It's been known for years that there exist fundamentalist men who raise young girls in isolation, limit their education, and when these girls reach puberty assign them to be married to an older man in the community. These girls are then raped and forced to bear as many children as they can. The men they are married to may already have dozens of "wives," or more, and dozens of children. At the same time, in an effort to limit competition with the privileged elders, teenaged boys, with the same limited education and experience as the girls, are forced out of the community to fend for themselves in an unfamiliar world—that of Utah and Arizona and the rest of the United States.
|
|
 |
Why are these Talibanesque crimes against women, the family and the institution of marriage not on the radar of Family Research Council, Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Woman for America, or James Dobson's Focus on the Family? There are two reasons. First, the religious rights of men in our "Christian nation" trump the civil rights of women, even if the men's religious rights include child molestation, rape, and involuntary servitude. Second, this issue has to do with real people now, in real time, and is not a problem that exists, like the right to life or the homosexual agenda, in the ether of potentiality. In other words, these women and children can be helped and there's almost no way that carpetbagging Christians can make money off of them.
The recent press circuit of Elizabeth Smart and her family could have brought the issue of Christian polygamy into public discourse. Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped by a Christian fundamentalist, allegedly to become his bride. But, Brian Mitchell, Ms. Smart's captor, is presented to the public as a lone nutcase. Occasionally is he described as a Mormon fundamentalist, which only serves to separate him from Christian fundamentalists in general. In the last twelve months, however, a spate of books on fundamentalist Christian (Mormon) crimes and excesses has been published. The five books listed here deal primarily with two subjects: the criminal aspects of polygamy and the 1857 Meadow Mountain Massacre in which Mormons disguised as Indians attacked a wagon train and murdered 120 men, women, and children.
Christian Polygamy and Violence
PREDATORS, PREY, AND OTHER KINFOLK
"I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eighth of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say," writes writes author Dorothy Solomon in Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy. A well written and balanced personal account, Solomon writes of her mother's nervous breakdowns and her father, physician Rulon Allred's assassination by a rival clan. The family bore the stresses of poverty, threats of discovery and government raids, and its eventual scattering. Solomon now lives in a monogomous marriage and has been disowned by some of her family members.
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN
In 1984, on "direct orders from God," Brenda and Erika Lafferty, the wife and infant daughter of Allen Lafferty, were brutally murdered, their throats cut by Allen Lafferty's two brothers, Ron and Dan. Members of a fundamentalist Christian (Mormon) sect, Ron and Dan Lafferty are now in prison. Author Jon Krakauer meticulously lays out the details of the crime in Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Krakauer sets the crime against the history of the Mormon church and patriarchal tenets of mainstream Christian faith.
Mountain Meadow Massacre
Why the sudden surge of interest in the already well-publicized account of the Mountain Meadow Massacre, an event that took place almost 150 years ago?
RED WATER
In 1857 a party of Mormons, dressed as Indians, attacked a wagon train, murdering men, women and children. Only one man, John D. Lee, was executed for the crime. In Red Water, Judith Freeman tells the story of the massacre from the point of view of Lee's three wives. Freeman depicts the harsh Utah landscape and the brutality of the massacre with vivid accuracy, at times a bit overblown.
AMERICAN MASSACRE
Sally Denton's blames the attack on greed: the Baker-Fancher wagon train had 100s of head of cattle and carried cash. Denton draws conclusions not fully supported by historical record but is highly readable.
THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE
Juanita Brooks, a Mormon and resident of Utah, has written a historically accurate and exhaustively researched account in The Mountain Meadows Massacre. The two previous books draw on her account as well as that of Will Bagley. Brooks' book paints the troubled greys of her faith as she courageously reconstructs this event. Juanita Brooks originally published the book in 1950 to the consternation of the Mormon community.
BLOOD OF THE PROPHETS
Will Bagley, a Salt Lake Tribune columnist, picks up where Brooks leaves off in : Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Bagley attempts to determine the involvement of Brigham Young, a key patriarch and then president of the Mormon church. Bagley's account includes new source material; accounts from the Paiutes charged with the attack, and Mormons who objected and refused to keep silent.
It's most important that these events, the problems with fundamentalist Mormon polygamy and the Mountain Meadow massacre, not be viewed as anomolies of a fringe religion or past long gone. The basic beliefs of Mormons, fundamentalist or not, concerning half the human population—women, mirror perfectly the beliefs of mainstream American Christianity. In the pressure cooker of a harsh frontier existence or the marginalized and insular communities that shelter polygamous clans it should come as no surprise that these beliefs might end in abuse and violence. These incidents should serve as a warning to all people of faith that "godly" discrimination against anyone sets the favored believer as Lord over the other, and creates an idol that can wreak only destruction. Mormons, fundamentalist Mormons, Muslims, fundamentalist Muslims, and others with religions we do not fully understand, have more in common than not with mainstream Christianity and "traditional American values" when that commonality is thinly veiled hate and contempt for women.
Other articles related to Christian Marriage and Family:
Christian Sex Education LP's
New secular study shows divorce may be greater threat to marriage than originally thought, 2003
Supreme Court Sodomy Ruling: Wives forced to find new reason for denying sex acts with unpronouncable Latin names, 2003
Assembly of God Church capitulates to powerful divorce lobby, 2003
Chuck Colson Watch | Why Women Love Big Government, by Charles Colson, reviewed by Miss Poppy Dixon, 1996
|
