Parents Behaving Badly

Meet Phillip Dale Williams, better known to kids in Virginia and beyond as Douglas “Dude” Cigarette. His three wives known him by another name: “asshole”. Fourth wife Lashawn Stevenson suspected something was up when her hubby received child support notices in the mail. (Yeah, that’d tip me off too.) When pressed by his wife and, later, by police, Williams had to admit that he had been married three other times. The problem? He had forgotten to divorce the second two. Oops. Williams now faces 10 years in jail for his crimes.

This makes no sense to me. Who gives a shit about punishing bigamy any longer? Isn’t it in society’s best interest for this guy to be free and working, so that he can support his kids financially? Annul marriages 2 and 3, slap him with a giant fine, and saddle his bank account with a deduction for support. Give him a jail sentence if you must, but suspend it so that the dude can sweat off is debt to society. That’s better for his kids than tossing his ass in a cell.

Aaaah, ya gotta love religion. It can be a bastion of hope for the hopeless – a flicker of light in a dark world. Too often, however, it’s used as an umbrella defense for ridiculous and primitive ideas that society should have left behind a Stone Age ago. One such idea is polygamy, a misogynistic and abusive practice that’s revered by fundie Mormons such as Warren Jeffs.

While practicing polygamy is illegal (especially when it involves the “marrying” of underaged girls, as is common among Mormon bigamists), talking about it is not. Which is as it should be. But should a dad be allowed to teach these beliefs to his children? According to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, the answer is yes. The Court ruled 5-1 this week that Stanley M. Shepp can indoctrine his daughters regarding the virtue of being some Mormon knucklehead’s 14th baby-trophy.

You can read the full ruling from the Pennsylvania court yourself (PDF file). The long and the short of it is that the Court didn’t believe that teaching his daughters about polygamy was enough of a danger to warrant overriding Shepp’s right to free speech. Legally, I agree. Preventing parents from teaching their children “questionable” beliefs is a slippery slope that would lead to asshole judges applying their private morality in court – like the Indiana judge who ruled that two divorcing parents, both Pagans, couldn’t raise their daughter into their faith.

Morally, however, Shepp’s still a bastard for cramming this crap into the ear canals of impressionable children. So I’m practicing my right to free speech by plunking him in the PBB Hall of Shame. Fortunately, his oldest daughter’s a teen now – and we all know how resilient teens are to swallowing their parents’ bullshit. Here’s hoping that his daughter grows up, moves to Massachusetts, and marries the woman of her dreams.

(P.S. to Mr. Shepp: You’re lookin’ pretty snazzy in that button-down banana shirt, buddy. Ya know, if God ever gives you permission to take on a husband…)

(Photo courtesy of CNN/AP)