I've got some titles in mind; let me dig through my books at home and get back to you.

So you aren't clever enough for the New York Times, then?

Under the Banner of Heaven is good, if you take it for what it is. I've been following the FLDS and similar groups for about a decade now, and I've noticed something--there are only a handful of surnames among the polygamy practicing splinter groups. Regardless of the group, you see Barlows, Jessops, LeBarons and Allreds in every group. My personal theory is basically

1. At least some aspects of the church hierarchy approved of continuing to practice polygamy and may have tacitly approved of some splinter groups.

2. This institutional support died out with that immediate post-ban generation, and most people who persisted in polygamy past its being banned stopped after a generation, leaving a few extended family groups carrying on the practice.

The family trees of most of the polygamy practicing groups are so close they are practically braided. The star of Sister Wives (not FLDS) is married to 4 women--two of them are Allreds and probably close cousins. The FLDS is mostly descended from their the Barlows or Jessops and genetic disease is rampant.

They're called Lost Boys in the FLDS.

It's one of the serious problems with polygamy, which artificially restricts the supply of women--you get crowds of young men who don't have a prayer of getting a partner, ever, because older men are hoarding all the women. They cause all sorts of social problems, though the FLDS largely outsources this by expelling the boys from their enclaves for trivial infractions. This is starting to happen in some parts of Asia due to sex selective abortion, which also artificially restricts the supply of women.

This an excerpt from the memoirs of one FLDS Lost Boy:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104359348

Polygamy is rare, but practiced, in my husband's community. (Chinese expat men who have one wife in one country and another in a different one. And both know about each other.) It's more common and legally respected for Muslims in Malaysia, though not legally acceptable for other people there. The polygamy thing was really weird to me, but even weirder for me is that my husband's grandmother is really for truly illiterate and was never taught to read. That one threw me for a loop.

My husband is in that industry, and I've noticed something. Politically, every programmer I know is either:

1. Intensely libertarian.

2. Extremely statist, mostly because they think a clever bit of coding would just solve everything and we could probably get a computer to run our lives much better than we can.

What confuses me is the general response of horror among the media at these images. As far as I can tell, these are photos of soldiers posing with body parts of suicide bombers. Grisly, yes. Gross, yes. Disrespectful? Suicide bombers have to little respect for their bodies that they blow them up in service of a large goal. I think at that point, posthumous respect is a bit much to ask.

Am I the only one who's surprised not to see Colorado City or Hillsdale? They're FLDS dominated towns, where girls face a significant risk of being married off as a polygamous wife at ages as young as 12. I'd put my money on that being the worst place in America to be a woman.

I'm an INTJ, and a stereotypical one at that. I also slip away at social events. My hobbies are all very solitary ones, too.

Are you married to another introvert? I am, though he's more outgoing of the pair of us.

My husband has always freelanced and god a significant bump in income last year. I've just entered the world of having pay quarterly taxes. Ugh. It may be time tog et an accountant.

People are less likely to be married in times past, depriving them of both a spouse and the spouse's family and social networks. Thy are single longer. They are less likely to have children. All of this encourages isolation and loneliness.

It also appears very, very early in life without trying to create it. Unrelated children raised collectively on Israeli kibbutzim were unable to consider each other as potential partners when they were adults. They had to leave the kibbutz to find marriage partners. This couple never imprinted on each other as siblings because they were raised apart, which is the only reason they could stomach the relationship.

I will also point out that sexuality being genetic is beside the point--gender IS genetic.

No one has been able to point to a cluster of genes and say, "this is what makes a person white, black, Asian, etc." We know that there are plenty of places where racial mixing has occurred for a long time, and left people who do not easily fit into any of the familiar (white, black, Asian) categories. Race as a biological entity is concrete.

Gender as a biological entity is not. Absent a tiny handful of people who are XXY or similar, we know very well what makes a man different from a woman biologically, in a way that we don't know for race.

My husband is Asian and I am white. Genetically, one of us is obviously a man and one of us is obviously a woman. Genetically, I am not obviously white and he is not obviously Asian. That's a big difference. Furthermore, all men can perform the social function of being fathers, as all women can perform the social function of mothers.

3. Gay marriage assumes that men and women are interchangeable, so there is nothing unique about a household with a man and a woman vs. a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It assumes mothers and fathers are interchangeable. I reject this as absurd.

4. Love does not make a marriage. I did not become married because I loved my husband. If we cease to love each other, we do not cease to be married. Love is very nice, but it is distinct from marriage and should remain so.

Here's the way I look at it:

1. Marriage is a status, not a contract. My husband and I didn't make a contract to share our stuff, we transformed ourselves from single people INTO married people. I could have the same contract with two different people at once, I can not be married to two people at once. In this sense, it's like citizenship.

2. The primary purpose of marriage is to create a home with a mother and father. Obviously, in some cases, the home will never be used for children, due to age, fertility problems, or lack of inclination. That's not the point. It's also beside the point that single people have kids all the time. We legitimize marriage BECAUSE it is the best way to raise children and the community at large has an interest in that. We give people  privileges upon marriage BECAUSE we want people to enter the state, not because we're generous.

(cont.)

I married at 21, and I graduated from college in 2009. One thin I really had going for me was that I graduated with my B.A. at 20, which gave me a two year head start over my classmates. If we want earlier marriage, we have to start working with a timeline for the middle class existence that doesn't take so long to reach. It also took family support--we ended up living with my parents on and off for two years as my husband finished college and did a fellowship.

I think early marriage has been the most rewarding thing I've ever done, even if it is occasionally trying. I've never regretted it, though it wasn't what I expected for my life. I'm glad I got here, and glad that the circumstances of our life (immigration) made marriage, not cohabitation, the acceptable option.