Polygamy, Cults & Kids — Oh My!
(posted by Mona)
By now most have heard about the raid on the The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound — Yearning for Zion — in Edlorado, Texas. Over 400 children were removed, each of whom has been assigned a volunteer attorney (h/t to Margherita by email) to serve as guardian ad litem; all the children face the prospect of ending up in a secular foster system utterly foreign to the sheltered lifestyle from whence they were abruptly yanked. And separated from mothers who are agonized and desperately want their sons and daughters back.
I submit that to properly disentangle the issues involved in this case and come to any POV that might yield justice, it is necessary to accept that the words “cult,” “polygamy” and “child abuse” all taken separately can cause a suspension of rational thought; string them in an indictment of one group and the likelihood for uncritical mob outrage inspiring and backing unwarranted or excessive state action against the group — to the detriment of reason and fairness — increases exponentially.
(A note about the term “cult”: In common parlance, it simply translates into “A new religion I don’t like.” Mormonism proper was regarded as a cult at its inception, and still is by some. Technically, the FDLS, as a breakaway movement from the LDS, is a “sect,” but the public antipathy toward sects is often equivelant to that for cults, and the terms often used interchangeably.)
Now of course, the justification for this mass abduction of FLDS children is the specific charge that girls below the age of consent are being coerced into plural marriages, and thereby raped, along with more vague accusations of generalized child abuse. And indeed, the FLDS “Prophet,” Warren Jeffs, was convicted last year in Utah for being an accomplice in rape by arranging a marriage between a 14-year-old sect member and her first cousin — behavior the young woman, now 21, denies constituted rape, and she is still married to her cousin. But:
…prosecutor Brock Belnap won the day by arguing that what Jeffs did by urging the two to “go forth and multiply” was no different from sacrificing a young virgin for the harvest — a religious belief, but a criminal act. “This trial has not been about religion and a vendetta,” Walls said on the courthouse steps after the verdict. “It is simply about child abuse.”
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Indeed, the legal strategy used so effectively in St. George grew out of a “polygamy summit” held in 2003 by the attorneys general of Utah and Arizona. They had brainstormed and decided to launch an aggressive effort to utilize child abuse, domestic abuse and fraud laws to break the cycle of child marriages.
So, we have multiple state attorneys general meeting to get “aggressive” about the FLDS — an unpopular religion on any front — and yet we are supposed to take it as indictment of the group that, my emphasis “[d]eep in the vast mesquite-covered scrubland of west Texas lies the spiritual center of a secretive polygamous sect.” No group with nothing to hide would be “secretive,” right?
Let us consider some history, as recounted by the LAT in ‘06.
Horrified by stories of rape, incest and men taking young girls as brides, the new governor of Arizona quietly made plans to invade this polygamist settlement in the summer of 1953.
Shortly before dawn on July 26, a raiding party of about 120 law enforcement officers — state Highway Patrol, sheriff’s deputies and liquor control agents — descended on the community, which was then called Short Creek.
Me and my sister went into the garden and hid behind the bushes, and this policeman came looking for us,” recalled Shari Hammon, who was 10 at the time.
“He said, ‘Get out, ma’am,’ to my sister, and my sister said, ‘Get the hell out of here!’ “
The rest of the town, members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gathered in the schoolyard, waving flags and singing “God Bless America.”
By day’s end, families and crying children were separated in a scene that would haunt political leaders for years to come. In all, 36 men were arrested. Authorities loaded 86 women and 263 children aboard buses to Phoenix.
Public opinion turned sharply against the governor, J. Howard Pyle, and he was defeated in the next election. Arizona’s state historian claims: “’We are a different society today than in 1953, and [state authorities] could take action without the political risk,’ he said.”
Yes, and is that a good thing? Is that fact maybe WHY the FLDS “cult” might be secretive and not very happy to see strangers, much less armed state agents at their compound doors?
The reality is, as the execrable Stanley Kurtz writes at NRO, it is polygamy itself — which Kurtz fears will facilitate acceptance of same-sex marriage — that seems evil and threatening to mainstream religions, and to many Americans in general. But why ought it, and especially why ought it be illegal? After all, if a bunch of dirty fucking hippies want to live together at the Make Love Not War Commune, and pretty young adults Flower, Peace, and Star wish to constitute the harem of teh groovy Karmic King, should they and their progeny be left unmolested simply because the parents do not claim to be married? Or what of adults who have multiple sex partners, or those who enjoy a menage a trois?
******
Mainstream Mormons did not give up polygamy voluntarily, they did so because of persecution, some of it lethal, and because of this moralistic, 19th century Supreme Court decision. The fundamentalists who nevertheless continue the practice, continue to be persecuted, which causes them to close off and be wary of outsiders, and no doubt that justified paranoia contributes to problems with inbreeding. (h/t mtraven) (Marriage or sex within too close a degree of consanguinity, unless both parties are sterilized, perhaps should be illegal.)
The Amish live closed off from the dominant culture. Hasidic Jews enter arranged marriages — and arranged does not equal coerced. I would not wish to live in patriarchal communities such as the Amish, Hasidic Jews…or as a member of the FDLS. But until and unless there is evidence that the adults in any of these communities are forcibly prevented from leaving should they so choose, how is it any of the state’s business that segregated religious communities exist? Or that they arrange (as opposed to coercing) marriages? Or that secular society regards women in those communities as sickeningly subservient to the males?
Another point to bear in mind is a phenomenon that is well-established among religious studies scholars, namely, the “atrocity tale” genre that apostates who leave cults often peddle. (One example being former Roman Catholics who went on the stump and/or published absurd tracts and books — virtually always involving titillating allegations of sexual depravity — that fueled the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement in 19th century America.) Some of their claims are true; many often are exaggerated or even false. Thus, while it may be that some behaviors that could reasonably be considered child abuse occur in cults — including FLDS — claims by former members should not be accepted uncritically. (The psychology driving some apostates to exaggerate their experiences in a cult, or even make up tales, is a subject of vast literature, and I’ll update on that point if any wish support for it.)
*******
State and culturally hostility will often drive despised groups to withdrawal and secretiveness. This is wholly understandable. But when this dynamic alone allows hundreds of children to be snatched from their families and left bereft of mothers, something is wrong:
“The state of Texas has confiscated our children on an alleged allegation that has no facts. And now they’re holding our children. And we want the children back,” a woman who identified herself as Kathleen told CNN’s Anderson Cooper….
“They are clean and pure,” one mother said of the children. “This is the worst thing happening to them. They are learning terrible things from the questions being asked, things that they have never been exposed to. They have been so protected here.
Children are not exactly known to fare well in state systems, or once placed in the foster care (tho obviously some foster care parents are outstanding human beings). So before we all just discount the FLDS mothers who worry over their snatched, previously protected children (because said moms are purportedly deluded and blind to the “crimes” in their midst), we had better be damned sure that this raid and abduction of their kids has some basis in actual wrong-doings that should be crimes, and not in anti-cult moral panic.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Pretty underwhelming analysis, Mona.
- you don’t address the question I raised in the earlier thread, to wit, can someone who has been born and raised in an authoritarian cult atmosphere properly be said to be exercising freedom of choice? The fact that you can’t draw a hard line between cults, sects, and religions is not really very relevant. Personally, I think the Catholic Church is just as much of a criminal child abuse ring as the FLDS.
- in (libertarian) theory, polygamy should just be one of many options available to consenting adults. You want to marry 3 women, 4 men, and 1 goat, go right ahead. Polygamy in practice is very different, as Sara Robinson at Orcinus has been pointing out recently. In actual practice, it’s basically a rape farm.
- If you consider the biology realities, widespread polygamy can’t help but be problematic. If a community produces equal numbers of male and female children, and the males end up taking multiple wives, that leaves bunches of males with no mates at all. The result is usually that young males get expelled from the community when they reach adolescence. Perhaps this isn’t a problem for libertarians, since they are free to go wherever they want…but presumably you can see how this can be a social problem? A surplus of unattached males is a dangerous thing — China has this problem (for different reasons, obviously).
When individual “choices” lead to social problems, that becomes a point where social intervention is (sometimes) justified. This makes polygamy an interesting challenge for libertarian theory. I don’t have a fixed view of what the law should be, but it seems like a serious libertarian take on polygamy has to at least address the hard issues.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
you don’t address the question I raised in the earlier thread, to wit, can someone who has been born and raised in an authoritarian cult atmosphere properly be said to be exercising freedom of choice?
I was raised in an authoritarian sect - Traditionalist Catholics, the same insane group Mel Gibson and his viciously anti-Semitic father belong to (we are not talking about the regular Catholic Church here, by a long-shot) — and spent a good deal of time in counseling undoing those effects. But I could and did leave.
Many members of cults/sects leave. It is not only possible, but happens in droves.
As long as that choice is available, there ought be no harassment of the religion; and it should be prosecuted only to the extent it does not permit adults to leave, or actually abuses children. AS well as, if a sect is a “rape farm,” prosecute the actual rapes.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
And by-the-by, though this is really a response to comments on the earlier thread, here is an interesting comment by a former CPS social worker on a pro-LDS, pro-polygamy blog. Although this is just one voice among many on this complicated issue, I thought it seemed relatively balanced and well-informed about what is really going on, avoiding the hysteria that is present on both sides.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
mtraven, about that former CPS worker’s post, this:
is bullshit. Any anonymous person can make a complaint to CPS, and it a common tactic engaged in by estranged lovers, spouses in custody proceedings, or just anyone who hates you for whatever reason. A CPS investigation can scare the shit out of folks, make them hire a lawyer, and cause untold disruption in a family. (And no, I’m not sure what a better alternative system might be.)
And yes, I do wonder why the purported 16-year-old girl who made the call has not been located. (I’m not sure, btw, what the age of consent is in TX, but 16 is it in many states.)
April 20th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Mona, your background is…interesting. Since I was raised by wimpy reform Jews, maybe I’ll have to defer to you on how authoritarian cults work. Glad you broke free, but I can’t imagine it was easy. The ties put on the members of FLDS seem like they are even harder to break . I doubt you lived in a compound completely isolated from the rest of society.
In the case of FLDS, it is clear that abuse was happening. I am not sure how the authorities are supposed to proceed in order to stop the abuse, since they can’t get access to the compound without busting the whole thing. They can’t even tell whose children are whose without DNA testing (which is ongoing).
You said: I’m not sure what a better alternative system might be. and I agree. The CPS system has obvious flaws and abuses, don’t ask me how to fix it. In the FLDS case, from what I have gleaned it is pretty clear that the use of state power is the lesser of two evils. But where do you draw the line, and who draws it?
I am mostly just arguing against the libertarian reflex that presumes that the state is always opposed to individual liberty. In some cases, it is defending it.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I am mostly just arguing against the libertarian reflex that presumes that the state is always opposed to individual liberty. In some cases, it is defending it.
Just FYI, my “reflexes” on issues such as this are at least 50% the result of a BA in religious studies — religion in America emphasis — where one librul prof after another defended the rights of even the most patriarchal and closed communities to be left alone by govt, except to the extent actual crimes that should be crimes are committed. Prior to that education, I drank all the anti-cult Kool-Aid, even as a libertarian.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Prior to that education, I drank all the anti-cult Kool-Aid, even as a libertarian.
What an unfortunate choice of phrasing…you do know where that expression comes from, don’t you?
April 21st, 2008 at 7:19 am
Mona,
I was raised in an authoritarian sect - Traditionalist Catholics, the same insane group Mel Gibson and his viciously anti-Semitic father belong to (we are not talking about the regular Catholic Church here, by a long-shot) — and spent a good deal of time in counseling undoing those effects. But I could and did leave.
Many members of cults/sects leave. It is not only possible, but happens in droves.
I don’t want to downplay your experience, but I don’t think your experiences growing up are completely comparable with the wretches of the YFZ ranch. The physical and emotional isolation they faced is, from what I’ve gathered from the media, absolute or close to it. I have no doubt that if I had been raised under such conditions and indoctrinated with such values and have faced brutal punishment for the smallest transgressions since I was an infant, I would have ended up married at 14 and popping out babies until menopause unaware that there is more to life.
The reason why entities like the FLDS bothers me so much is not because of lack of tolerance for their polygamous lifestyle, it’s because it is horrendously coercive and controlling of its members.
Something feels very wrong to me about the way you are defending the FLDS on libertarian principles and respecting their right to self-determination and freedom of religion when their whole way of life seems centered on stripping self-determination and freedom from their individual members. Remember that most FLDS members (the vast majority in fact) are not converts but were born into the faith and that was all they have ever known.
The building blocks of our society are individuals with free will. This is why we not allow people to enter into slavery, even if it is of their own free will.
This makes dealing with sects like the FLDS very tricky.
On the one hand, respecting someone’s free will means not second-guessing their choices, even when they make choices that we think are bad. Horrendous. On the other hand, when people make choices that undermine free-will in themselves or others, that threatens the whole fabric of our society.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:32 am
I want to add that it is far from clear to me that the state did the right thing in this case. At the very bottom, I’m a utilitarian. The horrendous damage of ripping apart family bonds will have to be weighed with the potential benefit of saving some of those same children from child abuse.
It’s a problem. A small problem because I don’t see many more FLDS coming into being. A real problem because more people continue to be born in the FLDS.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:15 am
Something feels very wrong to me about the way you are defending the FLDS on libertarian principles and respecting their right to self-determination and freedom of religion when their whole way of life seems centered on stripping self-determination and freedom from their individual members.
What is the alternative to defending such groups on “libertarian principles?” In a free society, people are allowed to break away and form their own segregated communities into which children will be born. But individuals do leave such groups, all the indoctrination notwithstanding. And as long as they are free to do so, that is all the state should be concerned with — that, and enforcing actual laws against sexual liaisons where consanguinity is harmful, or the children are being physically or sexually abused.
One need not like, and may even be horrified, by what these groups believe. (I think the substance of the FLDS faith is absurd and its mores unpleasant, to put it mildly.) But because the state disapproves of a religious community’s beliefs and lifestyle is not sufficient grounds to persecute and prosecute its members. And again, they might not live so walled-off if they were not justified in believing the state was out to get them. The Amish, after all, will make forays into the regular community to shop and what not. But we leave them alone.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:20 am
Thus, while it may be that some behaviors that could reasonably be considered child abuse occur in cults — including FDSL
I stopped reading right there.
This is not a new story. A lot of the early interest was motivated by the fact that the vast majority of the sons of the cult were expelled, so that the fathers could trade 14-year-old girls back and forth like purebred dogs. Polygyny produces a lot of throwaway bachelors.
The Libertarian obsession with The State is ludicrous in this case, because the rulers of these small towns do exactly the kind of things that the worst states do. And apparently they’re welfare-dependent too.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:29 am
The Libertarian obsession with The State is ludicrous in this case, because the rulers of these small towns do exactly the kind of things that the worst states do. And apparently they’re welfare-dependent too.
Newsflash: My views on sects and cults were the same as the CW until I majored in religious studies where liberal professors taught me to think critically about how the majority demonizes and sometimes commits atrocities against religions it does not like. My feminist professor who taught “Cults in America” did her Ph.D. thesis on Jonestown, and concluded that state persecution exacerbated the paranoia Jim Jones and his followers had about outsiders and government.
But if you wish to “stop reading” because you find my ideological affiliation so off-putting, by all means do so.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am
That’s fine theory, but this is a specific case. There are quite a few activities going one which would be illegal without the religious justification: polygamy (not the main issue), underage marriage, coerced underage marriage, and the expulsion of the young males. (I’m not sure of the mechanism for the expulsion of the males; perhaps it’s not unlawful). All these practices are being enforced by a statelike power. (I would say, state power, except that apparently the religious elders are able to override and expell the mayor of the town).
Religious freedom is sort of a messy compromise. But you can’t say that anything goes as long as it’s religious. In some cases (e.g. the Amish, the Quakers, and native Americans) laws are bent or rewritten to accommodate a religion’s practices. In other cases (the Mormons), the religion is pressured to change its practices.
By and large, this case looks like a reminder of the way that The State can function to increase human freedom, at the expense of what are essentially patriarchal tribal authorities. And in fact, that’s part of the history of the rise of freedom.
P.S. I quit reading because of the passage I cited, which is the kind of boilerplate fudging that PR men and Mafia lawyers use.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am
In a free society, people are allowed to break away and form their own segregated communities into which children will be born.
I think this goes back to what I was saying in my post about atomization. The least amount of state interference does not always result in the largest amount of individual freedom.
The FLDS is a tiny tiny exception. And as they say, hard cases makes bad law. So I’m not going to advocate banning the FLDS or anything like that.
But I do think the authorities need to watch them closely and come down on them like a ton of bricks when they cross the line of law — child marriage especially. But also the abandonment of young men like garbage.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am
But I do think the authorities need to watch them closely and come down on them like a ton of bricks when they cross the line of law — child marriage especially. But also the abandonment of young men like garbage.
Agreed. Any marriages to underage girls should be prosecuted. Ditto for actually coerced marriages to young women who have reached the age of consent. And parents have financial obligations to male teens until they are 18, which they must by law fulfill.
Those laws ought to be enforced — for FLDS or anyone else. But it is entirely possible that the extent to which abuse is occurring in FDLS is being exaggerated by a media that loves this kind of story, as well as by crusading law enforcement that, like Americans at large, despises “cults.”
April 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I hesitate to interject, but want to note that Sara at Orcinus has two posts up on this subject, and will likely write others. For me, the crucial questions have to do first with what is FLDS? And, how does it work? Not all poorly understood environments are bad for children and women, but some can be. I’d like to recommend Sara’s pieces; Are FLDS women brainwashed? and The Secret Lives of Saints
April 21st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
bystander, interject away! I’ve read Sara’s first post, and will simply reproduce what I said to another person who pointed me to it:
I find Sara’s analysis wholly unpersuasive as to the matter of “brainwashing.” She writes:
The MSM is consulting academics who have studied the “brainwashing” accusation that has been hurled at all manner of new religious movement for decades. Brainwashing — to the extent it exists at all — is, as one expert said, exceedingly rare. Now, these women most certainly are indoctrinated, but that is not the same thing.
My bias is to believe these academics, because I majored in religion in America as an undergrad, and learned to think critically about so-called “cults.” Many of the atrocity tales circulating about them tend to be either exaggerated or untrue altogether. A small, despised religious group that manistream religions don’t like, creates a great and lurid fixation for the media — throughout the 70s we had cult-mania, saw the rise of “deprogrammers” literally kidnapping adults from their new religious communities, and haranguing them in locked basements to “get over it.” Until the courts stepped in and put a stop to it.
Whatever dangers the FDLS presents (and one would be wise not to uncritically accept everything the media and critics such as Sara assert), anti-cult moral panic is at least as dangerous.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:15 pm
GNXP has a pretty good post on the broader issue of religious cults and polygamy in American society here. David Friedman thinks this case is a hoax. I think we’re wacky on children, hence the Satanic daycare/recovered memory craze and facilitated communication brouhaha. Among the funniest results of this national pathology is the arrest of Peter Sotos for writings that seemed so sick he must have perpetrated the acts himself, when the only basis for the “crimes” were the fevered imaginations of the authorities.
can someone who has been born and raised in an authoritarian cult atmosphere properly be said to be exercising freedom of choice
Can anyone? Who is to decide what upbringing renders people capable of making decisions for themselves? It is nonsensical to imagine a sort of default upbringing or privileged perspective relative to which others are measured and the behaviors produced by which are dismissed. We are all inevitably products of our circumstances. We come up with notions of “brainwashing” because we refuse to accept that some people come to believe things we find ridiculous through many of the same processes that result in our own beliefs.
mtraven’s link says it’s quite difficult to remove children from their parents custody, but it didn’t seem to be that way in this case and at the end they state the majority of child removals are upheld. What I’d like to know is if state services have every been found to be incompetent to take care of the children in their custody, because I’ve heard of numerous cases where they simply lost track of kids.
Speaking of wacky religious groups, I actually like the Fred Phelps WBC video Your Pastor is a Whore.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Mona’s on point. Let me add Lyndon LaRouche followers to the list of the brainwashed.
If the polygamists are to be singled out, why not inner city Catholic schools, the Hindu (or Sikh?) “city” - yes, an enclave on the outskirts of my hometown Sacramento - Orthodox synagogues, Nation of Islam mosques, or even radically progressive homeschools? On the latter, I’ve seen some evidence of very illiberal stereotyping of men, destructive and erroneous economic doctrine, and potentially dangerous Luddite style assertions.
The point is there are many “cults” that fall far short of asserting pure reason and Rawlsian egalitarianism, if that be what is left to defend after doing away with all the freaks, eccentrics and recalcitrants.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Dain, thanks for the comment. Some have argued that in an FLDS community, one woman was murdered by her husband for not being a proper wife, and/or wishing to leave. But hell, that happens virtually everyday in secular America.
Point being, that the various evils that occur in society at large, when they occur in one of those “scary cults,” is luridly focused on all over the media and by both liberal/feminist bloggers, as well as by your good solid Baptists who “know” FLDS is a “false religion.” It is a perfect storm of diverse, powerful ideological groups combining to pile on the despised, small new religious communities.
When crimes that should be crimes are committed anywhere — including in an FLDS community — prosecute away! But it is very wise to be skeptical of picking this or that crime committed by a single or comparatively few “cult” members, and extrapolating that to the entire group. Further — and this cannot be emphasized enough — turning them into a persecuted community that has a basis for paranoia, is only likely to make them become more extreme and hostile to outsiders, and to discourage their members from mixing with the outside world. That’s one lesson of Jim Jones, which is, however, another entire post.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Mona,
Should marriage or sex between potential carriers of genetic defects–say, two carriers of Tay Sachs–be illegal unless both parties are sterilized? Should dwarfs be banned from ever having sex or getting married unless they agree to be sterilized first, since they have a 50% chance of passing on dwarfism to their children?
The “genetic defect” argument is perhaps the strongest justification for legal prohibitions against incest, but it quickly unravels when we follow its eugenic implications all the way through.
As for the rest of your argument, I pretty much agree. While I find religious cultures in general, and patriarchal totalitarian religious cultures in particular very disturbing and unwise, the alternative of coercive intervention is even worse.
Chandran Kukathas has written on this inherent tension within libertarianism: “Two Constructions of Libertarianism.”
April 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Should marriage or sex between potential carriers of genetic defects–say, two carriers of Tay Sachs–be illegal unless both parties are sterilized? Should dwarfs be banned from ever having sex or getting married unless they agree to be sterilized first, since they have a 50% chance of passing on dwarfism to their children?
Those are are all good questions, Micha Ghertner. I’d like to read mtraven’s answer, since s/he is the one who made a point of the inbreeding issue within pockets of the FLDS, which reportedly has caused many FLDS children to be born developmentally disabled and with other severe disabilities.
But myself, I think vis-a-vis the FLDS the solution is to stop persecuting them, so that they can be open to new members.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I just realized this debate also ties in to the Iraq War. While it is not yet entirely clearly if systematic, institutional violent coercion took place at FLDS (i.e. if the group legitimized child molestation and/or forcibly prevented exit), it is in fact entirely clear that systematic, institutional violent coercion took place in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
And yet most of us here, presumably, I hope, were nevertheless still against U.S. invasion of Iraq, not because we thought Saddam was a good person or because we denied that he committed crimes against his own people, but because using the U.S. government to intervene for humanitarian reasons (to replace a cruel dictator with “democracy”) is unwise in the extreme, for a variety of reasons. First, it would be naive to expect a government rife with massive failure in the domestic arena to achieve success with nation building. Second, the justification knows no limits; if it is proper to invade, occupy, and rebuild Iraq in our own image, why not also Iran, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe? Feel free to to add in the many other reasons why intervention was a bad idea.
Now, what is true in a clear-cut case like Iraq is a fortiori true in a less clear-cut case like the FLDS. As much as we may dislike the internal practices of these regimes, violent intervention is unlikely to improve things. Better to persuade peacefully with things like Radio Free Europe or pamphleteering than calling in the jackbooted government goon squads.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Now, what is true in a clear-cut case like Iraq is a fortiori true in a less clear-cut case like the FLDS. As much as we may dislike the internal practices of these regimes, violent intervention is unlikely to improve things. Better to persuade peacefully with things like Radio Free Europe or pamphleteering than calling in the jackbooted government goon squads.
That’s what I’m thinking. If, as has been alleged in some venues, women are afraid to leave an FLDS community because they’ve been told the sect will keep their kids, for god’s sake start a legal aid fund for them so they can fight for custody, and let them know it exists.
And if the sect (or anyone else) prevents a law-abiding mother from leaving a premises with her own children, that is a crime. It might be a workable compromise to simply make sure all FLDS women are informed that legal help, if they want it, is available to them. That’s better than violent raids and grossly dislocating all the children.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 am
Mona,
It might be a workable compromise to simply make sure all FLDS women are informed that legal help, if they want it, is available to them. That’s better than violent raids and grossly dislocating all the children.
I think that’s a great idea. In order for the women to “choose” to stay they must be made aware that there are options.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 am
Mona, I don’t hold Sara as the only/best source. She is but one source. And, I readily accept she has a particular lens through which she views this story. I have no libertarian standard I wish to meet, but I do have a liberal lens of my own - to which I also readily admit.
As I tried to indicate, my intent is to understand first, and to try to be discerning later. Sara has a new post up. What We’re Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS
Although Sara has a point of view which ought to be at odds with FDLS, and often is, I don’t find her wholly unsympathetic to the community. I find the juxtaposition of Sara’s analysis with your own (and, your commenters) illuminating.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 am
Whoops!
I said this,
I don’t find her wholly unsympathetic to the community.
before I read this,
In the next post, I’ll cover a few more reasons that the FLDS should never again be allowed to operate without close oversight from the outside world.
Shoulda read that last sentence before commenting. *sigh*
I disagree with her there. What I do wonder is whether/how the community could have “access points/points of trade” to the larger community for choices like engaging legal help. If you are so insulated that you don’t know the choice exists, how could it be argued there is a choice?
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Bystander,
Well, let’s read her next post and see what she means by “close oversight”.
I think we should certainly watch the FLDS closely enough to ensure that they are not marrying 14 year old girls or abusing/abandoning young boys. If Sara means “let’s watch them closely not to harass them, but to make sure no abuses take place away from sight,” then I say, good.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
What I do wonder is whether/how the community could have “access points/points of trade” to the larger community for choices like engaging legal help. If you are so insulated that you don’t know the choice exists, how could it be argued there is a choice?
Well bystander, they are going to have plenty of points of access now if they want their children back, and the judge and many others could tell them. But I should add, I’m not so sure they are entirely insulated from the outside world and don’t know they can leave. Some women have left, after all, and even written books about their experience.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:22 am
The following is a post I recently made here:-
Boundary, by Eric Flint and Ryk E. Spoor, has a character (Madeline Fathom) who has become a government security specialist on the back of a childhood formative experience: being rescued by a military raid from a compound of followers of a sociopathic leader. That’s the stereotype you’re supposed to be seeing here.