I kinda like that Uni-brow Zombie spokeswoman they had giving a tour of the joint on CNN. Had hair like a Primus video.
I’ll bet she doesn’t nag about clothes on the floor.
[QUOTE=fram40]
If this thread is going to distinguish correctly between pedophilia and statutory rape, we should also distinguish between polygamy ( many men and many women) and polygyny (one man many women)
This selt practices is polygyny
[/QUOTE]
The dictionary is your friend:
[QUOTE=vison]
There wouldn’t be any abuse to assist in if the men were gone.
[/QUOTE]
Doesn’t matter. The alleged activities are criminal. People who assisted in the crimes are also guilty of crimes.
I’ve been using the term alleged so nobody will pop in and say “They haven’t been proven guilty yet!”
[QUOTE=burundi]
While listening to the coverage of the FLDS child abuse case in Texas, my husband and I started wondering, why don’t FLDS men just wait until girls are 18 to “marry” them? It seems like it help keep them out of trouble with the law. (On a creepy side note, it also seems like an 18 year old’s body would be able to handle childbirth better than a 15 year old’s.)
Is there a rationale given for marrying underage girls? Is there some big spiritual reason why waiting until the girls are 18 and legal is a problem?
[/QUOTE]
They are sick pervs, who justify their sick perversion by a twisted set of religous ethics that almost no one else accepts.
Human History starts with History, ie civilization and the written word. Before that it’s either archeaology or mytholgy, not *history.
*
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
We have outlawed natural sexuality.
[/QUOTE]
Natural =! good.
Smallpox is natural. So’s snake venom.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
But **Walloon **was absolutely correct-- there is no factual answer to the OP.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t see why the FLDS people couldn’t have a doctrine, either written or verbal, that justifies the jailbait weddings. Something along the lines of, “Since Mohammed had four wives, so can we” only Christian.
[QUOTE=vison]
Take the men away. All of them. Lock them up and then have really slow trials. Let the wheels of the law turn exceedingly slow. Drag things out for years. And years. And years.
[/QUOTE]
Funny. That’s my solution to the “Republican problem.”
[QUOTE=vison]
TI don’t grant much slack to a 50 year-old man who “marries” a 14 year-old girl. Or an 18 year-old, for that matter.
[/QUOTE]
The heart wants what it wants.
Short answer: it takes too damn long.
However, I’m amazed at the comments in this thread about what is morally right or wrong. The US states don’t all agree on the minimum age for marriage. Shouldn’t there be some allowance for groups who think differently from the norm? If it’s legal to marry at 18, how can it be a heinous, moral violation at 17.99? (A legal violation, sure)
Isn’t morality and sin something between people, their religion, and the family? Can’t we allow for religious and regional differences? Must we all think alike on such personal matters?
Yes, I am among those who think that a hands-off policy is the best one, in the absence of coercion, restraint, kidnapping or torture. So far, in this case, the girl who complained hasn’t been identified, the allegations haven’t been substantiated, and someone suggested the complainant could have been a 40yo disgruntled man instead of a teen girl. Pretty flimsy excuse to uproot the entire community on a witch hunt.
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
You are assuming an awful lot. For the vast majority of human history, females got pregnant in their early teens. Until very recently, it was common for females to get married after they reached puberty. It is only a “sick, fucked-up system” because of assumptions we make in modern Western society.
We have outlawed natural sexuality.
[/QUOTE]
As NinetyWt correctly points out, the age of menarche has been swiftly declining from the late teens to the early teens, so, no, throughout most of human history, girls did not bear children in their early teens.
You are correct, however, that we have “outlawed natural sexuality” in the sense that most women now have more effective control over their reproductive lives. In the US, women no longer face the prospect of bearing nine, ten, eleven children in relatively rapid succession, wearing out their bodies and condemning them to years of ceaseless pregnancy and nursing. All to the good as far as I can see.
And I feel quite comfortable stating that any community that denies women and girls agency in who and when they marry; that drives off young boys so they won’t compete with old men for women; that keeps its women ignorant and terrified so they can’t escape is a sick, fucked-up system. It was true for the Taliban and it’s true for these people.
[QUOTE=vibrotronica]
Maybe, but I would argue our attitudes toward sexuality are better than “natural”. We emphasize individual choice. The “natural” way is sexual slavery. We may be apelike, but we’re not apes. We’re post-enlightenment humans.
Still, though, I believe consenting adults should be able to choose whatever sexual relationship they want. The problem is that these kids can’t give meaningful consent.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that and there’s the fact that we live a lot longer now, starting in the 20th century. If you know that you only have roughly thirty years to live, then starting to try to have children at 14 or 15 would be the norm.
I don’t think at anytime in the last two thousand years of Western civilization did people commonly died in their thirties. Such a low life expectancy at birth comes from the effect of a high infant mortality rate.
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
The heart wants what it wants.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think you have the correct organ.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
I don’t think you have the correct organ.
[/QUOTE]
Tell it to Woody Allen.
[QUOTE=burundi]
As NinetyWt correctly points out, the age of menarche has been swiftly declining from the late teens to the early teens, so, no, throughout most of human history, girls did not bear children in their early teens.
[/QUOTE]
OK, I was probably wrong about the age (I would like to see more research), but woman did have babies as soon as possible.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
The bottom 50 countries have a life expectancy of under 50. Would that change the equation.?
I do not think it is about age as much as it is about the girls not having the ability to choose or agree. They would be too young to be able to make such a decision. It certainly seems they are being forced into a life altering change with no input.
[QUOTE=Musicat]
Short answer: it takes too damn long.
However, I’m amazed at the comments in this thread about what is morally right or wrong. The US states don’t all agree on the minimum age for marriage. Shouldn’t there be some allowance for groups who think differently from the norm? If it’s legal to marry at 18, how can it be a heinous, moral violation at 17.99? (A legal violation, sure)
Isn’t morality and sin something between people, their religion, and the family? Can’t we allow for religious and regional differences? Must we all think alike on such personal matters?
Yes, I am among those who think that a hands-off policy is the best one, in the absence of coercion, restraint, kidnapping or torture. So far, in this case, the girl who complained hasn’t been identified, the allegations haven’t been substantiated, and someone suggested the complainant could have been a 40yo disgruntled man instead of a teen girl. Pretty flimsy excuse to uproot the entire community on a witch hunt.
[/QUOTE]
Well, if state age limits vary, then do we not allow for regional differences already?
Also, there seems to be evidence of “coercion, restraint, kidnapping or torture” and substantiated allegations (20 pregnant teens) that needs to be investigated, not ignored. The judge has decreed there is ample evidence suggesting of abuse to keep the kids not only from the fathers, but now from the mothers, also.
At this point, another reason the kids are not being returned because the parents cannot be identified with certainty, hence the DNA testing. This is directly caused by the parents lying to authorities.
At the beginning, the men lied about “Sara” saying there were no “Sara’s” on the ranch…there were 5. When asked to bring the children under 17 out, the only supplied about 15 kids. Someone asked a pregnant- looking teen how old she was. Instead of answering, she looked to the nearest male who said “You are 18” which she then parroted to the questioner. When the house by house search was conducted, 400 MORE children were located and many pregnant appearing teens.
When the mothers and kids were removed, there was great difficulty in ID’ing everyone. The kids’ mothers gave different answers at different times regarding their names and the name and number of their children. The kids were often unsure of their own names or the names of their parents (5 moms, no dads). The mothers were seen to “switch” kids between interviews, obscuring the identity of the children. The fathers were found to be calling and telling the moms/kids what to say or not say.
And that was in the first 4-5 days. Something really stinks here. I’m glad Texas is doing what the other states have been unwilling or unable to do.
[QUOTE=Cisco]
Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescents. Fifteen year old girls are physically mature. They are statutory rapists.
[/QUOTE]
I’d suggest that we consider this term:
I’m not sure if it applies, though. I suppose if the FLDS men in question continue to desire their child brides when said brides are in their 20s, they’re not proper ephebophiles.
I have a living great grandmother who was 15 when she married my young (but adult) great grandfather. I’m not going to accuse grandfather of ephebophilia: he kept granny around for 60 years or so.
I caught Larry King last night and he had several of the women on. They spoke so much alike that it had an eerie Stepford quality to it.
[QUOTE=Walloon]
I used to be a professional genealogist, and dealt all the time with marriage records from the U.S. and Britain going back to the early 19th century. And I can say: the incidence of teen marriages in the 19th and early 20th century has been greatly exaggerated in modern belief. It was very rare that I found a girl marrying before 16, and uncommon before the age of 18.
[/QUOTE]
However, onset of menstruation was also much later. And it is fairly regional.
Another point is that teenagers are little balls or hormones that want to have sex. Marry off the girls, and exile the boys, and you keep the teenagers from sinning. I have a friend who has a fundamentalist Christian brother with several daughters, and (until his children got to be the age and he realized he was screwy - he’s actually somewhat sensible) he intended to marry them off with parental permission as soon as it was legal (16 in his state) because he thought sex was inevitable as a teenager, and sex within marriage was better than sex outside it.