More Responses to Brooke's Blog Posters

So, a little more from the crowd on Brooke's Blog. This will be a little long but it responds to several people on Brook's blog.

Crusty,
A true child abuser, absolutely. If he did force this girl to marry him or have sex with him against her will then he deserves every bit of the 10 years.”

She was 15 years old. She had not matured enough in the frontal lobes to make informed and rational decisions. Yes, that makes it “force” even if you, she and everyone else involved disagrees.

“If he didn’t though… That is an entirely different deal.”

See above.

“Under that scenario then you’d be labeling 3/4 of the men in the Bible as child abusers.”

MANY of the men in the Bible were reprehensible by our standards. I see nothing wrong with labeling them as inappropriate with children, if that applies. However, since the age of puberty back in Bible days was closer to 16 – 19 I seriously doubt that there was as much “child abuse” going on as you’d like to claim.

“Jesus own father would be a child abuser according to your definition.”

Really? I’ve never seen any definitive evidence that Mary and Joseph even existed, much less as to what their ages were when they were betrothed/married. I wonder just what you base that statement on.

“Further, despite what you or I think of their religion and lifestyle, most of the FLDS kids, from everything I’ve seen, have been raised better and healthier than the vast majority of kids in the U.S.”

Really? When they know they can be removed from secondary school and kicked out of the group OR married off to a man old enough to be their father or grandfather (and in some cases a man who IS their step-father) and you consider that “better”? Better than what?

“Deprived? Not from what I’ve seen.”

Yes. Deprived of an honest education and an honest chance to form their own opinions in life and their own judgments of what is good and what is evil. Warren found it necessary to teach girls NOT to think for themselves and most of all, NOT to consider what they might find acceptable in a marriage. In short, he spent a lot of time teaching them not to want what the vast majority of women want in a relationship; exclusivity and respect.

Michaela,
“I have been wondering also what the circumstances of the three day labor were. I can certainly imagine very, very, very dangerously stupid decisions being made for fear of prosecution, but my labor 6 mos ago was 4 days, and I was very glad they let me go that long because I avoided a c-section rather narrowly.”

Were you in a hospital at the time? Because this 16 year old girl wasn’t and not one of the adults who should have been placing her needs first was willing to take the risk of adverse repercussions for Raymond. In short, they placed the freedom of a 38(or so) year old man over the health and lives of a 16 year old girl and her unborn baby. The girl and the baby lived, but it was just as possible that they wouldn’t have lived without advanced intervention available at a hospital. At the very least a girl that young should be overseen by a trained ob/gyn when in childbirth, not general practitioner and an unlicensed “midwife”.

FA
“So the illegality of Raymond’s “crime” would hinge on plural marriage. And that’s what it actually was, of course, an illegal marriage, and in no way a “sexual assault,” except for the way Texas defined it.”

No, the illegality of Raymond’s crime was Janet’s age – which precluded “consent” from her to sex. Yes, it was a sexual assault. The fact that you are unlikely to find a judge to approve a “marriage” between a man and child from a group known to practice polygamy is another matter altogether.

Amanda,
“If teens having sex is child abuse,”

And here’s where you go wrong. See this is a logical fallacy called “Begging the Question”. The abuse is not necessarily in the fact that the girl had sex – it’s in the fact that she CANNOT “consent” to have sex with an older, experienced, and authoritarian male. The crime is in coercing girls into sex. I don’t know of any states that don’t allow for teens who experiment amongst each other. (We'd prefer they didn't, but what we prefer and what we get are generally different things.) Parents who place their children on birth control, especially when they know those children are playing around with sex, are being protective. It isn’t healthy for young girls to have children. It places them and their children at risk. So, nice try, but you could really use a logic class if you want to engage in a serious debate. I doubt you do want a real debate, however. You strike me as more of a propagandist.