posted on April 24, 2008 11:27:28 AM new
Sent to us by a psychologist brought up in the LDS faith, no longer active.
April 23, 2008, 6:25 pm
Faith of Our Fathers
New York Times
Watching the polygamists in West Texas come into the sunlight of the 21st century has been jarring, making you feel like a voyeur of some weird historical episode.
You see these 1870 Stepford wives with the braided buns and long dresses, these men with their low monotones and pious, seeming disregard for the law on child sex — and wonder: who opened the time capsule?
But when Texas authorities removed 437 children earlier this month from the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints they did more than give Larry King something to talk about between anorexia stories of the stars. They gave us all a glimpse into what a religion was like before it took on the patina of time — with the statues, murals and polished narratives.
Religion has always been about faith and a certain degree of mythology. It’s pointless to argue whether the Red Sea actually parted, or if Jesus turned water into wine to keep a wedding party going, or if the freezing of the Mississippi River was one of the miracles that allowed early Mormons to flee persecution and build a theocracy in the desert.
Faith is a moving thing; witness the throng in Yankee Stadium who came away in a fever of fellowship after listening to the Pope last weekend, or the 55,000 moved to practice random acts of compassion by the Dalai Lama at Qwest Field in Seattle two weeks ago.
But religion can also be used as an excuse for awful behavior – from the torture of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, to beheadings by Jihadist killers, to the sexual manipulation of children by early Mormons and their latter-day sects.
Mormonism is the most homegrown of American religions, and the fastest-growing in the Western Hemisphere. There are more Mormons in the United States than Presbyterians. The church has been vocal about denouncing the renegade Mormons in Texas, and quick to point out that it abandoned polygamy in 1890, as a condition of Utah’s statehood.
For a long time, though, the church was at odds with basic American ideals, and not just because old guys sanctioned marital sex with dozens of teenage girls. What you see in Texas — in small part — is a look back at some of the behavior of Mormonism’s founding fathers.
When Mitt Romney, in his December speech about his religion, said, “My faith is the faith of my fathers — I will be true to them and to my beliefs,” he was taking on a load of historical baggage.
His faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.
It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.
Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.
As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”
Smith was also a commander-in-chief of his own militia, and a candidate for President, running on a platform of “bringing the dominion of the Kingdom of God” over the United States. His successor, Brigham Young, married 57 women – a harem that attracted curious libertines like Sir Richard Burton to study the American social experiment.
And when the church set up a huge polygamous theocracy in the West, President James Buchanan was forced in the 1850s to send an army of 2,500 – nearly one-sixth of American forces – to uphold the law.
The church did not give up its sexual practices without a long fight. As late as 1880, as Jon Krakauer notes in his book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” Mormon leaders preached that polygamy was above the laws of the land. The church’s then-supreme leader, John Taylor, said that polygamy “has been handed down directly from God. The United States cannot abolish it.”
Fast forward to this century, when the polygamist group makes the same argument at their West Texas compound and at their earlier one in Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border. I was at that Colorado City compound, twice in the last four years. It spooked me: the gnarly old men and their child brides, the creepy guards in their pickup trucks, the sing-songy women tending to a dozen children in houses the size of a Motel 6. They were ripping off the state, living on welfare and food stamps, even as they defied civil authorities.
In Colorado City, I spent time with DeLoy Bateman, a high school science teacher, who told of losing his daughter after church authorities ordered her to leave her husband and marry her father-in-law – a man twice her age.
And despite the best efforts of the wealthy, modern Mormon church to leave a big part of its past behind, some Mormons still support the defiance of modern-day polygamist leaders, judging by the comments of Saints who are appalled by the breakup of the compound in Texas.
“Back then, we were the ones in the compound,” wrote Guy Murray, a Mormon lawyer who writes a blog on his faith. He should be applauded for his honesty. But I’m not sure I’d want to be holding that baton of belief, passed through years. Sometimes, the faith of our fathers is better left to the revisionists.
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Without reliable evidence that children are being abused by a parent, there is no justification to remove children from their homes. It's especially disturbing to know that healthy children have been removed from their homes based primarily on their parent's religious beliefs...beliefs which do not condone or promote criminal activity.
posted on May 2, 2008 07:20:34 PM new
Helen, why do you think that the children were removed just because of the parent's religious beliefs? From ABC News (April 6):
Texas police raid Mormon sect after abuse claims
Posted Sun Apr 6, 2008 12:08pm AEST
Police in the US state of Texas are investigating possible child abuse in a breakaway Mormon church led by the jailed Polygamist Warren Jeffs.
Local police raided a ranch belonging to the sect on Thursday after receiving reports that a 16-year-old girl had been physically and sexually abused.
Local police entered the retreat to look for evidence of a marriage between the 16-year-old and a man aged 50.
The warrant to search the property said the girl had a baby eight months ago when she was 15, but under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental approval.
Warren Jeffs, the head of the church, is serving 10 years in prison for being an accomplice to rape. He was convicted after he forced a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
Authorities say almost 200 people have been removed from the retreat since the raid, most of them girls.
The ranch is part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which split from the mainstream Mormon church more than a century ago.
I don't believe that any type of sexual or emotional abuse is acceptable. The problem that I see with this situation is the outrageous removal of over four hundred children by a police force with automatic weapons and an armored vehicle, based on the allegation of ONE child who cannot be found or may not even exist.
How can you believe that the civil rights of so many families should be abused based on rumor or based on guilt by association or based on a philosophy that the ends justify the means?
posted on May 2, 2008 08:27:18 PM new
OMG Helen, there is a clear pattern of forcing 14 year old girls to have sex with 40+ year old men, then forcing them to marry when legal age. Their leader also mandated that all dogs be shot two years ago. If I loved a child in that community, I would feel relief that they were being removed. This is not about religious freedom, it is about child welfare.
posted on May 2, 2008 11:08:34 PM new
Forty-one of the children have had broken bones, some multiple bones broken. That's an awfully high percentage.
Many of the young girls have either given birth recently or are pregnant.
And let's not forget--welfare checks and food stamps went to all but the "real" wife in those plural marriages. If that isn't fraud, what is?
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posted on May 3, 2008 12:52:09 AM new
My thoughts are that the children should have been kept with their mothers for now even though I believe that they are being abused by having to accept blind obedience as a way of life. Not all foster or group homes are safe and a child could perhaps be more harmed in one of them than in the compound they were already in. Government workers don't always make the best decisions and some aren't qualified to know what's best for a single child let alone over four hundred of them.
For years now, women and young adults that have escaped or left the religion have told stories of children being taken from their mothers and moved back and forth within the cult to different compounds within the US and to Bountiful, B.C.and related the pain it's caused to both the mothers and the children who were separated.
To me it seems as if the children lead a doomed life within the cult but if so many are taken from their mothers who will take care of them as group homes are already full of kids no one wants.
posted on May 3, 2008 07:34:30 AM new
Pixiamom, Review my comments more carefully and you will find that I made no reference or statement about religious freedom as it pertains to this case.
posted on May 3, 2008 07:45:13 AM new
"It's especially disturbing to know that healthy children have been removed from their homes based primarily on their parent's religious beliefs...beliefs which do not condone or promote criminal activity". I guess this is where I got it from. The children were removed because the girls were threatened with sexual slavery at a young age.
posted on May 3, 2008 10:09:56 AM new
I can understand how you might misinterpret my remark as about freedom of religion.
But freedom of religion is about the right to practise the religion of one's choice or to be a non-believer.
This case may contain an element of discrimination against a religious group since all of the children who were forcefully removed from their families were associated with the same organization.
There is an interesting discussion about this issue here with a few more opinions that are interesting.
Right now, I'm going out to play with my daughter's new Tom Tom GPS navigation device.
...if you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps 'the' religion; and if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect; but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult." Leo Pfeffer.
posted on May 4, 2008 05:53:02 PM new AMARILLO, Texas - Now living hundreds of miles away from their rural Texas homes, some children at the center of the largest child abuse case in U.S. history are asking to bake bread.
They want a wheat grinder and a place to plant a garden. They want to pray twice a day - sometimes with siblings, sometimes all together. And when the spirit moves them, they want to sing.
Four hundred and sixty four children suddenly without a mother or father... Well, I guess the powers that be have determined that they are better off motherless and fatherless separated from their siblings. Is this the lawless way that Americans now protect children from possible abuse?
posted on May 4, 2008 11:20:27 PM new
Sorry. These were the most devout members of the cult who pledged absolute obedience and their daughters at a young age to whatever man the leader saw fit. The poorer young men were expelled from the cult- their children and wives dispersed among the older and wealthier. I think the children need to be taken to a neutral ground until this all sorts out.
posted on May 5, 2008 06:37:20 AM new
Why aren't the individuals suspected of abusing and raping children in Texas arrested, charged, tried and if found guilty, imprisoned? Or is this rumor of child abuse a deceptive ruse.
We can be thankful at least that those who removed the children with automatic weapons and a tank did not murder any children that they were sent to "save" as happened in Waco when ATF agents killed 21 children.
I believe very few messages that our government broadcasts through their media outlets. The message that fathers are raping children with the approval of mothers and that little boys are having their bones broken by that same group of mothers and fathers is designed to appeal to the same members of our society who believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to fire in 30 minutes.
posted on May 6, 2008 12:04:13 AM new
ST0NEC0LD613, you cut off part of my remark. I believe the children should have been kept with their mothers 'for now', while the investigation takes place, even if they have to be supervised.
Those mothers abused those kids just as much as the men.
Somehow I find it difficult to jump to the conclusion that all the mothers were knowingly abusing their children or allowing them to be abused by others or that all the children have been abused. Women that have left or escaped the cult have stressed how important it was to take their children with them. None of us know how many of these women truly want to be there or how many want to get out.
posted on May 11, 2008 08:34:10 AM newThe problem that I see with this situation is the outrageous removal of over four hundred children by a police force with automatic weapons and an armored vehicle, based on the allegation of ONE child who cannot be found or may not even exist.
It happens everyday in the family courts system everytime that they take kids away from their otherwise loving fathers, just so they can put you in the system.
