Child Protection and the Confucian Cycle
The government is abusing Texan kids, not their parents.
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The media have made much of police removing some 460 children from an isolated Texas ranch. The authorities received a telephone call which purported to come from a 16 year old girl in the compound who said she had been forced to marry a 50 year old against her will. On April 8, Fox News reported:
Children's Protective Services (CPS) spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said each child will get an advocate and an attorney. But she said they would have a tough time adjusting to modern life if they are permanently separated from their families. [emphasis added]
Questions are being asked. On April 25, Yahoo News posted an API report:
The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect's ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.
But the broad sweep - from nursing infants to teenagers - is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family's children.
"Of course, we condemn child abuse and we don't stand up for the perpetration of that," said Lisa Graybill, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. But "what the state has done has offended a pretty wide swath of the American people with what appears to be an overreaching action to sweep up all these children."
No Polygamists Here
The Yahoo article says, "rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect's ranch." That's libel, pure and simple.
These people have interacted with government officials before. They know that polygamy, that is, being married to more than one person at a time, is against the law, so they don't do that. Each man in the group marries one and only one woman.
They believe that a man gains great spiritual blessings if he has a lot of children. Limiting himself to only one woman would mean that a man could have a child only once every two or three years. The only way a man can have more children than one woman can produce is to persuade multiple women to have his children - for which technical marriage is not necessarily required.
Scragged has pointed out that men gain reproductive success if they can keep more than one woman pregnant. These men are careful to formally marry only one woman because polygamy is against the law, but it's not against the law for a man to have sex with a woman to whom he isn't marred. When these men get other women pregnant, the women sign up as single mothers and get welfare benefits.
Historically, the main issue with polygamy was a man having enough money to support multiple wives. Texas taxpayers are stupid enough to pick up the cost of supporting all the other "wives;" the men get extra reproductive advantage and the accompanying spiritual benefits and more opportunities to have sex at taxpayer expense.
Given the tax-free cash benefits from not marrying the other women, it should be no surprise that the police were unable to find any polygamy at all. The only real issue they've been able to raise is whether some of the men might have had sex with women who were younger than the "age of consent."
It's All About Money
DNA testing to find out which men had had sex with underage mothers could be done at the ranch. Why have the social workers kept the children? At first, CPS workers said they were checking to see whether the children had been abused. The Yahoo article provides an extremely important bit of information:
CPS officials have conceded there is no evidence the youngest children were abused, and about 130 of the children are under 5. Teenage boys were not physically or sexually abused either, according to evidence presented in a custody hearing earlier last week, but more than two dozen teenage boys are also in state custody, now staying at a boys' ranch that might typically house troubled or abandoned teens.
Another legal issue may emerge if investigators discover the call from the 16-year-old girl was a hoax.
Authorities are investigating whether the calls came from a woman in Colorado who has a history of making fake calls, but CPS officials and legal experts say the outcome of that investigation will likely have little bearing on the custody case, given that authorities went to the ranch believing the calls were legitimate and then found possible evidence of abuse [emphasis added]
Let's ignore the fact that the compound happens to be in the way of a new highway that's being planned. Let's be charitable and forget the fact that when the highway people approached the group leaders, they didn't want to sell because they'd set up a self-sustaining community with factories, farms, houses, and all the infrastructure of a community that was not a burden on the local police, fire, or school district.
Let's assume that the cops didn't know that if they could show that if enough crimes had been committed on the compound, they could seize the property under civil forfeiture without paying a dime for it. Let's assume that the police really had reasonable grounds to suspect child abuse based on what happened during their first visit to the compound.
Now that the Child Protective Services have conceded that they have no evidence of abuse, the children should be returned to their parents. Why are they still in state custody? Why is the government continuing to abuse the children by keeping them away from their parents?
The answer starts with the CPS statement of April 5 - "Each child will get an advocate and an attorney." Whenever CPS snatches a child, the court appoints an attorney for the child as well as a licensed worker to serve as the child's advocate.
These people are chosen by the judge. Suppose the attorney or the advocate finds out that there was no reason to remove the child at all and that judge made a mistake in ordering the removal. Is either of the people whom the judge appointed going to embarrass the judge? Not if they want more referrals in future cases.
It's a Federal Problem
On January 31st, 1974, President Nixon signed Public Law 93-247, The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) which had been sponsored by Senator Walter Mondale. Although social engineering was not particularly popular at the time, child abuse was regarded as abhorrent. As Senator Mondale put it while running for the Presidency, "Not even Richard Nixon is in favor of child abuse."
Child abuse was such a potent concept that Janet Reno's popularity soared when she claimed child abuse prevention as the purpose for the Waco, Texas raid that incinerated 87 children and adults. Here are some of the provisions of CAPTA:
- Child abuse hearings must be held in secret "to protect the privacy of the child." States whose CPS laws lack a "confidentiality provision" are ineligible for federal funds. The law ignores the possibility that privacy would not be an issue when accusations are false. Secret trials are the first tool of tyranny.
- Anonymous hearsay evidence is explicitly permitted. The right to confront your accuser is a fundamental part of our justice system. How can you question the credibility of your accuser if you aren't told who accused you? CPS gets around this by claiming that the state is accusing you, not the person who originally made the complaint. You can cross-examine the social worker about what the accuser said but you can't cross-examine your accuser.
- There is a very low standard for convicting parents of abuse - a judge can order permanent removal if he finds that it is more likely than not that abuse occurred. This is way below the "beyond any reasonable doubt" standard needed for criminal conviction.
- States are required to solicit anonymous abuse reports as a condition of receiving federal funds.
- Anyone failing to report any incident of suspected child abuse can be convicted of a felony. As a result, physicians, teachers and other professionals are afraid not to report any incident, regardless of how small, out of fear that they may be prosecuted themselves.
- There are no penalties for making false accusations of child abuse.
Another defect of CAPTA is that Title IV-E Federal funds require removal of children to a foster or group home. States receive federal funds only if they remove children from their homes.
Removing more than 460 children in one shot results in a massive windfall of federal funds to the child protection agency. The children ought to be returned home given that the state has not been able to find any evidence of abuse, but giving the children back to their parents would shut down the federal reimbursement stream and take more than 460 clients away from lawyers and advocates.
As in the Texas case, removal of the children from their family is almost always the first response of children's agencies to any report of abuse or neglect no matter how ill-founded or malicious. Once they've taken the children and haven't been able to find any evidence of abuse, the only way to keep the children is to have a psychological evaluation which states that the children need counseling because their parents messed them up somehow.
The social service agency contracts out the evaluation to a certified counselor. The counselor has a choice - declare that there's nothing wrong with the child or intone, "This child needs therapy" for which the agency will pay.
What's the counselor going to do? Embarrass his best customer and give up a patient or collect hourly fees for years to come? This blog has further details on how social workers make money by abusing the system.
Villages Make Lousy Parents
The real tragedy of the situation is that foster care is bad for children. A person who's had no contact with Child Protection might assume that taking children out of abusive homes and putting them into state care benefits the children.
While this seems like a reasonable assumption, research has shown that it's simply not true. Joseph Doyle Jr. of MIT's Sloan School of Management has shown that children faced with two options - their troubled families or foster care - have better life outcomes when they remain with their families.
The Texas CPS admitted that the children they had seized would have a tough time adjusting to modern life if they're permanently separated from their families. Given the vast amounts of federal money available so long as more than 460 kids are kept in their system, there's no reason to expect that the Texas CPS will give the children back to their parents any time soon regardless of how badly their "care" damages the children.
People with long memories will recall that when some of the Branch Davidian children were removed from their compound in Waco, Texas before the feds burned the place down, the CPS psychologists said that the children had been subjected to severe trauma because their parents had had so many guns lying around. As evidence, they offered the children's sketches which showed bullet holes in the roof of their house.
The psychologists were adamant in rejecting the thought that the children had been traumatized by bullets that Federal agents had fired at the house. The abuse had to have been done by the parents; the only cure was extended therapy at federal expense. We should expect more of this sort of self-serving psychological analysis as this case moves along.
Government employees can't even teach children to read; how would anyone expect that government employees would make effective parents? The MIT study shows that foster care often leads to worse outcomes than leaving children in their homes; the report was written up in USA Today.
Given that there is no evidence of abuse, the 460 Texas kids should clearly be returned to their parents forthwith. By keeping these children in state custody, CPS workers, lawyers, advocates, and the judge are abusing the children, and they know it.
When the history of these times is written, it will be shown that the coercive power of the state has made it possible for the government to abuse far more children far more cruelly than parents ever could.
Undermining Society
Government's only asset is its credibility. When people decide that the government either can't or won't enforce its laws, its laws are ignored. When people decide that government is not on their side, they try to evade government and hide from it.
When I first started work, people trusted government enough that they looked at me funny if I ever talked about taking legitimate tax deductions. They felt that government made good use of tax money and that it was somehow illicit not to err on the side of giving the government what the law required.
When the IRS audited me some 30 years later, a friend of mine told me I ought to cheat as much as possible; after all, the government would waste whatever money they got from me anyway. The government in general, and the IRS in particular, had lost all credibility with him.
A few years later, a wave of protests against unfair treatment by IRS agents swept through Congress. Laws were changed, and many IRS agents were reassigned.
CPS workers are undermining society as badly as the IRS did, except that people care even more about their children than about their money. Some years ago, a friend of mine had his four children removed from his home on false charges of child abuse. I saw first-hand how the federally-required confidentiality provisions and the requirement that hearsay evidence be considered made the proceedings utterly unjust.
My children had played with my friend's children on a regular basis; my son knew that his friends had never been abused. After a particularly unjust ruling by the judge, he asked, "Dad, could they take me, too?" I had to be honest; I admitted that if the government decided to turn him into a source of federal money, there'd be very little I could do about it.
My son doesn't see government as his friend, he sees government as his enemy.
Bureaucracy Run Wild
CPS is another bureaucracy which has lost sight of its product and is caught up in process. The CPS process is to remove children based on little or no evidence, get the federal funds flowing, then provide all kinds of mental health services to the children to keep the money flowing as long as possible.
The CPS worker's remark about the children having a tough time adjusting if they were not given back to their families coupled with CPS' admission that there is no evidence of abuse shows plainly that the CPS process ignores any considerations of what might be best for the children.
The news reports clearly state that no evidence of abuse has been found. If, indeed, men were having sex with underage girls, that is the crime of statutory rape, which should be prosecuted in a criminal court and punished according to the law. Modern DNA tests should make that case open and shut. Yet we see that no charges have even been filed for the one easily provable abusive act.
What's wrong with this picture? The cultists may be strange; they may live a lifestyle that is bizarre; they may be teaching their children doctrines which seem ridiculous to most normal people.
But unless a criminal act is being committed, provable in court, the freedom that Americans are supposed to enjoy must necessarily include the freedom to be a moonbat, and even to raise up little moonbats. As we've seen many times in many contexts, if you are free only to do what the government wants, you are not free at all.
As with most government bureaucracies, it's all about money. There is no limit to government greed any more than there is any limit to non-government greed. As Confucius noted, when government officials lose sight of the fact that government is supposed to benefit the public rather than exploiting the public, the collapse of the society is not far off.
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What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
Abuse does occur, and you know what the worse part about it: These goverment agencies Never seem to actually catch it! Now THAT is something to blog about! Not: Your goverment is your enemy junk!
My best friend was sexually molested by her father. The only time the goverment stepped in was after they had arrested him for beating her mother. (His wife.) If it weren't for her brother telling the police what their father was doing to my best friend, they would have Let this sick fuck back into the household to molest her some more!
So when these abuse cases come up, I for one am not going to jump to conclusions, and think, "Well goverment is always wrong, so hey there is NO abuse there!"
At this point there are very few facts known. Abuse has been suggested, but it's still "unproven".
I will be waiting for the facts. And as they emerge it has come to light that 25 underage girls have children, or are currently pregant.
What in the heck do you call that, except abuse?
Still, I think more people need to wait until there is more information before sidding either way: The goverment has committed the abuse of removing children without proof, ~ or ~ Underage girls have indeed been married off to older men even though they were below the age of consent, and have had or will have children by these "husbands".
Andrea has pointed out one: all the underage pregnancies are definite signs of abuse. There's no other way to interpret that.
There WAS polygamy on the compound. To be polygamous, one does not have to be married multiple times as recognized by the government. The word, in the strict sense, simply means to live in a constant state of multiple, concurrent sexual relationships. Look it up in the dictionary.
The comparison with Waco is flimsy. At Waco, the authorities trumped up gun charges to GIVE themselves the authority to go in blazing. In this case, the police were investigating a phoned-in rape charge. That is a very serious crime and one that SHOULD have gone in blazing over.
The thing I disagree with the most on this is how you're stumbling over the original chain of events so that you can get right to the "child snatching" part. The police originally DID go in quietly and peacefully and THEY TRIED to conduct their investigation at the compound by just talking to people. Two men at the front gate wouldn't let them in and were both arrested for obstruction of justice. The rest of the adults would not speak to them or point out whose children were whose. The police repeatedly insisted that taking all the children away from the compound was the ONLY WAY they could do their investigation because the adults were obstructing every step of the way.
With something as simple as past-due gun registration (Waco), I would be more inclined to agree that 'the government is my enemy'. In fact, I'm generally ALWAYS inclined to agree that 'the government is my enemy' because it generally always is. But here we have a case of serious crime investigation gone wrong. You have to get the up front facts straight before plowing into straight defense for the compoundees.
"You can cross-examine the social worker about what the accuser said but you can't cross-examine your accuser."
This is incorrect. In an "intake hearing" which I like to call the "gun-free firing squad" or the "witch trial", the defendant is not allowed to speak. He must sit there and hear the made-up accusations against him.
The entire process has nothing to do with due process, and they justify it by calling it a "civil case between the State and the defendant." This is BS. If a citizen is in court against the government, it is a criminal trial. There is nothing civil about it on the grounds that a civil case is between peers.
I have a lot to say on this subject, as I have done a lot of research. The system is flawed and corrupt to be sure.
But how about the babies and toddlers? There've been no allegations of abuse there - and they are specifically the ones who would be most harmed by an abrupt disappearance of their own parents.
And I suppose about half of the 464 would be male children. We've not heard tell of a NABLA chapter there, so where's the abuse threat for them?
One thing twibi said just made me fall down laughing though, and I have to point it out:
"There WAS polygamy on the compound. To be polygamous, one does not have to be married multiple times as recognized by the government. The word, in the strict sense, simply means to live in a constant state of multiple, concurrent sexual relationships. Look it up in the dictionary."
Yikes. If that's the legal definition, then there wouldn't be anyone left in college, they'd all be in jail! Hollywood likewise... hey, actually, maybe there's some merit to the argument after all...
And, keep in mind, the government can still prosecute polgyamy if it can be proven that they adults were living in that state, regardless of paperwork. If I recall, Warren Jeffs had that added to his stack of offenses even though there were no actual marriage certificates.
(Also, make sure you catch ALL the adjectives that I used. CONCURRENT is the key word. A regular, philanderous cad is not living CONCURRENTLY in multiple relationships. He/she is usually moving quickly from one to the next or back and forth. There is a distinct difference)
In any case, the issue of polygamy itself is entirely irrelevant to the taking of the children. Statutory rape is a crime, and obviously abusive; no other abuse has even been alleged, and it's not possible for that crime to have been perpetrated on at least half (if not three-quarters) of the children removed.
I agree that their (obvious) crime of polygamy is not relevant to the current matter. I responded about it only to confirm that the paragraphs on "No Polygamy Here" were incorrect.
According to this online law dictionary:
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.Asp?selected=65&bold=%7C%7C%7C%7C
bigamy is the condition of having two wives or two husbands at the same time. A marriage in which one of the parties is already legally married is bigamous, void, and ground for annulment. The one who knowingly enters into a bigamous marriage is guilty of the crime of bigamy...
Key words here: "already legally married." Apparently it is perfectly legal to live as a threesome, foursome, or however many you like, as long as nobody tries to legally marry more than one other person at a time.
I'm sorry, but you are, legally speaking, simply wrong. There have been several distinct cases where the government had "to prove" polygamy where no marriage certificates could be found. (Google this subject with respect to Utah) At the time, I remember thinking that this would be a) very hard to prove and b) strange considering more serious crimes one might imagine more urgent to investigate.
http://www.absalom.com/mormon/polygamy/utah-law.htm
Quoting from the quoted statute:
"(1) A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, he purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person."
So what's required is a) to be married to someone, and then b) to PURPORT (that is, to claim) to be married to someone else at the same time. If instead you claim merely to be shacking up with them, it's legal.
Bit of an odd law, that. It's all in your head - if you think you're living in sin, you're OK, but if you think you're married, then it's a crime. Makes me wonder if it's an entirely good idea for the government to be dealing with this at all. And the way they are handling the Texas situation leads to even more questions.
That seems a bit of a stretch.
"what you say" is usually irrelevant when prosecuting crimes; except in the sense that it can help point the police in a certain direction. Remember, the 5th amendment makes it so what you say can't be used against you anyway. Proving a case like this would be about showing on video (or by witness testimony) that in private you and your haram consider yourselves husband/wife.
(And, getting back to your original point, swingers would not do any of those things. They do not live with 3 regular women, have multiple children with them and go to events and experiences as a family.)
http://www.scragged.com/articles/who-defines-marriage.aspx
http://scragged.com/articles/polygamy-terrorism-wife-stealing-and-nuclear-war.aspx
Polygamy is one of the few sexual deviances that contributes to very real societal problems on the macro level. Homosexuality and incest both cause health problems but those are usually fairly well contained to the group that participates.
""what you say" is usually irrelevant when prosecuting crimes;"
"The cultists describe themselves as "plural living". The refer, internally, to their marriages. Once on tape, the government has a closed and shut case. Like Patience said, it comes down to what YOU think you are. If you think you're married to multiple people, the law says that's what polygamy is."
"So then, if the government has video or eyewitness testimony that you clearly - within your circle of friends, church and family - speak about yourself as living "married" to multiple women - SHAZAAM, down you go!"
What you say certainly goes to "State of mind", and if you NEVER CLAIM TO BE MARRIED, then it supports the contention that you don't THINK you are married to multiple people.
Also:
"However, they were living in a CONCURRENT sexual relationship."
I brought up swingers because there are many of them who enter into long-term relationships with other couples or individuals, which certainly fits this portion of your argument.
Seems to me that someone wants to redefine the argument when caught in a contradiction.
And as for Thomas:
I believe that marriage should be a personal and religious issue, sanctioned by the church. The Government should have NO role in determining what is or is not a marriage. Robert Heinlein offered some interesting examples of how this would work, by the agreeing to and filing of contracts which defined the legal terms of the relationship.
But you can be sure something like that will never happen. Both political sides have too much to lose.
I never said "if you tell the cops you're married to multiple women" then there's the proof. Of course, no one would do that. That subverts the entire purpose of getting away with polygamy. No reason to think that polygamists are stupid. They can lie to the cops as well as you and I can.
The issue is proving whether you say those things OTHER PEOPLE who are NOT the government. Notice my comments on surveillance and "referring to themselves". Those actions are not happening downtown in some police station interogation room. Those actions are happening INSIDE the polygamist community where video evidence or witness testimony brings it to light.
On the concurrent sexual relationship... Another keyword there, besides "concurrent", is "living". You can't find me one example of a swinger (should you be unfortunate enought to know any) that live in a concurrent sexual relationship. Note the word "live". Now take a second and THINK about the word "live". Jumping from one concurrent sexual relationship to the next is not the same as LIVING in that state.
No contradictions here; only commenters who read too fast.
And you claimed that my example, where the group does NOT refer to themselves as married, in public or in private, would still be polygamy.
"You can't find me one example of a swinger (should you be unfortunate enought to know any) that live in a concurrent sexual relationship."
Actually, I can. But your parenthetical clearly indicates your mindset (and ignorance) about swingers.
You clearly want to see things only your way, and are quite willing to contradict yourself, while convincing yourself that you aren't, in order to hold on to your beliefs. In the face of that, further discussion is rather pointless.
Thanks for playing.
They've admitted that they can't prove child abuse either, but they want to keep 400 or more kids in the system for reasons of budget, so they'll spin that out as long as they can.
Let's talk about underage sex. Texas law makes it illegal to have sex with kids who are under a certain age REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE KID OR THE PARENTS SAY ABOUT IT. I tend to believe that such laws are a good thing, I disagree DEEPLY with Nambla:
http://www.nambla.org/welcome.htm
who are trying to abolish all age of consent laws. It seems to me that the ONLY crimes they may be able to prove are a) that a woman gave birth at an age which suggests that she had sex when she was under the age of consent and b) the child was fathered by a man who has been identified via DNA. that would make the man a statutory rapist.
They have a problem - the women RESENT the state moving in on them and messing up their lives. The women appear to be utterly unwilling to even to give their ages. Under age or not, it appears that the women love their children and want to get back to raising them.
What do you think of the age of consent laws in general? In this case, given that the women don't want to testify, does the government have the right to FORCE the women, children, and every man in the place to give them DNA samples?
The government CLEARLY doesn't have the right to keep the kids given that they have no evidence of abuse, but that won't stop them because there's so much money involved.
I claimed that your example was polygamy because any rational person understands that sooner or later you would introduce one of the women as your wife or do something that lead to that clear impression. You're suggesting that you could live your entire life with 3 women (in the role of wives) and not lead to that impression? Ha!
Since you can point out the swinger group, please do! Where? And be specific about how they "live" together as married. This I've got to see...
As for "ignorance on the subject of swinging", I will accept that remark as the resounding compliment that it is. Thank you. (But you still can't point out one and you know it :))
But there are other factors at play with the compound women. Women who are physically abused by their husbands will many times a) not report it and b) continually go back to the same man. Why is that? They do this even when there are no children involved. I believe they do it because of fear: either fear that he will find and abuse her more or fear of the unknown away from the tradition that has been provided.
I firmly believe that the same issue affects women/children in these environments as well. They fear what they do no know and they fear reprisal.
The call goes out for Alfred Kinsey...
No, just realizing that you are incapable of seeing your own contradictions.
"(But you still can't point out one and you know it :))"
Are you calling me a liar? I clearly stated that I could. Only that it would be pointless:
"And be specific about how they "live" together as married."
Umm, that was NOT the terms you originally wanted. You want to change the terms of the debate in just about every post you make.
So go ahead and claim that you're convincing me - you're not. Go ahead and claim that you're winning the debate - you're not. All you've done is prove how insane it is for me to continue beating my head against the wall that is twibi.
It sounds like twibi is considering the definition of polygamy to be:
More than two adults who
a) live together in one functional unit (which can be one big house, or a couple of really close neighborly ones)
b) have sex together (though I don't necessarily know that that applies to traditionalist Mormons, who I think restrict themselves to one man, one woman at a time)
and
c) have some sort of familial caring (which I suppose would rule out the swingers?)
The finer the definition is parsed, the more it looks like something that government can't possibly hope to make any sensible, just decisions on. It's beginning to look like, in an age where marriage is all but irrelevant to the way people live, the crime of polygamy no longer has meaning. Only in a time when marriage is expected and standard, is it relevant in any effective juridical way.
Sexual actions ON THEIR OWN do not provide proof of polygamy.
A man with multiple women ON ITS OWN does not provide proof of polygamy.
Having multiple relationship ON ITS OWN does not provide proof of polygamy.
But if you put ALL OF THOSE together and you can show that the group views itself as an indefinite, holistic married family.... in my book that's polygamy. And I think that's more or less how Utah defines it to.
All I know for sure is - there have multiple cases in the midwest where state governments have prosecuted polygamy where there were not multiple marriage certificates.
So that means one of the following things must have been true:
a) Those governments used my method of definition to gain the proof they needed.
or
b) Those governments cheated and put innocent people into jail when they had no route.
(Perhaps both were the case)
Raid on Sect in Texas Rattles Other Polygamists
By KIRK JOHNSON and JOHN DOUGHERTY
Rumors of a Texas-style police crackdown are among the constants of life in the heartland of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/us/08raid.html?th&emc=th
NO ONE in the MSM seems to be willing to ask whether the issue of who's married to whom is something government should think about. Clearly, fraud is back, a polygamist who lied about it has committed fraud. Clearly, there is an issue with respect to under-age sex, but that's independent of polygamy. Is marriage any business of government?
I would think that GLBT groups would weigh in on the side of the polygamists. Why haven't they?
Homosexuality causes health problems? How do you figure?
... That's just the silliest thing to say!
---- Incest is where people who are CLOSELY-Related Have sexual relations. And yes, IF such a couple produced a child or children, those offspring may indeed have serious health issues.
For the adults, incest (of course) causes severe Mental illness. Perhaps that is what you meant?
Really? Why on earth would you ever think that? One has nothing to do with the other...
Thomas Moore said: "Is marriage any business of government?" No!
... Not unless: There are Children --- Who CANNOT mentally consent to the marriage because of their extreme youth, Or there are Children who have been taught that they Must marry a person they do not wish to, because If they didn't they would suffer for their "Wrong" choice.
... Isn't 'eternal salvation' Promised to these young girls, If they "choose" to marry the men picked out for them?
Does that sound like a choice to you? Let me see: Heaven or Hell --- Which Would YOU Choose!
The government and liberal media have been trying for over a decade now to obfuscate the data, but it's very simple. Go to the census website or look at the CDC figures. Every year, from the first time they started counting, homosexual sex between males accounts for between 70-80% of all AIDS propagation. Another 15% is made up of dirty needle use by drug users. And the last little bit is represented by heterosexual sex, usually involving someone from the first two categories. The government, in the 80s, led massive campaigns telling everyone that they could get AIDS just as easily as homosexuals and that everyone should be worried. Twenty years later, nothing has changed. The facts are still the facts, and so we can analyze them rationally.
70-80% every year for two decades is overwhelming evidence for homosexual sex between males to be categorized as a public health crime. This may not be politically correct thing to say, but we can all be adults here and see the facts for what they are. Replace "homosexual sex" with ANY other activity and think about what the government and media reaction would be.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/05/what-does-texas.html
Details here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080522/ap_on_re_us/polygamist_retreat
While we all find child abuse to be abhorrent and we all believe that children should be protected, all too often the current system is simply used by vindictive or even abusive mothers to remove fathers from the lives of their children. This is a REAL issue, unlike the puffery of "gay marriage" and other distractions offered up by the politicians of our day.