THE COVERAGE of the arrest of Warren Jeffs might lead some people — folks who channel surf and scan newspaper headlines — to believe that the FBI was chasing him because he is a polygamist.
That is far from the truth, but the misconception is understandable. Jeffs is routinely identified in headlines and stories as a polygamist. It is a handy reference point. Most people have ever heard of Jeffs and would not recognize his name. More people were aware that the FBI was looking for a fugitive polygamist.
Polygamy is a crime in most jurisdictions in the United States and its territories. Plural marriage is still practiced by, among others, followers of some renegade offshoots of the Church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But polygamy cases are rarely prosecuted.
The FBI wanted to catch Jeffs because he is accused of being the leader of group that practices a particularly malignant form of polygamy. Jeffs, investigators say, routinely arranged marriages between underage girls and older men. That would mean, in effect, that he was arranging rapes.
It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Jeffs was engaged in the slave trade and that the slaves he was selling were all young girls.
Members of Jeffs’ sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, consider him a prophet, whose actions are beyond judgment by human law. For that reason, Jeffs’ word has been the law in the communities that hold his followers.
The Jeffs case is a good argument for the separation of church and state. If the state is not able to stand aside from religion — all religion — and make laws that apply to all the people, then there is nothing to defend the powerless from tin-pot prophets who assume the trappings of God.
Jeffs’ crime is not polygamy.
His crime is using religion for his own twisted ends.