Deep Thoughts: Cultist Allan Keate convicted

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Cultist Allan Keate convicted

Polygamy is one of those gray areas for me. I don’t really care what consenting adults do. If they want to live as a large family with one husband and a bunch of wives, that’s fine by me. It might not be legal, but I don’t think it is amoral. Where it goes awry is when cult like religious behavior warps the boundaries of propriety. From what I can tell (in my limited reading), this is the norm with polygamy, and it is normally wrapped in religious dogma.

Mormon offshoot cult member Allan Eugene Keate of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter-Day Saints is a good example. He raped a child given to him as a wife. Apparently, the giving of children as wives is a common practice.

The prosecution witnesses included a DNA expert who testified Keate had fathered a baby born to the teenager.

Some of the most dramatic testimony came Monday from Rebecca Musser, who was once married to Rulon Jeffs, the FLDS prophet. She told the jury she and other younger wives were ordered to marry Warren Jeffs after his father's death.

Who really cares what adults do with older consenting adults? (Except for Christians, who seem preoccupied with that question.)When a religious authority figure abuses children in the name of his religion, it is not hard to make the call on abuse. It’s like when Justice Potter Stewart commented on pornography by saying, “I know it when I see it.”

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staggerlee · 796 weeks ago

I usually differentiate between theistic driven (usually forced) polygamy from multiple people of one or both sexes who have bonded both mentally and physically and have taken steps to symbolically reinforce that bond polygamists by calling the former plygamists and the latter polyamorists. If that helps.

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breakerslion 40p · 796 weeks ago

Your comment section is a bit of a bitch to track down.

There is a difference between multiple concurrent relationships (polyamory) and polygamy. One is not gender specific in its one-to-many relationship. Nor is it strictly speaking one-to-many except to say that one only can speak or act for one's self. The other is just a bunch of egomaniacs going alpha. One guess which is which, and the first guess doesn't count. It all comes down to ownership, or lack thereof. As Judy Tenuta so eloquently put it, "You cannot possess me!"

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1 reply · active 796 weeks ago

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