We've all heard about the FLDS scandal, yes? I've been following it with the usual interest in American spectacle and grotesquery. There's much to be said. The most recent news, as far as I'm aware, is that government and state agencies are currently trying to dis-entangle the dramatically convoluted genetic lines of this particular band of fundies. It's fucked up in more than one way and from more than one direction. On the one hand, fundamentalists...yikes. Double triple yikes. All the freaking way. Scary, scary shit. On the other, I can't get behind this hysterical desire to simply figure out which sperm went to which egg, as though if we could only discover the truth of the heterosexual nuclear family in the midst of all this unwieldy, patriarchal heterogeneity, that order would return and we could all feel better about any possible future solution. We're all about opening up the straightjacket definition of the family, right? Every child deserving a mother and a father, and this being the key to normalcy, health, and success, blah blah blah. But raffling pubescent girls off to crusty older men, and shuffling younger men off to the suburbs of Utah cities so that they won't be in competition with the aforementioned crusties for the aforementioned girls? Or, not raffling, but "joining in spiritual marriages" with said crusties and popping out as many babies as their bodies can handle.
Anyway, I've been wondering wondering wondering, where on the earth the mainstream, non-polygamous LDS folks are on all of this. Where's the public statement--disavowing, supporting, remaining neutral, WHATEVER? After all, these are the majority of the folks who will be living this one down in posterity. The FLDS, after all, will have retreated to some compound in the middle of nowhere, filled with bolts and bolts of gingham cloth and hair gel (have you seen the 'dos?), so they won't be dealing with the social backlash. Assuming there is one. And then, in the midst of all this wondering I was doing, comes Savage with this post on the Slog. If you love me, you'll read it. It's short. I promise.
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2 comments:
Long live the Slog.
Also, good call on the silence of the so-called "mainstream" religious-types. QC and I have been harping on this since college (well, I call it "college." QC calls it "undergrad.")
I've always wondered where the "good" Christians are on all these issues. Why are they so afraid to condemn this sort of behavior? It seems like after the civil rights movement, Christian do-gooders put their Bibles on a top shelf somewhere and forgot all about the fact that early Christianity was an anti-imperial, anti-colonial, anti-poverty, social justice movement. Why don't any liberal Christian figures have the power of, say, Phelps, Dobson, or even Falwell in death? The disgusting complacency of most mainstream Christians was one of the main reasons I chose to become Buddhist. I really didn't feel like I could be part of a religion that teaches you to ignore problems in the world, so that when you die you can go to some happy place where there's no conflict. What's the purpose of that? Ugh.
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