A possible reason why the Mexican, etc. families are being separated (warning: disturbing content)

Great Debates
21

I disagree.

No, it was an accusation that they were sacrificing the children in religious ritual and either drinking or eating their blood. You know, cannibalism with a dash of black magic. Please do NOT minimize what blood libel is.

No, it’s not. You’re trying to frame this as the same level of victimization of your group as that experienced by another group, and it isn’t. Blood libel was used as an excuse to murder Jews - no one is doing any such thing against your group. No one is saying “evangelicals” are murdering and eating Mexican children. Get off your hyperbolic high horse.

Cute. This is the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Saying you’re a different sort of Christian doesn’t’ get you off the hook. If you want to claim the title “Christian” you have to deal with the baggage that comes with it.

Wait, I thought you said there was a high chance these brown children are evangelicals? Make up your mind, please.

What’s the difference between adopting a child and killing and eating a child - seriously, I have to explain this to you?

Oh, the poor oppressed Christians!

Look, there is definite evidence that some Christians have adopted out or adopted children that weren’t actually orphans with the intention of “saving” them regardless of trauma caused by separating them from their living families. That’s not prejudice, that is fact. Comparing people talking about those facts to people who made up fictitious stories about a group murdering and eating children is way out of line. It’s like comparing a broken finger to having your entire arm amputated and saying they’re the same thing. No, they’re not.

22

So, what you’re saying is that it’s OK to slander someone by calling them a kidnapper, but calling them a murderer is a bridge too far? It’s nice to have a line.

It’s also nice that you get to lump 2 billion people together in the same pot. If I then make an accusation that because of Pol Pot, atheists are genocidal murderers, do I get a pass? If you want to be an atheist, you have to take the baggage that comes with it, right?

Blood libel also didn’t start with murdering Jews. Blood libel began in the pre-Christian era and didn’t come to a head until the 12th century. The first blood libel accusations of the post-ancient era was after the murder of a boy in England in 1144 and didn’t result in the killing of Jews, but a demand for a trial which was denied because church courts didn’t have any jurisdiction over Jews and the local sheriff declined to prosecute. The persecutions after this libel didn’t actually begin until nearly 50 years after the event. What began as simply a slander eventually morphed into a genocide. Unfounded accusations of vile crimes against religious or any other group are wrong. They are immoral actions that lead to much worse things. Simply saying ‘They’re too powerful to be affected by those words’ is exactly the logic used against the Jewish faith. ‘They’re rich and they’re powerful, so it’s not persecution to simply tell the truth about them.’ is pretty much exactly the words used in the 12th century. They said that the lack of prosecution against Jews after the murder was because they bought off the constabulary and the king. It’s what led to the resentment that eventually led to hangings and deportations of Jews across England.

I personally can’t believe that we’re actually arguing that calling Evangelicals kidnappers who have subverted the government into state-sanctioned kidnappings is acceptable behavior. Quite honestly, it has left the realm of reason and sounds to me to be dangerously close to the realm of bigotry. And bringing the fact that I have a tangentially related religion is just as bad. If you made the same comment about Muslims or atheists or black people or any other group you’d care to add to this conspiracy theory, I’d be just as condemnatory.

23

It’s been well documented that people have taken advantage of errors in the handling of immigrant children to conduct human trafficking.

It’s a little late to try to forestall comparisons between the border problem and the Holocaust.

24

You see, I don’t buy the notion that all sins are equal. Some really are worse than others. Kidnapping is bad. Murder is worse. Is that really such a difficult concept?

Correct. It started with accusing the Jews of murder. No one has accused your side of murdering anyone, at least no one I’ve seen in this thread. If they did, I would refute that because it is not true.

Again, as I said, I don’t think “kidnapping then adopting kids” was the main goal here. I don’t think that at all. I do think that there are people who will rush in to “rescue” the kids without considering that these kids have living families that they should be reunited with, rather than ripped away from their families and cultures and raised in a foreign land by strangers, however well intentioned. I do think that there are desperate families wanting to adopt who will attempt to do so without considering the harm they might be doing to other people by their actions.

There is ample historical precedent for separating children from their birth families and cultures. And yes, it usually IS justified by bigotry on the part of the people doing the separating. That means OUR government is guilty, OUR elected representatives, OUR country is acting in a bigoted manner, not the people pointing out these deplorable actions.

You root out bigotry in your own society not by denying it happens but by absorbing the fact that yes, your own society is guilty and needs to be changed.

You’re the one who start dragging religion into this, by making much of the difference between “evangelicals” and Catholics, pointing out Miller and Bannon’s religions, trying to appropriate “blood libel”, and so forth.

25

The problem here is that the way senoy is using the term “blood libel” is similar to the Nazis claiming that the Jews victimized them horribly - just not true. It contradicts the facts.

26

You don’t have to go that far back in time to find examples of the American governmentfacilitating this sort of thing.

27

Let’s start from the beginning. There is a claim that Evangelicals orchestrated the separation of children at the border in order to indoctrinate them into their religion.

First off, this is wrong. The article that was cited specifically said that the adoption movement was to help orphans (the article even said it was born of an impulse to do good) and when individuals found out that the children they adopted were kidnapped, they were appalled. The people in the Trump administration that masterminded the separations were not Evangelical Christians. Many if not most of the children being separated WERE Evangelical Christians. The largest Evangelical organizations came out against separations and said they were wrong and urged the government to change their policies. There’s overwhelming evidence that this claim of Evangelical separations for indoctrination is not correct. There is actually no evidence that has been offered by anyone on this post that would suggest this is true other than the fact that at other times in history it had happened. That’s like saying that Donald Trump is a murderer because in the past world leaders have been murderers. It’s not good evidence or even more than conjecture. If for some reason, you can’t get past that this is a loony theory with no evidence, you’re on a different plain of reality than the rest of us.

So from there, let’s move on to the next point. You take issue with the fact that I call it blood libel and later on liken me to being a Nazi since I used this phrase. I explained exactly why I used the phrase. It is a false and slanderous statement insinuating that a religious group is intentionally harming children for the sake of their religious beliefs. The point of the blood libel was not to incite violence, but to dehumanize a group. Accusing a religious group of hurting children for their own aims is dehumanizing. It is the exact same thing with the exact same purpose in mind. This ‘theory’ if one can even call it that is asserted without evidence and I can’t speak to the poster’s intentions, but it sure as heck doesn’t seem to me like he was advancing it in order to improve dialogue or understanding between peoples. The intention to me seemed and I apologize if I’m wrong to provoke a negative reaction against a religious grouping without evidence. That seems pretty close to blood libel to me.

As to your assertion that I’m similar to a Nazi for saying this. The difference between Nazi protestations that Jews were lying and my protestations are that the Jewish people weren’t lying. In this case, this claim almost certainly is lying. So unless you can tell me with any shred of intellectual honesty that you think that Evangelicals are kidnapping children to brainwash them, you’re perpetrating a slander against innocent people. If you do think that this is the case, then I refer you to the above. You are either irrational or you are so caught up in your preconceptions as to be dangerously close to bigotry.

28

Yes. And I stated quite clearly that I did not think there was such a conspiracy but if there was anything of the sort it was a side effect of the current Trump fiasco.

And that is to the credit of those who actually were appalled and, on top of that, made efforts to reunite the children with their biological families.

Evangelicals who adopt children make an attempt to indoctrinate those children in their religion. They indoctrinate their own children in their religion. It’s sort of cornerstone of Christianity in general to try to make everyone else Christian. It’s not that the separations are for indoctrination, but rather pretty much anything evangelical Christians are involved with is either going to be used for indoctrination or the evangelical Christians involved will attempt to indoctrinate others.

If it’s happened before it can happen again. Look, I get that the notion that our government is committing human right violations is painful, and that you’d prefer none of this be true, but the facts, while ugly, are the facts. Families are being shattered and the children split up and relocated thousands of miles away.

I did not call you a Nazi. I did use them as part of an analogy, but you know, they really did separate children from families and adopted the ones that looked “Aryan” enough out into Nazi families. Seeing families split up now and the children placed with other families really does have some disturbing parallels. There are other examples I could use - Australia’s Stolen Generation, for instance - but they are not as well know to Americans.

I explained why I disagreed with your use of the phrase. You have not changed my mind. I am no less offended. I’m not going to repeat the proper definition of “blood libel” again for you. It’s an inappropriate comparison and it’s offensive. Not the level of offense that I’d report to the mods, but still offensive.

How is stripping children from their families without hearing or trial, splitting up siblings, and transporting the children thousands of miles away NOT dehumanizing? I do wish to clarify that I don’t believe this is religiously motivated. I believe it is politically motivated. Which doesn’t make it any better or worse, it’s still awful.

29

This isn’t an issue about whether separations are bad. They certainly are. I’ve been to marches against them and written more letters and made more calls about it than I can count. They are evil and dehumanizing and quite frankly border on atrocities. There is zero argument from me on this, we’re on the same side. It disgusts me that our leaders would implement such a policy and it disappoints and saddens me that the people on the ground actually chose to go along with it.

Unfortunately, that is not what this is about. This is about the OP saying that the reason for these separations is because Evangelicals want to kidnap children and indoctrinate them. That’s ludicrous for the above reasons. It’s also ludicrous because the people perpetrating these separations have been quite blunt about why they exist and it’s to ‘scare’ impoverished people into not attempting to emigrate. When they admit an already horrible motive, why is there a need to bring some other group into it and invent an even more heinous motive for them? It’s libeling a religious group with no evidence and contrary to facts for some unknown purpose.

30

What a coincidence, just two days ago I listened to The Dollop podcast, episode 328: “The Arizona Orphan Battle”.

In short: in the early 20th century, there were two little towns in Arizona where birth rates had plummeted due to (probably) fumes from the local smelting operations. New York City, meanwhile, had a “street urchin” problem, with lots of kids living on the streets with no parents (and some kids who got scooped up by mistake, despite having parents, but we’ll leave that for now). A French priest in the AZ towns called a NY orphanage, which agreed to send children for adoption if they were arranged with Catholic families (the orphanage was run by nuns, and most of the orphans were Irish-Catholic). The priest agreed, and the children were put on a train and headed west.

When they arrived, they were given to the families who had applied and been approved by the priest. Most of the adoptive families, however, were Mexican, which didn’t sit well with the white folks in town (who were actually the minority, but of course made better wages at the same jobs because racism). They formed a mob and essentially took the kids away from their Mexican-Catholic parents and gave them to white families. The priest, who was from France and thus not as racist as the average American, didn’t see all this coming, and he was run out of town. Lawsuits were filed, one even finding its way to the Supreme Court (New York Foundling Hospital v. Gatti, 203 U.S. 429 (1906)). A choice excerpt from the opinion: “…the child in question is a white, Caucasian child…the petitioner, on or about the 1st day of October, 1904, brought the said child to the territory of Arizona, and abandoned him to the keeping of a Mexican Indian, whose name is unknown to the respondent, but one financially unable to properly clothe, shelter, maintain, and educate said child, and, by reason of his race, mode of living, habits, and education, unfit to have the custody, care, and education of the child…”

History is fun.

31

What religion is a 1 or 2 year-old child? Is that something that happens at birth? Can you detect their religion by any test at that age?

32

I’ve never heard of an adoption from Russia or Romania that worked out well. We’re talking about kids - WHITE kids, no less - who almost always end up institutionalized because their problems are so serious, they not only cannot live with their families, they cannot live in the outside community.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were a number of well-publicized cases of families who had to give back their legally adopted children after it was discovered that the biological father’s identity was known, and he had not surrendered his rights. This is another reason why international adoption took off in popularity.

33

As much as I despise the current administration, I just can’t believe that it has sunk THAT low.

34

Um… why?

Evangelicals indoctrinate their own children, why wouldn’t they indoctrinate children they adopt?

Most likely parents offering to adopt these faux orphans have good intentions, but the fact remains that when highly religious parents adopt they impose their own religious views on those children.

Orphan girls have ALWAYS been at risk of sexual exploitation. So have orphan boys, for that matter. Orphan children are terribly, terribly vulnerable whether they’re real orphans or forcibly separated from their parents.

35

I will attempt to explain it once again as clearly as I can. This claim is not about whether parents raise adopted children to have the same beliefs that they do which is again pretty inarguable. I raised my adopted daughter to believe that education is good and that democracy is a fine thing and all sorts of other things that I believe. The original poster’s claim is that

THE REASON THAT CHILDREN ARE BEING TAKEN FROM THEIR PARENTS AT THE BORDER IS SO THAT EVANGELICALS CAN ADOPT THESE KIDNAPPED CHILDREN AND INDOCTRINATE THEM.

I’m not sure what you’re missing here. You’re all over the place with strawmen and strange arguments. There is a very big difference between ‘Evangelicals raise any children they adopt to believe as they do.’ and ‘Evangelicals kidnap children so they can raise them as Evangelicals.’ Kidnap is really the key word.

36

It’s all because we can’t adopt Russian kids…

37

And I have stated repeatedly that I don’t believe there is a deliberate strategy to destroy these families and adopt out the kids. I don’t believe “creating” adoptable kids is the goal here.

It might be a side effect though.

38

The administration’s clear goals are to be racist as fuck, to cater to their racist/nationalist constituents, and to try and blackmail democrats by putting guns to childrens’ heads. It is quite clear that the administration doesn’t give one single flying fuck what happens to these children themselves - they’re just pawns in a four-dimensional game of beer pong.

Of course, given a shitshow like this where valuable commodities like babies and sexually available girls are being tossed about with perhaps imperfect oversight by their apathetic captors, it would surprise me not in the slightest if sharks and vultures began to circle. The situation wouldn’t be that the government deliberately sells off the kids to christians/sex traffickers/christian sex traffickers, but more that the administration would be looking for a place to put these pawns and Christie McTraffic just happens to be offering to handle it.

39

Most or all of the children involved are Central American, not Mexican. I don’t say that to be pedantic, but Mexico has enough economic and political clout to challenge policies that the smaller and poorer Central American states cannot. Mexicans are generally deported fairly quickly with little fuss.

I think the intent is simple, and I take Trump administration officials at their words for once, it is to make migration to the United States a profoundly unattractive option for even a desperate person from Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador.

40

This regime routinely commits outrages that would have been considered “ridiculously ludicrous” if someone had described them in a work of satirical fiction three years ago.