Under the Banner of Heaven: Post 2 of 5

As i continue to read through the book I can't help to wonder if there might be a hint of mormonism in me. On Christmas day I went and the saw "Little Fockers" and it shows Robert De Niro trying to finish a family tree that he has dating back to the 1600s. At the end of the movie Dustin Hoffman informs De Niro that he is 1/23rd Jewish. This also makes me wonder since there are so many Mormons out there, based on polygamy and reproduction rate, and that mormonism was actually created in Illinois, perhaps maybe I am 1/23rds Mormon. Its a possibility. It is an unfortunate possibility. Basically, the book has went into more discussion about plural marriages and all of the under the table illegaliest that go on in these FLDS clans. I cannot explain how these family trees work but in one case a woman becomes her own step-grandmother because of how she marries and re-marries and her kids marry and brothers marry and sisters and fathers and so on. It is a gross practice which leads to incest. Krakauer explains how a lot of the women in these clans are raped by the time they are 10 because of the religious practice not allowing pre-marritial sex. In the 4th chapter of the book it explains the recent story of Elizabeth Smart, the 14 year old girl who was abducted into a plural marriage. This was a very interesting chapter because I remember exactly when this was going on and hearing the stories about it. It happened in 2002, and it is a very interesting case because she had opportunities to escaped but she did not want to because she was brainwashed by the abductors mormon teachings. Her abductor, Brian Mitchell, was just recently convicted of the crimes, which also makes this interesting because it is almost current. There isn;t much really to say about the people, except that they are looney tunes. It is interesting because in the U.S. Constitution one of our first rights is the freedom of religion and that should allow the mormons to practice the religion in the way they believe it with plural marriages and what not, but then in the law it is illegal to be married to more than one person, and incest is definetly illegal, so it is a very confussing situation, and which means more than the other. I would figure that the freedom of religion is more important, but if my religion tells me to kill a bunch of people then I should not have that freedom, and this is something that will be touched on later in the book I believe. It is a very interesting debate that I am going to keep reading more about. I will have another post in a few days.