A 50-year-old man had ritual sex with a 12-year-old girl while adult women assisted.

And everyone was cool with it.

That’s just part of the bizarre story told in Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey and the exploits of its prophet, Warren Jeffs.

Keep Sweet’s Fascination

It’s the story of a renegade Mormon group that still practice polygamy. Vigorous polygamy, especially the type that lets old men bang young women and, occasionally, girls.

It’s the kind of thing that disgusts, but it also arouses, at least at some level. Sex sells for a reason. Keep Sweet did, its IMDB rating currently sitting at 7.3 with 11,000 reviews (Netflix’s Murder Mountain, which enjoyed the endorsement of Joe Rogan, sits at 6.8 with 3,200 reviews).

But I don’t think sex is the only reason Keep Sweetfascinates.

I think it fascinates because, although everyone understands the sex part, they can’t understand how an entire culture could allow such a thing to occur.

If It Doesn’t Fit, Put It on the Shelf

The docuseries tries to explain it, but every interview or explanation came down to the same thing: it’s how these people were raised. It was the only thing these people knew. They were raised in a polygamous culture that celebrated their prophet. If the prophet told girls to do something—or someone—they did it/him.

If something didn’t make sense, they were told to “put it on the shelf.”

And just as the lechery of old men resonates with all men at some level, this kind of rationality resonates too.

These girls who submitted to sex with old men, the parents who gave their consent the women who participated in the erotic ritual: they acted rationally.

It’s All Rational

That’s the real dirty secret in the docuseries and another reason why, besides the sex, it fascinates.

We’re all capable of such a thing.

Not because of our nethers.

But because of our brains.

Show notes here