Last Sunday a friend’s parents were in an auto accident and her mom was killed. I don’t usually refer to a crash as an accident, but this one appears to have been. Having researched a number of crashes and talked to many highway patrol, county sheriffs, and city cops it is clear that the vast majority of crashes are not accidents – they are caused by driver inattention. They are not caused by speeding. They are not caused by mechanical failures of the vehicle. They are caused by inattention. A crash caused by inattention is NOT an accident. Some of these weren’t paying attention because they were drunk, most though were not drunk. They were simply stupid. They were stone cold sober but not paying attention to what they were doing.

Back to my friend. Her parents were friends of mine as well and it obviously came as a shock to a large number of us. Something that was really interesting to me is that over the past week it was my friend’s husband who seemed the most shook up. My friend’s dad was clearly sad, but handling things as well as can be expected. They’d been married for 37 years and were just beginning their retirement. They truly loved being together and had looked forward to an active retirement. My friend was sad over the loss of her mother and the grandmother of her 3 young children but she was mostly concerned about her dad and how he would manage. My friend’s husband? He was about as close to his mother-in-law as anyone I’ve ever known and while he was sad about loosing her, he too was concerned about his father-in-law but he was also hugely concerned about his wife and about his children’s loss of their grandmother. Just an interesting observation.

The saddest sight of the week for me was my friend’s father sitting by the coffin saying his final good-bye to his wife before they closed it for the funeral. I’ve never been one to get very choked up about things, but that sight got me.

Today came word that J. Palfrey, the DC Madam, appears to have committed suicide after being found guilty, not of prostitution, but of using the mail service to, well, mail things. Had the money she mailed been earned making porn films or telling old folks that they needed to send in $50 for a bottle of miracle water all would have been fine, but since the money was believed (she was never convicted of prostitution) to have come from prostitution (of consensual adults), well… Hers is the second apparent suicide from this same investigation as a woman who worked for her and was also a University professor apparently killed herself as well when her extra job was revealed.

Conspiracy theorists waisted no time claiming that Palfrey had not committed suicide but was killed to keep her from revealing names as part of a sentencing plea deal. She had over 15,000 customers in a 10 year period and many are believed to be fairly high ranking government and related folk.

This follows by a day the story of Susan LaFevre who, when she was 19 in 1974, got busted for Heroin and was sentenced to 10-20 years. This after she’d been told a guilty plea would likely result in 1 year probation since this was her first offense. Well, after a year in jail she managed to escape, moved to California, reformed her life, and over the past 32 years got married and had a number of children. By all accounts she did reform herself and has led a production life ever since. The authorities are saying that she now needs to serve at least 9 years of her original sentence though may get a few more tacked on for her little escape. Is this the best thing for society or her children?

Some things just don’t smell right. Today the FLDS website (http://www.fldstruth.org) began filling in their Q&A section. This included:

Q: Are women forced into marriage?

A: No. The young girls are taught all their lives that marriage is a sacred choice that they must make. They are taught to keep their bodies covered and live a life of cleanliness and purity according to the teachings of our Savior.

I don’t doubt that this is a truthful answer, but is it an honest answer? Is this truly a choice? Is a girl completely free to say that she doesn’t want to marry some guy who’s been chosen for her? Is the choice really one between marrying the chosen groom or being put out of the community and separated from family and everyone they’ve ever known for the rest of their life? Technically that’s a choice, just not much of one. Are girls taught all their lives that when the time comes they MUST make the choice that is given them? Are they taught all of their lives that if they don’t ‘make the choice’ to marry the chosen groom that they will spend eternity in hell?

Q: Even if a young woman had the desire to leave the ranch, would she be allowed to leave with all her children?

A: If any one in our communities desire to leave, there is no one that will stand in the way. We have had women who have decided to leave that have taken their children. We have had women who have decided to leave their children with their loving fathers and the mothers who wanted to stay with him. We are taught to think for ourselves and make our own choices.

As above, are there caveats to ‘free to leave’? Is it perhaps free to leave, but if they do they will never see their family again, they will never see any of the only people they’ve ever known in their lives again? What kind of choice is that? And though the official position may be that people are free to leave, how many individuals might act differently? What might an individual husband do if his wife takes off with their kids? In what ways will he threaten her?

Now, to put all of this in a bit of perspective. For most people who grew up prior to the 20^th century, including all of those in our Christian Bible, the choices offered within the FLDS were likely the norm. Parents chose spouses for their children; sometimes purely on their own, sometimes with input from a tribal or other spiritual leader, sometimes with input from the bride and groom, sometimes without. This doesn’t necessarily make it right or wrong, but the FLDS is far from an aberration.

Also, given all of the problems in our society, I can certainly understand a group wanting to stay as separate from it as possible. On more than a few occasions I’ve thought how nice it would be to gather together a bunch of like-minded folks and form our own community. A community where we have similar beliefs with regard to how we raise our children and what we teach them about drugs, sex, personal and corporate responsibility, obesity, integrity, and a host of other issues.

I can also understand people wanting to choose a spouse for their daughter (or son). I haven’t been through having a child marry yet, but many of my friends have and many of us have seen disaster waiting at the alter. There is an abundance of wisdom and insight that is gained after years of marriage that younger folks simply do not have. The groom is an absolute dream romantically, is good looking, and is overall a nice guy. But, he has the work ethic and morals of a noodle – no disrespect to rigatoni intended.

OK, back on topic. I don’t particularly like being lied to or misled and here I felt misled by the FLDS. I still believe that based on what we know so far that the Texas Authorities were wrong in their response. I still believe that they way over-reacted. I still believe that it would have been much better to have not removed anyone from the YFZ ranch but instead to have begun an investigation and removed only those people who had clearly violated the law or who were clearly in danger of real abuse.

As much as we in America like things to be black and white, as much as we like everything to come down to good guys and bad guys, that’s not always the case. In this one both sides appear to have their issues.

Teen brides marrying older men isn’t exactly old history for Texas where yesterday the Houston Chronicle noted: ‘State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran became alarmed by reports from Eldorado, former sect members and the Utah attorney general. In 2005 he pushed into law a bill that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16.’

In 2001 and 2002, the years just prior to the FLDS moving in, the State of Texas issued legal marriage licenses each year to over 800 girls under the age of 16 and many were for these women to marry older men:

Aside from the FLDS the State of Texas certainly doesn’t appear to have any problems with young girls marrying or with them marrying older men. Each and every year between 1966 and 2005 the State of Texas issued more marriage licenses to girls under 18 to marry men twice their age (Example: 178 in 1970, 51 in 2001) than all of the girls they’ve claimed have ever been abused in the FLDS community.

Even in 2006 with it’s new minimum marriage age of 16 the State of Texas issued marriage licenses to 3 14-year-old girls and 25 15-year-old girls. Presumably these were before the law took effect.

There are currently an estimated 58,000 children in Texas who were born to girls under 16. About 60% to single teen moms. How many of them do you believe will have a better life than those growing up in the FLDS?

It’s all well and good to get historical perspective, and it’s important, but now we get to the question that is of paramount importance – have we done the right thing? What are we saving these kids from? Or more importantly, what are we saving them to? Will their life be better after being ripped from their parents, placed in foster homes, moved around from foster home to shelter to foster home, and setup for a life in our ‘normal’ world?

What impact does it have on a 4, 7, 10, or 17-year-old child to be ripped from their parents and told that their parents are being investigated by ‘the authorities’? That their parents are criminals? Parents who have likely been very loving and caring? If their parents are completely 100% innocent of breaking any law have we helped these kids?

Even if their parents are guilty of polygyny are we making any of their lives any better? Even, and many will be aghast at this thought, if their parents are guilty of telling a 14-year-old to marry a 40-year-old who already has 2 other wives?

My first concern is foster care itself. It is an important and valuable system, but is not even remotely perfect. There are some absolutely great foster parents in the US whom I have a great deal of respect for. Congresswoman Michelle Bachman and her husband, whom I have known for almost 2 decades (though sometimes don’t see quite eye to eye), are absolute saints when it comes to Foster Parents. And they’re far from the only ones.

There are also a lot who are found to be very poor parents and sometimes abusers.

Most studies indicate that about 25% of kids in foster care, whether in private homes or institutional group homes, are abused. Is having hundreds of kids suddenly thrown at an already overloaded system likely to improve that any? Current reports indicate that out of the 437 kids in Texas custody there are between 5 and 20 who are either already parents or pregnant. That’s at best 5% – assuming all 20 were under the legal age. Now, which environment do you believe is better for these children – the one where 25% are likely to be truly abused or the one where 1% ( or even 2% or 5% or 10%) are likely to be married off prior to 18 to a husband who will very likely stick with them for life? Many people are calling this latter situation rape but think for a minute about the two scenario’s.

We criticize them for polygyny, but is this really worse than our society of serial polygyny? Is growing up in polygyny really worse than growing up with parents who divorce, remarry someone else, and then divorce again – all the while spewing hatred towards their former spouses – the parent of their children? Is the FLDS really worse than the unwed teen mothers who abound in so much of our society? In the FLDS a teen mom has a husband that in all likelihood, according to evidence and testimony, loves her and cares for her and their children? How many of the 437 ripped from their parents will become latchkey kids who come home from school to no parents and nothing but Grand Theft Auto to entertain them?

We’re aghast at these kids having one father and multiple moms, yet how many kids in our ‘normal’ society don’t have a father at all because he’s in prison, off with another woman, or simply gone because while he wanted to make a baby he doesn’t want any part in raising one? How many of these non-FLDS kids end up thrown in to group homes or scuttled around between relatives because mom is a drug addict?

If these kids become part of our mainstream ‘normal’ society will they follow the rest of our teens with 25% getting an STD? How many will become alcoholics or drug addicts? Will any get drunk and kill someone in a drunken driving accident? Will they achieve the same level of obesity we have? How many will face bullying in school similar to that which caused incidents such as we witnessed at Columbine? How many will become bullies?

Almost 5% of 15-19 year old girls in our ‘normal’ society give birth. Would you like to take a guess how many of these women have husbands and how many of their kids will grow up with a father? How many of these children will grow up to be just as responsible as their own parents? How many will grow up to be criminals?

The number of girls in our ‘normal’ society who get pregnant is considerably higher than 5% though. How many of these 437 kids will follow in our practice of getting abortions to avoid an undesired pregnancy?

It takes a rather extreme amount of gall and ignorance to think that we’re helping anyone by pulling these kids from their homes without overwhelming evidence that real true abuse is happening and knowledge that they will clearly be better in institutional group homes or foster homes in our ‘normal’ society than in their cloistered environment.

Given the world we live in who can blame the FLDS for wanting to separate themselves from it?

If we are going to go after people we need to do it for the right reasons and most importantly we need to make sure that our actions do not create a worse situation than already exists.

Oh, the beds in the temple mentioned earlier? According to several people, including harsh critics of the FLDS, this was very unlikely to have ever been used for sex. These were most likely for people who were not feeling well to lay down during very long church services or after fasting.

Beyond their marital practices there are some very genuine concerns with the FLDS.

The Lost Boys. Natural birth rates do produce more girls than boys (for every 53 girls born there are about 47 boys). By marrying age the ratio is skewed even more due to wars and higher risk taking by males. So, if everyone is to be married then we’d naturally have about 12% of marriages polygynous – there simply are not enough males to go around. Add to this a belief by some that a higher number of males prefer to remain single than females and you have a requirement for even more polygynous marriages. None of these natural causes though provide a high enough female to male ratio for every man to have multiple wives, let alone the 3 wives that the FLDS teaches are required to reach the highest levels of heaven. Enter the problem of the lost boys. An estimated one-third or more of teen and adult men are expelled from the FLDS to create the desired ratio. A number of excuses are provided for this, usually that they have committed some sin. This practice, especially when the one kicked out is very young or is married and forced to leave his wife and family, is absolutely abhorrent.

Allowing polygyny from natural ratio’s is one thing. This is another. And it’s truly an atrocity. It’s also interesting to note that during the late 19^th century when the entire Mormon church was practicing polygyny in Utah, there were very likely many more men than women so it would be difficult to argue that polygyny was naturally necessary.

Real Abuse. I am not going to jump to a conclusion that sex between a husband and wife, regardless of their ages and of their marriage being legal or celestial, is abuse or rape. Even if we determine that she was coerced in to the marriage at 14 – if she and her children now want to remain with her husband I would likely support that as a better outcome for all than having the children ripped from their family and placed in foster care.

What I’m talking about here is men or women molesting or raping girls and boys who they are not married to in any fashion – legal or celestial. Sadly, I’m sure that it happens within the FLDS just as it does in every part of society. Whether it’s worse or not I don’t think any of us knows.

Even many of the staunchest critics, including most who left the FLDS, say that childhood within the community, through mid-teens anyway, is pretty good. Parents are overall very loving and caring. There are a number who say that discipline could be rather strict or that the mothers sometimes treated their own children better than the children of sister-wives or than husbands and wives argued and disagreed. Then again, how many of us didn’t complain about the discipline we received from our parents or witness arguments? If we’re judging the tree by it’s fruit though we’d have a difficult time criticizing the FLDS too much. According to everyone who’s come in contact with them over the past several weeks the FLDS kids are well adjusted and on the whole extremely disciplined and polite. Perhaps we could take some parenting lessons from them.

There are more serious complaints though. Warren Jeffs nephew says that he was sexually molested by his uncle and school principle Warren. Mary Macklin is a former FLDS member who has accused her father of molesting her and her husband of molesting her children. I don’t disbelieve either of these or the other similar stories of abuse within the FLDS (or Catholic church or Baptist, Muslim, or Atheist). Unfortunately, you are likely to find similar abuse in almost any group of 12,000 people. The people who do these things need to be prosecuted and these are cases where children should be removed from a home, hopefully to be placed with relatives or family friends though, not in institutions.

Freedom of Choice. Do people in the FLDS have freedom of choice? If someone wants to leave the FLDS can they freely do so? How free is anyone, male or female, to decide that they do not want to marry a person who has been chosen for them? Do they have some place to go if they do leave?

What rights do parents have to raise their children as they see fit? Do parents have the right to educate their children at home or is public school compulsory? Do parents have the right to teach their kids about Creationism or Darwinism or Evolution? To teach them that they should wait until marriage to have sex? To teach them that homosexuality is normal or wrong? At what point does the state step in and say that taking a 14-year-old to church against his will is abuse because the church teaches that homosexuality is wrong or that [something liberal]? What rights do parents have to discipline their children?

At what point do we say that the state will do a better job of raising our children than parents? There are certainly instances where it is necessary for the government to step in and remove children from truly abusive situations. At what point though do we cross a threshold where we’ve lowered the bar so low that we’re doing more harm to the children and society than the harm done by the parents?

Remember that people choosing their own spouse instead of their parents choosing for them is an extremely new concept in human history – and by many measures it’s not working out so well. A Jewish friend of mine with a tradition of arranged marriage once told me that while most people fall in love, get married, fall out of love, get divorced – we marry and then fall in love.

How do you insure the safety and freedom of people within a community such as the FLDS while at the same time respecting their right to practice their religion as they see fit? More on this later…

Hooray for the authorities down in Texas for saving 416 kids from imminent danger! Polygyny, arranged marriages, child brides, teen parents, beds in the temple. Something must be done. And it has.

I’m no fan of polygyny, I personally consider even 18 too young to marry in our day, and there is no shortage of Mormon teachings with which I disagree. However, was uprooting 416 kids from their parents and throwing them in to group homes the right response?

It’s important that we put this entire situation in context. We need to understand the historical perspective, the current situation, and what to do to avoid a catastrophe like this in the future.

Background: Who are the FLDS?

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? They are the original Mormons.

The Mormon church ‘officially’ renounced founder Joseph Smith’s teachings on polygyny in 1890 so that Utah could become a state. Polygyny however continued to be fairly widespread among the Mormon faithful. In 1905 a stronger and real stance against Joseph Smith’s and Brigham Young’s Polygyny teachings caused a split – some of those adhering to Smith’s teachings remained and just kept a low profile but most left and formed their own groups. The FLDS is the largest of these surviving groups and the one generally believed to most closely adhere to Joseph Smith’s original teachings, not just with regard to polygyny, but other areas as well. There are believed to be somewhere around 12,000 FLDS members today.

They believe in the Bible (the original LDS translation) and in Jesus Christ as Savior. They believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that God gave them the Book of Mormon through Joseph Smith. Similar to the Pope for Catholics they have a single head of the church referred to as ‘The Prophet’. The current prophet, Warren Jeffs, is at this time serving a prison sentence for aiding in the statutory rape of a minor for his part in the marriage of a 19 year old man to a 15 year old girl.

[Edit 5/21/08: A couple of people have pointed out to me that the FLDS did not officially split from the Mormon church until around 1932, not 1905 as I said above.]

Perspective: Some History

Most people today, when they hear about men with multiple wives, arranged marriages, and teen girls getting married, are quick to label those involved as abnormal or perverts. Let’s take a look in the family closet.

Polygyny. “Polygyny is wrong. Of course it is…” Really? We may not like it, or agree with it, or understand it, but is it inherently wrong? Many Christian leaders scream that allowing homosexual marriage will lead to the worse sin of polygyny. Would this be the same polygyny featured throughout the Old Testament? The same one that the God of the Old Testament gave explicit rules for how to practice and how not to? The same one where God told David that if all the wives he’d already given him were not enough that he’d have given him more? When did God change his mind?

Like it or not polygyny is never condemned in the Bible and in fact is both directly and indirectly condoned. It is not a part of the Greco-Roman culture we’ve inherited in the western world, but it is not anti-Biblical. Perhaps more on this later.

Teen Brides. For the first 50 to 100 centuries (or more depending on when you believe humans first inhabited the earth), up through about the 3^rd or 4^th century after Christ, the average age of first marriage for women was about 14 with most marrying between 13 and 17. It rose to around 16 over the next 2 or 3 centuries as marriage was delayed for some due to changing economic conditions. About 2 centuries ago, with major shifts in numerous areas of society, it jumped up a bit more and for much of the 19th and 20th centuries bounced around between about 19 and 22. In just the past couple of decades though, with more women devoting time to post-graduate degrees and careers, its risen rather dramatically to around 24.

The minimum acceptable age has never really changed though. It’s remained steady at about 12 or 13 throughout all of history until our own generation. Until maybe the 1970’s nobody would have batted an eye at a 14-year-old marrying. As recently as 1970 (yes, that is recent for some of us) 4% of marriage licenses issued by the State of Texas itself were to girls younger than 16 including 3,602 15-year-old girls, 1,460 14-year-old girls, and 55 girls under 14. Their husbands included 2 50-somethings, 7 40-somethings, and 41 in their 30’s. And this was after years of decline in marriages by those under 16.

Interestingly, from looking at legislative testimony, the reason the minimum age began to be raised in the past few decades does not appear to have been so much for the protection of young girls, but because we no longer had a society and culture that supported newly married couples as previous cultures had. This was compounded by women entering the workforce and the two-earner family becoming more of a norm (and for some a requirement?) Those marrying at the traditionally younger ages were more and more finding the going very tough.

In the end however, while we may have reduced the number of 14 and 15 year olds getting married, just as many are having sex and producing babies. Now they just do it without the benefits of marriage. That sure has worked well hasn’t it?

Arranged Marriage. As recently as the late 19^th century people would think you absolutely nuts to suggest that two people should choose to marry based solely on their choice of each other. Stephanie Coontz said it best in her ‘Marriage, a History’ something like marriage is too important to leave up to something as fickle as love and romance. Arranged marriage has actually been the norm throughout all of history until just the past century. With the high divorce, single-mother, and teen pregnancy rates, and the problems that come with them, there are a growing number of people thinking a return to arranged marriages might not be a bad idea.

Now, while historically marriages were officially arranged, it was not always a do or die scenario. Anecdotal evidence indicates that many parents strove to arrange marriages that were at least somewhat agreeable to their children. It is also clear, from Biblical and other historical accounts, that women were not treated like chattel, as some would have us believe, but were often independent and highly regarded.

Persecution: Who?

So we stand aghast at the polygyny, teen brides, arranged marriages, dress, and other elements of FLDS lifestyle. We scream that these people are all perverted. Yet historically, they’re more normal than we are.

For many of us who study history, even as rank amateurs, the FLDS doesn’t seem all that strange. They actually seem quite familiar. Their lifestyle, not just with regard to sex and marriage, but many other areas such as living in a tight-knit homogeneous community, is actually very much like that of the Hebrews throughout the old and new testaments or Christians during the first millennium after Christ. We in modern society are the odd ones out. Polygyny, arranged marriages of teen girls, close-knit homogeneous and supportive tribal community. Our Jewish and Christian forefathers, FLDS, or both?

So, what we consider controversial or perverted today was normal from the beginning of the world until just very recently.

For Christians, Jews, and anyone else who worships the God of the Bible and believes in the Old Testament perhaps some editing is in order before criticizing the FLDS on these issues.

First we need to cut out all of the verses giving laws for polygynous marriages such as Exodus 21:10 which states that if a man takes another wife that he may not reduce the food, clothing, or sexual rights of his current wife or Deu 21 where God states how a man is to treat his children if he has 2 wives. Lev 18:18 and others may need to go as well.

2 Sam 12:8 needs the axe because we certainly can’t have a verse with God telling David, through Samuel, that if the multiple wives he’d already given him were not enough, he would have given him more. Last I checked God didn’t actively support things that are sinful.

Finally we must remove the entire book of Song of Solomon. This is after all a love sonnet, and a rather erotic one at that, from a man to his bride. Most scholars I’ve read generally believe it to be a 40-something Solomon to his 13-year-old and 60^th bride most likely in an arranged marriage.

Some will point out that Solomon was convicted of sin for his marriages. Indeed he was, but this was specifically related to some foreign women he’d married later in life who he’d been specifically warned not to marry. He was never condemned in any way for multiple wives, the age of marriage of any of them, or for agreeing to an arranged marriage. Nor for that matter, was anyone else in the Bible ever condemned for any of these.

Oh, what about Mary and Joseph? Was Jesus raised by a pervert? In all likelihood Joseph was in his 20’s or 30’s and Mary was about 13 or 14. For that matter was David a pervert? Solomon? Want to take a guess how old Moses and Zipporah were when they got married? Tell me, if Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Joseph, or any number of other Biblical patriarchs who married girls half their age or had multiple wives showed up at your church would they be welcomed? Or would they be turned over to the authorities as perverts?

Perhaps the question for us Bible believers then is do we believe in this Bible of ours or not? Unless we edit our Bibles how can any of us who believe in the Old Testament be too critical of the FLDS for these things?

I’m not suggesting that we should return to polygynous men marrying 14-year-old girls in arranged marriages, but I do think we need to be cautious about how judgmental we are of others. The FLDS may in fact be more Biblical than us.

Well, I’m giving in. I’m doing a blog. Hope you enjoy.