First They Came for the Toddlers...
Jesse Walker | April 24, 2008, 11:25am
The
FLDS raid in Texas looks more ludicrous every day. Writing in the
Dallas Morning News, Scott Henson
takes aim at Judge Barbara Walther:
Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle. You accepted the testimony of an expert on "cults" who only learned about FLDS from media accounts, rather than an academic who'd studied them professionally for 18 years.
You've ruled the existence of five girls between 16 and 19 who were pregnant or had children was evidence of systematic abuse, even though in Texas 16-year-olds can marry with parental consent. You've ruled young toddlers are in "immediate" danger because of their parents' beliefs or what might happen 15 years from now, not because anyone abuses them.
From the evidence presented publicly, I do not believe that the children have been sexually abused or physically harmed. Allegations of forcible rape turned out to be bogus, and only five girls 16 to 19 years old were found pregnant or with children -- probably about the same ratio you'd find if you rounded up all the kids in my neighborhood....
In Eldorado, no one alleges YFZ parents are themselves abusing children. Instead the allegation (in court, at least) is that they're teaching their kids that a woman's highest calling is giving birth and raising children and that it's acceptable to get married at an early age. Even if it were true, and the allegation was disputed, can this really be enough to seize children from their homes?
Hanson has been
covering the case heavily on his excellent
blog. Also invaluable:
The Polygamy Files, a blog by Brooke Adams of
The Salt Lake Tribune, who has been on the fundamentalist Mormon beat for years. One piece of good news: Judge Walther has
reversed her decision to separate FLDS mothers from children less than 12 months old.
And yes, it may turn out that there was some genuine sexual abuse in that community. If so, it should be punished. But even then, the approach the government has taken would be deeply harmful overkill, for reasons expressed pithily by
Les Jones:
Imagine that some parents in a school district were accused of child abuse. Now imagine that the authorities took every child from the elementary, junior high, and high school away from their parents and put them in foster care. That's a rough analogy of what's happening in Texas.
The difference, I guess, is that the FLDS parents belong to a "cult." And once you've applied that label, it's just a quick step to assuming they do everything en masse.
Nick | April 24, 2008, 8:50pm | #
Age of consent in Texas is 17, not 16. However , "...It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the actor...was not more than three years older than the victim and of the opposite sex...(and) did not use duress, force, or a threat against the victim at the time of the offence."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America
"16-yr with parental consent" marriage laws don't matter in this case, because such marriages under 18 require a court order, which I'm sure few if any have, in addition to parental consent. There is zero legal defense for an 80 year old sleeping with a 16 year old. Some women in these cases are even younger.
There is little to no consent involved in these relationships anyway. I have no problem with polygamy between consentual adults, but I also have no problem with the government cracking down on what are essentially children being forced into arranged marriages and raped. If you don't agree to the marriage, young women are beaten and threatened with your life. Some have even been killed. Also, the whole cult, as mentioned above, is basically a scheme funded by government welfare anyway.
I don't understand how any libertarian could tolerate this. My big fallout with libertarianism has been over the misguided belief that the government is the primary evil in society, ignoring that individuals, societies, religions, groups and corporarions could be as, if not more, violating of individual liberties than the government. You can't say most things the government does are wrong, and then turn a blind eye to other violators of the rights of others. Look at anarchist Somalia. This is why libertarianism can actually be inconsistent with maximizing liberty.
Back to this case, the problem is that the cult is so secretive and closed that it is difficult to prove wrongdoing. I think the government also took it too far in removing children from their mothers (or even their fathers) until due process takes place. I don't believe that a phone call about one incident gives the government the license to raid the whole compound, divide up families, etc.
So I guess my opinion tows the line between recognizing the rights of families to teach their kids any crazy religion they want to and receive a fair process before having their kids torn away just because they live there, and recognizing that these societies ARE indeed rife with abuse, sexual slavery and forced marriages and should be opened up more for investigation. The government should have gotten legal warrants and investigated each case on a one-by-one scenario instead of doing a massive raid and destroying families who may not have done anything wrong because of one phone call.
Freedom of religion is not a defense here. Forcing children to marry and, in many cases, be raped has little to do with religious freedom. It's like NAMBLA - they have the right to believe whatever they want about sex with children, but actually molesting children is not a right protected by the freedom of thought or belief.
Jo Boost | April 25, 2008, 8:20am | #
Polygamy and hoaxes
Polygamy is nothing new – quite the opposite. Moses prescribed it as duty: Under the hard conditions of the desert life, men’s lives didn’t count for much (so, what’s changed?) and a widow’s wouldn’t last long without support – so, the brother had to take on his dead brother’s wife – and if several brothers died, …
It served as life insurance. Mohammed also came from that desert region, and he took over the Pentateuch in full, as faithful Son of Abraham.
As for more recent times: the Christian churches grown in the States are mostly more Old-Testamentarian than Christian (maybe, some more “lost tribes” of Erez El? – I understand that some of them believe that.)
Thus, for Josef Smith et alios, who also had the experience of expulsion and a hard life, it was, at first, quite natural to follow the Judaic forebears.
In these days, when people can rely on social services, such a support seems not needed any more (although in the US – one doesn’t really know). Mind you: if people wanted to… We have protection for all sorts of “gender orientations” – “consensual between adults” etc …? This liberalism seems, however, a bit selective in some places – especially the other orthodox Bible-Belt.
We have seen Waco. And now…? The tanks were there again – but why? It turns out: the “HELP!” cry by an under-age forced “wife” was a hoax – actually, there was a whole plethora of hoax calls. But the Forces of the Law were there as if they had waited for it. – Tat looks a bit like: They were waiting for it?!
Who else would have fabricated that sting operation (evidence acquired in such illegal ways is not admissible in any decent Court of Justice (but: we’re only about the US Judiciary – so what?).
There is one other possibility: the NOW or some other ‘Women’s Rights” organisation. That would not be new: Think of Roe vs. Wade, the perjury before the US Supreme Court which has legalized 30 million feticides by now: Norma McGovern, alias Jane Roe, was put forward as stooge with a false claim of rape and wish of abortion. Only: she was never raped and never aborted her child – and she has thrice asked the Supreme Court to annul that decision, which she is deeply ashamed of.
And it’s not only US – here in Hong Kong we had the “Evidence is a Luxury Bill” passed under a definitely false claim of similar proportions. All that is sad because our moral sense should have developed far enough to tell us that the dictum “the aim justifies the means” is, maybe, enough for a scoundrel, but should be far from us. So: Whodunnit?
Dr. J. Boost
