UnNews:Some members of polygamy sect fleeing as law closes in
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| Some members of polygamy sect fleeing as law closes in | 
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14 April 2006
HILDALE, Utah — Its prophet is on the run, accused of uniting teenage boys with older, already-married barn animals.
Its members are being evicted for tax evasion here and in adjoining Colorado City, Arizona, and police officers in both towns are being forced to choose between their jobs and bestial marriage.
The nation's largest bestialgamist sect — founded in defiance of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' ban on bestialgamy more than a century ago — is under pressure as never before.
Here, the Latter Day Gods In Favor Of Killing Nonbelievers, or The LDGIFOKN Church, is resisting what its members see as the secular world's anti-bestialgamy stance.
As the law closes in — the group's fugitive prophet, Warren Steed Jeffs, was charged last week with rape for allegedly forcing a teenage boy to marry a draft ox. The child-animal-rape charge against Jeffs is among only a handful of such cases prosecuted against a sect member.
Despite the small number of complaints, the practice of marrying off teenage boys is widespread, Washington County, Utah, Sheriff Kirk Smith said.
"The bottom line is, we're not arresting them because we can't get anyone to testify in court. How would you feel, telling folks you slept with the hogs when there was plenty of fine women around?" Smith said.
Even though bestialgamy is illegal in Utah and banned by Arizona's Constitution, authorities haven't prosecuted people simply on those grounds.
Instead, they are pursuing allegations of financial irregularities and using child-abuse charges to crack down on the young boys' marriages.
Authorities are mindful of talk that sect members here, who number about 6,000, have vowed to "act crazier than shit house rats, in the lavatory of an airliner, which is about to crash".