Warren Jeffs Convicted
There were two counts of conviction which the jury reached after a long and often contentious deliberation.
Here's the full article from the Salt Lake Tribune
There are many levels and cultural/social questions in this case. Utah is, by any practical assesment, a place with an established and entrenched state religion. The LDS church and the state government when the prophet had his revealation about discontinuing the practice of plural marriage all took the prophet's words as the revealed word of god. For those of you who are not familiar with the LDS church I will ask you to please understand that sects like the one here are aberrations. The bulk of my Mormon neighbors and friends are simply people who follow a different faith sincerely. They are some of the finest people you can know. I am not a big fan of organized religion, I have no pure or strong faith of my own. Folks like this have no relationship to the real and recognised faith as practiced in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, and many other places in the west. No matter what else I might think about the Mormons, they found a family for me to live with so that I could attend a decent school in High School. They did that to help promote their faith and their viewpoint, but they also did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Most of the time when I'm looking into a Mormon heart I see a good one.
Simple historical facts say that the Mormons as a society were already experiencing many of these same results from the practice that we've seen with the "Fundamental" offshoots.
It still took a lot of gumption and dedication to duty on the part of the jurors to convict their neighbors. That's something we try to stay away from out here in the west. I figure my business with my neighbors pretty much stops at their side of the fence. They treat me with the same deference. If somebody's barn catches fire, I'm there to help and I can rely on the same help from them in my times of trouble.
There are eight charges against Jeffs still pending in Arizona.
For some true in depth reporting of this case check out this page of links from the Deseret News.
Personally, I'm glad to see that pinch faced beady eyed son of a bitch go down. I hope he gets more of the same from my own state.
3B's
posted by The Minstrel Boy at 10:03 AM
8 Comments:
friend of mine that used to live near Salt Lake City calls Utah "the Stepford State".
yo soy Horsedooty!
you and me both mb. he's nothing but a sick perv wrapping up his sickness with a shining ribbon of religion and forcing people to accept his "gift!"
fuck him. i hate men like that.
The tithe. Blech.
i take great care when dealing with my mormon neighbors. we leave a great deal unspoken. for instance my next door neighbor's wife has not figured out that my cultured, elegant, and witty cousin is gay and the man who is always here with him is his partner. she just thinks he's a great guy and that he plays the piano beautifully. when she has her "will and grace" moment it will require more than a little cognitive dissonance to balance.
there are a great deal of practical and sound community practices that are tenets of the mormon faith. good mormons are good people. if you let them go very deep into their theology though it starts getting pretty whack. so, i choose to accomodate and love my friends and neighbors for who they are and simply not go there, ever.
what a person believes or doesn't is very personal and their right but then there are people like this man.
i have family, friends and aquaintences with many different beliefs and some, none at all. i respect them. i hope whatever they believe in fulfills them and helps them be better human beings.
this man, i'd like 5 mininutes alone with him and i'll have a ball peen hammer.
I think there are damned sick people in this world and a lot of them do their damned sick crimes while using religion as a shield.
Someone tried to say this was a "freedom of religion" thing. No sir. We have plenty of objective and subjective evidence that statutory rape of a 12 year old girl by a 30 year old man is wrong. Outlawing statutory rape of a 12 year old girl by a 30 year old man is not a religious thing. It applies to all religions, not Branch Mormons alone. It is a "our society has decided this is wrong" thing.
You can't use religion to condone things that our society has determined at every level to be just plain wrong. You can't invent a religious reason for your perversions and then scream "religious persecution!" when convicted of them. It just don't work like that. I'm glad that a jury of this pervert's peers agreed.
As for the "don't go there" bit, yep, know what you mean. I was at a desert gathering a month or so ago, and kept my mouth shut about anything political. Someone would have gotten their feelings hurt, tempers would have been raised, and all for no good purpose. Sometimes just shaking your head and offering someone a beer is the best response you can make. Folks will believe stupid things because they want to believe them, and if it's an irrational belief like, say, baptism of already-dead people into the Mormon Church is needed in order for them to go to heaven or if you're Tom Cruise belief that you must build a 30 ft deep bunker to protect your family from the impending destruction of most life on earth by the evil space alien Xenu, there's nothing to do but agree to say nothing. Tom's bunker is hurting nobody, and neither is the Mormon Church's grand geneology project for baptism of dead people. As long as nobody is being hurt, it just is not my business, and not worth hurting folks' feelings over.
- Badtux the Desert Penguin
that would be my thoughts exactly.
sherry, the odd little pgh. poet
(and spoiler of my grandaughter supreme!)
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