More Seriously

With all this talk about the Mormon sect in Texas, I've had some mixed feelings that I just feel like expressing. If you don't like my more cerebral jaunts, skip this. I promise, I'll bring you updates on Sveta's ass as soon as they happen.

The adults of the sect, and some of the children as well, are arguing that what they're doing is perfectly acceptable and religious. Obviously it's not acceptable to most people, otherwise no one would make a fuss about it. As far as religious, that seems pretty flimsy. I'm for religious freedom, but the day that religious freedom allows you to violate my rights in some way, that's the day you and I will have a problem. In this case, it's not my rights, but it is the rights of people that governments are supposed to protect. Non-sect members and ex-sect members are saying that the kids have been brainwashed into thinking this is the right way to live, and I guess they could be right. It's certainly not the way I want to live.

Yet at the same time, it's kind of like my situation. I mean, I was raised to think some things were acceptable that most people don't find good at all. If anyone found out about my family, while they wouldn't put me in protective custody, they would definitely lock up my parents. And they would claim, when I said that it was consensual, that it wasn't, because I had been brainwashed to think that these things were okay, when really they aren't.

I don't know how to react to that, really. I don't feel brainwashed. I certainly had exposure to other points of view. My parents were never abusive; I've never felt anything but love from them. I like to think that I made my own choices, regardless of whether or not some arbitrary rule says I was able to.

There are differences. Nothing about sex in my family is religious. Maybe it's belief-based, but frankly, what isn't? My father only married one woman. He's never tried to marry me off to an older man. He never beat me or physically abused me. The same is true for my brother and sisters. And we don't live in a compound (I've seen the video and pictures of this place, and if that's not a separatist compound, I don't know what is. It's probably a jail too) cut off from the outside world. I went to normal schools, even religious ones. I had friends over. I even like to believe, although I have no proof, that if I had not wanted to have sex, my parents wouldn't have made me. They love me. Why would they do that?

But at the same time, my father did set me up with older men. He didn't force me, or so I believe, but you might argue that I was brainwashed into doing what he wanted me to do. Since I don't always do what he wants me to do, and neither I nor any of my sisters or my mother are subservient to him, it's hard to draw a parallel there. But maybe we just think we aren't subservient. I had sex at an age when most people find the thought totally inappropriate, an age where if the government found out, my parents would be in jail. And I believe what I believe, and maybe it's because I've been brainwashed.

It's like the old dilemma: what is real? Is anything I do real, or am I living in a fantasy world in my brain. The Matrix wasn't the first thing to deal with this subject, contrary to popular belief. An extension of that: are my beliefs really my own? Are my decisions my own? Or did someone outside me influence them in a way I can't realize?

I think that if you think about that kind of thing too long, you start doing nothing. And that's not healthy. So maybe nothing is real. Isn't it better to just act like it is, until it's proven otherwise. Sure, somebody could come along with a magic pill and take you out of the dream, but who's to say whether that reality is real either. Maybe it's just a hallucination. That's why I don't take psychoactive substances, kids. They say it opens your mind, but really, all it does is make you wonder if anything is real. And then you spend all your time worried about that.

In the end, all I have to go on is the belief that I haven't been abused. Hell, if I had been abused, my father would have started fucking me back when I wanted him to, instead of waiting until he felt I was ready. And I'm sorry, there's way too much love in my family for it to be abuse. I remember my first time, not in glowing manufactured images like something that I might have made up so I wouldn't feel the pain of abuse. I remember it like it was. And until someone can prove to me that it's other than that, I'm just going to keep believe what I believe, which is that my mom and dad love me and my family, and I love them, and nothing we do is wrong or evil.

As far as the sect members, it's hard to say. On the one hand, if what the media and the government are reporting is true, then it's abuse. On the other, maybe they just misunderstand. I'm not preaching tolerance; I just wonder if our lenses haven't affected how we view these people.

That said, they're a creepy cult, and whether or not what they are doing to their children is misunderstood, they ought to be looked at very carefully. As should other cults I won't mention. And other religions. And the government.

I wish this all would go away. It makes me uncomfortable, partially because it gives me fantasies about what it must be like to be a member of the sect, and that turns me on and makes me wonder whether I'm really more screwed up than I think. I mean, how can I find the concept of underage forced sex and pregnancy and abuse to be arousing? It's my cross to bear, I guess.

Thanks for bearing with me for this. Or if you skipped it, you're not reading this anyway, so screw you for not bearing with me. Only kidding. You know I love you baby.