It's devastating to see how such abuse passes from one generation to the next.

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So, if Warren Jeff's received contradictory orders, that means that he should promote polygamy. It also means that God is maybe a bit of a loon. (He did, after all, condone polygamy, then decry it, then condoned it again, then decried it again.)

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The ONLY reason the Mormons officially abandoned plural marriage was to end their persecution by the US government, as you said.

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But if God told him he was supposed to start a church? What's the guy supposed to do?

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It's actually 60%. 262 (victims of either direct or witnessed sexual abuse of children) divided by 439 children. I think we can all say that 60% would be high vs. the incident rate in mainstream society.

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in short, believing in something greater than yourself (which is how I define real faith because you always seem like the most real thing in the world, to yourself) usually concomitantly means not acting in sole, unabashed, self-interest, which is what these dudes do.

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I don't know that what you're describing is true, though. There's a lot of kinds of things that are bigger than the individual (family, tribe, nation, Communism, God), and even the biggest and best of them (God, presumably) often resulted in men of faith doing pretty terrible things. Are we meant to think that they no longer counted as men of faith, because they fervently believed that they were supposed to be burning heretics? Or is the desire to burn heretics something that is possible only in the absence of faith? That all incidents of terrible activity are the product of selfish self-interest, and not of someone misunderstanding "the greater good"?

I don't know what these guys are thinking, obviously, but I'm not willing to rule out the possibility that they behave like dickheads because their faith commanded it--it seems to me that faith doesn't, historically, have a really good record for excluding dickheads.

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What makes their faith insufficient is that it isn't faith. It's fear. The leaders of the sect (and of cults in general) take advantage of people's need to feel like they are a part of a community. If you read interviews with former member of the People's Temple (Jim Jones' cult), you will read that most of the people said that they spent most of their lives feeling like outsiders, that they didn't belong to any sort of community and that they craved a sense of belonging. Jim Jones was able to fill that void by making people feel as though they belonged to something, a community, and gave them an identity that made them feel secure. He prayed on people's insecurities to bring them into the cult, and used their fear to keep them from leaving the cult. I believe that the same thing is happening here.

As to the "what is faith" question, here's my idea:

Faith is believing that, even if you get laid off from you job, even if you lose your house to foreclosure, even if your closest loved one dies, even if life throws you the toughest curveball imaginable, you will be ok and you will come out of your crises as a stronger person. You may have faith in God and believe that God will protect you, and believe that God knows best, or you may simply have faith. And I think that, when a person reaches enlightenment, they no longer have faith "in" something, they just have faith. Having faith in something eventually gets you to the point where you just have faith, and you no longer need the "in".

Just my $0.02 idea.

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What about a mother who gives her child in marriage to an older man--a man whom that mother knows will sexually abuse the child. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that she even recognizes it as abuse. Does her faith help her here? Or does her belief that no matter what happens to her or her daughter everything is going to be okay actually hinder her?

If we accept that enlightenment is an optimal condition, does this mean that having faith in anything is equally good? If faith "in" something, even if it's vicious and terrible, can lead to enlightenment does that mean that all paths are equally valid?

And, given that all it takes is for you to have faith in something, and that it's at least possible that some of the men that abused and impregnated twelve year old girls and the mothers that gave those girls into bondage believed that it was at the behest of their god, then the FLDS is, spiritually and morally speaking, anyway, as valid a path to enlightenment as anything else, isn't it?

It's a rare thing for people to achieve enlightenment, anyway, so I tend to discount faith's capacity to produce enlightened people. Without that, it doesn't seem like there's anything respectable about faith at all--it's just as likely to produce terrible consequences as it is to produce good ones. And, once we consider the chance at producing enlightened people, we've now got to weigh it against the odds and numbers of producing terrible, terrible people.

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However: I don't think any faith produces enlightened people. Enlightenment is something you have to strive for, that you have to earn. You have to lose your ego first, and so on. I need to finish reading Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and then I can be more coherent...

One thing though: I saw a movie once where a mystic said that to understand religions you have to look at your hand. You have one finger for each of the major religions. The fundamentalists, ie people who blow shit up, are the fingertips. For them, religion is an identity and completely wrapped up in the ego. Then, as you move up towards your knuckles, you'll find people who maybe go to church every sunday or temple every friday, and they don't want to kill people but they still might think that their way is the only true way and identity is still a big factor. Then as you move farther still, you'll find that there are people with a more all inclusive view, and then finally you'll discover that, in the center of the palm of your hand, they all meet in the middle. The differences are gone, the ego is gone, and presto: enlightenment. It's a progression, and the rituals of the various religions exist to help the person reach enlightenment, and when he or she reaches it, the rituals fall away and are no longer necessary.

If someone has faith in something that's "vicious and terrible," that person is on the wrong path, stuck at fingertip level, if you will. I don't think religions produce terrible people, I think terrible people use religions for their own gain. They use religion to bring them power. Any religion can be enlightening and any religion can be vulgar and dangerous--it's what you choose to make of it. The problem is that people make that choice for other people, and deprive them of the chance to decide for themselves what they want their faith to be. For example, there are parts of the middle east where the koran is available only in Arabic and the people don't understand arabic, so they have to accept the interpretation given to them by the imams. I think the same thing is going on here: the leaders of the cult have isolated the women and children from the rest of the world so that the leaders' interpretation of Christianity is the only one they will be exposed to, and they will have no choice but to accept it. I don't think it's real faith if you don't discover it on your own. It's not real faith if you force it on someone.

Lastly, I think this quote from the Koran shows why Warren Jeff's "faith" isn't real:

"Hast thou seen him who belies religion? That is the one who is rough to the orphan, and urges not the feeding of the needy, so woe to the praying ones, who are unmindful of their prayer! Who do (good) to be seen, and refrain from acts of kindness"

Child abuse = your religion isn't real.

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I'm having some religious issues today. I'm going to church for the first time in a year tonight, to placate my parents. I.. meh.

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@PilgrimSoul: Allowing people to choose their own families -- I am SO down with that (since it's what I've been doing for years).

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Except, I'm not really sure I can think of a good reason why plural marriage shouldn't be legal.

Which is not to say that abusive pedophilia like this should ever be legal. "Consenting adults" being the operative phrase.

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I guess you could make a decent "it would be too complicated" argument, but then it just sounds like an implementation problem.

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Yeah, that's a good point. I guess saying that is sort of a cop out and a way to not really discuss the actual practice.

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I could get behind a resolution that allows me as a single person to confer the same benefits that legally married people enjoy upon one person of my choice.

Obviously, the current denial of equal rights to the LGBT community doesn't sit well with me.

But as a single person, I'm also really bothered by the fact that the government confers benefits upon people whom it deems 'marriage-worthy' that I will never have available to me if I remain single. The whole idea of state-sponsored marriage, with it's benefits, is discriminatory. And that's really the point of state-sponsored marriage--to shape behavior and encourage marriage between those the state deems worthy.

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This same argument could be applied to health insurance; for instance, first wife gets coverage, all else would be elective and you'd have to pay more for. Or husband(s).

The really sticky situation would be second wife has two husbands; how does THAT work?

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My parents like to guilt me about it and I can't find a good way to say: NO I DO NOT BELIEVE IN ALL OF THIS AND IT IS VERY AWKWARD FOR ME TO HAVE TO BLOW OFF 20 PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KNOW WHEN I WILL BE COMING BACK.

bah. Thank you for the company.

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That is what my marriage is. I am a straight woman married to a mostly closeted gay man. I married my best friend, who has terminal cancer. This way, I am included in his health care, AND, I get to plan his funeral - not his evangelical Christian mother. He is my person, my family. My daughter adores him.

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