From the ArcaMax Publishing, Ellen Goodman Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/ellengoodman/s-348078-348010
BOSTON -- During the Vietnam War there was a phrase that came to
symbolize the entire misbegotten adventure: "It became necessary to
destroy the village in order to save it." It was said at first with
sincerity, then repeated with irony, and finally with despair.
I have heard similar thoughts in the weeks since Texas authorities
invaded a ranch in Eldorado and rounded up hundreds of children from
the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints. Did they traumatize the children in order to
protect them? Did they shatter their lives to rescue them?
The invasion came after a tip from a 16-year-old who called herself a
victim of sexual abuse. The tip may turn out to be a hoax, but the
practices of the sect are well-known.
In the world of the FLDS, "spiritual marriage" between older men and
underage girls -- what the law defines as rape -- is given the stamp
of religious approval. Of 53 girls believed to be between 14 and 17,
more than 30 have children or are pregnant, including one who gave
birth to her second child in custody. Among the boys, too, there is
suspicion of widespread physical abuse. Indeed, many teenage boys are
routinely banished to preserve the odds of polygamy.
Nevertheless the story of children taken from parents, of families
wrenched apart, has produced enormous concern and worry in the past
weeks. Is this a rescue operation or a state-sponsored attack on
parents? Should the state enforce a set of values or tolerate
"alternative lifestyles" and religions?
These questions themselves say something about our own cultural
moment. Who, after all, doesn't do a double take when hearing that
these 'endangered children' were never exposed to the Internet or
television or processed food? The girls in their prairie dresses who
are raised for assigned men have never text-messaged or eaten Fruit
Loops or seen "Hannah Montana." The children's requests for a
bread-making machine and prayer time have led to some ironic comments
about exactly which culture is protecting children.
More to the point is the concern about separating children from
parents. Every agency balances the risks of leaving children in a
dangerous setting and the trauma of removing them. But cases are
generally weighed one at a time. What's different about the FLDS case
is that it was a wholesale roundup of all the children of a whole
community.
This makes many, like Jane Spinak, a Columbia Law professor who has
represented children in foster care, uneasy. "We may not like their
lifestyle," she says. "We may not condone the practice of multiple
women living together with a man, but it's not for the court to decide
lifestyles." Spinak remembers when children were removed from biracial
families, let alone gay families. "Lots of people live lives we don't
think are good for their children, but we don't take the children
away." Indeed, this citizen of New York archly reminds me that two
governors have admitted multiple partners in the last months without
having their children removed.
Nevertheless, what do we make of an entire sect that has sexual abuse
at its very heart? That believes plural "marriages" between older men
and underage women are not an aberration but a pathway to heaven?
Nobody can prosecute the FLDS for what they believe, says Marci
Hamilton, author of "God vs. the Gavel." "They can stay together and
believe what they want into eternity. What they can't do is illegal
action."
She compares their community to a crack house. "If you go into a drug
den in a burnt-out rowhouse and all the adults are drug addicts, how
can you leave the children there?" Hamilton calls this sect a
"conspiracy of adults to commit systematic child sex abuse."
I understand the ambivalence toward this dramatic story. The uprooting
of distraught children from pained parents strikes a primal core. And
we are aware that many state foster care systems are flawed enough to
amount to a second kind of abuse. But surely the call to understand
this sect as just another unique corner of multicultural America is
relativism run amok.
Individual hearings will begin next week. I hope that the children and
mothers will tell the truth rather than follow the admonition to "keep
sweet." I hope mothers will choose their children over obedience to
their patriarchs.
But in the end, what we have on that ranch in Eldorado is not a
lifestyle. It's a pedophile ring. If we cannot rescue children from
that, we've already destroyed their village.
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Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com