"This is a veiled hit piece on Mitt Romney. Mormonism in many people's minds is associated with polygamy, even though Mormons banned the practice many years ago."
Mormons used to make up a big share of the FBI.
I guess the FBI made Jeffs a top ten mst wanted, in order to ruin Romney's chances. This polygamy issue is practiced ONLY by a radical cult.
The big, official Mormon church outlawed polygamy well over 100 years ago. I think it was in part to gain statehood, since the rest of the country obviously disliked polygamy.
I don't think polygamy was ever very widely practiced in Utah among Mormons in the early years. There was a fair degree of mystery and scandal about it, from the start.
But if you wanted to run a cult community far from the law, the northern Arizona strip would be ideal. Note I say far from the law.
The strip is closer geographically to southern Utah. And there are probably a few polygamous outposts scattered around that area.
There isn't much population. Saint George is the "big city."
Actually, IIRC, that's not true. Polygamy is still a canonized doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS stopped sanctioning these marriages, but the doctrine remains, if I understand correctly.
You have to read LDS press releases quite carefully...misleading or misstatements seems not to be included in "bear[ing] false witness."
I know the area you mean. We traveled there a few years back and purposely got off the beaten track onto some winding dirt roads just to see what the backcountry was like. It WAS remote.
We went into a little town, might have been St. Georges-can't recall-to get a few groceries and some wine. We looked all up and down the "main street" and didn't see a liquor store anywhere, so we asked some locals where the liquor store was. You should have seen the disapproving looks we got.
Finally someone (I think it was a teenager-LOL) told us where the store was. It was down a small unmarked street and actually did not even have a sign out front. There were about 5 choices of wine and the bottles were dusty so you know they'd been sitting there for a while. In fact, the whole store was dusty and didn't look like it had seen many customers in the past month.
It was a funny experience.