The trial of a polygamist 'prophet'

CNN: Polygamist 'prophet' found guilty of aiding rape

Polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for using his religious authority to push a 14-year-old girl into a marriage she did not want.

Wall [the victim] spent three days on the stand, frequently sobbing as she described how she felt trapped in a marriage she did not want, to a man she did not like.

She said she repeatedly told Jeffs that she did not want to be married and was uncomfortable with her new husband's sexual advances. Jeffs advised her to pray and to submit to her husband, learn to love him, and bear his children -- or risk losing her "eternal salvation," she said.

Thus spake the prophet Jeffs: submit to rape and turn over control of your life to a man you despise, or you won't go to heaven. What could anyone say in defense of this repulsive fraud?

The defense countered that authorities were persecuting Jeffs because of his religious beliefs, which include practicing plural marriage as the way to heaven. "His church, his religious beliefs is what's on trial here, and it's being dressed up as a rape," attorney Walter Bugden argued.

Absolutely right. Ignore this defending attorney's apparently tenuous grasp of grammar and syntax for a second, and consider what he's saying. Warren Jeffs's religious beliefs are being put on trial for rape.

It's true. But his defending attorney says that like it's a bad thing.

Of course this reprobate's religious beliefs are being put on trial. The defending attorney is right about that, but here's the specious turn in his argument: he makes it seem that the beliefs are on trial BECAUSE they are religious.

The beliefs are not being assaulted because they are affiliated with a religion. They are being assaulted because they have led to degenerate and malicious behavior that is patently unacceptable in a free and lawful society.

Notice, though, that it is not the religious beliefs themselves that are being prosecuted, but the actions that the beliefs inspired. This is a free country, and you can believe whatever you want, however outrageous, but it is foolish to expect amnesty for acting on those beliefs. To use a more secular example, take the KKK; they can think and say whatever they want about minorities, but they can't cite the freedoms of belief and expression when they go lynch someone.

This trial is reminiscent of another that took place some eighty-two years ago. In the Scopes trial, the religious beliefs of anti-evolution America were taken to task - not because they were religious, but because they were ignorant, because they supported stultifying the education of our children, because they favored ancient myths over scientific fact.

Is it right that reprehensible, outrageous, or idiotic beliefs take on a sacrosanct aura of legitimacy simply because they are associated with a religion? Should we tolerate things like statutory rape or rejection of scientific knowledge because the 'sacred' preachings of ancient texts and a few sanctimonious frauds in long robes claim it's what god wants?

In a free society such as ours, such beliefs will inevitably come into conflict with reason. And they will lose.