FLDS Polygamy: Good solutions? Bad solutions?

My first reaction on hearing about the Texas raid was “Finally, the authorities have stopped ignoring the abuses committed by the polygamists!” Yet the more I hear about this story, the more reservations I have about it.

The state took several hundred children away from their parents and put them in foster care on the strength of one anonymous phone call? Now I know you’re thinking “Chanson, everybody knows these guys are forcing underage girls to marry creepy old geezers.” True, but “everybody knows” isn’t evidence. Michael Carr makes the following point:

Now you tell me, if you took a two block area in a rough area of an inner city, wouldn’t you find that the children living in that area would probably be suffering all sorts of abuse, addictions, and neglect? Yet you couldn’t simply take them away en masse and distribute them to foster care. You’d have to make this decision on a case by case basis and the mass raid itself would be illegal. How is that different than this case?

Taking children away from their families is a very serious matter, not to be taken lightly. Individual evidence should be present for every family affected. Granting the state (and, in fact, a competing religion) the license to round up all of the children of a given community — based on the parents’ ideology — is scary enough that it should give you pause even if you’re horrified by the polygamists’ practices.

Recall this famous quote attributed to H. L. Mencken:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

And in this case, if you’d like to see the scoundrels brought to justice, that’s all the more reason not to screw it up. This mess may well help the fundamentalists attract converts from within the mainstream LDS community. Remember Mormons thrive on “persecution” especially if they can reasonably claim it’s unfair or unjustified. All we need is for one television program to show a sweet FLDS mom pining for her kids and then cut to a shot of the same kids being taken by their new foster parents to a fiery “Joseph Smith was a fraud” sermon at a Baptist church, and a good portion of Utah will start thinking “Maybe these guys are the real true church after all…”

Already some voices in the Bloggernacle are tentatively starting to sympathize with them (see here, among other places). As bad as they are, there’s some legitimate claim of unfair treatment. Take a recent case in Wisconsin where a child died of a curable disease because the parents decided to pray instead of taking the child to a doctor. The only reason the parents might avoid a charge of criminal neglect is because the law has an exemption for the case where the neglect was (supposedly) obedience to God’s will. And the authorities didn’t remove the other three children from the house because they saw “no abuse or signs of abuse.”

So a child who is dead of criminal neglect isn’t sufficient evidence to take three kids into custody (if the perps are fundy Christians), but one anonymous phone call is enough to take a few hundred (if the perps are fundy Mormons…).

So what to do about the FLDS and other fundamentalist Mormon groups? Obviously we can’t just let them keep forcing teenage girls into marriages with their uncles.

I kind of lean towards improving public education (instead of scrapping and trashing the public education system further and further). This would give the kids some exposure to alternate ideas and give them the skills to make up their minds about what they’re being taught and to leave if they so choose. Additionally, legal recognition of polygamy might help since regulating it could curb abuses (especially underage marriages). And if taking another spouse were considered legal grounds for divorce (so one spouse automatically has the right to alimony, child support, and custody if the other chooses to take a new spouse), then we could test the FLDS claim that the women are there of their own free will. Those who would like to leave would be able to leave without forcing an alternate ideology on those that don’t.

chanson

C. L. Hanson is the friendly Swiss-French-American ExMormon atheist mom living in Switzerland! Follow me on mastadon at @chanson@social.linux.pizza or see "letters from a broad" for further adventures!!

You may also like...

88 Responses

  1. There is no compelling reason for prosecutors to lay out their case against the FLDS leaders

    Except, this is not supposed to be a prosecution, but an action in the interest of a child. As a result, the state is required to lay out the case.

    BTW, the entire matter reminds me of a child custody case where the state was rescuing a child from being raised by atheists.

  2. Hellmut says:

    Good to see you, Stephen.

    I probably should have acknowledged Matt’s courage in speaking out for an unpopular minority. His statement about parenting in inner cities, however, is arrogant, condescending and riddled with ethnocentric stereotypes of people who look different than him.

    There are any number of factors that challenge parenting in inner cities, some of which indict us more than many of the wonderful parents who are performing admirably.

    Lack of access to education, health insurance, and opportunity are probably just as much to blame as parental failure.

    Another major factor is the absence of consumer protection that exposes tens of thousands of children to lead poisoning.

    If an expecting mother imbibes harmful substances, by all means, there ought to be an intervention to protect the interests of the child. Just be sure to include happy pills in Sandy as well as crack in inner cities.

    Matt is just plain wrong. There is no systematic factor that would allow for an analogy between inner city and FLDS parents. It is well documented that the latter routinely abandon their sons and impregnate their minor girls for religious reasons.

    That does not give the Texas authorities license to cut corners but there is plenty of reason to step in to protect the children.

  3. chanson says:

    this is not supposed to be a prosecution, but an action in the interest of a child.

    Very true, and this highlights one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole incident. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that in general it’s in the best interests of a child to leave him/her with his/her parents unles you have some reason to believe there is abuse going on. In this case — as far as anything that’s been reported is concerned — the only abuse the FLDS are even suspected of is forcing teenage girls to marry older men, but they have no reason to believe the FLDS are abusing children under ten. So why were children under ten taken from their parents? What are they supposedly being protected from? Getting taught wrong ideas about families?

    I hadn’t heard about a case of atheist parents getting their kids taken away, but if the majority religion is now allowed to protect kids from being taught unpopular ideas by their parents, anything is possible. Still, I think it’s unlikely that the state could do a mass raid-and-foster-care for atheist kids for a few reasons: (1) atheists are randomly spready throughout society, so it’s tricky to find them all and round them up (2) atheists on average tend to be highly educated (and already members of the ACLU 😉 ) so they’d have an easier time contesting it.

    Still, even if the “inner city” example is a canard, here’s one that’s not: One could easily argue that the doctrine of celebate priests inherently creates a class of sexual predators who are placed in positions of authority over children (in much the same way that the doctrine of polygamy is supposed to inherently lead to abuse). Since Catholic bishops acted to hush up abuse accusations and protect accused priests (and lay Catholic parents have stood by the church), one could easily argue that child abuse is an institutional part of Catholicism and that every Catholic child is potentially in danger and should be placed in foster care until their parents have been cleared by the court system.

    I hesitate to write the above because I know somebody is going to swing by, read that paragraph only, and accuse me of being “bigoted against Catholics.” I’m not — my husband is a cultural Catholic from a very Catholic family, and I largely identify with a highly Catholic culture (France). Please see the topic of Catholicism on my blog.

    That said, I’m completely serious about the above comparison. I don’t mean it as a rhetorical game. The one thing that protects Catholics from being the next target of this precedent is their numbers (which means that this precedent doesn’t represent equal treatment under the law). If all of the Catholics in Texas lived in one tiny town (surrounded by Evangelicals and fans of Chick publications), and the authorities heard some reports of abuse taking place and being covered up, that town would be in real danger of being next on the list.

    So in short — as much as I don’t think highly of the FLDS or their lifestyle — I also don’t favor granting the state this dangerous new power.

  4. Froggie says:

    Hi Chanson,

    I agree with your catholic analogy, and it is particularly appropriate given the apparent “systemic” pedophilia problem within the catholic clergy.

    (FWIW, I thought your inner city one was fine too. Those parents are not doing enough to shield their children from drugs, gangs, etc, so something must be done about their systemic inner-city neglect – referred to from here on out as SIN 🙂 )

    One thing that will continue to bother me about this story is that CPS seems to be given latitude “outside” of normal legal procedure, and because of this they have the potential to be far more abusive because of less checks and balances.

    Froggie

  5. chanson says:

    Froggie — Exactly. I’m shocked by how many people are willing to say “yeah, but these guys are really, really weird” or “but they’re a cult!” to justify ignoring the checks on legal procedure that have been the right of every citizen (even people most consider bad guys) for more than 200 years.

    It’s not just a “slippery slope” — it creates a very real legal precedent for taking kids away from parents in the absence of probable cause to justify it.

  6. Katie says:

    Alot of people accuse the FLDS of being guilty of something just because they live in a secluded “compound” but on the other hand nobody seems to mind that cps is keeping these prisoners in isolation where the news media is unable to interview them and confiscating their cell phones.
    If cps has nothing to hide why not install webcams and let the world see people living in concentration camp conditions with screaming children being yanked from their mothers arms. What do they have to hide ? the truth ?
    People are so quick to believe that these “rescued” people are happily living in paradise. Sounds just like the Nazi propaganda where they told everyone that “the Jews are being located to the east” the forgot to mention that this meant a one way trip to Auschwitz and being sent to gas chamber or worked to death and then being tossed into a large mass grave in the ground. Never never trust anything governments say.
    Ever wonder why in a country with thousands of people homeless and children going to bed hungry and unable to get health care that they would need to “rescue” this particular set of children who lived in nice log cabins and ate fresh farm raised food and had several mothers doting on them and get this free medical care from a resident doctor.. here is the answer … RELIGIOUS HATE CRIME

  7. Kullervo says:

    I don’t really think anyone believes that the “rescued” people are “happy living in paradise.” Methinks most people realize that detainment and government custody is no picnic.

  8. Hellmut says:

    Katie, there is evidence of child abuse. Several FLDS leaders, including Warren Jeffs, have been sentenced for participating in child rape.

    We also know that over three hundred boys were abandoned at the side of the road. That’s child neglect, which is a crime.

    Who else is supposed to protect those children if not the government?

  9. Katie says:

    Ok warren Jeffs at least got some sort of trial and now he is in jail. Do you have any proof that these particular mothers abandoned or were planning to abandon their sons ? This is unfair stereo typing.

    It is unconstitutional to punish someone for someone elses crime.
    The government could care less about protecting anyone. Ever hear of Katrina when the heroic government left thousands of people to die ? And then scattered them recklessly around the country separated from their families and then cut off their aid. Did you know that thousands of American citizens are currently homeless and hungry ? Does the government help them like it should ? Do you know that your tax dollars are being used to take innocent children from their families for profit ? It is all part of that “Welfare Reform”. States get money when children are adopted. There is the financial motivation.

    I could go on and on about things the govt doesn’t do. Like keeping poisonous chemicals out of children’s toys for instance.

    IF they had bothered to investigate the call and IF the call was real instead of a prank call. Then MAYBE they could have gone in there and tried to see if anyone was being held prisoner. If the person was in such trouble why on earth didn’t she call 911 and get rescued right away ?
    If someone is genuinely being abused of course they should be rescued. NOT KIDNAPPED with a SWAT TEAM. These women are free to come and go as they please they have their own cars and cell phones.
    Seriously I don’t think nursing infants need to be rescued from their mothers milk do you ?
    When I think of someone being “rescued” a vision of a starving person chained to the wall of a dungeon with whip marks all over them comes to mind. The liberation of Auschwitz was a rescue. Notice the difference ? No prisoners crying and clinging to guards begging not to be taken away.
    Who is going to rescue these unfortunate children from their “rescuers” ?

    This is a Religious Hate crime pure and simple. Not only that, it is down right absurd to worry about polygamy in this day and age when people are so promiscuous and every big city has 13 year old girls who are prostitutes working the streets.

  10. chanson says:

    Katie — I didn’t reply to your comment earlier because I hesitate to compare this to the Nazis and call it genocide. At the same time, I also hesitate to follow the common wisdom that would say that it’s absurd to compare anything to the Nazis because they were so superhumanly evil that no human behavior is on the same plane with them. That kind of thinking prevents us from learning from what happened back then. We should be learning a cautionary tale of what kind of evil can be done by people who honestly think they’re no more than decent folks acting to preserve their way of life.

    In the case of the FLDS, it is very likely that some abuse is occurring. However, the evidence used to justify the raid was fake, and the evidence (illegally) collected by the raid — while suggestive and consistent with a theory of abuse — is not even close to being proof of abuse (as I said on another blog thread, I defy you to find a town in Texas where a raid wouldn’t turn up pregnant teens and a hair on a bed). Worst of all, they don’t even claim to have a suspicion of abuse against small children, yet small children were taken en masse from their mothers. This action is not remotely consistent with a picture of friendly police force who sees the FLDS as citizens yet wants to stop what abuse exists in their community. This action is an example of using a suspicion of abuse as a justification to wipe out a whole community. And decent folk all over are praising the action because everybody knows those FLDS are just that bad that they don’t deserve the kind of due process that other citizens get. This is exactly the sort of situation and mentality that we the people should be very, very wary of.

  11. Katie says:

    This situation is only the tip of the ice berg apparently CPS has been kidnapping children from perfectly good parents motivated profit for many years in other states too. Hopefully this will lead to and end to all of these child snatching fanatics. They got too greedy this time and now everyone is noticing.

  12. chanson says:

    Well I don’t know anything about the CPS in general, but if this sheds light on other abuses, that’s potentially a good thing. As others have pointed out on this thread, CPS and the foster care system have their problems and leaving children with parents suspected of abuse is also quite dangerous. So it’s a complicated question that shouldn’t be treated with a simple “always leave kids with the parents” or “always take them on the slightest suspicion.” Hopefully a high-profile case such as this one will ultimately result in improving this agency and correcting its problems.

  13. Seth R. says:

    “At the same time, I also hesitate to follow the common wisdom that would say that it’s absurd to compare anything to the Nazis because they were so superhumanly evil that no human behavior is on the same plane with them.”

    Chanson, while I think calling Texas CPS “Nazis” is a bit overwrought, I object to this line of thought generally.

    This basically removes the Nazis from the same plane as the rest of humanity, isolates them in their own little corner of history and makes it so that we can never learn anything from them.

    Because the Nazis are “freakish aberrations” they couldn’t possibly have anything to do with us, or anything we are doing right?

    Not at all.

    The Nazis were not “monsters.” They were people. Ordinary people – like you and me. And we could EASILY be repeating their crimes, given the opportunity.

    In fact, the more we resign Hitler to the realm of myth and legend – with no practical application to anyone or anything we know, the more likely another Hitler is to arise.

    Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

    Automatically dismissing anyone who makes the “Nazi” analogy as inherently overwrought, is a great way for real Nazis to re-emerge in our own society. It basically takes the lessons of World War II off the table and we are no longer “allowed” to discuss them – because they’re irrelevant to us, right?

  14. Seth R. says:

    You know… it’s Sunday nap time for uncle Seth.

    I think I just managed to completely misread your post Chanson. Correct?

  15. chanson says:

    Seth — I wouldn’t say you misread my comment, unless you were thinking that your comment disagrees with mine… 😉

  16. Katie says:

    I have looked at a few other blogs and I’m sorry to say that Nazi type people are alive and well. There are people ranting in there about Evil Mormon Pedophiles raping children but when asked them if statutory rape is such a big problem why not pregnancy test every single teenage girl in country and prosecute all “child rapists” and confiscate all “endangered” children from their families ? Their response was to continue ranting about evil old men and young girls.

    I assure you they could care less about the well being of the young girls than their jealousy over old men having many wives.
    These type of people would like to go out and kill every Mormon if they could based on rumors and stereotypes with no evidence to back them up. This is a scary thing.
    They see nothing wrong with taking innocent little children from loving homes and sending them to this …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VEhdOOOzZg

    I have do doubts that more children are killed and injured by foster parents than the would have been by their own parents.

    I plan to have children someday and
    if faced with a choice between some stupid parent occasionally killing/abusing their child and EVERY child in the country being put in danger of being kidnapped, drugged, abused and sold by these child snatching fanatics. The answer is self evident.

    A Nazi by any other name is just as dangerous ….

  17. Hellmut says:

    Katie, you are fundamentally confused about what is happening. The Texas authorities have not punished anybody. They have taken steps to protect children from further abuse.

    There is evidence of systematic child abuse in FLDS society. That abuse includes the abandoning of boys and the rape and impregnation of girls.

    There are also indications that children of unbelievers have been kidnapped.

    Notice this is a preliminary measure that will be reviewed by courts and the state has the burden of proof.

    You do not understand the actions of Texas Child Protective Services because you are confusing punishment and criminal law standards with the obligation of the government to protect defenseless children.

    The children were not removed to punish the parents but to protect them from parents who have exposed them to danger.

  18. Hellmut says:

    Still, even if the “inner city” example is a canard, here’s one that’s not: One could easily argue that the doctrine of celebate priests inherently creates a class of sexual predators who are placed in positions of authority over children (in much the same way that the doctrine of polygamy is supposed to inherently lead to abuse).

    That’s an empirical question. The observable fact is that most celibate priests are not child abusers.

    Since Catholic bishops acted to hush up abuse accusations and protect accused priests (and lay Catholic parents have stood by the church), one could easily argue that child abuse is an institutional part of Catholicism and that every Catholic child is potentially in danger and should be placed in foster care until their parents have been cleared by the court system.

    It certainly is a fact that the Catholic Church has failed to protect children and to rectify the situation once the abuse had been reported. It’s an institutional failure.
    In the case of the FLDS, however, the abuse is institutionalized. In Catholicism, raping a child is an abuse. In fundamentalist Mormonism, raping a child can be a virtue.
    Besides, most Catholic parents could not care less what their bishops say and do. There would be a an analogy if Catholic bishops demanded that parents provide their children so that priests can satisfy their sexual appetites AND
    if Catholic parents acted on the instructions of their bishops.
    Catholics fulfill neither condition. Orthodox Catholicism does not require child abuse. Fundamentalist Mormonism does. That’s the difference.

  19. Hellmut says:

    Nazis have nothing to do with Texas CPS. If the Nazis had seized the children, then the government would not have to answer for its actions in court.

    Katie, every girl in the country will be tested for pregnancy if there is cause to believe that she might have been impregnated by an adult.

    The FLDS have given the government of Texas cause to suspect child abuse. I agree with you that the government should not conduct such tests without reason. That’s why we do not test every girl for pregnancy.

    You are too generous when you discount the considerable body of evidence against the FLDS. Four hundred abandoned boys is a lot more than nothing. Seventeen pregnant teenagers is a lot more than nothing. Convictions in court are the best evidence available to mortals.

    We also have eye witness evidence that babies and toddlers are savagely beaten by FLDS fathers and sister mothers.

    There is enough evidence to support the suspicion that the children are in danger. Should it turn out that those suspicions cannot be verified in court then the children will be returned.

  20. Katie says:

    How is having their mothers taken away NOT punishment ? the mothers and children are suffering horribly. It would have been less painful to them to rip out their fingernails than do this…

    The constitution says that it is not legal to arrest people and do all these horrible things to them. The constitution doesn’t say if someone is under 18 they have no rights so cart em off and put them in storage until you can figure out what to do with them. I bet some of these little kids will die because of this trauma and the others will be messed up for the rest of their lives. Several of the children cant be accounted for, I worry if they are still alive.

    What Hitler did was not “illegal” either, in fact it was illegal NOT to help kill the people he wanted killed. Another tidbit of information.. did you know that there was once an American Nazi party that wanted to join hitler ?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund

    Alot of the so called “evidence” is given by a former FLDS member who is trying to get revenge for whatever wrongs she thinks she suffered AND Sell her book! There is no evidence that the particular mothers and children being cruelly punished without due process did any of these things to her. Who is to say that she is not telling outright sensationalist lies to sell her book ?
    Waterboarding a baby ? come on why would people who want to have as many children as possible drown babies.

    Did you ever wonder why witches who could ride broomsticks never rode them to escape the people who were coming to burn them at the stake ?

    I’ve heard that some of the children at the ranch were there without their parents but at least their parents knew where they were being raised with relatives on a nice ranch.
    None of these parents complained the complaint was made by a person who had never even been to the ranch and now all these children and parents are in agony. For what ?
    I could care less about pregnant teenagers but I DO care when I see unarmed defenseless people having their children stolen by an army of commandos and people from another religion and then sent off to a Gulag.

    This stinks to high heaven. I hope all these People that did this are arrested and prosecuted. I’m starting to think the whole trial of Warren Jeffs was a politically motivated prosecution. He didn’t even actually rape anyone. Real rapists rape all the time and never get on the FBI most wanted list.

    If statutory rape is not a real enough problem to go to every high school and test every teenage girl then why would this not be religious persecution ? There are plenty of non FLDS parents who throw their teenagers out of the house. There are plenty of non FLDS parents who do incest and allow their daughters to get into situations where they will be date raped. Or is Rape ok as long as the rapist is the same age as the victim ? and not married to her ….

  21. Hellmut says:

    Again, Katie, you are applying criminal law standards, which are not appropriate. If we followed your line of reasoning then the government would have to leave children in the power of child rapists until there is a conviction in court.

    No liberal democracy handles child protection this way.

    Waterboarding a baby ? come on why would people who want to have as many children as possible drown babies.

    Katie, do you know what waterboarding is? Waterboarding is not drowning. You keep sounding off about matters, which you do not understand.

    FLDS fathers waterboard babies and toddlers to break their will so that the little ones will accept the domination of their fathers.

    I could care less about pregnant teenagers but I DO care when I see unarmed defenseless people having their children stolen by an army of commandos and people from another religion and then sent off to a Gulag.

    Lets not get hysterical, Katie. The Texas foster care system is nothing like a gulag.

    My relatives have been tortured and starved in a real gulag and I find it troubling that you would make light of their suffering. My great-grandparents and my grandfather would have gladly traded their spots in the gulag with a place in the Texas child care system.

    Your attitude with respect to the sexual exploitation of children is downright shocking. If you find it appropriate that adults impregnate minors then I am beginning to understand why you are so afraid of child protective services.

  22. Katie says:

    People have drowned quite often from waterboarding. I dont think a toddler is even rational enough to understand such things. Should we install Cameras into every home in the country to see who is doing what to their children in all fairness ? Equal protection under the law. I’m sure many parents are doing horrible things to their children right now and don’t forget emotional abuse which is perfectly legal and just as devastating.

    I just looked at the lost boys thing and what puzzles me is why the FLDS don’t just recruit more women to join them it would be much better for them than fighting over women they have. If the boys are really trouble makers I can understand kicking them out but if it was done because of shortage of women kicking out loyal members seems down right foolish and counter productive.

  23. Hellmut says:

    What Hitler did was not “illegal” either, in fact it was illegal NOT to help kill the people he wanted killed. Another tidbit of information.. did you know that there was once an American Nazi party that wanted to join hitler ?

    Wrong again, Katie. What Hitler did was illegal. The Holocaust was illegal. Starting World War II was illegal. Killing civilians in retribution was a violation of international law.

    Courts found hundreds of Hitler’s helpers guilty. Many Nazis were found guilty by German courts who relied exclusively on German laws that were on the book during Hitler’s reign.

  24. Katie says:

    Yes but they were not illegal under HIS laws. Alot of things people do in this country would be illegal in other countries. Drinking and letting women drive come to mind. The only laws that matter are the ones that are enforced and lately the Constitution which is supposed to be “The supreme law of the land” is not being enforced. Which is really unfortunate.

  25. Hellmut says:

    I just looked at the lost boys thing and what puzzles me is why the FLDS don’t just recruit more women to join them it would be much better for them than fighting over women they have.

    I am sure that there are thousands of women in the United States who would volunteer to share their husbands with other women.

    Since healthy women are naturally jealous and would prefer a partner of their own age rather than having to copulate with an old geezer, coercion is essential to maintain a polygamist society.

    If the boys are really trouble makers I can understand kicking them out but if it was done because of shortage of women kicking out loyal members seems down right foolish and counter productive.

    Parents do not get to kick out boys just because they are “troublemakers.” Becoming a parent entails the responsibility to nurture children until they are old enough to take care of themselves.

    That includes having to deal with teenagers who will be difficult from time to time. Every baby will become a teenager. Therefore every parent who has a baby also incurs the obligation to take care of teenagers.

    If people don’t want to deal with teenagers, they should have thought about that before they had babies.

    I’m sure many parents are doing horrible things to their children right now and don’t forget emotional abuse which is perfectly legal and just as devastating.

    And parents do get into trouble with child protective services over these issues every day.

    Equal protection under the law.

    The FLDS do enjoy equal protection under the law. The actions of the CPS are subject to court review.

    If CPS acted inappropriately then FLDS parents can sue the state of Texas, its officers, and its services in court.

  26. Katie says:

    Even if they can sue CPS that wont undo all the damage of having post traumatic stress for the rest of their lives.
    I think most women are jealous because of the socialization of American society which makes women compete with each other over men. A man cant have a new wife without dumping the previous wife. Alot of men have secret mistresses of course.
    I personally wouldn’t mind polygamy as long as I could choose the other wives.

  27. Katie says:

    Also if only certain religious groups or Minorities are every investigated for crimes while most people are ignored that is not equal protection of the law it is called selective prosecution.
    It is like those laws that make crack cocaine smoked by poor people more illegal than powder cocaine used by rich white people with the desired result of sending alot of black people to prison.

  28. Hellmut says:

    Yes but they were not illegal under HIS laws.

    No, Katie, the Holocaust was illegal under German law during Hitler’s reign because murder was a crime. Mistreating prisoners of war was illegal under German law during Hitler’s reign because Germany was party to the Treaty of the Hague. Most of the Nazi atrocities can be prosecuted under laws that were on the book during Hitler’s reign.

    You don’t need to believe me. Spend some time in the library. The case of Emanuel Schäfer might be a good point of departure for your research. Schäfer was sentenced for murder by a German court, because murder remained a criminal act even during the Hitler dictatorship.

  29. Katie says:

    Murder of people was a crime sure but what Hitler did was reduce Jews to non persons non citizens. You know what I dont even blame hitler for what happened. He only encouraged people to do what they already wanted to do anyway.

  30. Hellmut says:

    I think most women are jealous because of the socialization of American society which makes women compete with each other over men. A man cant have a new wife without dumping the previous wife. Alot of men have secret mistresses of course.

    Women are naturally jealous, Katie. So are men. You might want to read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, which explores among other things the biological foundations of jealousy.

  31. Katie says:

    Ive heard of that book. But you are forgetting women and men are different. Many women can share one man and pass along their genes but many men cant share one woman and pass along their genes

  32. Katie says:

    the FLDS situation reminded me of a group of lionesses sharing the duties of caring for the cubs which is a much better support system than contemporary american society that leaves kids home alone parked in front of the television

  33. Katie says:

    I agree that people do have the selfish gene and this means that these kids are much safer being raised by people who are genetically related to them who have an evolutionary stake to make sure they thrive…

  34. Hellmut says:

    Normally, I would agree with you, Kate. Unfortunately, that is impossible because we are dealing with parents who are facilitating the rape of their underage daughters.

  35. chanson says:

    Hellmut — If you want to convince me this is not like the Nazis, the absolute last way to do it is by saying “It’s different because the FLDS are so bad! No, really, they’re just that bad that we can’t be bound by normal people’s rules when dealing with them!” The way to convince me would be by saying “We’re not like the Nazis because we will follow Constitutional due process and any FLDS person accused of a crime will be given a fair trial just like any other citizen.”

    If they’re that dangerous of criminals (very possible), and if there exists overwhelming evidence out there somewhere to prove it, then that’s just all the more reason that the authorities had absolutely no excuse to screw it up this badly!!!

    If what has been reported in the news is correct, then this raid was so totally illegal that (if there’s a functioning court system at any level in the U.S.), the case will be thrown out, which means that in all likelihood dangerous people will go free. And when that happens, I don’t want to hear anyone complaining about that pesky old Constitution and how inconvenient it is for the cops to have to follow it when putting away the bad guys. If criminals go free in this case, it will be entirely the fault of the people who chose to plan and execute this raid in an illegal and unconstitutional manner. They should be loudly and unequivocally denounced for it by everyone who wants to see justice served.

    Regarding putting the kids in foster care: If we grant that there exist cases where kids need to be removed from parents for their own safety, a bare minimum for this has to be an actual suspicion that the child is in danger of harm or abuse. Maybe popular opinion is right that these guys really are evil and dangerous, but the courts need evidence. In every case. No exceptions, period.

  36. Katie says:

    I’m sorry to say but we are like the Nazis.
    Hate crimes have now been perpetrated against Mormons in other places that are encouraged by this hate crime of taking children away from their families. Think Krystalnacht. The holocaust was a historical event that I had hoped would never be repeated.

    I am starting to question why Jeffs was prosecuted when the alleged 19 year old rapist was not. I think Jeffs was brought down for political reasons not because of what he did legally. He was too powerful of a leader and I agree he did some very unplesant things to his people. I don’t condone forcing young girls to be married against their will BUT I am starting to wonder why people who think it is funny to rip crying babies out of their mothers arms would care ? As a matter of fact these religious zealot do gooders have caused women and girls to have metal instruments forcibly inserted into their body cavities. Which is also called “rape with a foreign object”. Religious persecution at its finest.

    These children being taken out of danger and put in a safe place is about as true as Hitler caring about the health and cleanliness of Jews and building them nice showers to bathe in.

    Lets get this straight for once and for all, the government doesn’t care about the well being of children or adults it never has.
    Watch this movie it will explain alot.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHJ2joOSSGw&feature=PlayList&p=97FE328F1F080027&index=0&playnext=1

    Another thing I’d like to add is that they were not having sex with children. I’m sorry but a 14 year old girl is a young adult not a child. This has been true since the recorded history of man. Statutory rape laws are stupid, unconstitutional and don’t stop anyone from having sex. The only purpose of them is to use as a tool to selectively prosecute Mormons while the other 99.9% of “offenders” go happily on their way.

    Marriage laws that don’t let pregnant girls get married are a violation of their constitutional rights to practice their religion among other things. Laws against polygamy are Unconstitutional for the same reason. It is nobody’s (*&*&%$ business what people do in their bedrooms at night. If there were rape victims at YFZ ranch they have had ample opportunity to make themselves known. The only “rape victim” thus far is a mentally deranged crank caller from another state who has never lived in ANY FLDS community.

    It is not right to punish children by taking away their home, Father, Mother, siblings and possibly their lives. What did these little children do wrong to deserve to be arrested and imprisoned ?

    There was never a legal reason to even go into these peoples ranch. Books made by former members who want to tell lies to make money just don’t cut it for probable cause.
    The police never had a right to even set foot on the property must less arrest hundreds of people and hold them prisoner.

  37. I Will have to come back again when my class load lets up – however I am taking your RSS feed so I can read your site offline. Thanks.

  1. January 15, 2011

    […] (Though I did make the same points, perhaps less concisely, here, here, and in the discussion here. […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.