Read Online “It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass by Joanne Hanks, Steve Cuno - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joanne Hanks, Steve Cuno
Ads: Link
woefully
weak method for warning potential victims, was by and large the only “system”
in place in the TLC.
It didn’t help that Harmston and the apostles were easily
swayed by a good show of repentance. If predators are good at appearing
harmless before they’re caught, they are masters at appearing remorseful after.
Crocodile tears and emphatic promises to behave were all it took to get TLC
leaders to forgive and—worse—forget.
Let’s be honest. Not just polygamist cults are guilty of
turning a blind eye. It is a much broader problem. The injunction of Jesus to
“judge not that ye be not judged” and to forgive those who sin against you
“until seventy times seven” needs limits. Families, neighborhoods, and
religious communities need to stop thinking that being a good Christian means
allowing a repentant wolf back into the henhouse. What would Jesus do? I don’t
care. What we should do is ensure
that no predator ever gets a chance to claim another victim.
A reaction from a former TLC member to an early version of
this manuscript illustrates the problem. He accused me of being “a little hard
on Laura.” We should forgive her, he said, for the Ogden incident happened long
ago, and she had repented. “Besides,” he added, “she said that the girl who
went to the police lied.”
Too hard on Laura? I decided I hadn’t been hard enough. You have just read the beefed-up version.
Racism
Following the Mormon Church’s lead, the TLC ordained all
“worthy” males age 12 and older to its priesthood. Yet the TLC parted company
with the Mormons on an important issue. After a ban of nearly a century and a
half, God decided in 1978—without explanation or apology for the prior
policy—that it was OK for the Mormon Church to ordain Negroes to the
priesthood.
Harmston’s God stuck with the original Mormon position.
Black skin was a curse brought upon oneself through personal unworthiness in a
pre-earth existence. Blacks were “the seed of Cain.” And a white person was
better off dead than mixing his or her seed with the seed of Cain.
The concept of dark skin as a divine curse and identifier of
people to avoid is found in Mormon scripture. The Pearl of Great Price says
that God “put a mark upon Cain,” that “the seed of Cain were black,” and that
those so marked “had not place” among the rest of Adam’s posterity. The Book of
Mormon says that God became so fed up with the disobedient ancestors of today’s
Native Americans that “… as they were white, and exceedingly fair and
delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did
cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”
The Bible isn’t blameless, either. It wasn’t lost on the TLC
(or, for that matter, on the Southern States prior to the American Civil War)
that the Bible contains implicit endorsements of slavery and explicit
endorsements of genocide.
Notwithstanding, an African American man actually joined our
cult for a brief time. He did so despite the fact that he could hold no
priesthood, have no celestial marriage, and, therefore, take no plural wives.
For that matter, he could take no wife from among us at all, for there were no
black women in our ranks, and we believed that a white woman who mixed her seed
with his would curse her posterity, priesthood-wise, for eternity.
Why on earth he had anything to do with the likes of us is
beyond me.
He didn’t stick around for long.
Well, well, well, if it isn’t welfare
Polygamists bristle at the suggestion that the second
marriage and those that follow aren’t real marriages. Who cares that the law
doesn’t recognize plural marriage? Polygamist women will tell you that they are
married. MARRIED. Don’t you dare call them single.
Polygamists also preach from the pulpit that government
welfare is an evil system that rewards slackers and robs the honest of the
incentive to work.
These high-minded principles do not prevent polygamists from
setting
weak method for warning potential victims, was by and large the only “system”
in place in the TLC.
It didn’t help that Harmston and the apostles were easily
swayed by a good show of repentance. If predators are good at appearing
harmless before they’re caught, they are masters at appearing remorseful after.
Crocodile tears and emphatic promises to behave were all it took to get TLC
leaders to forgive and—worse—forget.
Let’s be honest. Not just polygamist cults are guilty of
turning a blind eye. It is a much broader problem. The injunction of Jesus to
“judge not that ye be not judged” and to forgive those who sin against you
“until seventy times seven” needs limits. Families, neighborhoods, and
religious communities need to stop thinking that being a good Christian means
allowing a repentant wolf back into the henhouse. What would Jesus do? I don’t
care. What we should do is ensure
that no predator ever gets a chance to claim another victim.
A reaction from a former TLC member to an early version of
this manuscript illustrates the problem. He accused me of being “a little hard
on Laura.” We should forgive her, he said, for the Ogden incident happened long
ago, and she had repented. “Besides,” he added, “she said that the girl who
went to the police lied.”
Too hard on Laura? I decided I hadn’t been hard enough. You have just read the beefed-up version.
Racism
Following the Mormon Church’s lead, the TLC ordained all
“worthy” males age 12 and older to its priesthood. Yet the TLC parted company
with the Mormons on an important issue. After a ban of nearly a century and a
half, God decided in 1978—without explanation or apology for the prior
policy—that it was OK for the Mormon Church to ordain Negroes to the
priesthood.
Harmston’s God stuck with the original Mormon position.
Black skin was a curse brought upon oneself through personal unworthiness in a
pre-earth existence. Blacks were “the seed of Cain.” And a white person was
better off dead than mixing his or her seed with the seed of Cain.
The concept of dark skin as a divine curse and identifier of
people to avoid is found in Mormon scripture. The Pearl of Great Price says
that God “put a mark upon Cain,” that “the seed of Cain were black,” and that
those so marked “had not place” among the rest of Adam’s posterity. The Book of
Mormon says that God became so fed up with the disobedient ancestors of today’s
Native Americans that “… as they were white, and exceedingly fair and
delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did
cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”
The Bible isn’t blameless, either. It wasn’t lost on the TLC
(or, for that matter, on the Southern States prior to the American Civil War)
that the Bible contains implicit endorsements of slavery and explicit
endorsements of genocide.
Notwithstanding, an African American man actually joined our
cult for a brief time. He did so despite the fact that he could hold no
priesthood, have no celestial marriage, and, therefore, take no plural wives.
For that matter, he could take no wife from among us at all, for there were no
black women in our ranks, and we believed that a white woman who mixed her seed
with his would curse her posterity, priesthood-wise, for eternity.
Why on earth he had anything to do with the likes of us is
beyond me.
He didn’t stick around for long.
Well, well, well, if it isn’t welfare
Polygamists bristle at the suggestion that the second
marriage and those that follow aren’t real marriages. Who cares that the law
doesn’t recognize plural marriage? Polygamist women will tell you that they are
married. MARRIED. Don’t you dare call them single.
Polygamists also preach from the pulpit that government
welfare is an evil system that rewards slackers and robs the honest of the
incentive to work.
These high-minded principles do not prevent polygamists from
setting
Similar Books
