well hey you
I am going to try to post your thoughts and my answers in a way that is readable ok? I will put yours in
bold
I understand what you are saying and I agree with you for mothers that did what you are describing. But what about the mothers that have a one or two year old and have not handed their child over for abuse? The ones that are being very good mothers? They had their children taken too. I totally agree that we should not set aside the abuse of children. I just believe it is possible to help those children without displacing the lives of other children to do it.
i feel it would have been impossible to leave any children there if the men are not arrested first. for example in the world we live in we find a family where the father is accused of sexually abusing his 3 daughters. do we allow him to keep custody of his son since he seems to only want sex with the girls? well i am sure some judge out there has done that but normally he is thought to be a unfit parent for abusing one child. as a unfit parent he should not have access to any of his children.
but sherri they ARE detaining the men. The men are being held on the compound and the innocent ones have been displaced. It didn't have to be that way.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/details-of-sect-life-emerge-after-raid/20080404201909990001 i read that as the men are detained only during the search. i would think that would be common practice. for the safety of the officers you would not want criminal suspects to be free to wander in and out of a crime scene. the search may take longer than a normal search due to the size of the compound.
This is a very good point that you are making. I think you are right in that some of these teenage girls might not be able to visualize an escape to a different life while being in the same location they have always known. Being in a whole different environment might make them see that life outside the compound IS possible for them. I don't think anyone is trying to say that the toddlers and infants are being sexually abused. As far as I know the concern is the "older" children. Ranging in ages from 9 or 10 and up is that correct? If I am right about that, then why not leave the younger ones with their mothers just for now? That would have lessened the load on the system and enabled those trying to help th aim their help where it is most urgently needed and will do the most good.
they have given the mothers the chance to stay with the children. that is unusual but it has taken some of the burden off the system. finding a place to house 400 plus children and a hundred plus mothers was easier than finding foster homes for 400 plus children. as i said above the children should not be left in the home with a sexual predator. until the men are arrested or cleared the children should not be returned.
It isn't true that it is impossible to tell which children belong to which mother. That is what we are being told and are expected to "believe" but it simply isn't true. It is the paternity that is proving more complex.
The mothers know who they are. if you showed up on the playground and claimed my child as yours today what would i do to prove it was my child? i would produce family photos, i would produce stacks of paper work from the birth certificate to doctors records to school records. i would ask my child to tell the police who his mommy is. things are not so simple in this case. the children are instructed to call all wives of their father mother. they raise the children as a group not as individual families. a 30 year old wife may claim a new born as hers to cover for the fact it actually belongs to her 15 year old sister wife. with no records of the births we would need to trust that none of these mothers would lie to protect their way of life.
well you have just placed yourself in the minority viewpoint wise. I agree that it is somewhat a cultural thing although it has its roots deeply in religion. The reason that I mentioned the polygamists that were on Oprah was because I made it a point to watch that show. The lifestyle is so outside me value system and comfort level that I thought it would be good for me to look at it from another point of view. Interestingly, ALL the mainstream religions condoned polygamy to some degree in the past. The Jews, Catholics and Protestant religions all eventually abandoned the practice though.
religion is not just faith but also history. people often ignore that. the bible has rules laid out by god and rules laid out by man. when we read a reference to slavery or how large of a stick you should beat your wife with we should take it in the context of a historical document. as the views of society change the historical rules laid down by men are often drop by the main stream religions. it is the rules laid down by god we are expected to still follow if we practice one of the faiths you listed above.
I think everyone finds that abhorrent But this i where it gets complicated isnt it? Having sex with a small child is universally understood as wrong. From that point on is where it gets complicated. In some times and ages past it wasn't unheard of for girls to be betrothed and even married at 13 or so. I remember reading here on WS on one of the Christmas threads, that Mary was thought to be 14 when she gave birth to Jesus. That was the accepted standard at that time. I am neither defending or condemning that I am just stating it as it is. Another way this can be viewed is from an anthropological viewpoint. Or maybe some would call it the evolutionary view point. When the body undergoes sexual maturation the body is then ready for sex. I think that some of the more ancient cultures went by that standard apparently. In our modern world we abhor that thought and think that the older people are when they have sex the better and we have set a mandatory magical age for that. 18 in some states. 16 in others. No matter, we still have 15 year olds giving birth into airplane toilets so I guess the evolutionary have a point as to when the BODY says it is ready for sex. Regardless the law of the land and the time period we live in currently, says that under 16 is too young and regardless of the "culture" or the "religion" of ANY group If they cross this law, then they are in violation of it.
i am a firm believer in the right to express our religious beliefs even if it makes others uncomfortable. when our religious practices cause physical harm to others i feel it is no longer a freedom of religion issue. we have a set of laws in this country that govern acceptable behavior. those that feel the law is unjust are free to try and change them. different states have different laws that cover the age of consent. inbreeding must lower the IQ because they chose a state with a consent law of 16. the point of a consent law is to say "at this age a girl is old enough to control her own body and make a agreement for sex". in no state is it legal for a parent to tell a child of any age you must consent to sex. weather you hold the girl down or simply tell her she must do it you have taken away the ability to consent.
I am cautious about wiping out a culture. Suppose for example there was really a planet X ( I am borrowing that from a thread here at WS) and lets suppose on that planet they believe no one should marry under the age of 21. Lets say that they also do not allow for any divorce if one has children. Lets say that they even see divorcing when there are children and remarrying and blending those children into a new family with a new "mom" and "dad' as the equivalent of the reassigning that the FLDS practice. Lets say that they see that one in every 50 infants is maltreated in our culture. That the number of babies being born and dumped by barely pubescent girls is on the rise. They make the decision to come here and invade our culture. They decide to take all the children here in America and the mothers can come or not. Would we be real happy with that?
would i be happy with that? depends on the day you ask me. some days i would be happy to have our culture wiped out. for all the wonderful things we have done we have bred a society full of people that abuse children. from my first memory i was abused. from the age of 7 until 15 i was sexually abused almost daily. my mother did not stop it. many times i prayed for him to die and often thought of killing myself. i do not think a end to a culture that allows that kind of abuse is a bad thing. just because something is culturally acceptable does not make it ok. the nazi empire had it's culture virtually wiped out and that did not turn out bad. you do not hear of many cannibals around today and i am ok with that. people will always judge each other and think they are better. i am sure the people on planet x think there way is better than ours. maybe it is.
But the question still remains what to do with this particular culture today, the FLDS. They are certainly not the worst abusers of children's rights globally speaking. That dubious honor probably goes to the practicers of female circumcision. But these people exist within the borders of our country. They are fringe dwellers in a country that was founded by people seeking a place to practice their religion as they saw fit. That was a highly idealistic venture on their part and makes the USA unique on the world scene. I just feel cautious about superimposing my own or anyone else's current view until we are very very sure we will truly be making things better and not just another variation of worse then they currently have.
as for what to do with the FLDS i think that answer is not so complicated. we have shown as a society a willingness to ignore their practice of polygamy. if they wish to retain their culture they must no longer bring harm to their children. eat home grown foods. ok. kick young boys out into the wild to fend for themselves. not ok. make your own clothing and shun a modern lifestyle ok. force young girls to have sex. not ok.
