To me they looked like the Stepford Wives, the women from the FLDS in Texas watching as their children were taken away. Their pompadoured hairstyles reminded me of pictures I’d seen in my family albums, only in color. Pastel.
I’m half Mormon. Though I don’t practice the faith, I’ve spent enough time with that side of my family to know the mainline LDS Church doesn’t engage in underage rape as a spiritual practice.
My father once told me the Mormon faith teaches it’s the father’s responsibility to get his children into heaven. Though he occasionally suggested I attend the LDS ministry near my college campus, it seemed odd to follow a faith my father had no use for. Late in life, Dad expressed regret for his failure to convert his children.
Dad was downright irreverent when it came to religion. He had a habit of making the sign of the cross over the front of his trousers, as if his genitals were the three persons of the Trinity, a gesture he found amusing, but which as a girl I found inscrutable.
I’ve since learned things through my family that Dad never told me. After my grandfather died, when Dad was two-years-old, my grandmother moved in with her father-in-law. My uncle believed the relationship was polygamous.
In Denver a year-and-a-half ago, Saudi Arabian Homaidan Al Turki was tried for rape on the grounds he’d kept an Indonesian woman as a sex slave. It was a high-profile case, one that came to national attention through the Department of Homeland Security because of the defendant’s believed connection to the 9/11 hijackers.
After the trial, the King of Saudi Arabia challenged the guilty verdict on the grounds the Islamic Law of Sharia requires four witnesses to a rape. The prosecution produced only three.
I’ve read that Mark Driscoll’s fundamentalist Mars Hill Church in Seattle sings a song called “Grow a Pair.” It paints a clear picture of the gods (gonads?) these people worship.
Irreverent or not, Dad taught me more than he realized about religion. Whether it’s Mormon, Islam or Christian, all fundamentalist religion worships the same triune god.
I’m half Mormon. Though I don’t practice the faith, I’ve spent enough time with that side of my family to know the mainline LDS Church doesn’t engage in underage rape as a spiritual practice.
My father once told me the Mormon faith teaches it’s the father’s responsibility to get his children into heaven. Though he occasionally suggested I attend the LDS ministry near my college campus, it seemed odd to follow a faith my father had no use for. Late in life, Dad expressed regret for his failure to convert his children.
Dad was downright irreverent when it came to religion. He had a habit of making the sign of the cross over the front of his trousers, as if his genitals were the three persons of the Trinity, a gesture he found amusing, but which as a girl I found inscrutable.
I’ve since learned things through my family that Dad never told me. After my grandfather died, when Dad was two-years-old, my grandmother moved in with her father-in-law. My uncle believed the relationship was polygamous.
In Denver a year-and-a-half ago, Saudi Arabian Homaidan Al Turki was tried for rape on the grounds he’d kept an Indonesian woman as a sex slave. It was a high-profile case, one that came to national attention through the Department of Homeland Security because of the defendant’s believed connection to the 9/11 hijackers.
After the trial, the King of Saudi Arabia challenged the guilty verdict on the grounds the Islamic Law of Sharia requires four witnesses to a rape. The prosecution produced only three.
I’ve read that Mark Driscoll’s fundamentalist Mars Hill Church in Seattle sings a song called “Grow a Pair.” It paints a clear picture of the gods (gonads?) these people worship.
Irreverent or not, Dad taught me more than he realized about religion. Whether it’s Mormon, Islam or Christian, all fundamentalist religion worships the same triune god.
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