Signs: Church, Crown & Commerce

I drove my car down Pico past other car washes (wasting money again!) since this car wash had a really good sign. Crown Car Wash. It's right next to a Catholic Church and, I couldn't get it in the photo, it's within spitting distance of the Big Mormon Church in Westwood, that has a big golden angel moroni on top being all pseudo-gothic and old testamenty.

The LA Times did a large series this week on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, a gloom-and-doom off-shoot of Mormonism whose leader the feds decided to put on the FBI's most wanted list this past week. This is one of those ultra-orthodox, going back to the real way sects that are busy going back to 1840 when good old Brig Young had a lot of wives and so they practice polygamy and refuse to educate their children and demand that women be subservient to men and that men be subservient to their prophet. You know, the one on the FBI's most wanted list. The Utah Attorney General was quoted as saying "this is our Taliban." So what this sect of 10,000 do is 1) practice polygamy, 2) molest and rape their children, male and female, 3) practice shunning, 4) abandon male children by the side of the road, 5) stop educating the kids at about 11 so that the girls can get "married" to older men and the boys who are not abandoned can work on construction crews and get injured and maimed. They do this to keep the number of boys down so that there is less competition for wives.

One point that I thought was fascinating was that the sect makes money by working construction jobs, and they use their boy kids as slaves to keep costs down. So in this area of Utah and Arizona they under-bid construction crews that are made up of immigrant labour. Yep, Mormon boys are cheaper than illegal immigrants.

The other thing I think is amazing about all this is the, (aside from the fact that your tax dollars go to support these people) what is it about God and pedophilia? Roman Catholic Priests have been molesting children for years while the Bishops just looked on and giggled and these more-closer-to-god-than-you Mormon zealots have been molesting and raping their own children for over 50 years and the federal, state and local governments have done nothing to stop them. Not to mention the "official" Mormon church. Which despite sending their missionaries everywhere in the world (including New York City) won't send them to this town in their own state.

None of this seems very sanctified or religious to me. It seems to me that devotion should include civil rights, including those of children, because what Jesus said was actually "love thy neighbor." He didn't say "rape children."