It’s Sunday. Normally on Sundays I don’t even turn on my computer. All I do on spring and summer Sundays is (1) read the New York Times and (2) decide what else to do with the Sunday. (As of next Sunday, my (2) will be watching football.)
But then I read this article on the scandalous hate-crimes trial against a renegade Amish patriarch, and my outrage has caused me to turn the computer on.
Women, read the whole article. It is an effective bible for fundamentalist religion of any kind and etches into the mind that the purpose of fundamentalist sects such as this is arguably singular: to suppress women. To deny women full human rights. To ensure that men control everything and everyone and can, with the impunity the notion of any old god conveys, insist on having sex with any women around.
It doesn’t matter what fussy little religious traditions the leaders of such sects conjure up to make each sect distinct from the others. Wear a cap with strings, or a scarf exposing the woman’s ears. A naqib, a burka, a wig of the Orthodox Jews, the mandated female uniform of Mormons.
This is the dynamism, the central truth of any fundamentalist cult, any fundamentalist sect. Men rule, women serve.
This is religious rape. This is human rape. Read the whole article and cry, and get angry and leave whatever religion you’ve bound yourself to, because they are all the same and their purpose is unified.
OK, now I’ll turn off the computer and go see “The Bourne Identity.”
Monday, Sept 3 at 4:20 pm: I meant “The Bourne Legacy.” And it was great.