Using religion for domination

This post is going to be about Elizabeth Smart, I promise it is.

First, however, I want to take a moment to update some of you on the crisis in Samoa.

As I am sure most of you know there was an 8.3 earthquake off the coast of Samoa earlier this week.  This resulted in Tsunamis that hit the coasts.  As some of you may also know, The Hulk (my husband) is Samoan.  He was born and raised most of his life in Samoa.  He went to high school and part of college in American Samoa.   He has a lot of friends and family still there on both islands.  His brother and father are both living in Upolu right now.  Upolu was hit by tsunamis and mud slides.  His father and brother are both ok.  He lost a great uncle and some distant cousins in one of the tsunamis.  Until today one of his cousins was missing.  He was found alive and well.  He made it to higher ground but has been without a means of communication.

I am not going to post any of the pictures of the devastation here, if you want to see them you can find them.   The Red Cross isn’t one of my most favorite organizations, but they are fast on the scene to places like this.  So please considering donating to the relief effort.

So anyway, on with the reason I felt compelled to write today (besides having some free time).

I was reading a story in the Salt Lake Tribune today about Elizabeth Smart.  She was the 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped out of her bedroom by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee to be a plural wife for Mitchell in 2002.  She was found several months later walking on the streets of Sandy Utah with Mitchell and Barzee.  Elizabeth is now a grown woman getting ready to go on a  mission for the Mormon Church and wanted to testify before she left in case it ever gets to trial.  The problem is Mitchell and Barzee are both being treated as criminally insane.  Which means they can’t stand trial yet.

Elizabeth tells about times she had a chance to tell someone who she was and maybe get away, but she was scared because Mitchell had told her he would kill her and her family.

When I was little my mom was a single parent.  We used to live in some bad neighborhoods and take some really scary (at times) public transportation.  I remember my mom always telling me that if someone threatened to harm me or her to try get me to do something bad, or go somewhere with them that they were lying and I needed to run away screaming, especially if there were other people around.  She also raised me to believe that there wasn’t such a thing as “male head of the house” that women are equal and no man should be allowed to dominate me  (but sometimes I like that Just sayin’  ).

Here’s what I am pissed about.  Mitchell was able to use religion to justify what he did to this girl, and this girl was raised in religion that teaches that women are second to men in terms of their role in this life and in this world.  The most sacred thing a woman can do is make babies.  But the man is the leader of the house and the family.  Now, I’m not saying that this girl was raised to think rape is ok.  I don’t think that for a minute.  However, in most religions women are considered less than men and men are the controllers and rulers, and when girls think that god wants them to submit to men I think it makes it harder for women who have been raised with those ideals to put them together with the idea that a particular loon who is using jesus for sex isn’t more important than she is in the eyes of god and to take a moment and get out if you can.

I think it’s way past time for women to fight for equal rights within religion just as they have in public life.

I will say one thing I got from reading the article.  Elizabeth seems to have dealt with her ordeal exceptionally well.  It was her idea to testify and she was disappointed that she couldn’t testify in front of Mitchell (when he is in court he starts singing hymns so they always have to remove him).  She has grown into a strong woman who wanted to face the man who did those things to her.  I do hope her story will convince more people to teach their daughters to fight back.

I also have to give her one more kudos to being a smart kid in that when she was with Mitchell and Barzee they went to California for a while, but she knew nobody there would recognize her and it would be harder to be found so she used religion to convince Mitchell to come back to Salt Lake.