Counselor Daniel H. Wells tells the Grantsville School of the Prophets that "a great many of our young men [are] abusing themselves by the habit of self-pollution: or self-abuse, or as the Bible terms it Onanism," which he regards as "one great cause why so many of our young men were not married, and it was a great sin, and would lead to insanity and a premature grave." Polygamy is the likelier cause for the prevalence of bachelorhood in nineteenth-century Utah. First, every national census lists more males than females in the Mormon population. Second, 20-40 percent of Mormon men marry polygamously which demographically requires bachelorhood in Utah's majority population of males.
[The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]]
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