Both sides now
Like many people, I read the news from Eldorado, Texas, with a pre-emptive fear. I feared another Waco. They feared another Waco, sending a horde of ambulances and fire equipment out with with police. Thankfully, Waco II never materialized, and, as of this writing, 534 women and children have been "removed" from the compound.
As many of my readers know, I’m not religious. I’m vaguely spiritual in a woo-esque manner. I find organized religion to be, on the whole, suspect; in general I think that it’s yet another way for humans to exert control on one another, using their "privileged" interpretation of written texts about mysterious omniscient beings to exhort their followers to do This Thing or That Thing, and collect money at the same time.
Certainly, this particular offshoot of Mormonism (not mainstream Mormonism, by any means) has its fair share of that entire outlook on religion. Young teenage girls are married off to older men with nary a yea or nay allowed. Those older man–pillars of the church, all–get a bevy of lithe, untouched girls of their very own. The younger men…well, they’re SOL. Gotta pay their dues, work their way up through the church ranks, become one of the Chosen, before they, too, can partake of the youthful bounty.
And yet.
And yet.
"Imminent danger" says the warrant. How many were in "imminent danger"? For how long? Why was it suddenly necessary to do this?
In the pictures, I see women and children who are weeping and confused. Being ripped from their family lives, thrust into the national spotlight, children sent off to foster families, women off to (I suppose) shelters.
"They have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it." These are the words of one woman who left the compound with her children years ago.
What will these people do?
What will happen to these children?
How can a judge claim that all of them are in "imminent danger", when a week ago they were just living their lives and only one girl called in seeking help?
I am so torn. I despise a culture that keeps women barefoot, pregnant, and strictly limited in their life’s choices. I cannot condone girls being thrust into sexual relationships at the ordering of some church elder. At the same time, I think of, say, my dotter being suddenly ripped from our household and stuck in a foster family, with absolutely no idea why, no concept of it.
If the authorities had reason to think that specific girls or children were in "imminent danger", then those girls/children should have been removed. Not the wholesale splitting of families that this raid has engendered.
In addition, a similar raid back in the ’50s led to the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints withdrawing even further from the world, isolating themselves and producing a societal situation where it was "us against them". This raid will no doubt cement that feeling within this group…making it more difficult to effect change or move in when there is obvious and substantial evidence of abuse.
posted in News, Religion | 6 Comments
