Injustice In The Lone Star State

I'm beginning to believe I'm the only person in America who has a problem with the ongoing crackdown on that polygamist sect in Texas. I want to make it clear that I oppose any abuse of children and I'm not defending this sect's beliefs or marital practices. However, I feel the state of Texas has committed a grave injustice by removing over 400 sect children from their parents.

As you know this sect, called the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, practices plural marriage and, apparently, routinely marries underage girls to older men. It was a claim of spousal abuse from one such girl that triggered the removal of the group's children. Rather than deal with that one case in the normal fashion Texas authorities are using it as a pretext to shut down this sect. I strongly suspect it's our mainstream culture's visceral dislike of polygamy, and not concern about child abuse, that's really driving this crackdown. The FLDS parents are being punished for daring to live a lifestyle society doesn't like. That's what is most disturbing about this case.

Think about it. Why are Texas authorities so eager to terminate the parental rights of the FLDS parents? Because they're desperate to save the children from abuse? Not hardly. A few months ago a Texas mother threw her two sons off a freeway overpass then jumped herself. Fortunately they all survived, but the children had been in state custody at least once before this ordeal. If the state of Texas was so concerned about protecting children from abuse why did it give those two boys back to an abusive mother? Why have child protective services all over America given children back to unfit parents who later killed them? Government has a dismal record of protecting children from abuse.

But, you might say, the government had to do something with the FLDS. These people weren't just polygamists, they were child sexual abusers. Why, they gave underage girls in marriage to men old enough to be their grandfathers! That sounds horrible I know, but just what is it that people don't like about these May-December marriages? It certainly isn't the sex part. For all the sanctimonious outrage at the FLDS's marital/sexual practices the truth is our mainstream culture loves underage sex. Our popular entertainment is saturated with it; our schools aid and abet it.

For example, virtually every teen horror flick of the last 30 years has included sexual intercourse between the teen characters. Popular teen tv shows are also full of underage sexual activity. Music constantly pumps pro-promiscuity messages into the hearts and minds of our kids. And the original version of The Vagina Monologues, a very popular feminist play, positively portrayed the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl by a grown woman.

Public schools continue the sexual evangelizing of our kids. Most teach an amoral sexual ethic where anything goes so long as you don't get pregnant or get a disease. Last year a Maine public school began dispensing contraceptives to 11-year-olds without parental knowledge let alone consent. No provision was included in the policy to ascertain the age of the preteens' sexual partners. Other schools were reported to be considering the same policy. All to keep the kiddies safe, they claimed. Of course, such policies make a mockery out of age of consent laws and loudly proclaimed committments to childhood innocence. Yes, we mainstreamers love kiddie sex even as we stand in pious condemnation of those child marrying polygamists.

If I had a daughter I wouldn't marry her to an older man, but is that really the worst thing that could happen to her? And if polygamy is so awful why isn't the state of Texas investigating it in the Muslim community? Why isn't the state of Texas investigating honor killing, where girls are murdered for "shaming" their families? Two young Muslim sisters were victims of an apparent honor killing back in January. Texas authorities didn't respond by taking other Muslim girls from their families on the grounds that they, too, might be killed. Yet the mere potential for abuse--abuse, not murder--was deemed justifiable grounds to snatch hundreds of Mormon kids from their parents.

I smell a rat. Something is really, really wrong here. The removal of the FLDS kids was a virtual kidnapping by the state of Texas. If it is allowed to stand it will bode ill for all families whose lifestyles are remotely unconventional. Families whose beliefs strongly contradict the prevailing secular, PC orthodoxy will be especially vulnerable. Homeschoolers in California recently got a preview of that.

I ask all people who believe in freedom, family autonomy and parental rights to pray that the FLDS parents get their children back. Yes, their beliefs may be starkly different from yours; you may even find them repulsive. But if the state can take those fundamentalists' kids, it can take yours. Whose to say when your lifestyle will be judged unacceptable. So I think you'd better pray for those "weird" Mormons because the family and children you save may be your own.