Clearly I can’t leave well enough alone. This is just a quick link to an MSNBC article about FLDS parents driving hundreds of miles to see their children, as the sibling groups have been scattered to all corners of the Lone Star state. The FLDS spokesman claims to see something fishy in this, and although I’m more disposed to suspect any spokesman than I am the individual parents, I have to agree. Forget about the parents. Does anyone honestly think it’s good for children from tightly-knit families to be separated from their siblings? We’re talking about elementary-age children here. And again, why the big emphasis on keeping the mothers, not accused of any crime, away from the children, unless the real point of all of this is to reprogram them into proper modern children?
Just basic constitutional principles here. No one should be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. Both children and parents here are being deprived of liberty, and with only a farce of a legal hearing so far. What kind of a precedent is this setting? What if the Arkansas authorities decide that being forced to grow up in a family of 18 children constitutes abuse, or brainwashing? Can they just go and confiscate the Duggars’ children? What about Amish children, brought up in isolation from the world, without simple amenities like electricity and TV? Should we forcibly assimilate them, distribute them through foster homes? What about homeschooled children? Back in the ’70s and early ’80s, they were indeed kidnapped away from their families, and parents spent weeks, even months in jail, for the crime of not conforming to the government-run school system. Maybe we should reopen this. They get spanked, after all, and taught all kinds of weird things: creationism, obedience to their parents (rather than teenage rebellion), the biblical perspective on all subjects, and forbidden to date. Maybe we need to move towards imitating the German government’s approach, where they recently put a teenaged girl in a mental asylum because her parents were brainwashing her by teaching her at home. (in case you thought the Germans had gotten over the fascist approach to the state’s privileges)
Whatever happened to the old-fashioned idea of burden of proof? Doesn’t the Texas government need to prove its allegations in order to keep these children locked up away from their mothers, brothers, and sisters?
May 12, 2008 at 4:55 pm
i totally agree w/ you!
May 13, 2008 at 3:21 pm
What you say is very sensible. I agree completely. I find the idea of family separation and government instigated reprogramming as or more repulsive than the alleged child abuse. This is being made into a statement against a way of life when all it should ever have been about is protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
May 13, 2008 at 5:02 pm
DNA proves which adult men had sex with underage girls. Arrest them.
And arrest the mothers who stood by and allowed their underage daughters to be raped. And take away ALL their kids. Anyone who follows instructions from a grand pooh-bah to allow their underage daughter to have sex with an adult man is just as liable to follow instructions to throw a Jim Jones style Kool-Aid picnic for the whole family.
Arrest anyone who knew that underage girls were having sex with adult men and didn’t report it to the cops. The pious mannerisms of the sect members masks the fact that their core behavior is the same as a group of rowdy guys circled ’round cheering on the rape of a girl too drunk to protest. It doesn’t matter if you’re pounding the bible or pounding down beers… not stopping what’s happening at center stage is criminal.
May 14, 2008 at 12:48 am
Yeah! and while we’re at it let’s go to the public schools where teachers have been “dating” the school girls sinmce forever and getting away with it. We should close down every public school and put all the teachers in jail and all the kids in foster care because we all know and they all know that “everybody’s doing it”. There’s some serious criminal activity going on in the public schools. We should shutter them all and if we don’t then shame on US for allowing such dens of iniquity to continue existing! While we’re at it we could even jail all the folks who know those “people” next door are stealing to feed their drug and booze habits. Oh think of the people we could jail. Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could just MAKE everybody live the way WE think THEY ought to live…Truthfully…this whole Texas mess is just another step toward the end of the rights of the people of America which were once guaranteed by that now antiquated and obsolete piece of paper known as the US Constitution.
May 14, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Seriously y’all. Quit your senseless bickering. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on here. You should be praying. You should be praying for the parents. You should be praying for the children. You should be praying that God guides the hands of the authorities. You should be praying for the little girls who may have been raped. It really doesn’t matter what side you’re on. Shut your mouths and get on your knees and I mean that in the most loving of ways.
May 15, 2008 at 8:03 pm
oldpaths - For your analogy to to be equitable, it would have to be common practice for the school’s parents, students, teachers, and administrators to accept the principal as the official sexual matchmaker and know exactly which students have been assigned to have sex with which teachers! That’s completely different from the occasional, clandestine teacher/student affair that gets the teacher investigated, fired, and jailed if anyone finds out about it.
The Texas folks got caught and the process is the same for them as for a single teacher that got caught except 1) it’s not one but many being accused of rape, 2) all the neighbors, teachers, people in authority who would normally protect the child and report the rape are instead actively covering up the crime by lying about who is who and who slept with who at what age, etc., 3) due to the isolation of the ranch there are no outside, uninvolved sources of information about the members of the group, 4) the members of the group have dragged out the “religious belief” red herring to deflect attention away from the fact that they endorse illegal sex between adult men and underage girls. I repeat - it doesn’t matter whether you quote the bible or quaff a beer before bedding an underage girl - it’s rape. Period. Apparently they believe their ranch should be a zone of criminal immunity and they should be able to rape young girls as they please.
You said, “Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could just MAKE everybody live the way WE think THEY ought to live…”
We do! That’s why we have laws. We aren’t allowed to steal or damage another person’s property. One law says it’s illegal for an adult to have sex with an underage person and another says it’s illegal to not report it if you know an adult is having sex with an underage person. Change the laws if you want but don’t hole up in some secluded spot and rape youngsters as you please thinking you’re gonna get away with it.
Look up “Pitcairn” if you want to know what can happen. An isolated island with very few residents, 12 year old girls getting raped was seen as normal (”one Councillor said, ‘”Look, the age of consent has always been twelve and it doesn’t hurt them.”). All but one of the men were found guilty.
May 30, 2008 at 1:08 am
Kids are America’s most precious and most at-risk citizens. With drugs and peer pressure facing them on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that mental illness and drug abuse is at an all time high. Problems facing American children.