The Rebellion of Yale Marratt
Page 65
Saul smiled at Agatha. "I'm not answering your question because I don't know what will happen tomorrow or after. There are some imponderables in this situation which could have interesting results. First, Yale Marratt is a frighteningly tenacious man." Saul scowled. "Obviously, inherited from his father. Second, he has two women who really believe in him. And third, he has an old lady who, one of these days, will have put in his hands the thing our society understands . . . dollars . . . a hundred million of them."
"I only wish it were a billion of them. We spend billions for wars. A hundred million is inadequate to fight all the hatreds in the world that breed wars." She was silent for a moment. "I have never asked you, Saul, whether you approve of what I am doing. It is much easier, I suppose, for all of us to go along with the old truisms. The world has survived and grown fat on wars, hatred, and bigotry. Man is basically an animal in his responses. We need wars to clean out the excess population. . . ." Agatha shook her head. "It's too easy. Isn't it better for me, at eighty, to hope that perhaps for the first time in the world there exists a body of beliefs that could be commonly understood by all men? Beliefs not based on fear of the state, or established religions, but beliefs rooted in a calm, youthful confidence that through recognition of the wonder of man, all men could lift themselves out of the mire . . . by their own bootstraps."
"I don't know whether Challenge is the answer, Agatha," Saul admitted, "but I do know that my own actions should affirm to you how I feel. After all, I'm here . . . led on by the same piper's tune. . . ."
Saul chuckled. "I told Yale that Challenge was a Byronesque idea . . . a religion for the young and beautiful. Not for men like me . . . beak nosed and ugly. The old and the ugly could either not remember or would never have participated in the physical or mental awareness that he calls for in the Eighth Commandment.
"Yale didn't answer me until later that night. We were in the library. Rachel, my wife, was there; and Anne and Cynthia. Yale asked Anne whether she thought I was ugly. All of us could see that Anne was puzzled, wondering what Yale was driving at. She stared at me for a moment with that frank, disarming look of hers and said: 'Saul, no man is ugly to a woman in love . . . and I'm in love with you.'"
Saul grinned. "I'm not the type that blushes, but she had me off-base. Rachel was bewildered. Anne was delighted with our reaction. She asked: 'Why is everyone in this world so willing to grasp at hate, and so embarrassed and circumspect with love? I don't mean a sickening, sad-apple kind of love that the do-gooders and religionists preach. I mean what Mat Chilling, and now Challenge, is trying to say . . . that if you open your mind to the ineffable wonder of each living human being then there is no ugly man or woman. If one man is God . . . then all men are Gods. Once you truly understand this, you will know that hate and evil in the affairs of men can be vanquished from the world.'
"You see, Agatha," Saul continued, "Yale didn't prompt Anne. He knew she would answer me . . . I envy what the three of them have accomplished for themselves, at least. And, as a Jew, it amuses me that, if you sift the philosophy of Challenge, it is nothing more or less than what Socrates . . . or Jesus after him . . . preached to the world."
Saul shrugged. "Socrates drank hemlock and Jesus let himself be nailed to the cross. Neither of these symbolic acts did much in the last analysis to wake men to their possibilities." Saul touched Agatha's gnarled hand in a quick gesture of understanding. "I sometimes think one of the best things about Challenge is the Tenth Commandment which has both courage and humor: 'Challenge will never cease to challenge. No thing, no beliefs, not even the Commandments of Challenge are sacred or inviolable.'" Saul chuckled. "'For the world is like a big thoroughbred horse, so big that he is a bit slow and heavy, and wants a gadfly to wake him up. . . .' Come on, Agatha . . . we have work to do."
Epilogue
Saul Angle stood up and addressed the court. "Your honor, I realize that at this juncture you must be under the impression that the defense has no case at all, and the logical thing under the circumstances would have been for the appellant to have entered a plea of guilty. Ordinarily I might have concurred in this opinion, but close study of the laws governing bigamy, and the manner in which they have become laws and statutes of this country, led me to feel with the defendant that their validity for human beings today should be re-examined and questioned. These laws were for the most part devised before the turn of the century when our country had a vastly different moral outlook on life than now dominates most of this culture. We are now living in a society, for example, when one marriage in four ends in divorce, and this percentage seems to be on the increase. Marriages of this kind, contrasted with the bigamous marriage of the defendant, seem far more deleterious to the welfare of the state than a responsible marriage of three human beings who care deeply for each other.
"In the proclaimed, principles of their secular religion called Challenge, the defendant and his wives have already received wide publicity, and are in fact living their lives according to these principles. The defendant is aware that he has broken the law as it now stands on the statute books of this state, as well as the federal law. Today we hope to convince the jury, despite the evidence they have heard and despite the necessity of the bench to charge the jury under the law to bring in a verdict of 'guilty' . . . we hope to open the minds of this jury to the fact that the law is written by human beings for human beings. It is not beyond the province of men or of this society or of this jury to set the wheels in motion that will write new laws based on new times and new conditions facing civilized man everywhere in this world of conflict and hate. It is possible that our generation can write laws governing marriage which are more attuned to present reality. This jury stands on the threshold of a new era. Recognizing that the law as it now exists evidently concedes that the easy divorce and remarriage system society has created is nothing in essence but 'tandem polygamy,' you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, by bringing in a verdict of 'not guilty' will have the unusual opportunity to be charter thinkers and point the way to a revision of the moral code of our time."
Saul's vibrant black eyes swept the courtroom, and rested on the jury. "To accomplish our purpose, in cross-examination of the defendant and his wives, we will examine carefully how these three people have united, and we will consider the alternatives that were available to them. In weighing the alternatives we will consider whether society as a whole would have benefited by Yale divorcing or having his marriage to either of these women annulled.
"This case is of particular interest because the defendant, while he is not on trial for the views set forth in the book, Spoken in My Manner , is editor and publisher of this book. In no sense should it be assumed that the defense in this case is based on proving that bigamy is one of the tenets of the secular religion called Challenge. This is not the issue. The defendant himself does not believe that all men should be permitted bigamous marriages. Our plea of 'not guilty' is based on the fact that we believe that whatever your decision as a jury and as men and women, the law must eventually be rewritten to permit marriage forms, such as bigamy, which have built-in responsibilities to the state. The availability of this type of marriage would in many cases solve the problems of divorce by allowing variationism within marriage, and at the same time would insure the sanctity of the home. Moreover, this modern marriage law would open a new life for thousands of women who in the preponderance of females in most societies have no opportunity to live a full life.
"In a social structure which in the past fifty years is breaking down into smaller and smaller family units, it is conceivable by its variety and strength the bigamous or even polygamous household would have a unity now lacking in the very narrowness of our present family units."
Saul paused. The quiet seriousness of his manner and the sincerity of his words delivered without oratorical effect or bombast had captured the jury and the entire courtroom. Saul continued. "While I have stated that the constitutionality of the law on bigamy will not be challenged on
religious grounds under the First Amendment, I do believe that these words spoken by a lawyer, in a bigamy case in 1889, should be exhumed from the dusty reports of the United States and reviewed in the light of the wars and cataclysm of human despair that has visited the world in the past five decades. These words were written by a man who never heard of the Kaiser or Hitler or Mussolini or Khrushchev. They reflect a philosophy which is dying in the world today . . . it is your sacred duty to nurse the flame of this kind of thinking before it is extinguished and reason and love and free human beings vanish from the world."
Saul picked up a leather-bound volume and read:
"Religious liberty is a right embracing more than mere opinion, sentiment, faith or belief. It includes all human conduct that gives expression to the relation between man and God; it includes all frames of feeling, all forms of faith, and acts of worship to which man is impelled by his hopes or fears; it includes the coitus or outward expression of the religious sentiment; it means entire freedom of creed, thought and worship with a restriction upon the government that it cannot go beyond the overt act; in other words it includes all manifestations or exercise of religion which are not in violation of peace or good order. . . ."
Saul smiled at Yale. "When the defendant came to me to draft the charter for his foundation called Challenge, I was doubtful as to the sanity of this man. Today, I know that Challenge is not a muddleheaded philosophy or religion which calls for other-worldly sanctions for its existence, but a practical philosophy of living which, if it should gain acceptance by a majority of mankind, could truly spell the beginning of the Golden Age. The decisions to be reached in this court are beyond the problem of whether the law at the moment will allow this marriage of Yale, Anne and Cynthia to continue." Saul paused a moment and said, "No . . . the real problem here is not so much one of law, but whether at this juncture in the history of man, you . . . the men and women who hear these words . . . wrapped as you are in mortal clay, can transcend your human limitations and judge like Gods.
"The defense calls for its first witness, Yale Marratt. . . ."