Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Warren Jeffs' Arrest
Today (2006 August 29), I heard that Warren Jeffs was arrested on I-15 near Las Vegas, Nevada. Warren Jeffs is the leader of a group of Mormons, descendents of a group that refused to abide by the anti-polygamy decision on the part of the original Mormon church of the 19th century, a decision which was in part motivated by the desire to get Utah admitted to the Union as a state. These Mormons live in a fundamentalist religious polygamous colony straddling the Utah-Arizona line at the downs of Hildale and Colorado City. Rev. Jeffs was arrested on charges of conspiring to marry young women, ages 13 or less, to older men. This colony is secretive and dominates the surrounding area, and have started to expand into other areas, including Texas.
There are two trends in our society which pertain to this arrest. One is this trend towards making something special about sex when it is involved in criminal activity. People are up in arms about abuse of children by adults of all types including Boy Scout leaders, women, Roman Catholic priests, and county supervisors. They think it awful when children are involved in sexual acts with adults. This may be the case with 4-year-old children, but how about a 20 year old man with a 14 year old girl? It doesn't matter, even though trying to enforce sexual laws against such a couple could cause a Romeo and Juliet situation. The authorities have even gone to the point of construction special "sex offender registries". If you want to find out who has committed crimes concerning sex on your block, just go to your neighborhood Web sex offender registry and find out. But if I am afraid of burglars or drive-by shooters in my neighborhood, I can't find them out; there is no registry for them.
The other trend is one towards religious fundamentalism. People are flocking to fundamentalist churches and talking God and Christ all over the place, even to the extent of infringing on Constitutional guarantees against separation of church and state. Religious leaders entice followers to follow beliefs like that a human has ascended into heaven to the right hand of a supreme being in heaven, or that the waters parted to let the Israelis through, or that aliens brought life to Earth a long time ago, a Scientology belief. The trend towards fundamentalism in the Islam religion is even worse. It is so bad that when an Afghani wanted to convert to Christianity, all of the people in his community wanted him executed. These people were egged on by the religious mullahs. Especially galling about established religions is this belief in an afterlife. Therefore, people ignore the only life we know about in favor of some supposed afterlife up above with the angels, or maybe 55 or 72 virgins. It was belief in such virgins that got the terrorists to fly planes into buildings in 2001, killing 3000 people.
Warren Jeff's Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints falls right on the middle of these two trends; they pull in opposite directions on this community. What right have we got to tell them that they need to live one man and one woman (gays are finding out that people are turning against them on this point) and only as adults above some age such as 18 or 21? But on the other hand, look at the beliefs of these people. Warren Jeffs is using the power of belief in fundamentalist religion to get his people to live the life that he wants them to lead, saying that this is God's will. God's will, all right. When you talk about God, you are talking about yourself. Mr. Jeffs is talking about his will, not God's, but the people believe his party line.
So Mr. Jeffs got arrested. Fine. But let's make sure we are going after this group by the right reasons - not that his group is sexually or maritally mistreating 16-year-old women but that he is promulgating hypnotic religious nonsense to his people and getting his flock to go along with him on it.
There are two trends in our society which pertain to this arrest. One is this trend towards making something special about sex when it is involved in criminal activity. People are up in arms about abuse of children by adults of all types including Boy Scout leaders, women, Roman Catholic priests, and county supervisors. They think it awful when children are involved in sexual acts with adults. This may be the case with 4-year-old children, but how about a 20 year old man with a 14 year old girl? It doesn't matter, even though trying to enforce sexual laws against such a couple could cause a Romeo and Juliet situation. The authorities have even gone to the point of construction special "sex offender registries". If you want to find out who has committed crimes concerning sex on your block, just go to your neighborhood Web sex offender registry and find out. But if I am afraid of burglars or drive-by shooters in my neighborhood, I can't find them out; there is no registry for them.
The other trend is one towards religious fundamentalism. People are flocking to fundamentalist churches and talking God and Christ all over the place, even to the extent of infringing on Constitutional guarantees against separation of church and state. Religious leaders entice followers to follow beliefs like that a human has ascended into heaven to the right hand of a supreme being in heaven, or that the waters parted to let the Israelis through, or that aliens brought life to Earth a long time ago, a Scientology belief. The trend towards fundamentalism in the Islam religion is even worse. It is so bad that when an Afghani wanted to convert to Christianity, all of the people in his community wanted him executed. These people were egged on by the religious mullahs. Especially galling about established religions is this belief in an afterlife. Therefore, people ignore the only life we know about in favor of some supposed afterlife up above with the angels, or maybe 55 or 72 virgins. It was belief in such virgins that got the terrorists to fly planes into buildings in 2001, killing 3000 people.
Warren Jeff's Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints falls right on the middle of these two trends; they pull in opposite directions on this community. What right have we got to tell them that they need to live one man and one woman (gays are finding out that people are turning against them on this point) and only as adults above some age such as 18 or 21? But on the other hand, look at the beliefs of these people. Warren Jeffs is using the power of belief in fundamentalist religion to get his people to live the life that he wants them to lead, saying that this is God's will. God's will, all right. When you talk about God, you are talking about yourself. Mr. Jeffs is talking about his will, not God's, but the people believe his party line.
So Mr. Jeffs got arrested. Fine. But let's make sure we are going after this group by the right reasons - not that his group is sexually or maritally mistreating 16-year-old women but that he is promulgating hypnotic religious nonsense to his people and getting his flock to go along with him on it.
