As the FLDS drama continues in Texas, it appears that perhaps public opinion is starting to sway toward the religious sect. It is beginning to look like another example of punishing all for the sins of a few. Or punishing the victims instead of the perpetrators.
Removing over 400 children from their families to barracks and on to foster homes, unlike any home-life they have been accustomed, will certainly confuse and possibly permanently harm them. Displacing all of them for the sake of saving a few is not the answer.
Better police investigations and stronger evidence singling out the perpetrators, then removing the alleged perpetrators from the compound would have been a better solution. Children could have stayed with their mothers and innocent fathers would not have a guilty shadow hanging over them.
Just because a group of people look and live differently from "normal" society, does not mean that they are all criminals. Speak to a Catholic priest, a Muslim, or a young black man. Suspicion in this country is rampant and tolerance has a long way to go.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Being different is criminal
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2 comments:
PG, I agree with your last sentence that people should not be prosecuted merely for being different. But I disagree that the State should not be removing all of the children from the compound, even though they are not all girls who have been forced to have sex with older men. Just like we would expect the state to remove children from a brothel, society should not allow children to be brought up in an environment where their sisters are being forced at ages as young as 13 to "marry" older men who already have multiple "wives." I agree with your general philosophy that the state should be the least intrusive possible into private lives. But I think we have to protect children who are unable to decide for themselves what they choose to do and not do.
Two information books I would point you to in order to better understand what Texas has done may be necessary to stop the ill treatment of women in that environment: I think it will be difficult to find, but A Mormon Mother by Annie Clark Taylor, (mother of prominent businessman O.C. Tanner)who was one of the last plural wives in the LDS church; near the end of her life she changed her mind about the practice though she'd been and remained a devout Mormon, and God's Brothel by Andrea Moore-Emmett, a collection of stories from women who have left the lifestyle at great risk to themselves. (Glad to see I can now easily make comments!)
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