Reason Magazine - Topics > Religion

Live from the YFZ Ranch: Fashion Week

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:45:00 EDT

The moms of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints started an online clothing store to provide their confiscated children with acceptable clothes. Now that they have been reunited with their kids, they're considering turning the website into a money-making venture:

"We don't know what to expect on demand but we have had a flood of interest," said Maggie Jessop, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. "Our motive is not to flaunt ourselves or our religion before the world. We have to make a living the same as everyone does."
The sect is offering dresses, overalls, shirts, pants, nightgowns, sleepers, onesies for babies and, yes, ankle-to-wrist underwear. There are denim jeans for boys and "teen princess" dresses in plain, jacket and vest styles in pastel shades of pink, peach, yellow, green, aqua, blue, lavender and lilac.

The FLDS has gotten a rough rap during the last few months, and I'm on the fence about how much of it was deserved, but the group's openness to economic adaptation is refreshing:

"They accuse us of [relying] on welfare, but that's untrue," [Jessop] said. "We like to be busy and learn to meet our needs—out of ashes growing lilies."

Editor Jacob Sullum wrote here about Texas' abuse of children in pursuit of protecting them from the very same.

"We Are All Hussein."

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:49:00 EDT

Barack Obama supporters looking for ways to neuter the negative impact of his middle name, Hussein, have taken to using it themselves:

The movement is hardly a mass one, and it has taken place mostly online, the digital equivalent of wearing a button with a clever, attention-getting message....Legally changing names is too much hassle, participants say, so they use “Hussein” on Facebook and in blog posts and comments on sites like nytimes.com, dailykos.com and mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s networking site.

The idea of assuming another person's identity as a sign of support is as old as Kirk Douglas in a loincloth:

Some said they were inspired by movies, including “Spartacus,” the 1960 epic about a Roman slave whose peers protect him by calling out “I am Spartacus!” to Roman soldiers, and “In and Out,” a 1997 comedy about a gay high school teacher whose students protest his firing by proclaiming that they are all gay as well.

Supporters are trying to reclaim the name and drown out subversive accusations that Obama is a practicing Muslim, but one Obama supporter's anecdote reveals that the exercise is better at shocking mommy and daddy than catalyzing a widespread change in social perception:

Ms. Nordling changed her name after volunteering for Mr. Obama before the Kentucky primary. “People would not listen to what you were saying on the phone or on their doorstep because they thought he was Muslim,” she said....But when her father saw her new online moniker, he was incredulous.
“He actually thought I was going to convert to Islam,” Ms. Nordling said.

Wait—so Hussein does have Islamic significance?

Afghanistan: 'An Inspiration to the Cause of Freedom'

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:25:00 EDT

Here is our government's official take on Afghanistan, circa March 2006:

The democratic process taking hold in Afghanistan is an inspiration to the cause of freedom, President Bush said in the country's capital, Kabul, today.
"I hope the people of Afghanistan understand that as democracy takes hold, you're inspiring others," Bush said while visiting Afghanistan for the first time. "And that inspiration will cause others to demand their freedom."
Bush said he was "enthralled" to see the progress being made in Afghanistan. As evidence of this progress, he pointed to the growth of an entrepreneurial spirit enabling Afghans to realize their dreams, to young girls going to school for the first time, to the country's free press, and to the standing-up of a well-trained military dedicated to the sovereignty of the nation...
Bush emphasized that the U.S. is committed to the "universal" value that all humans desire to be free. "And we know that history has taught us that free societies yield the peace," he said. "We want peace for our children, and we want peace for the Afghan children, as well."

Here is a recent news item of a sort that has become familiar in the last few years:

An Afghan journalist accused of distributing an unacceptable translation of the Koran should be put to death, says former Prime Minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai.

Former journalist Ghows Zalmay, who was also the spokesman for Afghanistan's Attorney-General, was arrested in November last year for distributing a translation of the Koran into Dari, one of Afghanistan's two official languages.

Ahmadzai, who ran in the 2004 presidential election against current President Hamid Karzai, told Adnkronos International (AKI) he supported the death penalty for Zalmay.

"Today Afghanistan is full of vices. Several Afghan restaurants serve liquor, despite it being illegal and on top of it, such material is distributed," Ahmadzai told AKI.

"I am in favour of his death."

The point is not to take a cheap shot at the Bush administration with a facile juxtaposition. (Well, that's not the only point.) Clearly, Bush oversold the "freedom" angle, perhaps because he mistakenly assumed that democracy inevitably leads to liberty. If most Afghans agree with Ahmadzai that death is an appropriate penalty for an unauthorized translation of the Koran, executing Zalmay would be democratic, but it would not exactly be "an inspiration to the cause of freedom."

Bush's second mistake, we have to hope, is that American security depends on the freedom of people in other countries. This, I gather, was the main rationale for the invasion of Iraq, which the Bush administration advertised as a pre-emptive strike against an aggressive dictator armed with weapons of mass destruction. Although I never supported that war, I did think that military action against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan was justified. I did not realize it meant that the U.S. would be committed to transforming Afghanistan into not just a democracy but a liberal democracy, on the theory that "free societies yield the peace." Can't we settle for a regime that is less inclined to welcome anti-American terrorists, even if it continues to ban liquor and arrest heretics? And if that is in fact what our government is aiming for, how is this approach different from old-style realism?

Ride 'Em, Jesus!

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:46:00 EDT

For those of you who can't get by without your daily dose of H&R irreverence, here are some fascinating cultural artifacts:

"A Supreme Court in Georgia ruled that high school biology teachers were permitted to continue using the term 'evolution' when teaching their classes. However as a compromise, they must now refer to dinosaurs as 'jesus horses'." -Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update

What better way to turn a concept with frightening intellectual implications into a testament to the beauty of free markets than selling tee-shirts?

Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey on the Young Earth Creationist's love affair with the dinosaur. Managing Editor Jesse Walker on the secret lives of Creationist dinosaur parks.

Shout out to Chevans for the Digg link.

Messiah Watch

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:37:00 EDT

I hope for the sake of both campaigns that Mark Morford is a McCain operative. Here's his argument for Obama in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle:

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Bonus link: Time to roll this tape again.

Chemical Warfare of the Sexes

mriggs@reason.com (Mike Riggs) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:43:00 EDT

Turkey is frequently cited as the most (sometimes only) secular Muslim country, and therefore, the most Western. But then there's Turkey's Department of Women's Oppression:

"Women have to be more careful, since they possess stimulants," and they "have to be covered properly so as not to show their ornaments and figures to strangers."
Those are two of the controversial "dos" and "don’ts" given to Turkish women in the "Sexual Life" article that appeared last week on the website of Turkey’s Directorate on Religious Affairs, the Diyanet.
It added that if women have to communicate to the opposite sex they "should speak in a manner that will not arouse suspicion in one’s heart and in such seriousness and dignity that they will not let the opposite party misunderstand them."

Check out Contributing Editor Michael Young on Turkish secularism.

What's the Matter With France?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:44:00 EDT

A.P. reports that French politicians across the political spectrum are outraged by a judge's decision (noted this morning by Katherine Mangu-Ward) to grant a recently married Muslim couple an annulment because the bride misrepresented herself as a virgin. "The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union," A.P. says, "has stunned France and raised concerns that the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to cultural traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities." I don't get it, just as I did not understand why so many Frenchmen thought it was imperative to ban headscarves from schools. This case seems like a straightforward application of a contract, albeit one constrained by laws regulating marriage:

In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.
But in treating the case as a breach of contract, the ruling was decried by critics who said it undermined decades of progress in women's rights. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa.

Notably, the wife, presumably suffering from false consciousness, joined the husband in seeking the annulment and has no desire to challenge the outcome or to publicize the case:

The hitch is that both the young woman and the man at the center of the drama are opposed to an appeal, according to their lawyers. The names of the woman, a student in her 20s, and the man, an engineer in his 30s, have not been disclosed.

The young woman's lawyer, Charles-Edouard Mauger, said she was distraught by the dragging out of the humiliating case. In an interview on Europe 1 radio, he quoted her as saying: "I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything....I wasn't the one who asked for the media attention, for people to talk about it, and for this to last so long."

Yet critics of the ruling, including the justice minister and the prime minister, insist it must be challenged because it represents a defeat for feminism and secularism. Evidently women's freedom must be restricted to protect their freedom: They cannot be allowed to enter into whatever contracts they choose or make their own legal decisions because they might misuse those rights. Just to be clear, that is the feminist position. As for the secularist imperative, which in France is strong enough to override the free exercise of religion, I do not understand how it can co-exist with legal principles that empower aggrieved religious groups to punish people for speech that offends them. How can the same country that fears Muslims are taking over when they insist on wearing headscarves or marrying virgins prosecute a novelist for contempt of Islam?

[Thanks to Mark Tarnowski for the tip.]

Broken Contracts, Broken Hearts

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:06:00 EDT

A student in her 20s and an engineer in his 30s marry in France. They are Muslim. It turns out that she is not a virgin and, since the marriage agreement was based on "an error in the essential qualities of the bride,"--forbidden under the language of Article 180 of the Civil Code--the court agrees to annul the marriage.

Is this ruling:

1) "a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women," as Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara says.

or is it

2) a reasonable outcome in a contract dispute?

I'm inclined to favor the latter, especially since the possibility of doing a decent, peaceable, Western thing, like getting a marriage annulled for misrepresentation if the bride fails to deliver a bloodstained sheet, might forestall more grisly extra-judicial solutions, like honor killing.

The woman does not want an appeal:

"I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything. ... I wasn't the one who asked for the media attention, for people to talk about it, and for this to last so long."

For his part, the husband says it wasn't the sex, it was the lying.

Discuss.

Via alert reader Mark

Thursday Morning Links

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:15:00 EDT

* Cato embraces micro radio.

* The Nation discovers the Ron Paul Republicans.

* A socialist reads Hayek.

* Debbie Nathan reads Comstock.

* A child of a commune peers at the children of the FLDS.

Soundbite: Pop Christianity

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:05:00 EDT

In 2005 Daniel Radosh visited his wife’s family in Wichita, Kansas, and tagged along to a Christian rock festival. It was a bizarre experience for a journalist who thought he knew every cranny of pop culture: He was surrounded by fans screaming for bands he’d never heard of. “The key moment for me,” Radosh remembers, “was when one of my sister-in-law’s friends ran back after a set and said ‘That was awesome! They prayed like three times in a 20-minute set!’ I had to know what it meant to judge a band by how hard it prayed rather than how hard it rocked.”

Three years later Radosh has produced Rapture Ready! (Scribner), a humorous travelogue-cum-study of this “alternate universe.” He doesn’t attend a single church service. He goes instead to the Christian professional wrestling rings, stadium-sized passion plays, and rollicking rock festivals that make up the $7 billion Christian pop culture industry.

Q: Since the 2004 election we’ve seen umpteen books about evangelical Christians and their political influence, most of them written to spook secular Americans. What do you learn from exploring this culture that you don’t learn from exploring religious politics?

A: If somebody memorized the Constitution and watched C-SPAN every night and knew all the voting records of every senator but had never heard of Elvis Presley or Oprah Winfrey or Jerry Seinfeld, I think you could make a case that that person didn’t know much about America. We hear about evangelicalism as a religious movement, as a political movement; if you don’t know who [evangelical superhero] Bibleman is, or who [thriller writer] Frank Peretti is, or if you’ve never heard Christian comedy, you really don’t understand what’s going on in these peoples’ lives.

Q: You visited the oldest remnants of Christian pop culture, like the Great Passion Play in Arkansas, and it seems like the newer culture is leaving behind a much more conservative, much less tolerant way of life. What parts of that are being ditched in the new Christian pop culture?

A: It’s not a function of new and old as much as corporate vs. non-corporate. Companies like Thomas Nelson or Zonderman are wary about treading on many political or theological toes. The more independent voices within Christian culture, whether it’s something that existed before mass-market entertainment like the Great Passion Play, or whether it’s the Christian indie rock scene which does not get played on radio—they tend to be much more a reflection of people’s honest personal beliefs and honest spiritual beliefs. You’ll hear Christian rock bands that are militantly anti-abortion or militantly pacifist.

Click above to watch Daniel Radosh discuss his new book on Christian pop culture, Rapture Ready. Go to reason.tv for more information and to include this video on your website.

Q: What is more racially segregated, mainstream culture or Christian culture?

A: Definitely Christian pop culture. There’s no question about it. Mainstream pop culture isn’t any glorious field of interracial harmony, but the industry is dominated by hip hop and R&B and has been for 15 years now. The Christian music scene, which in almost every way is reflective of the mainstream music scene, has almost no hip hop acts to actually chart.

Q: Is the debate over whether or not you can commercialize Christianity pretty much settled?

A: It’s settled, but that was to be expected if you look at the history of American evangelicalism. When radio was invented there was a segment of the Christian population that said because the Bible says Satan is the prince of the air, and because radio uses airwaves, it must be a tool of Satan. But evangelicalism is by definition engaging in culture. Radio became American culture. There was just no way that Christians were going to turn their backs on that.

The broader debate is settled, but there’s a new debate bubbling up from younger Christians, saying, you know, we need to be more thoughtful about culture. We can’t just adapt every cultural form, take a rock song and change “my baby” to “my Savior.” The way that one honors God is by being authentically creative.

Church Chat

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:43:00 EDT

John Lofton, the hardest of the hard-core hard-right Christians, hectors -- sorry, interviews -- Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr. Barr displays remarkable patience, though it's clearly fraying by the end.

If you'd like a quick summary of the candidate's answers, here you go: Barr admires Ayn Rand because of her support for individual liberty, not because she's an atheist; Barr is a Methodist; Barr thinks the role of government is defined by the Constitution, not God; Barr supports laws against molesting children; Barr does not think homosexuality is "lewd and depraved"; Barr does not think the government should punish Sabbath-breaking; Barr is pro-life; Barr thinks the individual states should determine the penalties for abortion; Barr does not care to discuss what he believes the penalty for abortion should be in Georgia; Barr supports the death penalty; Barr does not think the federal government should have been involved in the Terri Shiavo case; Barr does not believe Shiavo's death was a murder. And Barr would really, really prefer to be talking about taxes, education, free speech, and government surveillance.

Bonus link: From 20 years ago, Lofton's interview with Allen Ginsburg, which is -- I think I can say this without hyperbole -- the greatest interview in the history of human conversation.

FLDS Parents Get Their Kids Back; Church 'Clarifies' Its Marriage Policy

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:34:00 EDT

Yesterday the state of Texas began to allow members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) to recover the children who were illegally seized from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado on April 3. CNN reports that all 468 of the children will be returned except for a 16-year-old girl who, according to her attorney, was an "identified victim of sexual abuse." Speaking of which, yesterday the FLDS Church issued a statement in which it promised to abide by state laws that set a minimum age for marriage:

    * The church's policies regarding marriage have been widely misrepresented and misunderstood. Indeed, much of the misinformation circulating on this subject seems designed intentionally to fuel the flames of prejudice against the church.
    * The church's practices in this regard continue a long tradition of marriage in this country that would have been found to have been unremarkable in 19th century America. In the FLDS church all marriages are consensual. The church insists on appropriate consent, including that of the woman and the man in all circumstances.
    * Nevertheless the church is clarifying its policy toward marriage. Therefore, in the future, the church commits that it will not preside over the marriage of any woman under the age of legal consent in the jurisdiction in which the marriage takes place. The church will counsel families that they neither request nor consent to underage marriages. This policy will apply church-wide.
    * The church believes in purity, cleanliness, and innocence. Our children and families are the cornerstones of our lives and our religion. We hope that this modest clarification in policy will alleviate recent concerns and allow the church and its families to reside in peace among our neighbors.

That sounds like an implicit acknowledgement that FLDS members have not always obeyed state law in this area. When the church says "all marriages are consensual," it does not necessarily mean that the state, which has decreed that girls below a certain age are incapable of giving proper consent, would recognize them as such. At the same time, the church is probably right that its early marriage practices "would have been found to have been unremarkable in 19th century America." In fact, until just a few years ago the minimum age for marriage with parental consent in Texas was 14; the state legislature raised it to 16 in response to concerns about the FLDS presence in Texas.

I don't mean to imply that there should be no minimum or that the state should not enforce it. But it's important to recognize there is a degree of arbitrariness in drawing these lines, especially when animus against a particular religious group seems to be part of the motivation. Lord knows I don't want my 15-year-old daughter to get married, and it's hard for me to sympathize with a father who does. But arranging a match between a girl of that age and a guy in his late teens or early 20s is different from marrying a 13-year-old to a middle-aged man, and both of those are different from "pedophilia," which is how some of the church's harsher critics have described its customs.

The order returning the FLDS children, issued by the same judge who (according to the Texas Supreme Court) erroneously approved their removal, requires their parents to permit unannounced visits by state caseworkers, which "could entail medical, psychological and psychiatric examinations"; to remain in Texas and notify the states of any trips more than 100 miles from home at least 48 hours ahead of time; and to complete "parenting classes." Since the state still has not presented any specific evidence of abuse in the vast majority of these cases, these conditions seem unjustified to me, and the last one is especially insulting. Is there any reason to believe FLDS members lack basic parenting skills, or is it just that state officials don't approve of their religious beliefs?

Previous reason coverage of this story (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Clarification: As a couple of commenters have noted, the real issue here is (or ought to be) the age of consent for sex. That gets conflated with the minimum age for marriage because having sex with your wife does not constitute statutory rape, no matter how much younger she is, as long as she was old enough to marry with parental consent (and in fact had that consent).

[Thanks to Tracy Cooper for the tip.]

Texas Supreme Court Rejects Seizure of FLDS Children

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:17:00 EDT

The Texas Supreme Court has unanimously upheld last week's appeals court ruling rejecting the state's wholesale removal of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. "On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted," the justices said, agreeing with the lower court that Child Protective Services could not justify taking custody of more than 450 children by citing their parents' religious beliefs, which the state claimed encouraged underage marriage.

The text of the Texas Supreme Court decision is available here. Here is my first column on the case. Here is this week's follow-up column about the appeals court ruling.

Addendum: Although the justices agreed that taking all the children was not justified, three said the state would have been justified in removing just the girls who had reached puberty and who might therefore be in danger of sexual abuse. These girls were a small minority of the 468 children seized by the state, many of whom were boys and half of whom were 5 or younger.

[Thanks to Derek Levisay for the tip.]

You Could Look It Up, But I'd Rather You Didn't

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:54:00 EDT

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that criticizes "compassionate conservatism," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) says:

Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor's possessions. Spending other people's money is not compassionate.

Defending compassionate conservatism against Coburn's attack, Washington Post columnist (and former George W. Bush speechwriter) Michael Gerson says Jesus was no libertarian. He may be right about that, but he blatantly misrepresents two biblical passages in an attempt to demonstrate that God is on his side:

The Jewish tradition in which Jesus lived and taught demanded that just rulers make a minimal provision for the poor, including no-interest loans and the distribution of agricultural commodities. (Look it up: Exodus 22:25-27 and Deuteronomy 24:19-21.)

Here is the first passage to which Gerson refers:

If you lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with you, you shall not be to him as a creditor; neither shall you lay upon him interest.

Here is the second:

When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to fetch it; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in the work of your hands. When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it after you; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.

These passages support Coburn's argument, not Gerson's. They are divine commands incumbent upon individual lenders and farmers. They are not, pace Gerson, instructions for "just rulers" to create government-run welfare programs.

[Thanks to Adamness for the tip.]

No Child Left Behind

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

The week before a state appeals court condemned the wholesale removal of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, a spokesman for Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) insisted the case "is not about religion." If you believe that, you may also believe that a community of hundreds is a single household, or that a 27-year-old is younger than 18, to cite just a couple of the whoppers CPS has told in the last two months.

To justify seizing more than 450 children from the ranch, which is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), CPS argued that the church's teachings are inherently abusive. CPS did not bother to present evidence that particular children were in immediate physical danger, as required by state law, because it thought membership in the polygamous sect was enough to make parents unfit.

CPS asserted that a "pervasive belief system" at the ranch, which it raided on April 3 in response to what seems to have been a fictitious abuse report, encouraged underage marriage. "They're living under an umbrella of belief that having children at a young age is a blessing," the lead investigator testified. "Therefore any child in that environment would not be safe."

But as the appeals court noted, "The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the [state's] witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger. It is the imposition of certain alleged tenets of that system on specific individuals that may put them in physical danger."

CPS claimed 31 underage girls at the ranch were pregnant or mothers. It recently conceded that at least 15 of them are in fact adults, ranging in age from 18 to 27, while a 14-year-old on the list is not pregnant and has no children. A.P. reports "more mothers listed as underage are likely to be reclassified as adults."

In any case, as the appeals court noted, "teenage pregnancy, by itself, is not a reason to remove children from their home and parents." In Texas the minimum age for marriage with parental consent is 16 (raised from 14 in 2005 with the FLDS in mind), and "there was no evidence regarding the marital status of these girls when they became pregnant or the circumstances under which they became pregnant."

By the state's current count, underage mothers represent no more than 3 percent of the children it seized. Even if the other girls who had reached puberty were likely to be married off soon (a matter of dispute), there was no evidence that the boys or the prepubescent girls were in danger of abuse.

CPS glossed over the lack of evidence by treating the entire 1,700-acre ranch as a single household. If there had been even one instance of abuse in the community, it argued, no child should be left there. This assumption of collective guilt was not only contrary to law; it was contradicted by the state's own witnesses, who conceded that FLDS members, only some of whom practice polygamy, disagree about the appropriate age for marriage.

The first parents to be reunited with their children after the appeals court's ruling, which CPS has asked the Texas Supreme Court to reverse, were Joseph and Lori Jessop, both EMTs in their 20s. The monogamous couple's children—two boys and a girl, ages 1, 2, and 4—became ill during their state-imposed separation and had to be hospitalized.

When they were released, CPS caseworkers forcibly pulled the two older children from their mother. Until a judge intervened, CPS threatened to take the youngest child as well, saying nursing babies older than 12 months were not allowed to remain with their mothers.

Not surprisingly, the Jessops' older children are anxious these days, waking up repeatedly during the night and displaying regressive behavior. There was never any evidence that their parents abused them, but there's plenty that the state did.

But Your Honor, I Swear I Thought She Was 15!

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:36:00 EDT

I came across this tidbit while reading about today's appeals court ruling condemning the wholesale seizure of children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch. Or perhaps I should say "children" (emphasis added):

At least half the mothers taken from a polygamist sect's ranch and put in child foster care have now been declared adults, significantly chipping at agency statistics that seemed to demonstrate the widespread sexual abuse of underage girls.
Attorneys for the state's Child Protective Services agency have been conceding, one by one, that many of the mothers authorities cited as evidence that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints committed widespread sexual abuse of girls are actually adults.
They had admitted by midday Thursday that 15 of the 31 mothers listed as underage are adults; one is actually 27. A few are as young as 18, but many are at least 20.
Another girl listed as an underage mother is 14, but her attorney said in court she is not pregnant and does not have a child.

Then, too, as the appeals court noted, "teenage pregnancy, by itself, is not a reason to remove children from their home and parents." Teenagers in Texas can marry at 16 with parental consent, and "there was no evidence regarding the marital status of these girls when they became pregnant or the circumstances under which they became pregnant."

It's also important to keep in mind that the 16 (or fewer) underage mothers represent a small percentage of the children seized by the state, who included infants and toddlers as well as boys of various ages. As the court found, there was no evidence whatsoever to indicate these kids—at least 97 percent of those seized—were being abused or in imminent danger.

Texas Appeals Court Says Removal of FLDS Children Was Unjustified

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:24:00 EDT

A Texas appeals court has ruled that the state acted improperly in removing more than 450 minors from the FLDS Church's Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado and placing them in foster care. An attorney for the children's mothers told the Desert News:

CPS was not justified in removing these children. They did not provide any evidence that the children were in danger, and they acted hastily in removing the children.

The story does not include details of the decision, and the paper says "it is unclear if the children will be returned immediately to the ranch or what impact this will have on ongoing status hearings."

Here is my column arguing that the state overreached and a followup post on its attempts to retroactively justify seizing the children.

Update: CNN has more:

"The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger," the three-judge panel said.
The state's Department of Family and Protective Services "did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty," the judges ruled.
According to the ruling, the mothers said the state should have proved that the children's health or safety was in danger; that there was "an urgent need for protection" that required immediately separating the children from their parents; and that the state made "reasonable efforts" to avoid removing the children.
Because no such proof was presented, the mothers argued, the District Court -- which backed the department's seizure of the children -- "was required to return the children to their parents and abused its discretion by failing to do so."
"The legislature has required that there be evidence to support a finding that there is a danger to the physical health or safety of the children in question and that the need for protection is urgent and warrants immediate removal," the ruling said.
It concluded, "Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may some day have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal prior to full litigation of the issue."

The full opinion is here.

Ix-Nay on the Ult-Cay

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:38:00 EDT

Is Scientology a cult or a religion? I've long been suspicious of the distinction, which seems to be more a matter of time than anything else. But at least one British teenager thinks the answer is "cult," which is too bad for him, because that's the answer that gets you a summons from City of London police for violating the Public Order Act. Section 5 of the act prohibits the use of "threatening, abusive or insulting words...within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby." The punishment for violators is "a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale." Prior to a May 10 protest at the Church of Scientology's London headquarters, police warned that use of the c-word would not be tolerated. But there it was on the kid's sign, which he refused to remove upon being "strongly advised" to do so. A leading civil libertarian told the Guardian "this barmy prosecution makes a mockery of Britain's free speech traditions."

[Thanks to Lee Gibson for the tip.]

The Cost of Yearning for Zion

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:18:00 EDT

Michelle Shinghal blogs, re: what happened to the kids who were in the Yearning for Zion Ranch, the polygamist compound recently raided in Texas:

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the cost of foster care for the kidnapped FLDS children will be nearly $1 million a month. The total cost to taxpayers for this fiasco could top $21 million.

More here.

reason's Jacob Sullum looked at "Latter-Day Taint" here.

Look Back in Pasta

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:05:00 EDT

A quick footnote to my short piece on the Flying Spaghetti Monster: In the time since that article appeared in the print edition of reason, the statue has been removed from the courthouse grounds, along with the other spiritual statuary. Apparently, faced with a choice of allowing every religion or no religion to have a place on public property, the local authorities have opted for a clean lawn.

Big Wheels Keep On Turning

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:43:00 EDT

The Alabama State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently held a public forum on eminent domain abuse. Here are Rev. John E. Smith and his wife Gail explaining what the authorities did to their Birmingham church:

You Don't Have to Watch Dynasty to Cop an Attitude

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:02:00 EDT

Last month I mentioned that the conspiracy theorist Carrington Steele, author of Don't Drink the Kool-Aid: Oprah, Obama, and the Occult, wasn't the first person to worry that a Church of Oprah was rising. But I didn't realize just how unoriginal Steele was. The Christian outfit Lighthouse Trails Research reports:

Upon reading Steele's work ourselves, our editors discovered that the 80-page book was filled with verbatim passages copied from other writers material, which was presented as Steele's own authorship....

While we regret to issue this finding because we do believe that Oprah Winfrey's efforts to convert the public to her New Age beliefs must be exposed, we fear that Steele's book could negatively reflect upon and misrepresent long-standing and reputable ministries. In addition, because the author also plagiarized some secular sources (such as CNN, Fox News, and Rolling Stone magazine), we believe this book may, in addition to being a poor Christian testimony, be legally problematic.

There's a political angle:

Because the chapter on Obama did not contain any documentation that he was involved in the occult or the New Age, Lighthouse Trails asked Steele if there was political motivation involved. What's more, the chapter on Obama did not seem to fit in with the rest of the book. Steele said she was not politically motivated.

Fuel for future conspiracy theories:

When Lighthouse Trails spoke with Carrington Steele, she stated she had done both the writing and the research on the book without help or support from others. However, it was pointed out to her that she often said "we" and "us" in her interviews, and we wondered to whom she was referring. At this point, Steele said she could not answer that question, saying she was not at liberty to say. We found this response to be curious and disturbing.

The Audacity of Agnosticism

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:33:00 EDT

Over at The American Spectator, Sean Higgins argues that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is an agnostic. He notes that in his memoir, Obama pointedly says he did not have a religious epiphany at the moment he became a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's congregation; additionally, Obama was raised to view religion as a cultural thing, rather than a source revealed truth. Higgins closes with this:

His Republican opponent [for a Senate seat in Illinois] was the bombastic, erratic and quite possibly insane black conservative Alan Keyes. Obama crushed him in the general election, but says it was harder than it looked.

"[A]s the campaign progressed, I found him getting under my skin in a way that very few people have. When our paths crossed during the campaign, I often had to suppress the rather uncharitable urge to either taunt him or wring his neck," Obama writes.

How did Keyes do this? By questioning Obama's Christian faith.

"Christ could not vote for Barack Obama," Mr. Keyes once said, "because Barack Obama has voted...in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

It touched a nerve in Obama and he was by his own account tongued-tied, irritable and tense during their debates. Keyes prodded Obama on the question of biblical literalism.

How could Obama believe the Bible's proclamation that life was sacred and yet support abortion rights, Keyes would ask? Obama gave "the usual liberal response" about separation of church and state.

"[Y]et even as I answered, I was mindful of Mr. Keyes's implicit accusation—that I remained steeped in doubt, that my faith was adulterated, that I was not a true Christian," Obama complains.

Well, it wouldn't have annoyed him that much if Keyes wasn't onto something.

Whole thing here.

I'm not convinced the "real" Christians can't be pro-choice, but I do think Obama's candidacy is forcing a discussion of the intersection of religion and politics that is very interesting and relevant to figuring out how pols govern.

Drop Barbies, Not Bombs, on Iran

info@reason.com (Greg Beato) — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Despite Hillary Clinton's penchant for magnificently monochromatic pantsuits that are just a couple epaulets short of colonel status in Michael Jackson's toddler army, the bellicose Democratic senator from New York is apparently incapable of intimidating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a recent appearance on Good Morning America, Clinton told ABC News' Chris Cuomo that she will definitely attack Iran if it launches a nuclear strike against Israel, and even added a dash of swaggering trash-talk to her promise. "Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel," she exclaimed, "we would be able to totally obliterate them."

But while Clinton's saber-rattling may have unnerved lesser Iranian officials such as Amb. Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, who lodged a formal complaint to the United Nations, Ahmadinejad appeared unmoved by Clinton's morning-chat bravado. "Presidency of a woman in a country that boasts its gunmanship is unlikely," he quipped.

Meanwhile, Iran is terrified of Barbie, the tiny polyvinyl sex bomb who loves shopping, pizza, and brushing her hair, but has few satellite-guided missiles at her disposal. According to Iran's Prosecutor General, Ghorban Ali Dori Najfabadi, a loosely organized coalition, led by the world's most impeccably accessorized mercenary but also including additional combatants like Harry Potter and Spider-man, is doing "irreparable damage" to Iranian children. "The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," Najafabadi cautioned (doubtless worried about the effect on sales of Iran's "official doll," Sara).

In the long run, of course, a Barbie revolution would be more devastating—and humiliating—to Iran's theocracy than a nuclear strike. Fundamentalists of all stripes inevitably fear homegrown dissidents more than foreign aggression: The prospect of annihilation is more palatable than the specter of choice. In Iran, the prosecutor general is battling plastic dolls. In the U.S., the American Family Association (AFA), armed to the teeth with adjectives, is decrying the "explicit, open-mouth homosexual kissing" that recently occurred on As the World Turns, the long-running soap opera underwritten by consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble.

In August 2007, As the World Turns made history when it showed a kiss between two gay male characters, Noah and Luke, or as their fans refer to them, "Nuke." In the months that followed, their romance continued, albeit with only one additional instance of same-sex first base action. Suddenly, in fact, even modest, closed-mouth homosexual air-kissing seemed off-limits—whenever the characters seemed on the verge of smooching, the camera panned away. Viewers took note of this uncharacteristic discretion and began campaigning for another kiss; a couple weeks ago, the show delivered. (And now the American Family Association would like you to see it too.)

According to the AFA, Procter & Gamble wants to "desensitize viewers to the homosexual lifestyle and help make the unhealthy and immoral lifestyle more acceptable to society, especially to children and youth." No doubt this is because Procter & Gamble's main business is selling Tide, Crest, and Pampers, and the unhealthy and immoral gay lifestyle inevitably leads to a pathological obsession with clean laundry, cavity prevention, and baby care.

In the case of Barbie, there in no multinational conglomerate driving the agenda. Mattel doesn't officially deploy its unlikely freedom fighter to Iran; the Barbies who show up in Tehran shop windows are smuggled into the country, the victims of international doll trafficking. Once there, however, they make the best of it, embodying the traditional American values of self-determination and haircare—and potentially exposing impressionable Iranian minds to phenomena as diverse as Frank Sinatra, the occult, investment opportunities involving miniature dog poop, and who knows what else.

Contemplating such matters, an obvious question arises: If Barbie's marginal and haphazard presence in Iran is so disruptive, what kind of impact might she have there if a more orchestrated effort to put additional sexy white boots on the ground was implemented? Luckily, the relative economy of a Barbie surge—an army of 200,000 cheerleaders for Western decadence can be mustered for the price of a dozen Tomahawk missiles—means our government isn't likely to get involved any time soon. If anything could dampen Barbie's revolutionary power, official U.S. sanction just might; the people of Iran already have one government too many trying to manage their doll-play.

Best just keep filling up your SUV, gas prices be damned. According to the Associated Press, the increasing presence of smuggled Barbies in Iran is "partly due to a dramatic rise in purchasing power as a result of increased oil revenues." As long as America's expressways remain bumper-to-bumper every weekday afternoon, hope for democracy in Iran exists.

And if we could aim a few gay soap opera Nukes their way, so much the better. After all, hardcore mullahs and old-school feminists aren't the only ones who despise Barbie's vacant but empowering gaze. In 2002, an AFA spokesman decried a pregnant version of Barbie's married sidekick Midge that featured a trap-door stomach with an adorable unborn baby inside it, exclaiming that "Mattel should stay out of the 'birds and bees' business and leave adult themes alone." (Yes, you read that right; the American Family Association is officially against childbirth.)

In 2006, Robert Knight, the confusingly virile president of Concerned Women of America, accused Barbie.com of trying to promote "bisexuality gender confusion" among visitors to its site, based on a poorly worded question in a survey that the site quickly amended. These days, however, such groups apparently don't have the troop strength to maintain a presence in every zone of the Culture Wars—they're too busy waging war on imaginary homosexuals to do battle with Barbie too.

Contributing Editor Greg Beato is a writer living in San Francisco. Read his reason archive here.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: The Age of American Unreason; Q&A with Susan Jacoby

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:35:00 EDT

...