White Slavery

It would seem that any depravity can be excused if is is done in the name of religion.

Even slavery.

When polygamist Warren Jeffs was arrested most bloggers preferred talking about his attire , the genetic damage of polygamy or (worse) finding excuses   to defend the SOB , while the snake in this tale lay coiled quietly in a corner.

It's slavery. (The correct caption for this picture should be, escaped slave.)

When you force women, from birth, to obey your every command, when you force them to sexually service you from puberty, even bearing your children while they are themselves children, when you isolate them from the larger world from birth to death, you are practicing slavery.

What is the real difference between Mormons defending Jeffs   (calling him a leader of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) or Southern Baptists a century and a half ago defending black slavery?  

Only the race of the victims.

What is the difference between Jeffs' using his “religious authority” to intimidate witnesses and corrupt authority, and the abuses of the Mafia, or the Medillin cartel?

There is none.

Today's slaves in the Mountain West are white women. They are just as enslaved as blacks were 160 years ago. Just because the chains today consist of religious authority or the fear of being shunned by the only people they know doesn't change the reality. If you are born a slave, brought up a slave and live a slave's life, you're just as much a slave as the man or woman who rebels against their state of captivity. Mental and emotional chains, imposed from birth, are just as effective as physical chains. (And on most Antebellum plantations, the chains were not visible to the casual observer.)

There is an inherent tension between the absolute freedom given religious groups by the First Amendment and all the other rights enumerated by the Bill of Rights. Over the last several decades, judges have tended to lean toward endorsing religious freedom, especially since the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

But there's a limit.

Unfortunately we're not really dealing with a small sect here. Polygamy has been at the heart of the Mormon Church since its founding. (If you want to read a spirited defense of the practice, might I recommend Orson Scott Card's Saints.) Despite the church's official turnabout on this in 1890, the idea that women are not slaves to men is only skin deep.

The excuse that women “choose” to live this way in deference to “God's will” is, in the end, the same nonsense Southern Baptists spouted for 100 years to defend black subjugation. The way in which LDS leaders have tried to play the press and discourage in-depth coverage should be self-explanatory. In my view it prevents former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, or any other Mormon, from deserving consideration for high office. Their treatment of women as property whether in or out of plural marriage needs to be condemned by everyone.

I'm writing at length about this because I think it's important you understand, and because it's vital federal authorities take this seriously. How can we condemn Shiite or Sunni clerics for their teachings, and the result of those teachings, while we allow this kind of nonsense on our own soil? The so-called Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints needs to be destroyed, utterly. White slavery needs to end.

So long as anyone is a slave, no man is free. And no woman, either.