Posted on 04/17/2008 6:55:49 PM PDT by claudiustg
In the sad case of the children caught up in the maelstrom of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) alleged child abuse matter, I tend to fall onto the church side in the separation of church and state.
The state is ill-equipped to deal with 400-plus youngsters it has torn from the bosoms of their mothers in the guise of protecting them from alleged abuses.
In considering this case it's important to keep in mind some rather unpleasant facts:
In America, there are over 500,000 children in foster care;
Approximately 300,000 kids are taken out of their homes every year because of neglect and abuse, and put in foster care;
Some 73 percent of the children put in foster care end up on the streets, or even worse, in jail;
Even though some 100,000 of these 500,000 youngsters are available for adoption, only a pitiful 1.2 percent will ever be adopted.
These statistics should concern every American. It's obvious that the government, which is great at starting wars and taxing the citizenry to pay for some of the worst hare-brained schemes imaginable, hasn't got the slightest idea of how to raise children.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
He’ll sing a different tune as soon as the DNA results start rolling in and we start getting answers as to where the boys, older boys and young men are.
I would take in a mother and her children from there.
I agree with him.
Current news has it that the FLDS kept documents about child brides and their babies.
Then, there are the kidnappings, and probably murders.
You real sure you want to defend this?
You would? Would you take in a woman and some kid just assigned to her care by the big kahuna?
Did you watch Larry King? I rarely do, but wanted to see it tonight as I wanted to see what was up with this story. They had a mother from the ranch give a tour. It was striking to me that she mentioned that one room was where one mother stayed, along with her child, and 2 other little girls she had with her (what does THAT mean? where is their mother or mothers?). She also never mentioned fathers, just that the kids needed their mothers. It was surreal.
susie
I was talking to my husband about this the other night. I’m going to bring it up at church Sunday also. Kids have to be in a safe environment but if the family can stay together it is best. The problem though...who belongs to who?
Kid(s). Brothers and sisters should be kept together if at all possible.
The more I think about this case, the more uncomfortable I become. I want to start by saying I don’t like the idea of 15 year olds getting pregnant by 50 year olds. I get the impression there is physical abuse, which is terrible.
While poligamy is illegal, don’t you have to get marriage licenses for the crime to be committed? If not how is this different from, say, a professional athlete who has 5 children with 4 women or my cousin who married and divorced three times and had children with all of her husbands?
Are they really all on welfare? I haven’t seen this stated as a fact. If they are tax paying citizens, what right do we have to say they aren’t productive members of society due to the age the girls get pregnant? No, they may not be or aspire to be billionaire executive supermoms, but that doesn’t mean that the government needs to interfere.
I do think this is a cult, but I think Texas needs to be very careful. We all know that unintended consequences often make the problem worse.
Guess you could file suit from prison ~ I think you folks have enough probable felonies to worry about that you'd best "lawyer up" quick before this overwhelms you.
You see all those volunteer but otherwise high priced lawyers there protecting the children's interests? That doesn't mean they like you, and as this goes on they won't like you as much as when this started.
I question the compelling interest of the state and society at large requiring law enforcement intervention in this matter.
Polygamy is not the issue (and no, the marriages are not legal). Statutory rape is the issue, that is, adult men having sexual relations with minor children.
susie
You know for a fact the 16 year old girl was a hoax? Could you please cite where that information came from? I have not been on the story since this afternoon, so I may well have missed that. Thank you for providing me with it.
susie
Yep. The raid is so full of holes it is a wonder anyone is playing along with this at all. Wrong guy on the warrant, he doesn’t know the mystery girl and he actually lives in Arizona. Can’t find the girl in fourteen days now out of about only four hundred people. The girl is both the victim and the witness. If she is a fabrication their will be hell to pay.
Actually, yes.
The kid needs a chance and that was the only mother he knew.
It was beyond surreal.
This seems to be what they do ~ they pass the kids around ~ no woman can readily run away from the camp because her children are being kept by others. There are many witnesses to this practice.
Way back in the days of the Ottoman Empire it was the practice in the Caliph's harem to assign a child to the care of one of the young women. This child would have been born to one of the "favorites" (meaning politically connected concubines). The harem was kept all over the place ~ many in the main palace, but also in buildings throughout Istanbul but also other cities.
A French woman who'd married the Caliph or Pasha and ended up in the harem wrote about this. The young boy she was assigned ended up as the next Caliph.
The others, and their mothers, or assigned keepers, were, as usual, killed when the Caliph died.
That way there were no downstream disputes regarding who would rule the Ottoman Empire.
The Frenchwoman's book is one of the main reasons anybody knows how the harem system worked.
No doubt it's been regular bedside reading for someone over at FLDS.
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