch the movie.
That looks like it says "So wives!" which is also accurate.
That area is a godamn powder keg. I'm amazed there haven't been a bunch of murders. Odds are the feds are going to win case and this could go sideways in a hurry.
I'm amazed there haven't been a bunch of murders
Wait, why?
5: We're talking several thousand people in a cult with members of families ending up on opposite sides. Imagine if all of a sudden you were kicked out of your house where you lived with your wife and kids and you thought there was a real possibility your underage daughters were going to get forcibly married off to various dudes in their 40's. You might consider doing some killing. I know I would.
There's a lot at stake here and they've never faced this kind of dismantling. There's been individual arrests and such but the feds are a whole different ballgame and they've got the manpower to make it happen. Getting a Jessop to flip and testify is a big deal. I suspect they've been deep in with an informant/s and/or a wiretap for a while. Good chance that the "routine traffic stop" that nabbed Jeffs outside Vegas was a wall stop based off of a tip or info from a wire.
LaVoy Finicum...I have no knowledge or information that he was any variety of LDS
From what I've heard he was regular mainstream LDS. That type of first name alone in Utah is a pretty good indicator of some kind of LDS background.
It would be weird to live for decades in Footloose and then find yourself in A Study in Scarlet instead.
6: Plus kicking out the teenaged boys (can't have them competing with the old guys for the young bride victims...)
7: His given first name is Robert - LaVoy is a nickname, I believe.
Also can you shed more light on the significance or background of Lavoy as a name?
Names that start with La-, particularly when the second part is capitalized, and particularly men's names, are a weird Utah Mormon thing. I don't know the reason for it. LaVell Edwards, former BYU football coach, is a good example.
The part of Nevada where the Bundys live is also very close to that area, and they're some weird kind of LDS (not FLDS, though).
That article kept getting more disturbing the further I read. For example, this, from way down towards the end:
Like other people I talk to in Short Creek, Thomas is especially concerned about the rise of something called the seed bearers - perhaps the most disturbing of commands from the jailed FLDS prophet. According to former members who still have family inside, Jeffs has decreed that only men of a "royal bloodline" can reproduce, and only with women selected to the United Order. According to rumors, these men (there are said to be 15) are the seed bearers. To have a child, women must eat a special detox diet and apply to Jeffs in prison. Husbands are made to watch these breeding sessions, in which seed bearers wear a hood, and a sheet is placed between the man and woman during intercourse to keep their identities secret. Any children born from these unions are put into hiding, likely at the FLDS network of secret compounds scattered throughout the West. They then become property of the church, with no knowledge of the identity of their parents.
I mean, that's not just your garden-variety polygamy. It's not even your garden-variety forced-underage-marriages-style polygamy. (Which is largely how the article had framed the town's citizens in the article up to that point.) But this is something... even more unusual. Calling them a "polygamist cult" seems almost unfair to polygamist cults.
Names that start with La-, particularly when the second part is capitalized, and particularly men's names, are a weird Utah Mormon thing. I don't know the reason for it. LaVell Edwards, former BYU football coach, is a good example.
LaMarcus Aldrige, LaMichael James, LaBradford Smith, etc.
16 sounds like something made up by an opponent.
I hadn't even considered 18, but that makes as much sense as anything else.
Here's a graduate thesis on distinctive Mormon naming practices; skimming it, it floats various theses, such as Mormons wanting to have names that are distinct from the larger culture that they're otherwise not too dissimilar some. It also mentions that naming is an area where the Church is comparatively lax. The comparison to African-American naming patterns is mentioned, but without any firm conclusions; also contains some awful jokes that I had previously heard about black names.
16 sounds like something made up by an opponent Margaret Atwood.
21: borrowed from Atwood or more likely the Gor novels? intellectual property is like weaponry; even if you only sell it to your friends who you trust, always, always it ends up God knows where.
20: Names that would code as A-A anywhere else are probably the descendants of Mormon pioneers in Utah.