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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (245185)	4/10/2008 1:15:52 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793916

They are born into the polygamist cult and raised in it. 2/3 of the boys are kicked out as teens and end up living on the streets in our cities (they have to kick out 2/3 cause men are supposed to have 3 wives to become "kings in heaven"). The girls are forced into arranged marriages at 14 or 15. They don't have to point a gun at 14 year olds with little education or knowledge of the outside world. By the time they're adults, they've got two or more kids and no way to support themselves but welfare. The 16 yo girl who called in an abuse claim had already borne a child at 15 to a 50 yo daddy. The polygamist community's support themselves on welfare. And the cult grows not from conversion of willing adults but because each girl/woman ends up having loads of kids during her life all raised on welfare. If we let a cult that calls itself Christian do this, we're gonna have increasing numbers of Muslims doing it in the future too. I'm not sympathetic to 'em at all. They should go in and aggressively prosecute these folks for welfare fraud plus any abuse they can prove.

To: LindyBill who wrote (245185)	4/10/2008 1:24:34 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793916

While you are correct about the upheaval for children being torn from what they know and being placed in care, are you really saying that those girls should be left in a situation that has them being married and bearing babies at 13 with no choices about their lives? And if the group has sanctioned and tolerated this, aren't they responsible as a group? I'm not big on demonization , but if a group has condoned the abuse of minors (which this is) then aren't they culpable? As liberal as I am in my views regarding adult behavior, anything that involves coerced sexual behavior on minors calls for intervention of some sort. And polygamy IS illegal, so there is justification for going in. Children are incapable for the most part of distinguishing clearly destructive parenting, even those who are raised in the "outside" world. I worked with a lot of minors who just couldn't admit to abuse. They loved their parents, regardless of how bad they were, and blamed themselves for whatever happened to them. And of course, they were terrified of being removed. Imagine the isolation of these children, who have no frame of reference outside of their brainwashed cult. Ideally, you should be able to work with parents and children together. But when an entire community is based on illegal and abusive practices, I don't know what the prognosis would be for turning these families into what we would consider healthy. Longterm, the best alternative is removal.

To: LindyBill who wrote (245185)	4/10/2008 1:24:37 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793916

>>But nobody there has a gun to their head.<< They use whips, beatings, solitary confinement, starvation etc on the girls to force them to comply. The leaders are a bunch of damn perverts who should be locked up for life with no parole.

To: LindyBill who wrote (245185)	4/10/2008 2:54:14 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793916

No doubt. But nobody there has a gun to their head. The question is, at what point is the the State justified to go in with a gun and jail them and institutionalize their kids? Is this right? I have heard interviews of women who escaped from this compounds. They describe a Taliban-like existence where those women who want to leave are watched and forcibly restrained, and face the terrible choice of trying to take their children (who have been taught to accept the system) or abandon them forever. They describe a system where the most favored men take all the girls in forced marriages, and the excess boys are simply expelled as teenagers, put out at the side of the road like unwanted kittens. I think that the point where a girl escapes and accuses her 'husband' of rape is a legitimate point for the State to act.