flds

i've been restraining myself from posting on this, but i can't hold back any longer.

first of all, regarding polygamy - i will reiterate my largely unpopular liberal position that i question the constitionality of the marriage contract in general. there is no rational reason for the government to restrict marriage as a civil contract based on gender, race, sexual orientation or the number of participants. as the conservatives like to constantly remind us, marriage is something that is based in religion - i agree! and as such, it should be left up to the churches. i find it offensive that the government is engaged in the business of selling marriage licenses to some and not others based SOLELY upon mainstream christian principles. the separation of church and state is becoming frighteningly nonexistent.

okay, now that we have that out of the way: i'm sorry, but i fail to see how people practicing polygamy is any different from the scores of unwed mothers who have multiple children by different fathers, or men who father children by different women to whom they are not married. they pose the exact same economic "threat" to the stability of our welfare system, and while we do generally find their situations to be grating, they are not met with the same sort of disdain and contempt that we show for polygamists - instead, we shower them with social services. we need to remember that just because polygamy is an alternative and unpopular lifestyle doesn't mean it's any more "damaging" to these children than the millions of other unmarried or single-parent households in this country (and i say "damaging" in quotation makes because i question the very validity of those statistics that tell us that single-parent children are at elevated risks for x, y, and z problems. you'll never convince me that a child in a happy single-parent household is worse off than a child in an unhappy two-parent household).

now, with regard to the specific situation going on in Texas right now: i think people are missing the point here. polygamy does not always equal child abuse. child abuse does not always equal polygamy. just because they are both alleged to have occurred here doesn't mean that they're inextricably linked. these are two different issues that need to be addressed separately. so why has the uproar suddenly become about polygamy when the real, separate, pressing issue is the well-being of the 400+ children who are now at the whim of the dubiously motivated Texas legal system?

the first priority in this situation should be to figure out if these children were abused, one by one. if not, they need to be returned to their families. we can sort out the "legality" of their parent's social arrangements later. for me, that part is really irrelevant right now.

don't get me wrong - if underage marriages are occurring, then that is clearly inappropriate and illegal behavior. i do not and will never and am not implying that child abuse in any form is ever acceptable. but i still don't think that the underage marriage issue is forever linked to polygamy. two different issues. and for that matter, my reading of the reports in this case has been that the "risk of abuse" here has always been about the underage marriage of girls aged 12, 13, 14. now to throw out a little bit of legal stuff here, the standard for removing a child from a home without a hearing is "imminent risk of harm." at least in oklahoma, and i think texas follows a similar standard. now put all that together and tell me how texas has justified taking custody of girls who fall far under the age group at risk? where's the imminent harm there? and where's the imminent harm for all the boys they also removed? hmm?

the fact that the state of texas has snatched hundreds of children away from their families on the grounds that they may have been abused is horrifying to me, and it should be to every parent who reads this. has this country turned into "minority report?" every child every DAY faces a risk of abuse - at school, at church, at daycare, at the park, at home. if i get pulled over speeding on the way home, are they now going to arrest me on the grounds that i may have caused an accident in the future?

a phone call by a STILL UNIDENTIFIED and POSSIBLY NONEXISTENT woman was sufficient grounds to remove hundreds of children en masse from their homes with NO proof of abuse - do you see how easy it has become for the government to step into our lives and break up our families? where is the due process in this equation?? but yet we think it's all okay under these circumstance because the parents belonged to some sort of non-mainstream religion.

those parents - those children - have constitutional rights, too, and we're trampling all over them.