It’s comforting to think that polygamy and the cruel, inhumane treatment of women in the name of God is something that only happens in hardline Muslim countries where female children are married off, often for a high price paid to their fathers, to rich sexual deviants who collect them like playthings for harems.
Yeah, it happens here in the good old United States, too.
The silver lining here, of course, is that sometimes the bad guy gets caught, as in the recent sentencing of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints head Warren Jeffs to life in prison.
Jeffs, who evidently fathered a fifteen-year-old girl’s baby and stood accused of sexually assaulting seemingly countless young girls, argued that he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs.
Hmm, yes, because pedophilia is evidently church-sanctioned in his warped mind (I thought that was just a Vatican thing …).
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven, has more than 10,000 followers who …
… consider Jeffs to be God’s spokesman on Earth.
You know, not to beat a dead horse, but doesn’t this sound like the whole fifty virgins thing? I kind of get the feeling that Warren Jeffs could really get the whole concept of going to any lengths—including murder—to have higher power-approved sex objects.
And this guy had one hell of a huge following. Scary.
Several former members of the church have testified that Jeffs ruled the group with a heavy and abusive hand. Jeffs also allegedly excommunicated 60 church members he saw as a threat to his leadership, breaking up 300 families while stripping them of property and “reassigning” wives and children.
In an audiotape played during the sentencing phase, Jeffs was heard softly telling five young girls to “set aside all your inhibitions” as he gave them instructions on how to please him sexually. Jeffs is heard telling the girls that what “the five of you are about to do is important.”
Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him — in what Jeffs called “heavenly” or “celestial” sessions — in order to atone for sins in his community. Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides “who can be worked with and easily taught.”
FBI agent John Broadway testified that fathers who gave their young daughters to Jeffs were rewarded with young brides of their own. Girls who proved reluctant to have sex with Jeffs were sent away, according to excerpts from Jeffs’ journals that prosecutors showed to the jury.
The whole story is completely horrifying, of course, but there are two things that really stand out to me.
1. A child molester was able to run rampant in the name of God, sounding a lot like Charles Manson in the process.
2. Women and children were able to be so objectified in the 21st century, when a collective “we” should know better.
I know the word “feminism” leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people, that there’s a knee jerk reaction bringing to mind stereotypical visions of morbidly aggressive women who want not equality but supremacy.
To me, situations like this underscore the need for feminism in the year 2011.
While the world has come a long way, monsters like Warren Jeffs and the fact that he was able to have his way with women at his leisure simply because he could illustrate the need to continue to get the word out there that women are not objects, that we do not need to do what a man says simply because he says it.
And it’s not like Warren Jeffs is the only charismatic bastard to pull this shit off in the name of religion. It is happening even as I write this, even as you’re reading it.
And it makes me sick.
On the other hand, one doesn’t need to be feminist realize this kind of sickness.
Once again though, paedophilia is misused here. the girls are young, but post-pubescent. The proper term for that is ephebophilia.
The concept of polygamy is not in itself demeaning to women. In an earlier society where women need men to provide for their children, a woman did better by getting half (or one-eighth) the resources of a rich man than getting a whole man who couldn’t provide. It’s only recently when we figured marriage should be based on love that 1:1 made more sense. There are still a few people out there who live happy, respectful polygamous lives – it’s the child abuse that is the concern here.
You are absolutely right, Kai. I feel that I deserve at least 2 husbands.
Unfortunately this is not going to end the problem. Most of the polygamist sects are already living on the fringes of society in remote areas (some have even relocated to Mexico) where they can run their colonies in such a way that women and girls are left without education and forced to work below-the-table jobs so they can commit welfare fraud (they almost all appear as single mothers on paper because their marriages are not legal), which they hand over to their husbands and church leaders. Rampant sexual abuse and pedophilia occur (and yes I do mean pedophilia – I’ve read about cases where infants had herpes and genital warts because of sexual abuse in these communities). This is a pyrrhic victory. Yes, the symbolic leader of these crimes has been convicted, but the rest of these disgusting perverts are just going further underground because of it; they know they have to be more careful and insular now. In many towns the church leaders are also members of the police force, and people who want to help the women and children escape from harm are actually being run off/shot at by what passes for law enforcement officers in these places.
I agree with Kai–polygamy is not necessarily bad for women. By definition (if not common in practice), polygamy can refer to one woman with multiple husbands, as well. Polygyny, which is what is being referred to in specific here, is not always bad for women, either. It was definitely so in this case, but there are just as many fundamentalist religions, Christian and other wise, that don’t practice polygamy and still subjugate women. There are non-religious pedophiles and ephebophiles who harm women and children.
The point is, there are screwed up people everywhere, in every group, and it’s usually these people who make the presses and lead those outside the group to believe the entire group is like that. I think it’s more accurate to say “Warren Jeffs is an abuser, and he used the veneer of religion to excuse his actions,” than to blame religion for these things happening.
Certainly we can’t say that polygamy is inherently bad – there are even some fundamentalist Mormon sects who do it successfully without any abuse (see that Sister Wives show, which, while weird to some people, is still an example of a loving polygamist family). And polyamory in general can also be very successful. It’s when it’s institutionalized, rather than a choice made by consenting adults, that it becomes a problem.
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How can you call it gang “rape” if five of the six people involved are having a good time?