If you're interested in the subject Jon Krakauer - Under the Banner of Heaven, contains a narrative history of the beginning of the Mormon Church and their westward migration to the Midwest and then to Utah. It covers other subjects too in a meandering back and forth, but it makes for very interesting reading.
I keep seeing this thing where people want "the government" to take care of more and more stuff for people. Can we instead say "the taxpayers should pay for this, including paying for anyone that wants to have huge families and contribute nothing at all to the rest of their community". See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1R2S/ for a good take on how some very out-there crazy communities essentially live off of the rest of the taxpayers by using whatever they can to get money.
I mean sure, it'd be nice. I'm all for revising the tax code. But how many immigrants are you willing to absorb, how many other people are you willing to pay for, and how high are you willing to see your tax rate go? The money has to come from somewhere, and the people you take the money from, they tend to get pissed off if you just hand it out to people they don't think contribute very much. That causes a lot of friction, and tends to attract a lot of people who just see free money and services, so there's no need for them to stay and fight or stay and try to improve the place where they're at?
This. He fell in love with another woman and thought that there is no way that God would allow him to be in love with multiple women unless it was supposed to be. So polygamy was born, until it threatened the possibility of Utah getting statehood then God said "My bad" and polygamy was gone. Another good place to get information is a book called "Under the Banner of Heaven", it follows some of the more occult people that broke off the faith but also does a great job of telling the history of the mormon faith.
Source: Book above, and grew up in Utah
Sorry this was so late going up! I was super busy this week and didn't have time to start researching or writing it until this afternoon.
Sources in this entry:
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