Published: May 06, 2008 12:20 pm            

Gene Lyons: Thank heaven for little girls

The First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom serves as the very cornerstone of American liberty. By minimizing sectarian political rivalries, it has helped American religious institutions to flourish.

To the connoisseur of human folly, however, it’s literally a godsend, providing an endlessly diverting spectacle of gullibility and fanaticism. Judging by recent American history, there’s no doctrine so self-destructive that some fast-talking scoundrel can’t gather a band of zealous followers, nor any shortage of softheaded defenders to rationalize their transgressions.

After more than 900 Kool-Aid suicides at Jonestown, the self-immolating Branch Davidians of Waco, and those peculiar young men who killed themselves in San Diego in the rapt expectation that benign space aliens from Planet Nutball would transport their souls to an extra-galactic techno-paradise, one wouldn’t have thought further innovations in the realm of magical thinking possible.

Then along came Warren Jeffs, prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a century-old breakaway Mormon sect. Among other theological absurdities, Jeffs teaches that polygamous marriage brings glorification in heaven.

At least three wives are required for salvation. With Apocalypse looming — the end is always near among crackpot sects — there’s no time to waste. Young girls must be married and impregnated ASAP to save their husbands’ immortal souls.

If polygamy were the whole story at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, it wouldn’t matter much. Bigamy is normally prosecuted only when there’s deception or tax fraud involved. “It injures me not whether my neighbor believes in 20 gods or none,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote. “It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Same deal with multiple wives, most would say.

Indeed, given the popularity of “Girls Gone Wild” and “Barely Legal” videos in the secular world, it’s tempting to see peddling obedient young brides to middle-aged husbands as a stroke of ecclesiastical marketing genius and leave FLDS members alone. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to it. Many brides aren’t legal at all; they’re children, years younger than the legal age of consent, which is 17 in Texas.

Jeffs’ zeal for mating girls as young as 13 with pious old goats personally chosen by the patriarch earned him a Utah prison sentence as accomplice to rape, after a highly publicized trial. The Yearning for Zion group migrated to Texas partly because states like Utah and Arizona, with higher populations of orthodox Mormons, were wise to them. Equally objectionable, if harder to prosecute, is the practice of culling teenage boys like excess roosters — the so-called “Lost Boys” worked hard at far below minimum wage, then abandoned.

Given the tragedy at Waco, Texas officials must have been highly reluctant to act. The last thing the state’s already overburdened, underfunded Child Protective Services agency needed was 463 new clients needing shelter from such modern corruptions as television and the Internet, lest their religious sensibilities be violated. FLDS members also shun processed foods, wear clothing unavailable at Wal-Mart — the color red, they believe, is reserved for Jesus alone — and are accustomed to living together in large extended family groups. Their First Amendment rights must be honored and protected, even as the crimes of the fathers must be prosecuted.

How many crimes remains to be seen. It appears likely that the state’s decision to give DNA maternity and paternity tests to all of the children could result in numerous prosecutions. It’s already been determined that of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 currently in state custody, 29 have children and two are pregnant. By definition, that’s 31 counts of statutory rape.

Persons moved by the televised tears of FLDS women, argues Sara Robinson on the invaluable Orcinus Web site, don’t understand that they’re virtually slaves:

“Almost every feature of these women’s lives is determined by someone else. They do not choose what they wear, whom they live with, when and whom they marry, or when and with whom they have sex. From the day they’re born, they can be reassigned at a moment’s notice to another father or husband, another household or another community. ... If they object to any of this, they’re subject to losing access to the resources they need to raise their kids: They can be moved to a trailer with no heat and given less food than more compliant wives, until they learn to ‘keep sweet.’”

Does it matter that the original 911 call allegedly from a 16-year-old girl named “Sara” who complained of being sexually abused by her middle-aged husband inside the Yearning for Zion compound may have been a hoax? Not necessarily.

As long as Texas authorities acted in good faith, any evidence they uncovered should hold up in court; although it’s surely ironic to hear people who complain constantly about criminals being turned loose on legal “technicalities” argue that it should not.



Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a

national magazine award

winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President”

(St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

You can e-mail Lyons at

genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.

        

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