Hypocrite

BRUCE WISAN

So, last year Brute Wisass got caught by Taylorsville police in a motel with a prostitute.  He at first said they did not have sex.  She said they did.  He said he was just giving her financial help until she "got on her feet" - (read: "till she got up from the bed"). He admitted that he had been showering with her.

This is a former Mormon Stake President - a paragon of religious virtue and integrity.  The one hand-picked by Shurtleff to bring salvation to the FLDS.

VOMIT !!!       Here is a chunk of the police report:
 

See also this article from the Salt Lake Tribune:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/58242242-200/wisan-woman-officer-court.html.csp

Off With Their Heads

I am still scratching my head over the FLDS implosion.  In 2005, the State of Utah seized the FLDS UEP trust and ran up millions in inflated fiduciary fees.  The Hooles assisted with the rewording of the UEP trust statement, hoping to plunder the trust for their own gain.  Warren told his followers to "Answer them nothing."  Young men were illegally detained and imprisoned in an Arizona prison, simply because they had no idea of Warren's whereabouts and could not disclose something they didn't know.

Warren was captured in 2007, but his conviction in a Utah court was overturned.

In 2008, 439 children were confiscated from the FLDS ranch in west Texas.  The feds knew at the time that Warren was molesting little girls.  The little kids were returned thanks to Julie Balovich, but Warren was later convicted by a Texas court, and should remain in his Texas prison until the next millennium.

Probably dozens of the young teen girls (now adults) still remain under FLDS house arrest.  Only God knows how they can regain a normal life in the wake of the destruction of their perverse, fairy-tale culture.

Fiduciary Bruce Wisan eventually had to get his filthy lucrative fees from the Utah legislature.  Mark Shurtleff, then the A.G. who targeted the FLDS, found himself at cross purposes with Judge Denise Lindberg, who would make a ruling in favor of the FLDS if her life depended on it.

Federal Judge Dee Benson demanded that the State return the UEP trust to its trustee (Warren Jeffs), but that got thwarted, too.

A wise man once told me that one can liken the UEP trust to an egg.  The egg was once fresh and whole and desirable.  Then somebody scrambled it and cooked it.  Then someone else came along and burned it.  Try as you might, you cannot return that egg to its shell, and put things back to how they were before.

Willie Jessop sued the FLDS church to recoup the money he loaned Warren to pay for all the lawyers who defended him.  Answering "them nothing", Warren watched Willie win the suit by default and earn a $20 million award.  Since then, Willie has gained control of the spectacular mansions built for Warren by his followers since his incarceration.  The porn theaters have been removed. 

After a period of time under the leadership of John Wayman, the control of the FLDS people has been handed back to Warren's brother, Lyle.  Warren and Lyle have bled virtually every penny out of the remaining faithful.  The number of faithful is dwindling steadily as they are systematically ejected from the fold because of any number of petty violations or heresies.  Families and children are abandoned, then jumbled up at Warren's whim.  Warren is now certifiably insane, so one has to wonder why Lyle complies with every directive.  Perhaps it is because he likes not working and living for free off other people's labors.  No one has been allowed to marry since 2006, and rumors abound now that a select group of men has been selected to play the role of community impregnators.  One thing is for sure - hundreds of families have been ripped to shreds, and some exiles are still trying to gain back the infant children they handed over to the church police while they were still sucked in by Warren.

This is turning out to be one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the days of Stalin.  It is a true tar baby for the State.  The State may have had a vision of some sort to rehabilitate the twin towns, but it didn't come about.  My sense is that the degree of indoctrination in the FLDS was so extreme, that many of the excommuniqués barely understand what has happened to them.  Would you feel guilty if you had been born into an oppressive cult, and had surrendered your free agency to a lunatic, just because your church's theology so dictated?  Would it be your fault, or just the fault of the lunatic and his cronies?

I wrote a blogpost in 2011 - Critical Mass - in which I pondered the eventual dissolution of the community.  I guess we are there now.  If we accept the premise of a pre-existence, we allow that all of the participants in this adventure consented to come to earth at this time and be tested by it.  For us outsiders, our duty is to provide whatever kindness and support is desired by those who have become victims of the nightmare.  I hope that we remember that it was NOT POLYGAMY that caused all this.  It was stupid humans doing cruel, selfish stuff.  That's the lesson.

WOULD YOU TAKE HIM BACK?

Warren Jeffs (pedophile)

Jerry Sandusky (pedophile)

I recently read one of Whorrin' Jeffs’ Looney Tunes revelations.  In it he rambles on clumsily about North Korea and other geopolitical issues.  The writer also demands that Warren be freed - “ . .  if any on earth desire salvation”!  Funny – I thought salvation was guaranteed to all on earth!

I was struck again by Warren’s bizarre, almost indecipherable syntax - -

“Let all nations be of holy order of cleansing child, unborn youth order, murder from own nation; to survive conflict soon on world, . . ”

I pity anyone who might be called upon to translate this gibberish into a different language.

I know that FLDS leaders have gone to great lengths to keep the members from hearing news stories about Warren.  Frankly, I would be more concerned about them reading Warren’s recent nutball material, lest they discover that their “prophet” is rowing to the beat of a strange deck of bricks.

Is that what this has come to?  Is there a significant number of FLDS faithful who have been so pummeled into cowering obsequiousness, that they cannot tell the difference between reality and insanity?  Would they read this balderdash and fawn over its content as if it were divine?

I think about the dozens of young women who have been forcibly confined to “houses of hiding”.  Do their parents assume that all is well with them, simply because Warren decrees their continued imprisonment?

Brigham Young said the following:

“What a pity it would be if we were led by one man to utter destruction! Are you afraid of this? I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way.”

The current FLDS dilemma is a breathtaking fulfillment of Brigham’s fears.  I want to know when it started.  How was one president of this community able to hijack the free agency of an entire society?  I would say that this phenomenon is played out equally in the LDS Church, yet if President Monson instructed all the elders to take a plural wife, the entire membership would defect before sunset.  Not so in the FLDS.

Do not be fooled into thinking that this is strictly a case of Warren-worship.  Had a different man – say brother Lyle – been the one to succeed Rulon, HE then would have become the presumptive “prophet” and mouthpiece of God.  It matters not who sits in this role – the idolatry centers in the worship of the iconic station.  The people yearn for the cozy, comfy reassurance that the guy who presides over the church is the conductor of the train that is taking them straight to the Celestial Kingdom.  Nothing else matters.  Follow him and you will automatically be saved and exalted.

Bottom line – right now, the vast majority of the sheep in the fold are complying with every word which proceeded forth from the lips of Warren.  The media are even reporting that Warren recently selected a small group of men whose assignment will be to perform all of the copulation and impregnation tasks in the community.  Would you comply?

Warren is fixated on being sprung from his incarceration.  If, by some cosmic anomaly, Warren were to find himself back in Creekerville, would he be warmly received?  Would you take him back into your trust?  Would you hand over your 13-year-old daughters so that he can have midnight orgies with them?

I am saddened by the immense oppression being foisted on the community by state and federal government agencies.  Every department of the town’s local government is being investigated.  The townspeople must conclude that this is a case of the wicked persecuting the righteous.  Some might conclude that God is just trying to get their attention for having blindly trusted in the perverted arm of flesh.  You decide.

What will it take to get the honorable men and women of the community to wake up and realize that they have been led miserably astray?  This is the epitome of apostasy.  These are choice Israelite children of the Restoration, and now they are now fully steeped in idolatry.  Thankfully, it seems there is now a steady stream of defectors who are waking up and risking everything to come out into the sunlight of truth and freedom. God bless them!

The Big Question

Maybe you are not scratching your head as vigorously as I am.  I just received this info:

Jury finds ex-polygamist leader guilty of bigamy

Updated 11:01 a.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2012

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Jury-finds-ex-polygamist-leader-guilty-of-bigamy-3439231.php

MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — A former lieutenant to polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was convicted Wednesday of illegally taking three wives besides his own, despite his attorney's argument that "celestial marriages" weren't forbidden by state law. A West Texas jury found Wendell Loy Nielsen guilty of three counts of bigamy. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

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I have blogged before on the topic of Wendell Nielsen's prosecution.  I cannot pass judgment on the extent to which he was or wasn't involved in the wedding of young teens to Warren Pedo' Jeffs.  One thing I do know, however, is that Texas is going out on a tenuous limb.  Wendell has (at least) four "bed-partners".  He would not use that term.  He would quietly refer to them as wives, even though "wives" they are not.  Perhaps one of them is legally married to him - the others cannot be - or else he would officially be a bigamist.  He has been convicted now of bigamy because he meets the two following standards: 

1.  He is legally married to one person.
2.  He calls several other women he knows, "wives".

His crime, then, is that he has uttered unacceptable, criminal words.  Oh yeah - he's also a DREADED MORMON FUNDAMENTALIST.  He will do ten years in the clink for saying "wife" (not "girl-friend").  Don't try to tell me that the First Amendment is not dead in Texas.

Is it the term "wife" which has Texas's knickers in such a twist, or is it the fear that he might have had sex with more than one person (unlike law-abiding Texans)?  So here is the -

           BIG QUESTION

Is there a lawyer out there who will take this absurd conviction and appeal it to a higher court?  Does someone other than Jonathan Turley have the urge to get Reynolds overturned?  You see, Texas did not have such a silly, overbroad bigamy statute until Mark Shurtleff went on a trip to Texas and shopped Utah's goofy ancient statute to the Texas legislature.

Should Kody Brown move to Texas?
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In other news, law enforcement agencies in British Columbia are now looking seriously at enforcing the recently upheld Canadian anti-polygamy law against the residents of Bountiful, B.C.  Let's watch and see if they remember to arrest the poor, guilty women, too.  OR - is it just a crusade against a handful of Fundamentalist Mormon husbands?  Politics make me sick sometimes.

Apocalips

A stream of consummate insanity continues to flow from Warren Apocalips Jeffs.  Faithful FLDS congregants are being admonished to refrain from sex and to swear complete allegiance to Jeffs by the end of 2011, lest they suffer divine wrath and destruction.

For many years I have pondered on the nature of the relationship between the FLDS people and their leaders.  Some say that the critical "fork in the road" occurred in the early 1980's.  There was a dispute at that time over whether or not each member of the council of the the twelve held the same authority as the president, such that at the passing of the president, the senior member automatically assumed the position of president.  Apparently, some leaders abandoned this formula and dismissed the pivotal revelation given to Wilford Woodruff in 1880 on this very topic.  This caused the ideological split.  This was the genesis of the "One Man Rule" leadership model - the seedbed for a hierarchy utterly controlled by a monolithic dictator -  a Jeffs.

I have struggled at length with other caring observers to figure out where to point the finger of blame for the current crazed state of affairs.  Is Warren Jeffs truly to blame?  Jeffs is culpable for his own integrity lapses.  He is guilty of a litany of abuses.  He is the epitome of a terrorist.  He takes wicked delight in toying with his victims.  He is a true psychopath.  He is like some of the hater-harpies - he is blithely complacent about destroying families.  More importantly, however, he would not be able to get away with any of his perverse manipulations if it were not for several thousand people who think that simply by virtue of the fact that he occupies the station of church president, he is somehow imbued with divine investiture - the steward of God on earth - the "PROPHET".

Brigham Young spoke often and adamantly about the importance of not abdicating one's free agency to some corruptible mortal church leader person.  This was one of the fundamental tenets of Mormonism.  I shudder to think that modern adherents, mainstream and FLDS alike, have undergone such an ideological metamorphosis that their religion is no longer akin to the gospels restored through Joseph Smith.  In one short generation, thousands of honorable saints have turned into lemmings, merely as a result of a doctrinal diversion.

Warren Jeffs is doomed to suffer long and greatly.  He has caused untold pain to many honest, decent people.  What, however, is the fate of the obsequious sycophants who have been trained from birth to do whatever they are told to do by their megalomaniac, lunatic leader?  I hearken back to the idea that God Himself is partly complicit.  He knew perfectly well before He put those pre-mortal spirits into those Short Creek FLDS embryos that they would be raised in a unique and ultimately bizarre environment.  This was part of the plan - the moral test.  These good, honorable souls are faced with a crucial choice - choose true principle or a false doctrine and its false prophet.  As the lunacy crescendos, each one must weigh the options and measure the pressures against the promptings of the Spirit and the bedrock teachings in revealed scriptures.  Like it or not, the inevitable train-wreck of this community is just around the corner.  One can only hope that the latest in Jeffs' wacky antics will trigger an awakening - a personal epiphany for many.  Surely many, many of the people are scratching their heads and wondering why things are getting so strange - why they have to part with their pets and tricycles and now their children.  Even now, people are vanishing.  Maybe, when the Apocalypse fails to occur a half an hour from now (midnight 12/31/2011), some will wonder if the prophet is false after all.

I'm sure cult experts have written volumes on how difficult it is to break free from the tyrannical psychological clutches of a religious dictator.  To my way of thinking, the hardest part would be facing up to the realization that virtually your whole life has been based on a religious distortion, and that you let yourself get slowly sucked in because your were afraid to lose your job or your home or your wives and kids.  This was the wizardry of the Jeffs incumbency - he kept you in the dark - people were told only the bare minimum of what they needed to know.  Jeffs controls access to information.  He threatens you with the forfeiture of your salvation (not even doctrinally feasible).  He even controls the local police.  He conspires with his brothers to execute his dictates.  His control is political, financial and religious - a dangerous combination.

No matter where you ascribe the culpability, many of these townsfolk are innocent.  They are just trying to survive and please God.  When this sick house of cards comes crashing down, there will be an immense humanitarian crisis.  Tonia Tool (Holding Out Hostages) is all over the news, clamoring for the castaways to come into her lairs.  The crisis will not so much be one of food and lodging, moreso a crisis of faith - one that the hater-hags cannot remedy.

The gospel dispensed to Joseph Smith was pure at its source.  Despite his immense significance in the history of this planet, he was a mortal man.  All of the gospel dispensations (except Enoch's) were doomed to crash and burn.  Attributing perfection to a mortal is foolhardy.  The restored fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel of the Father are perfect in principle - they are the "baby" that must not be "thrown out with the" Jeffs "bathwater".  That is the essence of the humanitarian crisis.

Are you in a position to offer the right kind of assistance?
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Kool-Aid Time

Rumors are bubbling out of the Creek that things are devolving rapidly.  The nightly news is showing pictures of trampolines and tricycles stacked up ready for sale.  Warren or his brother must be exacting ever more oppressive demands of the beleaguered congregants.  No more toys, no more trampolines, no more 4-wheeling, and NO MORE SEX !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Young single girls must walk around with wedding bands to give off the pretense of being married.  Families are being squeezed to cough up thousands more dollars for the "Prophet", for printing and mailing those asinine doomsday proclamations filled with gerunds (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars).

Warren wants the married adults to cease and desist from all marital conjugating.  The Jeffs hench-elders are grilling the husbands and wives to see if they are of-a-consummating their relationships.  God help anyone who conceives a child in this apocalyptic climate.

Under Jim (Warren [yes, 'Warren' really is his middle name !!!]) Jones in tragic Jonestown, Guyana, the vast majority of the followers stayed sucked in till the bitter end, glugging the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in a frenzied ritual of blind complying.  What is there about the current events in the twin towns that is any different?

 . . . . or will these fundamentally decent and intelligent people (who once had a benevolent king) wake up from the fog of obsequiousness and slavery, and remember that God's political structures always incorporated checks and balances, and separation of powers?

So, which will it be - hundreds of puffy bodies of men, women and children lying under the hot sun and swarms of flies, or a mass ideological epiphany?  Word is - this suffocating, tyrannical cult dictatorship is squeezing so hard that it is squeezing the Creek's best and brightest out into the clean, fresh cathartic air of truth and reality.  Warren is a deviant, crazed monster (with grammar of a new making).  Do you have to be deprived of all your human dignities and possessions in order to accept that?  Is it so hard to realize that you have been bamboozled by a cult (not colt) megalomaniac - to admit that your marriages were choreographed by a mad man?  That's why we have a Savior, an atonement, a chance to repent and make amends.  What? - it's not your fault, because you were born into this Matrix?  That's no excuse.

Remember, you were chosen to come to this land at this time.  You covenanted with your Heavenly Father to be born into the Everlasting Covenant, into the fullness of the Gospel at a time when there would be false prophets like Jeffs, Hinckley and Monson.  These trials were crafted specifically for you.  Are you going to stand on true principle or be tossed to and fro with every wind of dogma?

This Warren insanity is the exquisite test - a perfect gauge of your mettle - of your faithfulness to eternal truths and not to the corruptible arm of sick Jeffs flesh.  Which will you drink? - the dews of heaven or the Kool-Aid of poisoning?

News Updates

It looks like Papandreou is out.  Berlusconi has agreed to step aside also.  The Dow dropped 390 points today.  Europe is rumored to be on the brink of utter financial collapse [according to correspondent, Chicken Little).
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Yesterday, Merril Jessop, 75, got a ten-year prison sentence in Texas for performing an "illegal" wedding ceremony.  I have blogged about this before, but I just have to rub this in!  What in the blazes is an illegal wedding ceremony?  What element of the event is criminal? - the words? -  the arrangement of people in the room? - the ages of the people in the room?  What part of the FIRST AMENDMENT do Barbie and her puppet jurors not understand?

Now, I'm not saying that what Merril did was not inconceivably reckless.  If he had half an inkling that these (alleged) eleven young daughters of his (whom he was surrendering to Jeffs, his colleague in the church's First Presidency) were going to be molested in short order, he should have caught the first train out of town with Carolyin and the rest of his immense tribe.  However, it has also been reported that he picked up a couple of young dames in the bargain, so maybe there was some kind of wink-and-a-nod quid-pro-quo going on.

Nevertheless, I think Merril has suffered enough with the discovery of Jeffs's despicable debaucheries and the monumental humiliation.  I wish there had been some kind of plea bargain opportunity (like in Wendel's case) to avoid prison time.  Maybe he is feeling some sort of mea culpa and wants to fall on the sword.

The galling thing for me is the absurd contention that these fantasy ceremonies conducted in a private setting can constitute a crime in modern, 14th Amendment America.  I understand all the jurisprudence surrounding enticement, grooming, aiding and abetting, complicity, collusion, and so on, but this illegal wedding idea is even more intangible (let alone its being entirely novel in Texas).  In many cases, assisting in some way (even obliviously) with the actions of a criminal can be weighed and deemed criminal in and of itself, but it still seems to me like a huge stretch to criminalize a strictly religious performance - one which involves the utterance of purely religious phrases, and no more physical interaction than perhaps a brief hand-clasp, - one which presumes no legal stamp of approval, no governmental imprimatur.  I weep inside at the thought that no one has the stamina to take this farce to the Supreme Court and get it overturned.  In the wake of the Jeffs disgrace, however, I'd be surprised if any of his cohorts can escape the wrath of a disgusted American public.  Perhaps the prosecution's view is that, despite the informal nature of the ceremony, the young girl participating in it was losing all personal and community-approved freedoms to escape imminent sexual exploitation by the putative "husband".  Yet, if that is the legal standard, you would have to incarcerate the entire community - or maybe just outlaw religion.
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In other news, it has been reported that Judge Bauman will render his decision in the British Columbia polygamy reference case in a couple of weeks.  Remember that this anti-polygamy case was not about establishing new, anti-polygamy legislation, it was about whether or not to uphold a 100-year-old, anti-polygamy law that was atrociously crafted and NEVER implemented.  The judge has an unenviable task.  Any ruling is likely to be appealed (see my earlier associated posts here and here and here).

If he rules in our (polygamists') favor, I shall cheer because he will be acknowledging what everyone already knows - that you cannot criminalize informal, multi-partner intimacies in a nation that already solemnizes legal, homosexual marriages.  If he rules that the law can be lawfully applied, I shall laugh out loud because, despite my not wishing any harm on Winston Blackmore's and Jimmy Oler's families, I am DYING to see what the RCMP and the prosecutors think they can do next.  Of the perhaps hundreds of faithful Fundamentalist Mormon families in the Bountiful/Creston area, which ones will they handcuff first?  Will they take the women, too?  I have visions of the 1953 (Short Creek) raid all over again.  Sincerely, I wonder how it is that supposedly intelligent public officials can be so incredibly myopic and stupid.  I guess I'm just naive. 

Perhaps the law of unintended consequences will kick in, as with Bank of America's boneheaded $5.00 monthly debit card fee, or Obama's ill-fated 15-cent Christmas tree tax.

10 Years' Probation

GoSanAngelo reported today that Wendell Nielsen was sentenced to 10 years' probation for his crime of pure felony adult bigamy.  The sentence was the result of a no-contest plea.

While the Kody Brown family and the Utah AG's office joust over whether or not Utah's polygamists currently live in fear of the threat of prosecution for sleeping with more than one partner, Texas has gone all in and bet the farm.

Wendell Nielsen's only crime is having slept with more than one girl.  Texas is obviously pressing this prosecution and conviction because Nielsen is the only man in Texas EVER TO HAVE SLEPT with more than one woman.  Texas needs to make an example out of him to keep the state pure and unsullied.

I guess I should start calling for donations to pay for the lawyers who must needs take this case to an appeals court.  Texas gained notoriety when (through the Lawrence case [June,2003]) it single-handedly secured the permanent decriminalization of gay sex (and all other private consenting-adult sex, for that matter).  Texas must be bucking to get religious polygamy re-affirmed as a practice fully protected already by the Lawrence decision.

You cannot go to an American court and complain about a bad law unless you have been threatened or harmed by it.  Case in point.

I guess I still wonder what probation means to Wendell.  Will the probation officer routinely inquire as to whether he has confined his sleeping regimen to the bed of just one of his ladies, or whether he has maintained his customary rotation?  If he is caught with two different ladies in a six-month time window, will Barbie throw him and the equally-guilty ladies in the slammer?

Only in America !!!!!!!!!!!!  Someone should tell Hugh Hefner to steer clear of Texas.

Critical Mass

You know me - the cogs in my brain are ever whirring around, trying to make sense of a nonsensical world.  I have been wondering about the FLDS dilemma.  I know (from what I've read) that when someone in the FLDS world realizes that Warren is a deviant child-molester, then that someone must immediately be cut off from the 10,000-member congregation.  I understand also that that person's wives and kids must then be assigned to a different family - a family that is still under the ether.

A mathematician might be able to figure this out better than me, but it seems that this process of realization will follow a certain graph, most likely an exponential one.  At first, one girl will flee her church captors, and her family will have to deal with the mysteries and unanswered questions.  "Where were you, dear?  Why don't you want to wait for uncle Warren?  Why are you angry with him?  What did he do to you that is causing you so much trauma?"

Most likely at least one set of family members will recognize the signs and come face to face with the abuse and treachery.  If that family has the courage, it will face the music and accept the instant excommunication and ostracism.  Let's fast-forward a little into the future and see how, pretty soon, a bunch of families will wake up and accept the terrible reality.  Perhaps some will even stand up to Warren's brother and his goons and begin to propagate the awful discovery to their fellow faithful.  After all, how many families can you reassign before there is no one left to take them all in?

At what number is critical mass achieved? - 1,000,  - -  5,000?  The FLDS people are very obedient.  They prefer to operate as a collective.  When a goodly fraction of that collective is made aware of Warren's perversions and the degradation of their virtuous daughters, will they finally revolt and throw off the tyranny of the man behind the curtain?  Whither will he run, and will he get there before law enforcement gets to him?  I was never good at equations, especially when they entail a humanitarian crisis of such unthinkable proportions.

Your math is as good as mine.

On a similar note, this situation reminds me of a skit I saw recently from Monty Python's Flying Circus -  
The Funniest Joke In The World.


The idea was that when a person happened upon this particular joke, it contained such lethal material that the reader instantly died - BRILLIANT !!!!!!!!

Escape From What?

A few years ago, Carolyin Jessop co-wrote a book titled ESCAPE.  I think hers was more of a philosophical escape than anything else.  Jessop received a college education and ran a business away from the twin towns.  It would be more accurate to say that she left her religion and ran off with her kids.  In her book there is much information which would be better described as tabloid entertainment than factual narrative.

Last week, a young woman who is alleged to have been one of Warren Jeffs' wives, ran from her previous residence and sought refuge.  She reportedly sought protection with the family of one of the men who left the FLDS fold (under Lyle Jeffs) when he learned of Warren's molestation of his own 12-year-old girl partners.

So I have a question.  I know Warren had more wives than one. Who knows - maybe 100?  He was incarcerated over five years ago (August, 2006).  Presumably, those scores of wives (ranging from 12 to 92) must have been housed somewhere.  Recent photos show dozens of these very young wives all together in pastel prairie dresses.  I can imagine that Warren didn't want anybody else messing with them while he was away awaiting his miraculous liberation.  So where did they all get put?  Were they all together, or were they grouped in several locations?  Were they free to speak to the media?  NO.  Were they free to mingle with other community members and reveal their group sex party experiences?  I don't think so. 

This latest escapee appears to have had to go to extreme lengths to get free.  Why?  Was she being detained against her will - or, worse still - was she being compulsorily medicated to facilitate the restraint?  I don't know.  Where are the other young sister wives of hers?  Presumably, they are all still being concealed/confined in some way.  Maybe they get to sew and sing hymns, or even study the writings of Prophet Warren S. Jeffs.  Do they go to school?  NAHH!  Are they free to go into town or drive around, or even talk to their chums on the cell-phone?  I bet not.  Do they know what a computer is?  Would they even know what to think or do if they were to be liberated?

Has there been more than one who has fled this detention situation?  Do the other ninety-nine want to flee also, but cannot?  Can they escape and, if so, escape from what? 

If they do escape, what tales will they tell?  I can think of more than a few entities who are itching to get their hands on them.  How healthy would that be?

Is He Ready?

Warren is doing just about everything necessary to get himself over to the other side - and why not?  I would.  I mean -- when you commit adultery or pedophilia - or whatever the word is for the debauchery he has committed, why would you want to stay on this planet?  If you have a conscience, if you recognize the severity of these types of sins, you realize that the least you can do towards atonement is to die.  In earlier times, fellow church brethren could oblige and help you take the step.  Nowadays, in this pathetic, namby-pamby culture we live in, you are on your own.  If Warren keeps starving himself, and if the prison staff don't get in the way, we could be observing his early and timely passing very soon.  The drawback is that he may be cherished as a martyred prophet rather than as a disgraced pervert.

My question is this - if the Lord's prophet is dead and buried, will Lyle step in as the rightful heir?  Is he next in line? Is he the senior member of the 12 or the 7 or the 3 (or however many it is)?  Is he secretly aching for the chance to wrest control like Warren did?  Is he ready?  Is the Lord ready?  At the very moment when Warren takes his last gasp, will God resume this ostensibly unending stream of revelations by talking to Lyle ad infinitum?  Is it natural and normal for the thousands of faithful FLDS congregants to simply transfer their unstinting obeisance to the brother-in-waiting? 

I remember the passage in Moroni 10: 3-5, where we are admonished to test purported revelations.  If we are presented with the claim of prophecy or revelation from another party, we must study, ponder and pray, and ask God if these things are true.  Only after receiving direct personal confirmation from above that the alleged utterances are from Him are we to embrace them.  I pray that all my fellow saints in all the remnant communities will remember not to skip this critical step.

An Open Letter

Someone just sent me this.  Very interesting!

 This letter was signed by William E. Jessop and Willie R. Jessop

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My Three Wives

Doctor Drew Gets Into Polygamy!

This week on his nightly HLN tabloid show, Dr. Drew Pinsky got heavily into polygamy.  Above is what I believe may be a picture of Pinsky with his three "wives".  Jealous of the attention given to notorious pedophile, Warren Jeffs, Dr. Drew has apparently decided to expand his own family.

Like many impulsive, skirt-chasing men, Drew has no idea what he is getting himself into.  The above picture shows his wives taking him to task.  He does not yet realize that he may be looking forward to many years of stuttering, lying and exaggerating.  He will likely eventually wish he were in the Huntsville penitentiary with Jeffs.

"SHUT IT DOWN" !!! ???

The Headline News folks have been marketing the Warren Jeffs trial controversy almost as giddily as they flogged the Casey Anthony epic.  The various hosts and guests have offered their opinions about how to address the after-effects of the FLDS nightmare.  Two, in particular, Sonny Hostin and Drew Pinsky, have been especially vocal in calling for the dissolution of the FLDS community.  "SHUT IT DOWN !!" they say.  They want Hoary Reid to resurrect his RICO-style task-force legislation to target polygamous organizations (???).  They want the community to die or simply stop existing.  Their myopia and cruelty are stunning.

Sonny Hostin

Drew Pinsky

Their guests, Kathy Jo Nicholson and Carolyn Jessop, seem to have no hesitation in calling for widespread law enforcement intervention into the community.  Send in tanks.  Send in an army of social workers.  Send in 100 psychiatrists.  Send in dozens of new police officers.  Arrest all the mothers.  If Warren molested several pubescent females, the 10,000 community members must be invaded by the government machinery.  These busybody hater-crusaders CANNOT stop hankering for a massive siege upon one or more religious minority societies.

I have no idea how they expect the government to implement such a campaign, but it appears the government might try.  The government has amnesia.  It cannot remember 1953 or YFZ-2008. 

So here's my take on this.  You people are jerks and idiots.  Do you seriously think a massive invasion will achieve anything good?  Are you willing to go in there with the SWAT team and point a gun?  Do you have enough room in your basement for 6,000 people to crash?  Do you have the $20 million Texas already wasted on a raid one tenth the size of the one you are proposing?

Let me, Renn Oldsbuster, explain it to you in terms you might understand.  There are currently three fairly distinct categories of people in the FLDS community, and their numbers could change.  You decide which ones to capture and arrest . . . . . . . . . .

GROUP 1:
These are the henchmen.  This is a finite group of individuals, which would include Lyle Jeffs and the other collaborating brethren.  It also includes Warren's wife who assisted in the molestations.  If law enforcement wants more convictions, it needs to go after the parties who participated (if they actually did) in the commission or covering-up of the protracted perversions.

GROUP 2:
These are the inveterate suck-ups.  These are the people who had NO IDEA of the atrocities perpetrated by their prophet because they were deliberately kept in the dark.  These people needed Warren to be a true prophet (deviant or not).  They insist on his being a prophet still today (even in his despicable disgrace).  These are the people for whom truth is mostly irrelevant.  They see fine robes on the naked emperor.  These people will cling to the Warren myth till liberals vote for Ron Paul.  They will go down with the ship. Their obedience to a false prophet is vain and foolhardy. You CANNOT prosecute these people. Their only crime is their pride and hard-heartedness.  They cannot be identified by any visual means.

GROUP 3:
This last group is made up of true believers.  They do not worship men.  They can detect false doctrine.  They are heart-broken to learn of deceit in those people they trusted.  They don't believe a man is automatically a "Prophet" because of his leadership position in a church.  They are willing to sacrifice anything, but only for true principle and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  These people would never have expected such depravity and betrayal from their leader.  However, now, as soon as they learn of it and absorb it, they come down squarely on the side of righteousness and will gladly link arms with other equally sincere saints.  If you persecute these people, you can expect to face eternal repercussions. 
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So, crusader, explain to me how you will carry out your grand invasion.  Maybe you had better spend more of your busybody energies looking for a needle in a haystack or preparing for the day when Obama, Bernanke and Sir Evelyn come for you.

I think that what Warren Jeffs did is horrific.  Many of those little girls are probably 17 or 18 or 19 years old now.  Are they still pining for Warren to come home?  How much counseling and healing must they eventually undergo in order not to have torment for the rest of their lives?  Are their families giving them the emotional support they need?

Let us not forget that this travesty occurred on a somewhat limited scale.  I am unaware of any more male perpetrators other than Warren.  Let us not forget that a few years ago the Catholic Church dealt with an epidemic of molestations by its priests.  Despite the magnitude of those horrors, NOBODY is calling for the eradication of Catholicism or a mass raid on Catholic towns.  It is clear that people harbor a special and inexplicable resentment towards Fundamentalist Mormons.  I wonder why . . . . . . . . . . .

Unraveling

The leadership configuration of the FLDS is currently unraveling.  As wretched behaviors have been uncovered, the questions are starting to arise.  Who participated with Jeffs in his lasciviousness?  Who had full knowledge of it (besides the FBI)?  Whom is law enforcement pursuing for further prosecutions, or are the cops just going to give all the other actors a free pass now that they have nabbed the kingpin?

To me it all seems very clear cut.  Certain people knew and participated (Willie named some of them on TV today), and the rest of the folks were as oblivious as I was. 

Time for decisions. Time to draw a line in the sand. Time to come down squarely on one side or the other.  Either you are with Warren and his pedophilia, or you are with true principle, righteousness and the welfare of your young'uns.  You have a little time still to work things through because, if you don't have the Internet, you aren't seeing the news or reading my cynical sermons yet.  I'm gonna trust that the Creekerville rumor-mill is more efficient than texting, that the critical mass of truth and reality is already cresting, and that Willie Jessop will soon be received as an Abinadi rather than a Judas.  Just don't kill him for having the courage to tell the truth.

On the topic of unraveling, I am reminded (by the media) that an alleged 300 families were dismantled by Warren for God-knows-what reason.  Many men were simply banished, never to be heard from again.  Their wives and children were taken in by other men.  This went on for years.  Presumably, by now, these transplanted wives have had additional children by their new husbands.  How do you unravel that?  If the ousted men were honorable, and were ejected merely because Warren wanted their wives or kids, can they now return and have their families restored?  Can all the re-configured, reassigned families be unraveled and put back to their correct arrangement?  Can the clock be turned back?  Can a community of sincere believers come to terms with the fact that it was swept up in a whirlwind of deceit and evil?  Can they reconcile the precious truths of the Gospel and the betrayal that sprang out of the idolatry and priestcraft that crept in unnoticed by most?

Who's To Blame?

Jeremiah 23:

21. “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
22. But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds.

23. “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away?  
24. Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.  

Over the last few years, I have wanted to explore the very topical question of accountability.  Who is accountable when a person in an authority position leads his subordinates astray?  The Mormon Church grappled with this question in the mid 1900's.  The message was, "When the Church leaders have spoken, the thinking has been done.  If a leader tells you to do something, and it is wrong, do it and you will be blessed for your obedience."  

It is such a cozy, comforting feeling to know that you have a prophet nearby.  If God doesn't speak to you, but He does speak to someone in your Church, you can feel very reassured.  You can relax and figure that when God wants you to know something, He will tell "The Prophet", and the Prophet will tell you.  Even more reassuring if you believe that you are in the only "true", "right" church, and that church is taking you straight to the Celestial Kingdom (while everyone else is going straight to hell).  This is just simple human nature.  We all want security and comfort (even sometimes at the expense of others).

So what happens when the Prophet-leader-dude mucks up?  What happens when the President of the Church violates what God has taught?  In 1889, God told President Wilford Woodruff to make no more concessions to the courts regarding plural marriage. A year later, Woodruff defied God and announced the (at least feigned) cessation of polygamous marriages.  Eventually it stuck, and now the two camps exchange public barbs at each other for devolving into false religion.  Who was to blame?  Was it Woodruff - or was it the people - the people who would relax, capitulate and go along with it?

What happens when the Church tells the people that God would not "lead the leader astray" and that "were he to lead them astray, God would take him out of his place"?  Is this a passport to divine infallibility?  Is this what happened in the "One-Man-Rule" hierarchy in FLDS-ville?  Did the church-members abdicate their own free agency in exchange for perks and the reassurance of a fast-track ride to heaven?  Who is to blame? - a lecherous leader who takes the people's money and daughters and commits depravity in secret? - or is it the people who (despite their naivete) willfully surrendered their self-determination and allowed others to govern their families' destinies?

This is the big philosophical question, and li'l ol' Renn has the answer.  EVERYONE is accountable!  Who was to blame for forcing the devout Fundamentalists into the "wilderness"?  Was it the Feds, the State, the Church, the Arizona and Utah citizens who supported the witch-hunt, and Detective Bishop Fred E. Curtis, who investigated criminal suspects during the week and excommunicated them on Sundays?  Who was to blame for re-structuring a community and stripping it of its basic Constitutional principles of common-consent and free-agency (Warren or Lintbag)?  The answer - EVERYONE.

It's time for everyone involved in this 100+-year mess to take a hard look at his and her own personal responsibility and choices - and then take accountability.  Then let's go back to loving and forgiving each other, and work together and prepare for the bigger challenge that awaits us right around the corner.

The Saddest Part

This week's revelations about Warren Jeffs's molestations of pre-teens is positively galling.  I pray that the (now-somewhat-older-teen) girls are finding some solace and recovery from their doubtless horrifying experiences.  I hope they are safe, and that their parents are not dismissing their stories as heresy or fantasy.  The utter violation of these girls' chastity and virtue is an offense worthy of capital punishment (I mean it!).  The saddest part of this is that they probably had no one to turn to at the time - no one who would even begin to believe such clandestine treacheries were occurring in the church - perpetrated by one revered as virtually a god on earth.

Perhaps almost as sad is the fact that seven men are already serving extraordinarily long prison sentences in Texas for their (arranged) "marriages" to 15- and 16-year-old girls (see this article).  You and I both know the difference here.  First, these men's relationships were considered REAL (though plural) marriages - not some perverse orgiastic horror perpetrated in secret.  Early marriages were once considered acceptable in the FLDS community (if not everywhere else, including Texas).  By all accounts, these imprisoned men were/are model citizens and are deeply missed by those same wives (and their children).  Stirred up by its malice for Jeffs, Texas found a way to vent its rage upon these seven men, imposing sentences as long as 75 years ( - - teachers who molest 11- to 13-year-old pupils in Texas have even recently been sentenced to probation).  Don't think I am excusing these men's crimes.  They are all grown, intelligent heads-of-families who should have known better.

Secondly, however, my guess is that the marriages to these teen girls were most likely "sprung" upon the parties with little more than an hour's notice by the "prophet" himself, and the parties would have faced the loss of everything, were they to have protested.  If you have lived in that community since birth, and you want to remain, you do as you are told, or you would end up like many a Barlow  - houseless, wifeless, childless, jobless, churchless, and friendless.

So now we are left with a strange and sad state of affairs.  Warren has called off the crack legal team which was working diligently on the appeal of the men's convictions (based on an improper search).  The evidence should clearly be suppressed, but will it?  Not unlike the unwitting and uninformed folks back in Short Creek, these Texas inmates must know little of the trial of their (now-disgraced) leader.  Do they know yet the extent to which they were betrayed?  Must they now sit behind bars for decades wondering what the heck just happened, waiting for a liberation that isn't coming?

Justice and Mercy can be balanced out pretty well - -  if only politics and perversion don't have to be involved.

Cult Rumors

cult/kəlt/Noun

1. A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.

2. A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.

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"The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of the 20th century, especially since the 1980s, and is considered subjective. It is also a result of the anti-cult movement which uses the word in reference to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and that are believed to use dangerous rituals or mind control. The word implies a group which is a minority in a given society." (Wikipedia)

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One of the news channels had Steve Hassan speaking about cults last night.  "Cult" is another one of those exquisite weapon words.  If you don't like another person's religion, just call it a cult.  Clearly there is disagreement over a strict definition of the word 'cult'.  Nevertheless, there seems to be consensus that it can rightly be applied to situations like Jim Jones' Jonestown People's Temple mass suicide event in 1978.  We have heard the word used regarding Sun Myung Moon (the Moonies) and also to the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who set up an enormous cult commune in Oregon (only later to run into immense legal problems and deportation).

Yours Truly, Renn Oldsbuster, has few peers more committed to the ideal of religious freedom, so I am prompted to wonder if, in a reclusive cult, religious freedom can suffer its greatest restraint.  It has become ridiculously convenient for outside critics to call the FLDS community a cult, so does it really satisfy the definition?  There are rumors being circulated by ex-FLDS people that certain cult-like conditions are developing in the FLDS society.  Are they true?  Are the people free to come and go and associate freely with whomever they choose?

It is being rumored that Jeffs' brother has taken temporary control over the community, that he has demanded that followers sell everything they can and bring the cash to him to fund Warren's legal efforts.  Purportedly, members are now forbidden to use smartphones or the Internet, or to watch TV or read a newspaper.  WHY ???  If this is true, could it be an attempt to guarantee that members do not learn of the horrible (alleged) bad acts committed by their venerated leader?

Some have suggested that, with a complete media blackout, the pro tem FLDS leader can spin the news of his brother Warren's conviction as a terrible miscarriage of justice - the proof of gross religious persecution.  If a large number of the members can thus be fooled into continuing to follow deceitful direction and false information, does that not then constitute cult-like control?  Do they even have a clue that they are not being told the truth when all news and information is filtered or manipulated?

Surely this has not been the case under all FLDS leaders?  There have been periods of openness - Glasnost.  Not always have other, fellow Fundamentalist Mormons been derided as "APOSTATES".   Why now?  Is it a carefully orchestrated cover-up?  Can the cover-up go on much longer?

With inevitable leaks, is there now a schism brewing?  Are there some community members (aligned with William E. Jessop) who have repudiated Jeffs' idiosyncrasies (excuse the euphemism), and who want FLDS-ville to return to the kind of society envisioned by Joseph Smith?  Are their numbers growing, as more and more members discover the inescapable truth and draw a line in the sand, morally distancing themselves from priestcraft and mind-control, accepting that they were temporarily and innocently misled by dangerous one-man-infallibility deceptions?

Are the "cult" rumors true, or it is time to make sure that they at least STOP being true?

More Fodder

Brighter Days

What Happened ???

"I am not the prophet."

I happened to notice today that the Warren Jeffs sexual assault trial was wrapping up in Texas.  Apparently, there were audio recordings of Jeffs allegedly schooling young adolescent girls in the practice of human intimacy (shudder !!!!!!).

I saw some of the hater-nasties spouting their outrageous exaggerations on the Headline News network again.  It was a veritable "cult"-bashing fest.  In the absence of any counterbalancing voice, they were able to spout unchecked - - - water-boarding, dead-babies, incest, child abuse, abandoned boys, forced marriages - the list goes on.  With the shocking revelations emerging from the Jeffs trial, the hater-harpies appear now to have more fodder to call for the eradication of an entire culture.  If the allegations against Jeffs are true, he should do prison time.  If he had accomplices, then they should be prosecuted, too.  One anchor said that with the "cult's" leader now gone, perhaps this whole FLDS "cult" can be shut down - whatever that means.  I mean, what does she want to do with 10,000 people who have just discovered the human failings of their once-revered leader?  Should we nuke the whole town, kids and all (Waco-style)?

I am reminded of those "War of the Worlds"-type movies from the sixties - the ones where the army fires on the aliens before the aliens can even voice the words, "Take me to your leader".  If it looks like a Martian, kill it, then ask questions later.  - - - Or the Frankenstein ones with the frantic mob of Transylvanian townsfolk with torches and pitchforks, itching for a bloodbath.

Hopefully now, the long-overdue epiphany can occur in FLDS-ville - where the faithful congregants can see past the deceit of "divine infallibility" of their corruptible human leaders.  Meanwhile, the State, with all its fangs, can call off the dogs and realize that, just because one maniac went kooky and destroyed precious lives, the innocent people around him don't have to be guilty by association.  Perhaps the hater-hags can think seriously about providing sincere support instead of spreading lies and exaggerations all over the television - more fodder or not.  Sadly, the truth is still not as sexy as wild fabrications.  What motivates you - money, fame, notoriety, political ascendancy, revenge, lust, power?  Are you not as corrupt as the one at whom you are throwing stones?

Irony of Ironies

Simpson

Lintbag

General Authority

Stake President

An article today in Utah's Salt Lake Tribune reported that Judge Diseased Lintbag just ordered Shark Murtleff to pay Brutal Wisass's trumped up ($5 million) in fiduciary (ripoff racket) fees.  There are too many ironies in all of this for me to capture all at once.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that these three characters are all establishment Mormons - I mean - the kind of Mormons for whom Church membership is a badge, a trophy, a lubricant, a passport, a club membership card, an indulgence, a free pass, a mask,  - - - you know what I mean.  One thing it is not is a guarantee of purity.

They are locked in a bitter struggle despite their unstinting allegiance to the mother Church.  Clearly, Lintbag is in Wisass's corner.  She has NEVER NOT ruled in his favor.  She is his advocate.  She must almost be hoping for a cut of the ill-gotten gains. She desperately wanted to sell UEP property chunks to raise money for Wisass's commissions. Now that it looks like there is little chance of getting blood out of the UEP stone, Lintbag has decided to mine slightly deeper pockets - the Utah A.G.'s.  She now finds herself in Dee Benson's corner.  Perhaps Lintbag's campaign against the FLDS and the federal judge must take a back seat to the need to secure cash for Wisass.

The FLDS and Shurtleff made repeated good-faith efforts to arrive at a settlement agreement, but Lintbag refused at every turn, effectively causing Wisass's fraud meter to keep on running.  The only conclusion I can make is that Lintbag spent so much time at Happy Valley U, that her brain went permanently soft.

As I have said before, just because the leader of the FLDS community has long been devolving in a pathetic public disintegration, is that justification to persecute an entire community???  Lintbag and Barbie must have taken Hubris 101 together.  Governor Pyle could have taught them a thing or two about tar babies.