Posted on 04/27/2008 4:39:12 AM PDT by Zakeet
Texas Will Attempt to Show That Polygamist Culture Itself Harms Children
ELDORADO, Tex. -- The ironic thing is that before the big sheriff's department armored personnel carrier appeared outside the Yearning for Zion Ranch, it was starting to seem as though America had finally figured out how to live with its polygamists.
For more than a century, authorities had alternately persecuted and ignored the groups practicing plural marriage around the West -- splinters from mainstream Mormonism, splinters of splinters. Mostly, they ignored them.
But, in the past few years, officials in some states have begun trying to bring these groups out of the shadows. They offered a deal: Marry however often you want, but don't marry children. A Supreme Court case on gay sex also provided unlikely help.
Then came Eldorado.
On April 3, Texas authorities raided the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' compound here, then removed more than 450 children. Now, Texas seems headed for exactly the kind of wrenching, head-on fight that other states have tried to avoid.
Their case will ask: Does this polygamous group deserve a place -- and the right to raise children -- in modern society?
[Snip]
Now comes a legal fight with a twist. The state will argue that the sect's children are at risk at the compound, but not because every one of them has been physically or sexually abused.
Instead, they will say that the culture of the church, which encouraged girls to marry and bear children in their early teens, was a danger to any child immersed in it.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
****Agreed. While Mormonism is hardly my cup of tea, I would defend their right to practice their faith as they see fit as long as they do not violate any laws in the process. The vast majority of Mormons do not subscribe to the polygamist model that is in question here. Even having said that. If a man wants to shack up with three or four adult women in a consensual relationship and call no more than one of them his legal spouse, that’s their business. As long as they don’t want to teach my kids in school that it’s just one more acceptable “lifestyle choice”. When your talking about girls under the age of seventeen, then the law comes into play and should be vigorously enforced. ****
What about the offspring of such a union as you describe? Is that a ‘healthy’ home environment in which to raise children? Or are you not brainwashing them from birth to practice a sick and perverted way of life that naturally progresses towards male domination and child rape? Seems to me once you give males unfettered power such as polygamy fosters ... you soon get the structure seen within FLDS. Get rid of the boys and trade the girls amongst yourselves like cattle. Within three generations or so (not long the way these sexaholics breed) any decent morally uncrippled males are outathere and all’s thats left are the pedophiles.
Just an aside: Very happy to see the vast majority of these threads dominated by sane individuals who can recognize a child raping cult is not a legitimate societal group deserving cultural acceptance or even tolerance. The nutbag-anti-gubmint-single-issue types ready to give us anarchy in the name of their paranoia are handily being put down.
“Very happy to see the vast majority of these threads dominated by sane individuals who can recognize a child raping cult is not a legitimate societal group deserving cultural acceptance or even tolerance. The nutbag-anti-gubmint-single-issue types ready to give us anarchy in the name of their paranoia are handily being put down.”
Just because we are willing to stand up for the rights of children doesnt have to go in the same sentence with believing Government is good. My distain for the Government does not make me a nutbag. You are attempting to mix separate issues. And recognizing that America is going down the tubes because of the ilk of Government does not make for paranoia. DNA test the compound, and urine test the Government. They are all questionable.
marrying 16 year olds is not rape in texas
They weren’t MARRIED.
Only the liberal press thinks statutory rape is never prosecuted outside the FLDS, well I guess there are a few freepers who wish to see statutory rape not be a crime.
****marrying 16 year olds is not rape in texas****
Well, the legislature (that paragon of brilliance and far-sightedness) may just have to refine the points on that aspect of law.
Something along the lines of when the 16 year old girl is raised in a cult and brainwashed to surrender her life to the old perverts who control every aspect of her life and is kept in near total ignorance of the outside world and even if she resists this mental and physical slavery she is forced into said marriage ... it ain’t legal!
I don't think I will ever become twisted enough to put child molestation aside - in a child molestation case.
Who wasn’t married? Jeffs and the Colorado African-American woman who called CPS?
Actually they appear to begin ousting them much younger than that. Google up Brian Jeffs' testimony.
****Just because we are willing to stand up for the rights of children doesnt have to go in the same sentence with believing Government is good. My distain for the Government does not make me a nutbag. You are attempting to mix separate issues. And recognizing that America is going down the tubes because of the ilk of Government does not make for paranoia. DNA test the compound, and urine test the Government. They are all questionable.****
You jump from ‘government’ to ‘THE government’ in the first two sentences. Which is it?
I’m not mixing the issues. Those who ‘understand’ or ‘sympathize’ or go on and on about the ‘rights’ of FLDS pukes or wring their hand about Child Services coming after ‘our’ kids next ... yada yada yada are the ones mixing the issues.
I can’t think of a better reason why human beings MUST have ordered, representative, and powerful government to hold society together than this whole FLDS deal. It’s perfect.
It also perfectly exemplifies how government fails when it sinks into the swamp of multi-culturalism. WE, all of us, have turned a blind eye to this (and many others) travesty for generations. People lose track of what is right and wrong. THAT is when you get a police state. After government crumbles through corruption and moral relativism. If you don’t enforce law, ALL OF IT, you get societal collapse.
That’s where we are now. Due to our moral weakness we will get a police state. We let everything slide so far that there is no healthy way back. Only violence.
Even if the men are arrested and charged, they will be out awaiting trial. What is to prevent the women from taking the children and moving to another of the cult's strongholds, where they change the names of the children and themselves?
The void of leadership will be filled by other perverts who have the same goals. Unless the states of AZ, UT, CO and SD and who knows what others clamp down, the only way I can see to lop off the head of the monster is to lop off the money sources and in the meantime it will be "business as usual down at the ol' compound".
The defenders of this cult can't seem to see ahead that far.
Ask the kids with one dad and five moms and 30+ siblings
Ah-hah,,,,,,,,,I found it.
I knew I had seen this on TV recently. You can check this out for yourselves. The other notable compound which is under the microscope at this time is one in Bountiful, British Columbia. Goggle that mouthful then read to your hearts content.
I have been saying, this Texas deal is but the tip of the iceberg. The legitimizer in all this is WELFARE. Apparently the state has a “right” or “obligation” to check on their welfare wards. Since the FLDS are major welfare users, expect to see this come out as the legitimizer.
Here's a nightmare scenario for you...girl gives up parental rights...FATHER (SIRE) invokes his.
Not if he’s the rapist that fathered the children....sort of a no go that way.
Great post, najida!
Why does Free Republic have so many threads/posters who support this cult?
To me, a group which features 50 year old men raping 14 year old girls; is a sick sick group of people.
Don't forget, though, that the Eldorado compound was populated with the "most desirable" from the other FLDS compounds, which surely would not have included young men.
True,
but even so,
I don’t think you’d find a 50/50 MF ratio on any FLDS compound anywhere.
Giving them to a 50 year old geezer as a gift to get you into heaven and without her desires being asked is rape.
Calling it marriage is like putting whipped cream and a cherry on a cow patty and calling it dessert.
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