Jeffs, you may remember, is the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect that is all about polygamy. Now, I would be happy to leave polygamists alone if I believed that everyone involved was freely making an adult decision to order their life that way; de gustibus non disputandum est and all that. Unfortunately, polygamy more often seems to involve forcing fourteen-year-old girls into a situation where they are raped by their "husbands."
Such is the case going on right now in St. George, where Jeffs is on trial as an accessory to rape, and a very brave woman is explaining what happened to her when she was married against her will:
The woman, who cannot be identified, said she begged her husband not to touch her as he undressed her one night soon after their wedding.
"I can't do this, please don't,'" she said she told her husband. "I was sobbing. My whole entire body was shaking I was so scared. He didn't stop. He just laid me onto the bed and had sex."
Afterward, the woman said she felt dirty and took two bottles of painkillers. "I just wanted to die. I didn't want to deal with (my husband) anymore. I didn't want to deal with Warren, or the prophet, or my mother. ... I was so hurt by them," she said.
The woman went to Jeffs for counseling, and he counseled her but good:
The woman later arranged a meeting with Jeffs and told him her husband was touching her in ways she did not fully understand."
"I told him (Jeffs) I was sorry I had failed so severely. ... He told me that I needed to repent, that I was not living up to my vows, I was not being obedient, I was not being submissive and that was what my problem was," she recounted.
Jeffs told her to go home "and give myself mind, body, and soul" to her husband.
Right. Never mind that she did not want to do so -- it was her duty, as a woman, to submit. Never mind that she was fourteen, and did not ask or desire to be married to the nineteen-year-old man whom she had been paired with. It was her job, her one duty as a woman, to submit to his desire, and if she failed, if she did not desire sex, if she objected to it -- that was a sin, and she would have failed in the eyes of God.
It is tempting to write this off as just the sick outcome of following a twisted fake prophet. It is tempting, but it would be wrong. After all, Jeffs' teaching to the woman was not unusual. Phyllis Schlafly, who has not been cast out of society yet (though one can dream), recently told a group of students, “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.” Schlafly didn't dream that up out of thin air; there's a long tradition of thought that says a woman who was married had given eternal consent to her husband to do with her what he would. "Love, honor, and obey" is still part of a woman's vows in some mainline Christian churches.
No, Jeffs' counsel, while horrific and deserving of punishment, are not unusual. They are sadly all too much a piece with how women have been traditionally viewed, and are still viewed by many: as a subordinate who owes her husband everything, whether she wants to give it or not. As someone who does not have the right to object, once a ring is on her finger. As property. If there is something to feel good about, it is that Jeffs is nevertheless on trial, one of his victims is coming back at him, and Reuters' headline on the story is, "Polygamy leader told rape victim to repent." That's at least a small positive movement toward ending the wrongheaded view of women as second-class citizens.
