Most here know what side of the debate I have been on.
But.... I like to keep an open mind, and read as much as I can. Older articles can be more informative, sometimes.
So, here, is a report about the 'rumors' about the FLDS, from the FLDS members themselves.
If you want all the facts, you have to look at all of them, even the ones you don't like.
I thought this deserved it’s own place for discussion.
Gives a little balance to the case, anyway.
What’s up with the prairie dresses? Darn good question! And who said they go with an early 60’s bouffant hairdo anyway? I have a feeling it boils down to one weird guy’s sexual fetish.
They drink coffee, which I know many mainstream Mormons don’t do. I was shocked when they offered me a cup, but happy to drink it (they avoid carbonated and sugary drinks, but have no problem with caffeine).
Their diet is interesting - I also have read that they eat no processed foods, and have raw milk. It is noticable, and in great contrast to the ordinary communities around them, that none of them seem to be obese.
I’ve seen a lot of posts making snide comments about the dresses of the FLDS women.
Why no snide comments about the dresses of the Amish or Memmonite women?
They look to be pretty much the same
Here’s another article. Carolyn Jessop gives some different reasons for the FLDS ladies’ sense of style.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/21/20080421polygamydress0421.html
I stopped listening to Michael Savage recently because he’s so absolutely ready to disbelieve everything said against this cult.
What’s up with the 1940’s pompadours? And how do they get their hair to stand up like that?
Add the prairies dresses and they’re early rockabilly. Sure it looks a tad fetishistic, but it would be a welcome fad after all the years of over-exposed tart styles.
(I live in an area of PA with more than its share of seniors. If I went out dressed like that, the old duffers here would be charging up San Juan Hill for a glimpse of ankle.)
Prairie dresses and similar modest dress is warn by very many very godly women who are not involved in cults. They appreciate the modesty and “safety” provided in them.
My wife and daughters are included in that number, along with many women (not all women) in our church. We are neither LDS, Mennonite, nor Amish, by the way.
My daughters will not wear dresses or skirts that are any shorter than 6 inches below the bottom of the knees when sitting. And usually they are much longer. They don’t show chest or a lot of arm either, and they are not tight fitting. They are colorful and varied in design, however, and are beautiful.
Our girls attract a lot of eyes, and usually I am approached by young men who have some charater about them. It is not prudish dress, and it is not evidence of a prudish attitude; it is “safe” dress. Young men with less character and mean bearing figure they won’t get their hands on these girls, and don’t come too near.
We married off our second daughter in Nov. ‘06 to a very fine prinicpled young man who was attacted to principle of modesty, rather than being attracted by seeing flesh. This young man didn’t approach my daughter first; he approached me.
I wouldn’t expect the residents of the FLDS to say anything different about how they live.
There’s a huge discrepancy between what they say goes on and what people like Carolyn and Flora Jessop say.
I don’t like evasive answers either.
The results of the DNA testing and medical exams for child abuse should be very telling.
FIP ping
Just think of the money that is saved because of no need for bikini wax!
The raid revisited: Island Pond community heals wounds from 1984More at the link.
From The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, June 18, 2000
By Nancy Bazilchuk
ISLAND POND --
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...the Twelve Tribes community, once known as the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, gathered and invited the public to join in remembering the day 16 years ago -- June 22, 1984 -- when the state raided the community. Ninety state troopers and 50 social workers took 112 children into custody amid allegations of child abuse.
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The Northeast Kingdom Community Church took root in Island Pond in the summer of 1978. A resident, Andre Masse, had invited church leader Elbert Eugene Spriggs Jr. to the village to help found a religious community. Spriggs came from Tennessee, where he had already founded a church group. Almost immediately, the Island Pond group tripled in size from its 20 original members to 60.
Island Pond is a rural community of about 1,500 people; from the beginning, the relationship between the church's bearded men and kerchiefed women and the rest of the townspeople was uneasy.
Parents watched in horror as their adult children joined the church, handing over their possessions and pledging themselves to the church community. The church group lived in communal housing -- sometimes a little too communal for village residents. Eventually the town of Brighton, which includes the village of Island Pond, told the group they were violating town ordinances against over-occupancy.
Almost from the beginning, there were defectors, and stories about how children were disciplined by being struck with thin wooden rods called balloon sticks. About the discipline there is no dispute. Church leaders believe the Bible's admonition that to spare the rod is to spoil the child.
"We don't believe that spanking is child abuse ... it is reasonable to train a child that way," says Brian Fenster, a church member and spokesman. "But we don't believe that spanking means beating to a bloody pulp."
Others saw it differently.
"They beat their children," said Suzanne Cloutier-Fletcher, 49, who opened her Island Pond home to more than three dozen adults and children who left the church in the years around the raid.
Part of the problem was that church members schooled their children apart from the regular schools. That meant there were no teachers or other authority figures to independently evaluate the children. For some time, church members didn't register births or deaths. Only three births had been registered to church members in the five years after the church moved to Island Pond.
At the same time, news of the sometimes alarming behavior of religious cults frightened residents. For some, the Northeast Kingdom Community Church looked unnervingly like the People's Temple, whose nearly 800 members committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
By 1984, the chorus of concerns about child abuse, combined with a number of highly publicized complaints filed against church elders, brought the state to a watershed. Then-Gov. Richard Snelling found himself in a fix. After days and days of debate, Snelling approved the raid.
"He was uncomfortable with it," said the late-governor's wife, Barbara Snelling, "but he felt it was extremely important that the state find out if the children were being abused. It is a painful memory, but I think my husband did the right thing."
Armed with a search warrant issued by Judge Joseph J. Wolchik, 140 social workers and state troopers converged on Island Pond early June 22 and took 112 children into custody.
But because the search warrant didn't give the state the subsequent right to detain the children, a second court hearing was necessary, with Judge Frank Mahady presiding. Mahady looked at the state's evidence, including its inability to name individual cases of child abuse, and ruled the raid unconstitutional. The children went home and, eventually, the state's case was dropped.