The newspapers recently reported on a woman who, with the help of her boyfriend, used her 17-year-old daughter as a prostitute in order to get money for drugs. Such abhorrent behavior deserves the maximum penalty our system of justice is capable of imposing. So we should ask, what is the big difference between the actions of that mother and the actions of the male and female members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints who groom their 13 and 14-year-old daughters for marriage to 45 and 55-year-old-men?
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape.
I have nothing against these nitwits practicing polygamy if that is what they want to do. There should be no laws against polygamy. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than parental pimping. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and complain in robotic voices about the loss of their children. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 14-year-old daughter marry an older man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
We should not be moved by the fact that the children express the wish to return to their homes. I’m sure that most children of sexually abusive parents would say the same thing. These children need to be taken away from the primitive environment where men wield absolute power over women. But taking the children away is not enough. These abusive parents should be prosecuted for child abuse, child endangerment, and statutory rape.
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1 comment:
This commentary is spot-on.
I'd even go farther: the FLDS compound treated its children like livestock.
The "sweet" girls (compliant, submissive) were/are offered to the most powerful elders. The "sweeter" the girl, the more prestige through marriage brought to her family. In a community with very few personal posessions or status symbols, their daughters were the key to FLDS success.
These young girls were forced to breed early and often in their polygamous households. Raised communally and frequently separated and swapped among elder males, these girls failed to develop 'normal' maternal ties with their offspring.
Unwanted males were summarily driven from the FLDS community, much as foremen sell off unnecessary male calves on a cattle ranch. You only need one bull in a herd, after all.
The only thing this FLDS group neglected - that every rancher worth their salt knows instinctively? You don't inbreed your stock, you don't breed your heifers to close relatives.
Thus, the vacant stares, the monotones: I'd bet my bottom dollar that this FLDS community, with its incredibly shallow gene pool, suffers from mental retardation on a very large scale.
Prediction: the DNA analysis of this group, due in a few weeks, is going to be absolutely horrific.
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