Shorter Rod Dreher: Rape and child abuse should be legal long before we allow consenting adults of the same sex to marry. (Hat tip.)
What a massive, stinking asshole.
First, he tries to show his bona fides before he suggests that selling your daughters to your friends as rape toys should be legal.
Regular readers know that very little upsets me as much as child abuse. My default position is that the authorities must not hesitate to go in to protect children who may be being abused.
But then he immediately backs off this and gives people an exception if they say that god told them to rape girls that are barely past puberty. And he notes that raping young teenage girls has been considered a perfectly fine way to past the time throughout history, so we should take that into consideration when we decide to tolerate the practice of men raising daughters to give to their friends as sex toys, what you might call an FDLS compound, but I call a rape farm. By Rod’s argument, we should also be lenient on slavery (though it’s worth noting that the FDLS definition of wifehood is close to indistinguishable from slavery), infanticide, rule by kings, torture chambers for heretics, witch-burning—ah shit, what am I saying? All these injustices tend to fall on the shoulders of those who are not in his privileged shoes, so he’s probably see all of them as tolerable as long as you hid behind the “people of faith” label.
In our culture, it is abnormal for 14 year olds to marry. The fundamentalist LDSers have a communal structure built to accomodate married 14 year olds (well, “married”). I happen to think it’s terrible to force a 14 year old to “marry” a 50 year old man who has five other “wives.” I would put a stop to it. But shouldn’t we at least ask ourselves on what ground we stand to criminalize the practice, when many of us are perfectly willing to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
His poetic love of religious pluralism ends the second a religion, such as the Church of the Mouse and the Disco Ball or even a real church such as all the various progressive Christian churches, endorses same-sex marriage. Dreher is probably not ignorant of the fact that many same sex couples get married in tolerant churches, so his argument is thereby tossed into the bad faith category by his own measurements. He doesn’t love religion; he loves the patriarchy, and if the patriarchy wants to rape junior high schoolers, by god, the patriarchy’s judgement should be respected.
This made me see red:
If there is no fixed definition of marriage, and if marriage is merely a contract establishing a legal relationship between consenting people, why is it wrong for the members of this community to establish their own rules governing marriage?
Fine, but we’re talking about rape here, and you’re arguing in the defense of the idea that 50-year-old man should get to rape a 14-year-old, as long as he calls it “marriage”, or perhaps “snufflelumps”.
“Because 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent.” That’s not a moral argument, it’s a legalistic way of avoiding the argument. There has to be a reason why 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent to sex and marriage, despite the fact that their bodies are capable of reproduction, and they live in a society — e.g., the FLDS compound — that supports early marriage. We should think about this.
Red herring. The argument is less, “But 14-year-olds can’t meaningfully consent,” and “The girls in this cult are not allowed to consent or not consent and sometimes not even really allowed to have an opinion.” When you have sex with someone against her wishes, regardless of her age, this isn’t a legalistic argument about the age of willful marriage, but an argument about whether or not it’s right to rape someone.
And let’s not forget, in this culture, the rape is facilitated by the fathers. That Dreher looks at a group where men hand their daughters over to be raped and thinks, well, I’ll quote what he thinks.
But don’t think for a minute that the only losers in this tragic affair are the FLDS cultists. All of us who are, or who can imagine ourselves as outsiders — especially cultural and religious outsiders whose lives and beliefs run counter to the prevailing social order — will have lost something.
Yeah, you’ve lost the right to give your daughters over to your friends to be raped. I’m all for maintaining rights that you don’t think you’ll probably need to use (like the right not to testify against yourself in court), but you know, the rights of other people have to be taken into consideration.
Other people? What other people? I’m sure this could confuse Dreher, because he seems to think the people involved in this are men who rape teenagers, men who give their daughters over to their friends to be raped, and men in patriarchal religious communities that are hostile to women’s rights but not yet moving to the daughter-raping level, though they’d like to maintain a wide religious freedom in case god starts telling them to be violent to one another. What other people could there be? Who else in here has rights worth protect—
Oh yeah, the rape victims. Damn. Stupid America, with its equality and feminism and fucked up beliefs that women are rights-bearing people. The right not to be violently assaulted, to be treated like a human being instead of a token traded between men, does factor into this.
Something tells me that if a religious cult was discovered that practiced boy-rape instead of girl-rape, all these hand-wringing concerns over religious freedom would fly out the window. Dreher would be the first to pick up a torch and storm the gates to stop those evil people who think god told them to give their sons to their friends to sodomize, and wouldn’t be mollified by arguments that the boys “consented” if their “consent” was obtained in a situation where it was made very clear to them that the rape was happening whether they submit or fight. In fact, he claims he left the Catholic Church because of the priest sex abuse scandal, and in a sense, the priests in this case weren’t as bad as the fundamentalist Mormons, because they went to measures to hide it, indicating a certain understanding that rape is wrong. With the FDLS compound, it’s an open practice.
If you doubt that rape farms is exactly what Warren Jeffs was building with all these FDLS groups, I highly suggest you listen to this program where a young woman who was given to her cousin to be raped pleaded with Jeffs for mercy, but was told that she had to submit for god. But it’s disturbing, so proceed with caution. When I heard it while driving around doing errands when it originally aired in November 2006, I found myself choking up right there in the middle of traffic. Further reading.
I find myself very disturbed that it took so long for the authorities to intervene. Polygamy is illegal, as is statutory rape. Why did it take a call to the abuse hotline to get authorities to act? Also, I read that most of the children were girls. Why weren’t authorities intervening when the young men were being tossed out?
Being from the area, I can tell you that it’s got a lot to do with the attitudes Dreher praises here: This sort of reluctance to get involved as long as you can write people off as religious kooks. There’s a strange notion that religious kookery is usually harmless, and thus it’s not neighborly to get involved. That, mixed with a low level “not my business” attitude, the same thing that makes it simple for men to beat women in public without much fear of someone stopping them.
Something tells me that if a religious cult was discovered that practiced boy-rape instead of girl-rape, all these hand-wringing concerns over religious freedom would fly out the window. Dreher would be the first to pick up a torch and storm the gates to stop those evil people who think god told them to give their sons to their friends to sodomize
Yep, I’m pretty sure Dreher and his ilk would riot in the streets if they were ever told about the Sambia tribe of New Guinea.
http://faculty.mdc.edu/jmcnair/Joepages/The%20Sambia.htm
“But don’t think for a minute that the only losers in this tragic affair are the FLDS cultists. All of us who are, or who can imagine ourselves as outsiders — especially cultural and religious outsiders whose lives and beliefs run counter to the prevailing social order — will have lost something.”
How about we make some substitutions and see how they sound…
“In our culture, it is abnormal for 14 year olds to undergo Female Genital Mutilation. The fundamentalists who do this have a communal structure built to accomodate 14 year olds who’ve undergone FGM. I happen to think it’s terrible to force a 14 year old to have their genitals largely excised, and I would put a stop to it. But shouldn’t we at least ask ourselves on what ground we stand to criminalize the practice, when many of us are perfectly willing to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.”
Sounds sick, doesn’t it?
…
““Because 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent.” That’s not a moral argument, it’s a legalistic way of avoiding the argument.”
Excuse me? That absolutely is a “moral argument”. Children are not mature enough to keep themselves from being exploited. It’s a simple as that.
“There has to be a reason why 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent to sex and marriage, despite the fact that their bodies are capable of reproduction, and they live in a society — e.g., the FLDS compound — that supports early marriage. We should think about this.”
I wonder if he has a problem with child-labor laws? And I bet he would be seriously upset if this argument was used to support eliminating “Parental Notification” laws…
Let me be the first to clarify that while I support same-sex marriage rights for adults, I am 100% opposed to allowing 14-year-olds to enter into same-sex unions with 50-year-olds. (I also oppose opposite-sex unions between a 14-year-old girl or boy and an adult. Mary Kay Letourneau and the FLDS? Both wrong.)
Dreher is right in that society’s determination or when a post-pubescent person can “meaningfully consent” to sex is arbitrary. But that is irrelevant to this case since there was no consent.
However, the reason why Dreher is less disturbed by what is happening with FLDS than by gay marriage is because raping 14 year old girls makes teh babeez, consensual sex between gay men does not. Remember, sex is all about procreation, folks.
I’m going to take this opportunity to promote Escape, the autobiography of Carolyn Jessop, a woman who fled from the FLDS cult with her eight children. She was married at age 18 to a 50-year-old man (who is now running the cult in Warren Jeffs’ absence). The book is absolutely amazing stuff. She talks about how there was deadly competition among this man’s wives (he eventually wound up with eight), even though none of them liked him.
If you’re in any way interested in the FLDS, go buy this book. It’s simply incredible.
“But don’t think for a minute that the only losers in this tragic affair are the FLDS cultists. All of us who are, or who can imagine ourselves as outsiders — especially cultural and religious outsiders whose lives and beliefs run counter to the prevailing social order — will have lost something.”
Are you kidding? I sometimes perceive myself as a cultural outsider or as someone whose beliefs run counter to the prevailing social order. I have often been accused of saying things just to be argumentative or to get a reaction when I actually believe those things.
But there is no way in hell that I feel as if I’ve lost something because the law finally cracked down and took these children away from people who may be exploiting them sexually and emotionally!
Try to get some perspective: the fact that you identify with these crackpots enough to feel as if you’re losing your precious “outsider” (ie: freak) status is completely trumped by the lost childhood of these girls.
I happen to think it’s terrible to force a 14 year old to “marry” a 50 year old man…. I would put a stop to it. But shouldn’t we at least ask ourselves on what ground we stand to criminalize the practice, when many of us are perfectly willing to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Um, on the ground that sex between a 14 yo and a 50 yo is statutory rape, while sex between two consenting gay adults is, you know, not.
“Because 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent.” That’s not a moral argument, it’s a legalistic way of avoiding the argument. There has to be a reason why 14 year olds can’t meaningfully consent to
sex and marriagehaving an abortion, despite the fact that their bodies are capable of reproduction, and they live in a society— e.g., the FLDS compound —that supportsearly marriagelegal abortion.There, fixed that for him. Mind you, the argument that 14 yo girls are mature enough to “chose” was made at the custody hearing by both a defense, and a prosecution, witness. From the AP (emphasis mine):
Walsh [a defense witness] disputed that young girls have no say in who they marry.
“Basically, they’re into match-making,” he said of the sect, adding that girls who have refused matches have not been expelled.
“I believe the girls are given a real choice. Girls have successfully said, ‘No, this is not a good match for me,’ and they remained in good standing,” he said.
Perry [a psychiatrist and an authority on children in cults; prosecution witness] testified that the girls he interviewed said they freely chose to marry young.
Funny how the issue of choice and the presumption of informed consent only come up when the decision has to do with marriage and statutory rape, but never when the decision is about terminating a pregnancy.
I have been trying to write a comment that’s directly related to all this, but I’m still just sputtering with anger and disbelief. Argh! is the closest I’ve been able to come to a coherent thought.
So Amanda, thank you for writing this, for saying what needs to be said.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali appeared on the latest Real Time and her comments regarding the FDLS compound are dead on.
Check around the 4 minute mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeYyD6H7w0&feature=related
Freaking beautifully said.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali appeared on the latest Real Time and her comments regarding the FDLS compound are dead on.
Check around the 4 minute mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeYyD6H7w0&feature=related
Freaking beautifully said.
Dreher also demonstrates his absolute inability to understand law, as well.
Let us assume these girls and boys had been growing in up a set of families in NYC who practiced BSDM, didn’t “involve” the kids, but brainwashed them into being willing “slaves” in the BSDM community, said activity to start at the age of legal consent.
You can bet Dreher et al. would be howling for blood.
But slap “it’s a religious belief!” on top of anything and suddenly everything is hunky-dory to people like Dreher.
How about shorter Rod Dreher: FLDS must be OK because they make millions from the Pentagon? Cause money and connections make everything OK.
I have a post about this over at my other blog, from the perspective of a pissed-off mom. http://burningprairie.com/?p=39
Funny how the issue of choice and the presumption of informed consent only come up when the decision has to do with marriage and statutory rape, but never when the decision is about terminating a pregnancy.
Because when a fourteen-year-old is pregnant you can’t delay the decision whether to continue or end the pregnancy until she is grown up. The alternative to letting the girl decide is to let her parents or guardian decide. And while I personally think it would be best for most pregnant fourteen-year-olds to get abortions, I don’t think an adult should be able to require them to.
As a historian, nothing irks me more than just-so stories about the average age of marriage in the past as a way for modern men to justify statutory rape and rape of minors. At least in northern Europe, since the Middle Ages the average ages of marriage for both men and women was mid- to late-twenties. Only in the upper classes was early marriage fairly common. Even in southern Europe (like Italy) where the marriage pattern was closer to what happened in this rape farm, the age of the female was still closer to 18 or 20 and her husband in his 30s or 40s. Of course, we can’t possible acknowledge that there is no “average” across the entire human population, especially not when we are trying to justify the rape of girls and oppose same-sex marriage. (eye roll)
Dreher is a vile human being.
Is this common in Texas? I’ve lived all over the northeast and i’ve never seen this happen.
Indeed, the cognitive dissidence here is amazing. He expresses sympathy for both FDLS and the Branch Davidions, while suggesting that thse people are despised because they don’t adhere to teh liberal belief in government. I do wonder how his position of ’sympathy for religious freedom’ would change if this group was worshiping some guy name Muhammad in stead of some guy name Jesus. . .
Well of course it would change! If they were (as CNN, ABC, NBC, and FAUX so pleasantly put it) “MOOSlims” with many wives, well, that would be just another prong of THE BROWN MENACE! coming to destroy Whitebread America. The FLDS are whiter than a ghost, and thus just doing their part to turn back the tide of SKEERY FURRENERS.
I don’t think you could issue a punching bag beating of a woman, but yeah, definitely there are situations where men slap women, push them, or physically restrain them and people are reluctant to get involved. I don’t think it’s geographic. I don’t know how limited that is by geography, though. I’ve read about studies where the researchers faked a minor physical assault in public and gauged who stopped to help and found most people look away, assuming it’s a private matter.
To clarify: I think the way people look away from men assaulting women in public is pretty non-geographic, but add to that mentality a general Texan tolerance for religious kooks. On the whole, I think the Texan tolerance for kookiness is a good thing, but sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between loveable eccentrics and people who are threats to the peace. For example, there was a blow-up near my hometown a few years ago with a group of militia separatists got into it with the government, declaring that they were the “Republic of Texas” and barricading themselves into a compound of sorts with their no doubt massive arsenal. They eventually got rounded up and sent to jail, but it was weird for everyone in town, because a lot of people were friendly with them and unaware that the creepy, well-armed redneck thing they had going had crossed a massive line way back.
However, the reason why Dreher is less disturbed by what is happening with FLDS than by gay marriage is because raping 14 year old girls makes teh babeez, consensual sex between gay men does not. Remember, sex is all about procreation, folks.
Yup, I’m afraid that’s the reasoning here.
Man, wingnuts have serious issues with consent, don’t they?
“I’ve read about studies where the researchers faked a minor physical assault in public and gauged who stopped to help and found most people look away, assuming it’s a private matter.”
When I used to carry a cellphone (I despise them now), I once stopped a couple who were fighting and told the guy that I was calling the police if he didn’t leave his female counterpart alone. He was restraining her and yelling at her, and as soon as I threatened to call the police, he became very angry and started yelling at me. But he backed away from her, at the same time.
On another occasion, my own girlfriend was restraining me by my NECK! outside a lesbian bar, but conveniently in front of a police station. Two police men who thought at first that she was a man asked if I needed assistance, and even though I probably could have handled it on my own, I told them to take her away.
I have no tolerance for violence or abusive behavior. If you want to do that shit in public, you can bet I will call the cops on you. Yesterday, I called the police on a very drunken man who was overturning garbage cans into busy NY streets. If I lived in Texas, I would have the same “vigilante” attitude to reporting assholes.
Rod apparently hasn’t read Escape yet. In it, I believe Carolyn Jessop explains that for that community, the mass rape of children is relatively new, starting slowly with lowered marriage ages as a particularly frail and codgerly old prophet started declining even further, and becoming policy when that psycho Warren Jeffs officially took over and didn’t put the ages back to where they started.
The moral here is that it takes a few generations of unbridled patriarchy, apparently, to get to that level of mass child rape. Which I think means you could make the argument that people like Rod, who can go from just hearing about a vile practice to defending it in less than two weeks, even worse than than the people who did it - at least the perpetrators and victims here required years of isolation and brainwashing before they went along with it. But there’s always the chance that Rod has some redeeming human qualities left, and that if he actually lived at the compound and tried to rape a 15 year old himself, he’d be disgusted and change his tune. I hope.
I’m still trying to piece together the details, but I now believe that FLDS members leased a property from me recently. Reports from property maintenance people provided much amusement among my colleagues… until I saw first hand evidence of how the (very) large number of children were cared for.
I can only imagine/conclude from the state of damage/destruction left behind (and observations of the maintenance people) that the boys and girls were not well cared for at all considering that at least several “mothers” were apparently present at all times.
My experience, compounded by the Texas event, has left me with a slight feeling of sadness, helplessness and guilt. I’m afraid I started off this mis-adventure as one of the people straining to look at things through the “harmless kook” lens.
pablo,
I don’t think it’s geographic, per se, but anytime you have endemic poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of social services, and low education, you see this stuff. It may express itself as prosituition, unwed mothers, or child marriage, but it always comes down to women selling sex in exchange for survival.
Most of the time, I wouldn’t even call it rape: it’s people making a difficult decision between a really crappy future and a merely crappy future. With better education and services, it would largely be a non-issue, but lacking those, you have a lot of adolescent boys and girls who are basically completely scrrewed by the social system.
My coworker bailed out of a Mormon community at age 15 or so. She saw what her life was going to be if she stayed, and she ran. She basically homesteaded for 4 years, getting a high school diploma, etc. Just doable for someone with a 140 IQ who is willing to shoot their supper, virtually impossible for the average person in this sort of situation.
Re: Intervening in public DV.
While I’ve never had the opportunity presented in real life, when I do thought experiments on how/if I would intervene should I see a man abusing a woman in public, I end up with one sticky point. If I were to come to her defense, verbally or physically, unless the offender gets hauled off by the cops during the incident (or, in this case, have the children removed from custody), the women may very well get it worse when they get home. If she’s being abused in public, she’s probably on the super defensive, trying to calm everything down, in the in-the-moment logical ways that sufferers of abuse do. By (what the abuser sees as) interfering, I’ve just given him something else to take out on her hide.
It’s different than, say, if you see someone get jumped, and you help them. In that case, after the violence stops, it’s over and done with. The victim doesn’t have to go home with the attacker. Also, there is no emotional aspect to it. A person getting jumped is never going to think they deserved it, and will be happy you helped. On the other hand, an abused person may desperately want you to not interfere, because you will upset any kind of balance she is trying to restore to the situation.
So then, how do we intervene in a way that doesn’t actually make the whole of the situation worse for the victim?
It’s rape, it’s rape, it’s rape.
“Consent” obtained by coercion is not ever consent in any sense of the word.
Hiding behind the skirts of “religious tolerance” sickens me.
—-
I am all for legalized poly relationships - BUT only those between consenting adults.
I have to go wash out my brain and write 2 papers *grumble grumble grumble patriarchy grumble grumble*
Here is an interesting article on the Canadian branch of this cult. I learned of this writer’s work from Sara Robinson at Orcinus, where there is a good discussion. I’m going to ask a Canadian friend to send me Ms. Branham’s book this week.
when I do thought experiments on how/if I would intervene should I see a man abusing a woman in public, I end up with one sticky point.
I agree that this is tough. The last thing you want to do it make a situation worse.
The most recent time that I witnessed something like this, I was on a public street at dusk. The man was shouting, pushing and grabbing at her, and the woman was pressed up against a building. A steady flow of people was passing by. I stopped dead in my tracks and just looked at them. Didn’t say anything, stayed several feet away, just made eye contact. I lingered there a good two solid minutes (feels like an eternity under those circumstances), just hovering without making any attempt to talk to them. He seemed to calm down, shake himself off, and I went on walking.
In that specific case I think I gave a breather for him to realize he was in public and being observed, and I think he genuinely calmed down a little. And by making eye contact with her, I hope I made it clear that she was not being ignored by every single person walking by. Who knows what happened when they got home.
I don’t know if this would work for others. I’m nonthreatening enough that I think I can generally get away with doing something like this; very few people are going to think that I am challenging them to a fight (or even getting in their business).
In other situations I think I might go so far as to say, “Ma’am, I don’t want to intrude, but if you decide you’re not comfortable with this, there are folks you can ask for help.” And if she’s receptive, to give her the local safe hotline number. That puts the agency in her lap (if she decides she’s not comfortable) rather than presuming I have the right to tell her what she should put up with in a relationship. And it doesn’t engage with the violent partner at all. Not perfect, but probably what I’d do.
At first I was blown away by Dreher’s acceptance of relativism in god’s name. I thought relativism was the biggest flaw underlying the secular world. But I guess, parsing his argument more carefully, he is saying that, in his religion, there is NO MORAL IMPEDIMENT to compelled marriages between aging men and young girls of the FLDS variety. And his admission is actually quite revealing. He’s admitting that compelling girls to surrender their virginity as dictated by their elders is consistent with making the patriarchs the proprietors of that virginity (ala father-daughter chastity balls). I always suspected as much.
Between consenting ADULTS. Dreher would shit bricks if anyone suggested that his 14-year-old daughter ought to be allowed, over his objections, to run off and marry Michael Moore.
His whole schtick here is that he thinks he’s found a cute way to argue for consent laws and against SSM. He couldn’t give a fuck less about children being raped by men three times their age. He probably thinks it’s good on the old guys that they get to own a hot teenager.
Don’t underestimate Waco, which righties and lefties all around should see as a debacle. One of the consequences of Waco is that now its harder to deal with these FLDS arseholes. But it does seem that the authorities learned something from Waco since this time they descended with an army of social workers instead of just an army.
I’d like to see some ideas about how prevent this kind of polygamy while opening up the definition of marriage in general. My understanding is that some of these FLDS groups scrupulously avoid marrying people under 18 so they don’t get raided. They’re still patriarchal nutjobs and the world would be a better place without them. But, can you consistently argue that marriage laws and norms are way too restrictive as they are and argue that non-child-abusing polygamy ought to be criminal? For instance, I think polyamory should be recognized alongside same-sex marriage. If you’re going to get rid of the one-man-one-woman bullshit, you might as well get rid of the one-man-one-man bullshit too. But you can’t exactly make nutjob plural wives illegal while you make non-patriarchal polyamory legal. Are there some unexpected costs to making poly-type relationships legit?
But I guess, parsing his argument more carefully, he is saying that, in his religion, there is NO MORAL IMPEDIMENT to compelled marriages between aging men and young girls of the FLDS variety.
That’s how I read it, too. His waxing poetic about child brides in the days of yore was sickening. I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics he goes through to justify the raping of 14 year-olds — the whole “I would put a stop to this child marriage business” statement is directly contradicted by the crude “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed” argument”.
Is this whole FLDS cult about sex or is it about making money? Seems to me that a few old men got very rich by breeding compliant followers for manual labor.
“The moral here is that it takes a few generations of unbridled patriarchy, apparently, to get to that level of mass child rape. Which I think means you could make the argument that people like Rod, who can go from just hearing about a vile practice to defending it in less than two weeks, even worse than than the people who did it - at least the perpetrators and victims here required years of isolation and brainwashing before they went along with it.”
Lots to ponder here…
Shorter Rod Dreher: “First they came for the child-rapists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a child-rapist…”
Wow, this was exactly the thing to read along with Monday lunch *hits things*
waxing poetic about child brides in the days of yore
To add to History Mom’s very correct assessment —
Not only was the average age of marriage in Europe about on par with what we would consider normal today (women in their 20’s marrying men around the same age), but even in wealthy families where women were married off very young, the act of marriage did not necessarily mean that the couple would be cohabitating or having sex right away. The average age of menstruation was much older back then (between 15-18) due to nutritional differences, and it would have been unusual for a pre-pubescent girl to be sent off to live with her husband. Which means that even if some women were married extremely young by modern standards, they still wouldn’t have been expected to ‘perform wifely duties’ until they were well older than the FDLS girls.
“Something tells me that if a religious cult was discovered that practiced boy-rape instead of girl-rape”
Whadaya mean, if? (Ok, “as well as” rather than “instead” - but true, good point that the Church at least considered it a nuisance that needed to be covered up . . .)
We can’t tolerate young girls being treated as virtual sex slaves and breeding stock, as the Bible teaches us to do and the Taliban and FDLS does, but taking hundreds of very young children from their mothers because their mothers are of a fundamentalist religion is wrong.
Guilt by association?
You don’t have to commit a crime now, you just have to believe the same thing as someone who has?
Welcome to George W. Bush’s America. I object.
And if the Democrats were wise, they would put President Bush on record in this case because it would split the Republicans. Don’t let him get off with: it’s a local issue. The question is: Are there constitutional, i.e., national issues, in the arrests? Many fundamentalists see themselves in the FDLS case. They think Bush is their friend, and Bush is hiding behind the local issue, but if relgious rights are being stepped on, shouldn’t he be speaking up? This is Bush’s Waco if properly pinned on him. Fearmongering over-reaction.
I usually just lurk and read comments, but this jumped out at me:
Puberty does not equal sexual maturity. She may be capable of becoming pregnant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean her body can handle a full-term pregnancy and childbirth. Also, that’s not getting into the emotional and mental aspect of sex. Can these girls, who have been raised to believe their sole purpose in life is to marry and pop out babies, truly give informed consent? Are they educated about sex and their bodies before they’re married off to these
pervertsmen? I seriously doubt it.Unbelievable! I bet this guy isn’t singing this (fairly creepy) song about how “their bodies can reproduce” and stuff when it comes to 14 year olds having sex with each other, or getting information about sex or contraception!
On the subject of coming to the aid of someone being hit - I live in Melbourne (Aus) and last year in the city on a busy Monday morning, two men went to the aid of a young woman who was being hit and dragged by her hair by a man near a local nightclub. The aggressor pulled out a gun, killing one man and badly wounding the other. This kind of thing does put people off coming to the aid of a stranger. In an age of mobile phones, I think it’s safer to call the police from a distance, you never know what kind of vicious thug you could be dealing with.
Grrrrrrrrrr. It pisses me off how many people want to tolerate child rape in this circumstance.
Whaddya mean rape? THose are just womminz - you can’t rape a brood mare. OK - I’m making myself sick. You just hear this culture’s opinion that women are not human in this case, the treatment of it in the media, in Rod’s “argument,” and even in this comment thread. Gross beyond gross - but I suppose not a big surprise either.
for the record, regardless of age (and of course a 14-yr old cannot give meaningful consent) the female humans don’t get to even pretend to consent. Amanda points this out, but it get’s erased by the noise. So all this talk about what age they “marry” (begin to be raped) DOESN’T MATTER. The female humans don’t get to choose at any age, so all the rape apologists should stfu.
I expected better from this blog and its readers.
Of course I believe in statutory rape laws and think they should be enforced, but you folks need to think through this issue a bit more. The Texas raids and the subsequent abduction of hundreds of children by the government represent a shocking abuse of human rights.
Should we snatch Pashtun girls from the the tribal areas of Pakistan and save them from their own oppressive societies? Should we raid encampments of hunter gatherers in the Amazon to spare indigenous children the various barbarisms of life in the rain forest. The point here isn’t moral relativism. I would love to see the FLDS and the Taliban destroyed - but not by the Texas Rangers.
In general, the American liberals seems to recognize the limits of humanitarian interventions overseas, but they forget themselves when it comes to the various reactionary separatist movements that have populated the fringes of the American religious landscape for some 200 years.
The parents of the stolen children have apparently behaved with great restraint and dignity. In my opinion, it would be morally acceptable (but foolish) for them to respond with lethal violence to their persecutors.
Also, the idea that the Religious Right turns a blind eye to fundamentalist Mormonism because of some shared conservative agenda is absurd. American evangelical Protestants have been terrorizing and even murdering Mormons since the the Flying Spaghetti Monster revealed the location of the Golden Tablets to Joseph Smith.
“We can’t tolerate young girls being treated as virtual sex slaves and breeding stock, as the Bible teaches us to do and the Taliban and FDLS does, but taking hundreds of very young children from their mothers because their mothers are of a fundamentalist religion is wrong.”
The children were not taken from their mothers: I believe the FDLS mothers were allowed to go with their children. More accurately, the kids were taken from their *fathers.*
And they were not taken from their fathers because of their fathers’ fundamentalist religion. They were taken from their fathers because their fathers are suspected of raping some of these children. That’s a crucial difference: one is a crime and the other is just annoying.
I find myself very disturbed that it took so long for the authorities to intervene. Polygamy is illegal, as is statutory rape. Why did it take a call to the abuse hotline to get authorities to act? Also, I read that most of the children were girls. Why weren’t authorities intervening when the young men were being tossed out?
Yes, these things are illegal, but FLDS communities are quite smart at keeping ahead of law enforcement. First off, these communities typically incorporate as a town and ARE the local government. That means the local police force won’t intervene because they are part of the power structure. State and federal police are usually very far away and may have jurisdictional issues.
While polygamy is illegal, proving polygamy is very difficult since these people are smart enough to have one marriage on the books and the other marriages off the books. How do you prove that polygamy is occurring? Surveillance? What probable cause do you use to justify surveillance? Ditto with statutory rape. In both cases, the authorities really can’t do much unless they can get someone on the inside to testify, but these communities have raised people up from day one to believe that if their only chance at salvation and happiness is to stay in the community and do what they’re told: they often believe that leaving is a death sentence.
Finally, the authorities have been trying. They put away the community leader several years ago. But our legal system really isn’t well adapted for these sorts of cases.
If you think that’s bad, you should read back over his past blogs/columns.
I personally wish he would get the hell out of my city (Dallas).
Dreher’s probably confused by the difference between romance and coercion. After all, Romeo and Juliet were originally supposed to be around 15 and 13, so what’s the difference?
Having said that, I will note one point people have overlooked. Given Africa and Asia, especially India, a large proportion of the world’s marriages are arranged. What exactly seperates them from this situation except the level of coercion involved?
Apart from the blindingly obvious point of, you know, children under the social age of consent.
loneoak: But you can’t exactly make nutjob plural wives illegal while you make non-patriarchal polyamory legal.
In fact you can quite well. As soon as you create a legal framework for poly marriages, you can set an age requirement, implement divorce procedures, child support rules, and all kinds of neat stuff.
Are there some unexpected costs to making poly-type relationships legit?
Lots of study and work necessary to do it well. Protecting the rights of everyone involved, and then loads of money issues. Child support, welfare, taxes…
But that would really upset the definition of marriage. (Good.)
Having said that, I will note one point people have overlooked. Given Africa and Asia, especially India, a large proportion of the world’s marriages are arranged. What exactly seperates them from this situation except the level of coercion involved?
In the case of arranged marriages between adults, both parties are capable of meaningful consent to an arranged marriage and to sex. There are certainly circumstances where women are forced into marriages and subjected to rape within the marriage, but arranged marriage isn’t coerced per se. I know people whose parents offered to arrange marriages for them who agreed because this was consistent with their view of what makes a strong marriage (ie. long-term compatibility or compliance with cultural/religious tradition rather than romantic love) and their trust for their parents.
I don’t know about other countries, but there are NGOs and women’s groups in India working with girls and their families in regions where underage marriage is still common in order to discourage the practice. I visited one of these NGOs and met teenagers participating in such a project. The girls were taught how to sew and given access to machines so they could make clothing for their family. This saved the families money so the girls could continue their education rather than leaving school to work. The average age of marriage in the region a few years ago was 14 and the average woman gave birth to 10 children. These girls, however, said they wanted to marry at 18 because waiting to get pregnant was healthier for both women and babies, and to limit their family size to two children. Girls and women don’t always have the power to follow this plan, but average marriage age is increasing, family size is decreasing, and more and more women are finishing high school.
Foucault:
I believe only mothers of children under 6 were allowed to stay with them.
Is there any credible evidence that 6 year old girls were being raped? If not, then this is a travesty that is hurting these girls and trampling their rights. Being in favor of individual rights against the government means little if you abandon the principle when you find your self on the side of the government.
A sect trading child brides like chattel should have been stopped long ago. But overreacting now is neither fair, nor compensates for the earlier negligence on the part of the government.
Was George W. Bush governor of Texas when these guys had this compound built?
Piator: I think arranged marriages are symptomatic of a patriarchal culture; pretty much the logical extension of the “Purity Balls” discussed here. I’d be quite happy if they vanished completely. The problem is I don’t think it’s something that can be attacked head on with any results.
I think it’s more important to push for the fundamental human rights for women: education, legal equality, protection from domestic violence and rape, and reproductive freedom. I think once that happens, women have more ability to make an informed choice as to whether or not they want to participate in an arranged marriage, or change the laws from within to dismantle the structure.
I don’t know how Dreher was reacting to all the lurid, accurate stories of child rape in Afghanistan under the Taliban or in other Muslim country, but neo-con have long used that as a hobby-horse for invading any Muslim country and justifying a global war against Islam. And I doubt that Dreher would look at child brides in Taliban Afghanistan as just some harmless cultural difference.
Of course that’s a bad (read non-white, non-English speaking) patriarchy.
Thank you so so so much for continuing to follow this - I have been feeling like I have NO PLACE OF SANITY left - today I noticed that the ACLU filed an AC brief saying that fundamental rights were violated when the ranch was raided…
I know this has been said over and over again but I just have to say it - Why aren’t any of the news outlets or the myriad organizations involved ARGUING FOR THE WOMENS’ AND GIRLS’ RIGHTS NOT TO BE RAPED?!?!?!
Shorter Adrian: “But, but, but, ‘old enough to breed, old enough to bleed’ is a good ol’ Murkin tradition! And the fact that librulz support the FLDS raid but don’t advocate rescuing Pashtun girls from arranged marriages has nothing to do with the fact that the former happened on U.S. soil and the latter didn’t! And we should praise the rapist-patriarchs of the FLDS for not firing on the Texas Rangers who stole their fucktoys away!”
Rape-apologist asshole.
Oh, and anti-Mormon fundie xtians don’t give a shit about how Mormons treat “their” women, any more than they really care about the oppression of women under Wahhabism. They care about competition for “souls,” and political power.
Given Africa and Asia, especially India, a large proportion of the world’s marriages are arranged. What exactly seperates them from this situation except the level of coercion involved?
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that in India, most of the arranged marriages were between people of pretty similar age.
Personally, I don’t have a huge problem with arranged marriages where both proposed spouses have veto power and are of similar and legal ages — they happen in New York all the time among Hasidic Jews. It’s the 14-year-old girl forced to marry a 50-year-old man that’s the problem here or, frankly, a woman/girl being forced to marry with no say in it whatsoever. That’s how they got Warren Jeffs for aiding and abetting rape — the girl in the case tried to refuse that particular husband and was forced into the marriage anyway.
The way to intervene is to call the cops. Getting involved physically may seem heroic, but it’s incredibly stupid and no good can come from it — except in the unlikely event that the victim is in imminent danger of being maimed or killed right there in the parking lot of Borders or whatever.
Rod Dreher = smug, disingenuous douche.
On the FLDS:
It’s interesting to note how quickly the apologists to try frame their arguments as not being limited to Christian fundamentalists, even though it is patently clear that they intend that limitiation. A commenter upthread accurately noted how they’d go beserk if it were Muslim polygamists. Religion remains the magic evader, though, doesn’t it?
If a group of secular humanists started doing this the FLDS apologists would not leap to their defence at all; they’d be writing articles about how a lack of faith leads to kiddie rape and how it proves that a lack of morality and respect for your fellow humans lies at the dark heart of secularism, blah blah blah, lie lie lie.
On Godmonkey at 59 and similar comments:
A Mountie of my acquaintance once remarked on why he hated responding to domestic calls: “If I go to a bank robbery and stop the guy from pistol-whipping the teller I’m pretty sure that the teller isn’t going to leap onto my back, going for my eyes, screaming `LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!!!’.”
A nitpick, because this is driving me nuts:
It’s FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), not FDLS.
But what was the alternative? And I’m honestly asking. I’m not certain how these things actually work, but in a typical family situation, if the authorities get a call from an underage girl saying that she has been raped by her father, the authorities go in and take all of the children away temporarily, while it’s being investigated, right? They wouldn’t just take the one child out of the home and then leave the others who haven’t alleged that they were raped. In this situation, the family just happens to be enormous, with multiple fathers and mothers and numerous children. Last I heard, the authorities still don’t know which child it was who called to report being raped. So what can they do besides take ALL of the children out of the home (or compound, or whatever it is)?
Epistemology,
If the men are being accused of systematic statutory rape and spousal abuse, separating them (and their wives, who in many cases, would be considered accomplices) from their children is dramatic, but pretty standard. If they want these children to testify, they have to get them away from the men (alleged perpetrators) and even their mothers (alleged acomplices).
Another point that is important is that the adults (and maybe the children?) are giving the authorities false information about relationships between parents and children. The failure to cooperate is in itself grounds to hold on to those kids until relationships can be sorted out. And my guess is that when they are sorted out there will be more under aged mothers.
What do you think Dreher would do if his 14 year old daughter came home with a 50 year old boyfriend and announced her intention to become his fifth “wife”? We’ll never know because, surprise, surprise, Dreher has two sons and no daughters. Just another exercise in mental masturbation.
So Adrian: the religious in America should break the law with impunity? And commit violence against those who oppose them?
I mean, just so we’re clear here.
“Is there any credible evidence that 6 year old girls were being raped? If not, then this is a travesty that is hurting these girls and trampling their rights.”
There seems to be evidence that some girls younger than 16 were pregnant or bore children on this compound. I don’t know how many girls, and it doesn’t matter, One pregnant child is enough to warrant this investigation.
And girls who are six now will one day be twelve or thirteen or sixteen, and at risk of becoming prey to these people. So it’s better to investigate and remove them at an early age, if the investigation justifies such a removal. If there is nothing criminal going on, then I trust that these children will be given back to their parents.
Ismone:
You miss my point. Women were separated from infant children. Women who haven’t had children who have been raped. This is obviously NOT standard operating procedure. This is religious bias. If I found a Chrisitian church where spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child was being practiced literally, you apparently believe that arresting all members of the congregation would be alright, even for those who had never hit their kids. This is an absolute travesty of justice.
And I am not talking about the parents of underage girls who have been subjected to abuse. They should be arrested. But to condemn the mothers of young children because they belong to the same sect as these criminals is to be guilty by association.
And thanks to XtinaS for correcting my acronym, of course it’s FLDS. I’m an idiot (and not necessarily for the reasons Ismone thinks).
SO far every single defense of these douchebags I’ve heard has come from middle-aged white men.
Ummm… American Beauty fetish anyone?
Well, no, because at least 20, and possibly more, of the “women” in question are themselves the rape victims. They claimed to be adults and turned out not to be.
Are we supposed to wait until the children turn 12 and are forced into “marriage” with 50-year-old adult men before we can lift a finger?
“But to condemn the mothers of young children because they belong to the same sect as these criminals is to be guilty by association.”
No one is condemning the mothers. The authorities are merely trying to establish that the children’s home environment is safe before the children can go back.
Unfortunately, the children’s home environment is a religious cult, and all those involved in it could potentially be covering up child abuse. If someone could magically determine who has raped children and who hasn’t, then I’m sure this whole thing would be over by now.
In any case, children are resilient and I’m sure they will look back on this one day soon and laugh, “Remember how those infidels took us away and asked us if we were being forced to do the nasty in the sacred temple?”
Really: the “worse” (or best) part of all of this is that the kids will probably know a lot more about child abuse and their rights as children once they are free to go. They may even want TVs!
Let this be the beginning of the end for the swine who perpetrate and perpetuate the outrage…may they end their lives in prison.
But I’m not willing to give the “Mothers” a free pass. I get their circumstances but cannot totally absolve them from responsibility… because, at some point, some time…every rational and instinctual negative response to their lot in life must have been privately examined.
My great grandmother, married at 14, southern, isolated Pentacostal, was pregnant 20 times, and despite incrementally crippling strokes, bore 12, and raised 8 to adulthood, silent and bitter from the final stroke that took any voice she might have had…at 38. My Grandmother committed suicide rather than continue to live in a culture that despises women. My mother, at 15, graduated valedictorian from her Winnfield LA high school in the mid-thirties, winning a business scholarship to LA Polytech in Ruston, and with her two years of education, fled the bayou, to Dallas, to immediate postwar Japan and Germany, subsequently living all over the states…and returning home only to see loved ones. She rarely spoke of her history, but I will always remember her quiet comment…with veiled eyes and lifted chin…”my children would be raised elsewhere.”
I cannot believe that these women were oblivious to that inner voice, the voice that tells us SOMETHING is not right. The voice my own Mom listened to…
I’m not suggesting prosecution or persecution…but these women who are being trotted out for public relations purposes need to be asked some hard questions.
Mnemosyne:
Yes. We are supposed to wait for crimes to be committed before prosecuting people for them.
Are we supposed to [fill in the blank] before we lift a finger? Quite an assertion.
Should America wait to be attacked before striking other Muslims countries?
People who openly oppose our drug laws, hang around with people who use drugs, can they now be arrested for their associations and beliefs?
Is this really a guiding principle in your theory of human rights? That we can arrest people because they are of the same religion as those who have committed crimes?
This should have been broken up long ago, but not with mass arrests.
There are three good reasons to remove the children from their parents until trial, and none of them involve “punishing” the children:
1. Protective custody. Whether they’re being raped or just learning that rape is okay, that’s wrong. Both parents are a dangerous influence.
2. If they are allowed to take the children back to the compound, there’s a huge chance they will disappear forever. They get shuffled off to other compounds in other states or even other countries. Remember this is a state case, not a federal one.
3. The moment these mothers get their hands on the kids, it would be “make sure to tell the nice social worker that Daddy has only one wife.” The alternative is to lose the child and get punished by the patriarchs.
Others have said it better, but here goes my $.02
First, yeah, I do feel bad that the mothers are separated from their kids. I get that they’ve been brainwashed into a religious cult, and that they themselves may well have been victims of abuse, emotional or otherwise.
But, these same mother have also allowed their young teenage daughters to be raped by 50-year-old men, and from what I’ve heard so far, none of them see anything wrong with that.
Seriously, if this were a family of four, instead of the sprawling mess it is, would those of you outraged by the removal of the children still be outraged? If Dad was letting his drinking buddies have at his teenager, with Mom nodding in approval on the side, would you still be pissed that the authorities removed both children until the investigation could be completed?
No, those kids should not go back to their mothers, not until the authorities know which kid goes with which adults, how old all the mothers are, and frankly, I’d toss in a good deprogramming session with an army of therapists.
‘Cuz there are religious beliefs, and then there’s letting your daughter get raped–and seeing nothing wrong with it.
We are supposed to wait for crimes to be committed before prosecuting people for them.
Considering that we appear to have a group of at least 20 girls under the age of 18 who have had crimes committed against them as evidenced by the fact that they have already had their rapists’ baby (and possibly more than one), I’m not sure what kind of evidence you need us to wait for here. Statutory rape of teenage girls by older men is not a real crime, so we need to wait for a real crime to be committed before we can shut the place down?
Things which are illegal in this country:
Rape
Statutory rape
Polygamy
Domestic violence
Child abuse
Child abandonment (remember the little boys getting kicked out)
All of the above are things that the police had a reasonable belief and ample evidence of. It’s sad that they had to wait until after the 16 year old called the cops, but they knew that this was a raid that had to happen delicately, and that if they tried to prosecute and failed, the repercussions would be enormous.
They had a complaining witness, who called the police to report battering and rape. They went in and, seeing evidence of a wealth of other crimes, took the children from the home.
How is this religious persecution? How is any part of how the police handled it wrong? There was a small community which was engaging in mass amounts of child abuse. To prevent witness tampering and further abuse while they try to sort things out, they removed the kids.
Where is the problem?
You authoritarian feminists have fallen for Ayan Hirsi Ali - Shaha Riza, AEI school of coercive liberalism. The fundamental question should always be WWEGD or “What Would Emma Goldman Do?” Would Emma use a police force to steal children from their (theocratic, ass-backwards) families? Hell no.
What the kids in FLDS need is vigilant social workers and thorough police work, not a mass kidnapping.
It’s good to see that the crusades for religious freedom are finally on the case. To my knowledge, nobody has been arrested in this case simply for “being of the same religion as those who have committed crimes.” The reports I’ve seen so far indicate that the crimes alleged were known to and accepted by essentially the entire Eldorado community. In addition, its been documented that the FLDS there went to great lengths to discourage and prevent scrutiny and intervention from outsiders. While you may fret about whether it’s religious discrimination to separate the children from their families, I can’t help but think that it’s better than the alternative, which is to return them to the custody of people who are alleged to have either raped children or been complicit in the rape of children. We wouldn’t expect children to be immediately returned to their allegedly-abusive parents in a typical child-abuse case; why would we expect that to happen in this case?
I suppose that when you come right down to it, I consider the sexual abuse to be the real issue here, and the religious-freedom aspect of the case to be more of a distraction with which the rapists, along with their accomplices and enablers, can direct attention away from the horrific reality of their crimes. Whenever I’m told that I need to be more concerned with the religious freedom of the FLDS and its patriarchs, I feel like someone is telling me that I shouldn’t bother worrying about the man behind the curtain, because he’s not nearly as impressive or important as the Wizard.
On a related note, in response to Adrian’s question of “WWEGD,” I can only reply “WTF?” What a bizarre standard. I can only say that if Emma Goldman truly believed that the police should not remove children from families which apparently have a history of sexually abusing children, and are likely to continue doing so, then I’m perfectly comfortable in not caring one whit what Emma Goldman would do.
And now I’m going to hit the Blaspheme! button, appropriately enough.
Adrian:
Sara at Orcinus is doing a great job pulling together background, and showing why social workers and police are not enough at this stage. Basically, the FLDS has *owned* the local police and social workers — and schools, hospitals, and cemetaries.
Adrian: While it would have been more romantic to untangle that mess using a vigilante operation or an underground railroad, it would also be far more likely to get people killed. It also would, probably, help the victims (those that are not end up as casualties, that is), but leave the welfare-fraud child-rapist patriarchs with the power of law on their side. Which is not a good situation to get into.
Esme:
Punishing a community as a community is trampling individual rights. Round them all up and let the DNA sort it out? This is not the way to do this.
Women who were married at a legal age with infant children had them taken from them by uniformed men who arrived in armored vehicles because they lived in a community where child abuse was going on. This is George W. Bush’s America. I am shocked and dismayed to find there are so many supporters here. I know that much energy has been put into contradicting the supporters of this rape factory, but the way to take it down must involve respect for the rights of the accused.
As I said, this should have been done long ago (was this compound there when Bush was governor?) but this is too heavy handed. It tramples individual rights.
A religious community that threatens America. Round them all up. George W. Bush has won over the Pandagonians. It’s a sad day for America.
It’s a gorgeous day in Philadelphia. Let’s hope the turnout is high enough here to counterbalance the rural part of the state (I think the suburbs here–I’m in Delaware County–will come out big for Obama, and the rural part of the state really isn’t that jazzed about Hillary) and allow Hillary a pyrrhic victory at best here.
And Mr. Chris has parroted George W. Bush’s rationale for rounding up Muslims perfectly. Surely mass murder is as anathema as mass rape, so what’s the problem with trampling the rights of the accused?
And those who argue for careful attention to individual rights are “accomplices and enablers” of rapists as the right wing says of you accomplices and enablers of terrorists. Where’s the difference?
“A religious community that threatens America. Round them all up. George W. Bush has won over the Pandagonians. It’s a sad day for America.”
No, a “religious community” threatens American citizens, who are minors and unable to consent to such abuse.
If you’re of legal age and you’re stupid enough to want to be a part of such a “community”, go for it.
If that community decides that menarche is a sign that you need to be married to some old pervert, I have a problem with that, and so would many others.
This has nothing to do with religion. If it was a group of Muslims/Hindus/Catholics/etc., it would be just as wrong.
It’s pretty simple: If it’s a crime between one 50-year old guy and one coerced 14-year old girl - which it is everywhere in this United States - then it does not suddenly stop being a crime when many 50-year olds and many 14-year olds are involved. And the presence or absence of religion as an excuse does not make it any better.
Is that so hard to understand?…
MikeEss:
You have misread me. I think this community is a virtual rape factory. But you must shut it down by arresting those directly implicated in a crime.
You can’t brand the whole community as outlaw and arrest those not directly involved. Do you not believe that there were women who got married at a legal age who had infant children taken from them because they lived in this community. Because they might one day condone the rape of their daughters? That is not respecting individual rights.
I share your frustration with the belief system that many religions have that support the abuse and denigration of women, but this is too heavy handed. This is George W. Bush’s America. If it were a radical Muslim congregation and Bush was crying terror not rape I doubt you would be on board with this.
Our respect for individual rights is revealed in how we treat those with whom we vehemently disagree. The support for this heavy handed solution is disappointing to see in a supposedly progressive community.
epistemology,
You’re actually missing my point. These women aren’t just possibly accomplices if they give their underage children over, they are also accomplices if their husband has an underage wife. Even if they could prove that they were personally not married until they were of age, that does not mean they were innocent.
And this isn’t just like rounding up all the members of a congregation, which, no, I wouldn’t support. The reason all of these people are involved is because they are co-living. If they lived in different homes, and the police searched all of them based on one tip-off, that would be wrong.
Crimes have been committed, they are being investigated, and sometimes, investigations into massive child abuse are pretty damn intrusive. It sucks. I wish they could leave the women who are not legally accomplices alone. But, raising your children in an environment where other children are raped and beaten, depending upon they severity of the abuse and its ubiquity in the community, may be child abuse in and of itself.
Oh, and polygamy is still illegal.
Ismone
Oh, and epistemology, you can hold people on material witness warrants. If you are afraid they will be influenced or flee to avoid testimony. Does it suck to be held on a material witness warrant? You bet. But it isn’t new, although many times it is used in complex prosecutions involving large groups, i.e., the mob, terrorism.
And don’t get me wrong, I think that material witness warrants can be overused. But here they can and should be used. (Although, of course, they should release people as quickly as possible if it is established they are not witnesses and did not engage in any criminal activity.)
And they didn’t just “live in a community where child abuse was going on.” They lived in a community that publicly required child abuse and child sex abuse. And many of them participated in it. This is not a surprise to anyone living in this compound.
Ismone:
3 year old material witnesses? I don’t think so.
Protective custody. Being exposed to rape and child abuse and wife-beating is not healthy for 3-year-olds.
Material witness warrants would apply to anyone old enough to testify, certainly the women, and possibly children ages 7 and up. (Depending upon Texas standards.)
Don’t forget that pedophiles groom their victims for sex abuse from a young age if possible, so in an enviroment where child rapists actually run things, all kids should be taken out. If the children being raped were boys and the people running the place were Wiccans, law enforcement would have had to go in and protect all the adults from mass lynching by the community.
bmc90:
No, those who run the rape factory should be taken away, not innocent uninvolved children. You have it backwards.
Um, once the people who run it are gone, who is going to care for the children? The women who perhaps at best stood idly by while their kids were made ready to be sex slaves? What about those who counseled the 12 year olds to accept their fate, especially if their future spiritual husband had a lot of power in the community, or if the woman would end up being the child’s sister wife?
No, you remove children from dangerous situations, and if they adults who are responsible for their well-being created or tolerated those situations, you remove them from the custody of the adults as well.
Trust me, if this were a few bad apples, and the rest of the community was shocked by/opposed to the child abuse, it would be going down just the way you want it to.
Also, follow the money. The women don’t own that property, and dollars to donuts their welfare checks have been going straight into the rapists pockets. Once the rapists are in jail, they will have no visible means of support and no place to live depending on whether the govement takes the property under forfeiture statutes, or if not, whether the rapists still want them around when the welfare checks dry up.
There’s a certain amount of victim-blaming in pointing out that someone who lives in a family — even an extended family — where underage girls are groomed for rape, and then raped, and either participates in the grooming or does nothing to prevent it, is prima facie unfit to be a parent. But it’s still true.
And: men and women elsewhere in the world who believe it’s OK to rape underage girls, kill women for being seen with men not in their family, or rape virgins to cure themselves of HIV: also disgusting and immoral. But not in US jurisdiction and not the subjects of this post.
Shorter Paul: even if your own victization messed you up in terms of being a fit parent, that does not give you pass. Agreed.
“No, those who run the rape factory should be taken away, not innocent uninvolved children. You have it backwards.”
Also, epistemology, since you are so concerned with protecting the legal rights of all those involved, I should point out that you cannot arrest people till they have been charged with a crime. So it doesn’t make sense to take the parents away; it makes sense to remove the children in order to find out if crimes occurred.
Well, I can believe that they were depressed, abused, victimized, and suffering from post-partum depression or psychosis.Doesn’t excuse the child abuse, but may mean proper medical/psychiatric care instead of jail time and definitely before deciding whether or not parental rights should be terminated.
But, at least here in Chicago, when one child is found to have been abused or is strongly suspected of being abused, all his/her siblings are removed from the parents as well. In this case, you have dozens of siblings living in the same houses and you have people lying about who is a child and who is a parent.
They had to take all those kids. It’s my understanding that anyone 6 or under(probably underage for a material witness warrent) was allowed to stay with the “mother”. But they are doing DNA to find out for sure who the parents are. Just b/c some woman is claiming an infant doesn’t mean that it is hers, especially since they are trying to protect their patriarchs from statutory rape charges.
There are no birth certificates. There is no legal way to prove these kids legitimately belong with their “parents” until we know who their parents are. After removing them from a dangerous environment, even if you want to work toward reuniting the family, how do you know who that family is? The adults have been lying about familial relationships–and may be protected by the 5th amendment from revealing the truth.
And then there are accusations from Carolyn Jessop that children were taken from other compounds and given to people at this compound. That adds kidnapping to the charges and kidnapped children shouldn’t be left with the kidnapper, even if s/he claims to be an adoptive parent.
So, now you have a call from a purported underage girl claiming that she’s been beaten and raped by her husband–>and that she has 3 children which means she was illegally “married” at 13 at least. When the authorities go in, they find more teen pregnancies which supports the caller’s allegations. What were they supposed to do? Abandon minors who were in a dangerous environment?
They were legally required to remove all of those kids from every house that had evidence of statutory rape. Yes, it’s going to take a long time to sort out who belongs to whom, but that’s partially the parents’ fault for lying about who is related and how.
The mothers will stay with the small children until the DNA results come back. At that point, when we know for sure who *is* the mother, we can determine the suitability of returning the children.
It has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with child abuse, sexual abuse, and slavery.
I really want the media to refer to this compound as what it is: a rape factory. I’m sick of hearing about ‘forced marriage’ when the ‘marriage’ isn’t and couldn’t be legal. It’s sex slavery.
If you take away the adults who run the rape factory, who is left to take care of the “innocent uninvolved children”. Other “innocent uninvolved children”?
The state can’t leave children in the care of other children. They need to have a legal guardian or they go to social services until a legal guardian can be determined.
Foucalt, Actually, you can arrest them as soon as you have probable cause to believe they committed a crime. Charging usually happens post-arrest, except for the very wealthy. But you can only hold them for something like 72 hours without charge. And yeah, in the scheme of things, placing the children in protective custody is a lot less intrusive (and more legal) than arresting the parents and releasing them as they are cleared.
Doesn’t excuse the child abuse, but may mean proper medical/psychiatric care instead of jail time and definitely before deciding whether or not parental rights should be terminated.
Exactly. Again, I am not advocating that these women be prosecuted, but I recoil at the thought these women may regain custody of their children absent accountability for the future of their children.
I also don’t think it is true that you have to wait for a crime to be committed to take children from parents. In my state, the state stands in special protective role vis a vis children that allows them to act upon proof of a threat of harm even if injury has not occurred. I think that’s pretty standard.
Foucault:
And you are not. And that is my problem with the turn this thread has taken. Since when is the progressive community not concerned with human rights?
The same effect, protecting the children, could have been achieved while following the letter of the law. Long ago.
Caren, Creator of Animorphic Pancakes:
Do you not believe that there were mothers who were married at a legal age who had infant children that were swept up in this police action? The justification for this is what? They have committed no crime. Their children are in no immediate danger. Have you heard from reliable witnesses that children under six were being raped?
There is a reason the ACLU got involved. They know the law better than you. Rights are being violated.
“The same effect, protecting the children, could have been achieved while following the letter of the law. Long ago.”
I think you might be confusing our concern for the rights of young women and children with a lack of concern. Unfortunately, most of us seem to feel (justifiably, I think) that the rights of minors are more important or as important than the rights of their adult and/or teenaged mothers and fathers who may be sexually abusing them.
To my best knowledge, it is not against the law to set up a religious community in the United States. There are Mormon communes all over Utah and the Southwest that are allowed to practice their polygamy so long as they are not suspected of raping minors.
It would be wrong, from my perspective, to interfere with a bunch of peoples’ rights to practice their religion PREMATURELY– if all they were doing was practicing religion.
And until that alleged phone call from that alleged 16-year old girl, there was no “solid” basis on which to suspect this community of raping and breeding their children.They were just a bunch of people who don’t watch TV and have multiple spouses.
However, since the phone call was made (and who knows yet if it was legitimate), the law has the right and the obligation to act. I don’t know why you fail to understand that the authorities have acted entirely appropriately in this case.
“Have you heard from reliable witnesses that children under six were being raped?”
Have you heard that they weren’t? And the fact that they weren’t raped today does not mean they won’t be raped when they are ten or twelve or fifteen. Get a grip! Use your common sense here.
Also, the ACLU gets involved in everything. That’s just the nature of that beast.
sophie brown:
Of course you are right. But I think it highly unlikely that there weren’t infant children, in no risk of being snatched by some patriarch as a sex slave, who were taken from mothers who weren’t personally involved in crimes. And the excuse for rounding them up? They are in the same religion.
Supporting these storm-trooper tactics is not striking a blow against the patriarchy. Indeed I would guess that much of Texas is only a tad less patriarchal than the FLDS. Indeed the patriarchy needs to come down on groups like this to legitimize its own sex discrimination, as if to say “See, we don’t go for that sort of stuff.”
When was it that Texas raised the age of consent for women in Texas to its current age?
And I ask again (these are not rhetorical questions, I don’t know and think the hivemind must), was Bush governor of Texas when these people moved in.
Stop supporting local despots, and hold Bush and the politicians responsible for letting this go on so long.
The arguments against ho