The Sins of Who?: Plain Communities Under the Microscope for Sexual Misconduct By Males

Dear readers,

Has anyone heard of the Amish? Okay, has anyone even seen the Amish at work? Behind the picturesque horses and buggies, the farmers working the land, there is a deep dark pit of evil and despair lurking. What is this evil we speak of? You’ll find it in a recent Peacock original docuseries called The Sins of the Amish. Now, let me just explain what the hell I’m talking about.

The Amish may seem like a hardworking people, born of service to a church or whatever, but there is rampant male entitlement, rampant sex abuse, and rampant child abuse as well. Let me summarize. In the Sins of the Amish, we meet a group of Amish women who were discounted repeatedly for filing police reports on their brothers, husbands and fathers. Here’s another thing. Forget the why’s and ways of the Amish culturally. Think about why the plain community of such is so far behind. LEt me tell you why. Take a train or time travel trip back with me to the 1800s, and look at a sexual education book. It suggests that girls be submissive unto their husbands, sound familiar? “Wives, submit to your husbands as they do unto the Lord as Christ is the head of the Church.” This was written in the book of Ephesians, but for crying out loud, this never applied to modern marriages in my humble opinion. I only feel better about this submission thing because I do it every day, not in the sense of abuse, but in the sense of I can give myself freely to my man without his judgment of me as sickening, sexually unattractive, things like that. The Amish girl who does not listen to her father and keep her brother and father standing tall is a rebel, usually put in an institution as in the nineteenth century, treated like total trash.

If you wanna see just how behind the Plain communities, which include Amish and Mennonites are, just look at the sex ed books they use. Girls are expected to marry at nineteen, sometimes younger, otherwise, like in the old days, they are considered old maids. This is not even about the card game, folks. This is the reality of unmarried Amish women.

While my sympathies are in some way with the Amish, all they care about is work, no play, and the farming communities have also been known to sell puppies illegally bred from puppy mills. Some Amish and Mennonite farmers have been themselves puppymilling around in Pennsylvania and other states where puppy mills are born. They’re everywhere, and the Amish farmers are not helping the problem.

While I was at Amish Acres, a museum and farm in Indiana, I was forbidden from using my mobility aid, a white cane, on the stairway and my parents forced me to follow the rules. I want to say to those folks in charge of Amish sites in Indiana and other places, do not even bother opening a place if you’re gonna do a big injustice toward your blind clientele. Please cater to folks with disabilities, and include the blind in your thought and planning of any touring and such. Please tell any blind person they can use the cane on stairs, on the floor, anywhere because it is required. Blind people in your facilities must also be allowed to use a guiding or service dog of any kind. Usually, guide dogs are trained in helping the blind up and down stairs, through doors, around things, all sorts of stuff awaits a guide dog handler and the dog themselves. If you’re one of those Amish or Mennonites, chances are you’re not reading this, but if you’re on the outside of such communities, know this. I have no qualms about turning the Indiana Amish in for discrimination against me and other blind tourists.

The Amish have had many sinful things done to each other and other people. I think more than the women they mistreated, and trust me that’s important too, but the dogs and the blind tourists and the wives of some if not every Amish man should know that there is a big wide world outside that protects women from these insular practices. While Carolyn Jessop was fighting for custody of eight little lives, Merrill Jessop, her good for nothing jerkish husband with a bunch of other sex toys to play with was demanding the same. Why did Carolyn win? Because she was smart, independent, sick of the sister wives being bratty with her and the kids. All but Betty ended up staying with her. Why did Flora Jessop get out of the FLDS too? Because she knew the world would protect women and such, and she had a very supportive husband and family of her husband. The other problem here is that plain communities are stuck in the past, not willing to move forward. Stuck in the past could be an understatement, but most religious groups that are not Amish or Mennonite are now going face down in piles of sex abuse scandals. There is no way that I would ever want to join a Plain community, and perhaps Weird Al wasn’t too far in making fun of the Amish. Yes, the song itself called Amish Paradise is rather comical, but the Amish and their sins are a reflection on us, the United States. What can we do to curb all the stuf going on in insular communities?

1. First, could we revise the First Amendment to include you can have opinions, freedom of speech and the press and assembly which is safe and peaceable? Yes, peaceful assembly at all levels is great, but when the purpose of a group of folks is to do what the Heaven’s Gate nutheads did to those victims they encouraged to kill themselves, you got a problemo.
2. Houston, if there’s a problem with a certain religious sect, one must be able to report it to a government task force set up for this purpose. While I value freedom to have and practice religions, practicing one’s religion should also mean that hateful thoughts and actions don’t mix themselves with the teachings of a deity or Jesus or Buddha or anyone else. Religions should be about freeing, not controlling mankind.
3. If you want to see hate groups on a map, the Southern Poverty Law Center has a whole big map full of these such groups, including Neo-Viking, NeoNazi, Neo-Vulkish, and many others. In Colorado, there are a few underground hateful groups. Unfortunately, I’m sure Malcom X is rolling in his grave because the Nation of Islam is listed in Colorado as a hate group for being and speaking Antisemetic. I can’t stand antisemitism as much as the next big black guy can’t stand racism, but shouldn’t we include the Plain communities on a certain level of a hate group registry? See next item.
4. Let’s say you’re browsing a group database thing so you can find something to be part of, you’re a new person to this country, or you’re new to the state you live in and you’ve been American all your life. LEt’s say you got swept up in a group, and you found out the group doesn’t like your gay son or your lesbian daughter or your transgender grandchild, your blind relatives, etc etc. Things like this happen a lot. So here’s the skiny. Level 1 registered hate groups should not be allowed to receive government support and funding, should be taxed for hate, and should be told how to operate safely because people can die from such groups. These level 1 groups would include terrorist orgs like the KKK, NeoNazi groups, and a lot of your white nationalist orgs as well. I’d also classify America’s alQaeda groups as level 1 and add terrorist to the label as well. This would be classified as code red level 1. All groups in this tier would get a red bar code symbol to place next to their name. So let’s see how this would work. Level 2 groups would be all of level 1’s criteria, but no violence would be pinned on it. Such groups might include, sadly but accurately, your Neo-Vulkan groups, some of your anti LGBTQI+ churches, including the Westboro Baptist Church and some of the Pentecostal churches that preach only to include cis males and cis females, think about it. These churches would also have to be taxed, and would not receive government funding or support, and did I want to say the Word of Faith Fellowship should get a level 2 on this registry? The big bad reports of abuse would go here. There have been incidences of violence and isolation of cult members, and this is a dangerous cult status group we’re talking about, but WFF really should be a place where politicians are barred from. They should not be part of this organization if they want to govern our country. WFF has been noted as abusive and not following the word in its entirety, using scripture as a means to abuse kids, all that stuff. The ax on this church will be because they won’t be able to run in a whole county in North Carolina.
5. Continuing from the previous item, the Amish would be a special case, level 3. Level 3 groups would be the groups that have been known to be abusive, are everything but racist. The Amish don’t like disability, don’t like gays, so they’d probably fall under this category. There will be a little orange dot next to those groups. Level 2 groups, btw, would get a yellow thing next to their names because you know what yellow would mean right?
6. There would be a green dot to the proximity of groups that do the following.

1. Green coded groups would welcome all people in its ranks provided the criteria for joining the club can be that you may be interested in a subject, golf for example, or you have a like mind with the club’s members, ham radio for example.
2. The clubs in the green category don’t hate people based on protected class status, including disability, sexual identity, sexual preferences, and many otyher combinations of protected class.
3. The group would accommodate people with disabilities. All materials should be made into formats we can read, including on the Internet.
4. Recruitment is not aggressive or some marketing tactic.
5. No way will I join a group that lovebombs its potential recruits. Jim Jones and his people did that.
6. Green coded groups would exhibit the ability to bring people together, get awards, and do good acts of service that can be demonstrable in getting grants. Examples, Soar Youth and Adult choir, though I can’t be part of them anymore, has a good habit of inviting all manner of person to their choir. Foster kids and others share a meal, and it’s fun. I hope that someday I will go back to Soar. They’ve been instrumental in helping me realize my dream of maybe fostering and adoption. I’m not sure about that though given discrimination against blind folks in all countries, so if I did adopt, I bet it would be domestic.
7. Green coded groups would encourage, not discourage talking to outside folks.
8. The group with green on it would also not exhibit scandalous activity.

These databases and ideas are not meant to necessarily impede on freedom of speech, but I want to see more protections in place for former cult victims, victims of folks like the FLDS and the Amish and such. Thank you all for reading.

Beth