No Thinking Required

Well, everyone's second favorite prophet and polygamist is in the news again. Of course I'm speaking of Warren Jeffs. For those of you living in Utah, where prophets and polygamists are still considered cool and news-worthy, you already know all about this situation. For those of you that live in other places, where silly things like education, the economy, and politics are news-worthy, I'll give you some background. Warren Jeffs is/was the leader (prophet) of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS for short. Please don't confuse the FLDS with the straight up LDS church (you know, the Mormons) because both organizations believe different things. For example, the FLDS still practice plural marriage while the regular LDS folk (I'll call them RLDS) have evolved enough to realize that more wives exponentially increases the amount of bullshit one has to deal with. Another marked difference centers around race: the FLDS don't allow African-Americans to become members of their church while the RLDS started giving full-membership to African-Americans in 1978. Other differences include portfolio size, dress code, and probably a bunch of other things as well.

As far as I've heard (or just now made up) the "FLDS" sobriquet isn't well liked by either organization because it sounds too much like "F the LDS" which is about as rude as standing on street corner with signs supporting Prop 8 or doing other sorts of Christian activities. I have heard some shorten the "fundamentalist" part of the name to just the "fundies" or, in my case, I use the latter part of the word and call them the "mentalists" which is also the name of a television program on CBS about handicapped people.

As I mentioned above, Jeffs is back in the news again, this time because God has told him the world will end soon and he should alert his followers. The only reason that's news-worthy is because Jeffs is in a Texas prison, and I guess that having to give revelation to your followers via the telephone is news-worthy. The real news concerning Jeffs is how he got to prison in the first place. Long story short, God told Jeffs to marry several underage girls and have sex with them (by "underage" I mean 12- 15 years-old). According to Jeffs, however, it wasn't rape because God told him to do it (oh, the circularity!). So my question regarding Jeffs isn't about the end-of-world predictions, but about the God-sanctioned rape of children (good band). I'm specifically wondering how a religious leader justifies having sex with a twelve year-old under any circumstance, including a command from God. If God told me to marry a twelve year-old girl, I would think that I'm schizophrenic, or that the entity telling me to do something so objectively wrong (there's no room for moral relativism here) isn't a source for righteousness. Watch an episode of Lockup, Inside America's Toughest Prisons, or even Oz, and you'll find that rapists and child molesters aren't having as much fun as the other inmates. Why not? Well, it seems as though arsonists, vandals, thieves, drug traffickers, embezzlers, shoplifters, solicitors, money launderers, and murderers have a better moral compass regarding children than some religious leaders -- both current and past.

If it's all too much to think about, do what most other people do when faced with important questions -- ignore them.

Religion is just like prison, but not as uplifting.