Like many people, I've been following the story on the FLDS raid

[conuly]

Well, who hasn't been?

Haven't posted anything about it though because, really, what is there to say?

What I'm wondering, though, is what took so long. I mean, I've been reading articles about this compound and others in this country and Canada for years now. It has been known for years that they're marrying off their young girls, often to relatives, in polygamous marriages. It's been known for years that they tend to drive off their young boys for... well, for acting like teenage boys... and also for being in competition for the girls, y'know.

And I expect that they don't get to this point without raising the kids to see this as totally normal, and the outside world as totally unsafe.

I don't think the raid was wrong. Unlike some people, I think that it's clear that the children not currently being abused would be in the future - no matter how clean and fed they are.

But I have to wonder - we've known the conditions for years. What, exactly, was the hold-up?

(Incidentally, that doesn't mean I think the foster care system is wonderful for these kids. I'm very upset at the reports about how the foster care system in the area is scrambling to make things easier on these kids. If the system is as bad as they describe (and you know it is), then it should be changed for the other kids already in it as well. Not just spot changes - real ones. You think those kids couldn't use a better system? Riiiiight.)

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

The case scares me. I think child abuse is wrong. I think pushing young girls into marriages is wrong. I wish that were the focus of it. I think it'd be just as wrong to push young girls into monogamous marriages as into polygynous ones. But I worry they'll decide that raising children to believe polygamy is okay is child abuse. I think polygamy is fine for consenting adults who decide it's right for them. Big difference. But I worry that too many people won't draw these distinctions because the cluster of features they tie together. I've been following the case, but I don't feel like I have much to say.

[conuly]

But I worry they'll decide that raising children to believe polygamy is okay is child abuse. I think polygamy is fine for consenting adults who decide it's right for them. Big difference.

Fully agreed.

People have signs - polygamy is child abuse. And some of those people grew up in just this sort of family, and I feel for them. But polygamy in and of itself isn't child abuse, because it's something that *ought* to be practiced between consenting adults, like every *other* sexual or marriage-al arrangement. Incest and forced marriage and rape are child abuse.