posted
I don't see how that's relevant to you feeling jubiliation at the creation of a situation where 13 years olds are going to get raped. Are you saying my horror makes it okay for you to be thrilled by this?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Either you have poor reading comprehension or else are incapable of attributing any but the worst possible motives to those who don't shout your party line.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:It bothers me that people aren't addressing all sides of this issue, especially when their characterizations of the CPS actions ("They're doing this because they don't like the FLDS beliefs.") ignore important aspects like the whole raping of children thing.
There's been very little evidence of child rape on the scale that the FLDS at the YFZ ranch have been accused of. That is-- CPS accused the FLDS at the YFZ ranch of engaging in pervasive child abuse.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled that CPS "failed to meet the burden of proof" as required by the law.
So-- it's not just that people are ignoring the fact that the FLDS church reportedly marries off 14 year olds. It's that, thus far, there's been a scarcity of evidence of child rape at the YFZ Ranch.
Comparing the evidence of child rape with the reaction of CPS, it seems logical to me that people would focus on the more egregious of the two-- CPS' actions. For which there is plenty of evidence pointing to their mistakes.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Really quickly-- let me just clarify that by 'egregious' I don't mean to imply that CPS' actions are WORSE than child rape.
I mean that CPS' actions are, in this case, more easily identifiable as being harmful, than the alleged "pervasive" abuse they accused the FLDS of, simply because the EVIDENCE is more demonstrable and easier to see.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:There's been very little evidence of child rape on the scale that the FLDS at the YFZ ranch have been accused of.
I don't get your scale argument, especially based on the burden of proof required by law.
Does the number of community endorsed child rapes that they can prove in court really make that much of a difference to you? It doesn't to me.
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I've got no problem with people focusing on the bad actions of the CPS. As I've said, my problem is with statements characterizing their actions without reference to other relevant aspects and with people unqualifiedly celebrating the creation of a situation where more child raping will likely occur.
edit: I thought about this a bit and I think another thing that I strongly disagree with is the idea that maybe I'm merely reading into what people are saying, which is that the FLDS parents did nothing wrong and there is no real reason to want to remove the kids from them.
quote:Does the number of community endorsed child rapes that they can prove in court really make that much of a difference to you? It doesn't to me.
I'm not sure what you're asking. It matters to me that there have been children raped; it matters to me that CPS took some these kids away without meeting the burden of proof. There is evidence that CPS acted outside of the law; there are allegations that the FLDS acted outside of the law.
There is more evidence that CPS acted outside of the law, and that their actions have had greater negative consequences than the evidence of what the FLDS have done.
quote: I strongly disagree with [..] the idea that maybe I'm merely reading into what people are saying, which is that the FLDS parents did nothing wrong and there is no real reason to want to remove the kids from them.
The Texas Supreme court has found that CPS did not provide enough evidence to warrant removing some 400 kids from their parents.
I suppose that this does NOT indicate that the FLDS parents "did nothing wrong." It does indicate that the state was certainly wrong, however, in removing them.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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1) Texas' CPS has been slapped down. They undergo a massive overhaul, examining processes, procedures-- and someone wise and zealous (as Kat pointed out) is appointed to head the department.
2) The FLDS reform. The doctrine of child rape/spiritual marriage (which, if I understand things correctly was largely instituted by Warren Jeffs) is officially repudiated.
posted
Mr Squicky - the state has yet to present ME with any information that actually says anyone was getting raped. Also, there is the question of what is best for the kids, the so-called "rape" or foster care...
I do not agree with underage girls being forced into sex by older men. However, if a teenage girl is brought up to think that marriage to an older man is appropriate, then likely it is NOT traumatic for her - it may not be usual, and in the long run she may end up not liking it, but it isn't traumatic. Being ripped away from her family and having her marriage exposed to the public as something filthy and dirty is definitely going to be traumatic.
Also, most of those kids were in no danger at all. Many of them probably lived far happier and better lives that the majority of Texas children - certainly than most San Antonio children. The rate of physical abuse and neglect in San Antonio is sky high, the rate of children living in Poverty absolutely sickening. To waste so much money taking kids away from loving homes because of a phone call that could have been seen for a hoax with any amount of initial investigation is so appalling that the end of it can only be seen as good from my point of view.
If CPS wanted to investigate - then investigate. Maybe a watchful eye would encourage the FLDS to stop marrying off girls younger than 17 or 18. However, legally, once a woman is 18 it is her own choice who she has sex with.
I think it's silly for us to frown on a man who is actually taking care of his children by several different women, since the state currently spends millions TRYING to get OTHER men who have children by multiple women to act like fathers. If we can make sure those women are legally of age, then we should bow out and let them be.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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DDDaysh: genetic evidence that several of the children taken from the ranch are already parents, and have been since well under the age of consent isn't evidence of rape to you?
Of course, the state has no obligation to present you with evidence on anything.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:The order signed by Texas District Judge Barbara Walther, responding to a state Supreme Court ruling last week, allowed parents in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to pick up their children from foster care facilities around the state almost immediately.
In exchange for regaining custody, the parents are not allowed to leave Texas without court permission and must participate in parenting classes. They were also ordered not to interfere with any child abuse investigation and to allow the children to undergo psychiatric or medical exams if required.
However, it does not put restrictions on the children's fathers, or require parents to renounce polygamy or live away from the sect's Yearning For Zion Ranch in West Texas.
posted
Parenting classes? Unless there's something going on we haven't heard anything about, the issues that standard DHS parenting classes are designed to cover are not the issues these families need help with.
Maybe it's a way to keep contact with the families for monitoring or something. Or maybe someone is writing a special curriculum on "why it's a bad idea to marry off your daughters before they're 18"? Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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DDD, I know where you are coming from, but you are wrong.
quote:However, if a teenage girl is brought up to think that marriage to an older man is appropriate, then likely it is NOT traumatic for her
What is "Traumatic" here is not the physical abuse these 13 and 14 year old girls must go through. You are right, our grandmothers were probably married about the same age, and some to older men.
no, the Trauma her is to the self-confidence of the girls. This is not just the claiming of some dainty flesh, this is simple brainwashing. These girls are being taught, like any hooker in the big city, or any bunny at the Playboy mansion, that their entire worth lies in their bodies.
It is not their souls, nor the hard work that matters. It is not how nice or how good they are. All that matters is that they get pregnant.
Yes, here it differs from the slutty women. Here the goal isn't to prove your worth by sleeping around, but by getting pregnant.
They are not even given the option of being a beautiful race horse. They are breed cows that can also do the laundry, and that is all they deserve to be, according to this ethos. So before the girls are old enough to discover their own value, their own worth. Before they can discover the free-will that God offers, they are sold on the idea that they must marry.
Whom do they marry? Someone of their own age? No. They marry a saintly father figure, a man 2 or 3 times their age (3x13 is still under 40). They become just another in a stable of women for these men to acquire.
And the rape, you say, is not traumatic because they've been led to believe its OK.
Would those who followed Jim Jones into the jungle say that murder was OK because Jim Jones, in his maniacal paranoia, taught them it would be OK?
You say that they were told all their teen years to expect marriage to an older man. What teen years? If you are married by 13 or 14 what teen years did you have to learn this in? You must mean in their pre-teen years, the same time I tell my children about Santa Claus and Easter Bunnies, they are being told, "Its OK for Mr. Smith to marry you, sleep with you, get you pregnant, turn you into a mommy just as soon as possible."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
A lot of us (women) have been taught, growing up, that the most important job we'll ever do is be a good mother. It's certainly what I believe. My work as a mother, the way I raise my own children, is more important than any job I might do outside the home.
It makes me uncomfortable to think that to others, this belief would be seen as "their entire worth lies in their bodies. It is not their souls, nor the hard work that matters. It is not how nice or how good they are. All that matters is that they get pregnant."
Comparing being a good human mother to being a breed cow?
I think the choice of whom to marry should be made by the women, when they ARE women. But teaching girls that being mothers is the most important thing they'll do is hardly "terrible" IMO.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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What JennaDean said-- even though I wasn't taught that growing up. I came to that belief on my own.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Same here. I was taught that because a girl can be anything a man can be. she should, and that marriage and family was the unfortunate default option. Which of course it isn't--it's more challenging and consuming (motherhood).
Posts: 575 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Though there is a difference between what JennaDean and Kq are saying and a doctrine that promotes motherhood to the extent that it is considered appropriate for children to become mothers (because they are fulfilling their maternal duties).
ElJay - interesting. I guess the issue will now be splinter groups that refuse to abide by official FLDS policy. (FFLDS?)
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Me four. I discovered (even before I no longer had a choice in the matter) that staying home full-time was not for me. But I have a great deal of respect for those who do, and strongly disagree with Dan's assessment.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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imogen, I agree-- but I think that 16 is not too young for SOME young women to be mothers. I'm not saying MOST-- but if a young woman has finished her education at 16 (say, graduated high school and has no desire for college), is married (in a healthy marriage to a partner of her choice), and decides to start a family right away, I would have no problem with that. If it was HER CHOICE and she had her ducks in a row, so to speak. BUT that would be very few 16 year olds, to my mind.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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(I in no way mean to imply that is or is not what is or has happened in the FLDS community. Just that some kids are still kids at 16-- I was-- but I know some who are ready to be adults. Very few, but some. And that I would not be opposed to that as long as the priorities were straight there.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by JennaDean: A lot of us (women) have been taught, growing up, that the most important job we'll ever do is be a good mother. It's certainly what I believe. My work as a mother, the way I raise my own children, is more important than any job I might do outside the home.
I agree with this statement BUT I would extend it to include that for a man, their work as a father is more important then any job they might do outside the home. I sometimes worry that the focus on women as mothers minimizes the importance of fathers and gives men an excuse to check out of the hard family raising stuff. (not that you are doing that).
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
There's a problem with going too much to one side or another. I've got no problem with people choosing to be a stay at home parent - aside: I'm bothered by the assumption here that the woman is the one who is always staying at home with the kids.
I believe it is extremely important work. I have a big problem with people saying that it is the most important thing that people can do.
It's possible that you are using a definition of important that I'm not familiar with, but, from how I understand the word, this is not automatically accurate. I also think it's impossible to accurately judge in this way the worth of how someone else lives their life and it's pretty disrespectful to try.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I think he was taking exception to the idea that this is the only or even main source of worth in a woman, or especially a 13 year old girl.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I believe it is extremely important work. I have a big problem with people saying that it is the most important thing that people can do.
I'm going to have to agree with this statement. There are plenty of people out there doing lots of good who have either chosen to not have children, or who are unable to. Raising children should not be a standard for judging someone's worth.
Doing any good and doing it well should be.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
When I was thinking most important, I was thinking about the case where a baby already is in the picure. Once you have one, it should be the number one priority. I wasn't really thinking about a person who doesn't have a baby.
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Would you fault a soldier with children for remaining in the military, thus taking him away from his family and putting him at serious risk of death?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Being away from the family, and even risking death doesn't necessarily mean that you don't place your child's welfare before everything else.
There's more to a child's well-being than just time and parental presence. Those are HUGE parts, no mistake-- but let's all recognize the complexity of the issue.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Scott, How do we measure a parent's concern for his children's welfare?
I get the feeling, largely from past threads here, that people are criticised for having jobs that take them away from their kids and put them at a great deal less risk than what is required from a soldier.
---
edit: I may be overly pesimistic towards people here. Something about people claiming that other ways of living one's life are necessarily inferior to the one they chose tends to lead me to group them in with other similar statements.
quote:How do we measure a parent's concern for his children's welfare?
I don't know, honestly.
I would say that a soldier who is on tour for a year in Iraq, who does everything he can to fulfill his obligations honestly and honorably, is at least setting a good example for his sons by the way he is living.
I would say that a father who decides to leave his family for a year and go into hiding from the law because of his drug dealing is the opposite of a good father.
The ends are the same-- both men are gone for the same amount of time, both are in considerable danger; but the potential lessons they're teaching their children (and thus, I think, the concern they show for them) are very different.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
How about a scientist who puts in a lot of time at his lab, say researching an avian flu cure. He may not be available for all the things that a perfect dad would be there for, but he's doing something that he thinks is crucially important. Is he wrong because, at times, he places more important on another role than that of being a father?
How about if he were a she?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Or even a small business owner who has to put in long hours to keep his or her widget business afloat.
I don't put much stock in the idea of a real definition of a "perfect parent."
So-- I don't really know. How does their absence affect the family? Neither the soldier, nor the con can choose to spend time with their family without very real, very personal negative consequences that will probably cause them to to be able to spend LESS time with their families.
The scientist and the business owner can find other jobs, and all it may cost them is their happiness. (I'm not convinced of the single-braniac-scientist cure outside Hollywood) Can they (should they) sacrifice their professional happiness for more time with their families? What will that do to them?
:shrug:
Like I said, the issue is very complex. I try not to make judgments about anyone but myself.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Can they (should they) sacrifice their professional happiness for more time with their families?
That's part of the soldier example, though. If it is okay for a soldier to choose that career and to stay in it, which si going to keep him away from his family for logn stretches at a time, where could the fault with a dedicated X that, because of their dedication, spends much less time away from their kids be?
It can't just be the time. They certainly can choose another career, but so could the soldier.
For me, if the kids are healthy, relatively happy (or not terribly depressed when teenagers), and confident that their parents love them, you're in more or less the right place. I think, in most cases, this allows room for, at times, valuing other pursuits as much or even greater than focusing on your kids.
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edit: I've gotten, implicitly and explicitly, from the kind of stay at home moms who will say that any other way but the way that they chose is inferior in importance and meaning, that believing that this room exists is a bad thing to do.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I think he was taking exception to the idea that this is the only or even main source of worth in a woman, or especially a 13 year old girl.
Most important thing is most certainly not synonymous with only thing. Or even only important thing.
I expect most scientists would agree that finding a cure for breast cancer is more important than finding a cure for the common cold? But even so, I think they would also agree that finding a cure for the common cold is important.
So saying that raising kids well is the most important thing someone can do -- even if you agree with that premise -- is not saying that someone who cannot or chooses not to do that is necessarily not doing anything important. Quite the contrary; someone whose time is not taken up with that important task will have time for other important tasks (many of which may more directly benefit society than the parenting does) that the parents may not have time to do properly.
I'm thinking that if I came up with a cure for the common cold tomorrow, there wouldn't be too many idiots (there'd be some, because that's just the nature of people) who said "Too bad you didn't put that time and money into cancer research!"
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:So saying that raising kids well is the most important thing someone can do -- even if you agree with that premise -- is not saying that someone who cannot or chooses not to do that is necessarily not doing anything important.
No, but it is saying that anyone who chooses to do something other than that is choosing an life inferior in importance.
edit: Plus, I'd really need an explanation of what they mean by important there. I can't think of one that would make that necessarily true.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I would say that a soldier who is on tour for a year in Iraq, who does everything he can to fulfill his obligations honestly and honorably, is at least setting a good example for his sons by the way he is living.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I would say that a soldier who is on tour for a year in Iraq, who does everything he can to fulfill his obligations honestly and honorably, is at least setting a good example for his sons by the way he is living.
And daughters.
Why don't you shut up about women, Stan, you're putting us off. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I would say that a soldier who is on tour for a year in Iraq, who does everything he can to fulfill his obligations honestly and honorably, is at least setting a good example for his sons by the way he is living.
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