Drink Your Kool-Aid
Those involved in the Peoples' Temple cult, led by Jim Jones,
committed mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
The rights of people in religious sects are far more protected than the rights of those who belong to a cult. The most well-known cult of this century is the Peoples’ Temple Cult, based in Jonestown, Guyana, and led by Jim Jones. Members of this cult idolized and worshiped Jones, even though they were prohibited from communication outside the cult and were coerced into participating in their Doomsday suicide. Children in the cult were brought along with their parents, and how the parents “discipline their children, what activities they encourage in their children, what they teach their children: such decisions are dictated by the group's leader” states Michael D. Langone, Ph.D., and Gary Eisenberg, M.A.. They also state that this could cause neglect from the children’s parents, due to the fact that the cult leader made them the “middle man.” The absolutism of Jones’ power over these people and their belief in his word as their ideology is what led them to kill themselves—as well as their children. Jones’ decisions ended the lives of these children who did not have a choice as to whether they wanted to be in the Peoples’ Temple or not.
