Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?

A long time ago, politicians learned how to farm outrage as a method to grow political power. That is nothing new, and has gone on since long before the days of the US, probably since before the dawn of recorded history. Over the last few decades, they hit on a winning formula-child abuse, especially child sexual abuse. This was the rationale given for the invasion of the Waco religious cult. It is the same rationale given for the taking away from Mormon parents of their children in another Texas community.

Of course, sometimes shit backfires. What happened at Waco was a call to arms for many Americans, but aside from the attack on the federal building at Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, nobody did much of anything except complain.

Now, a federal appeals court has declared the seizure of Mormon children was unjustified. They will soon return to their parents, who nevertheless face some restrictions as to travel outside a sixty-mile radius, in addition to a requirement to attend “parenting classes”. They are still trying to sort this case out in the meantime.

The whole case is a sham, a political creation based on a sham-the woman who made the call to the authorities is a scam artist with a bone to pick. She pretended to be a teenage sect member in fear for her safety, yet she actually made the call from where she lived in Colorado. This brings up a whole other question. Doesn’t the state and county authorities of Texas have caller ID? Of course, they recorded the call, but apparently not the place of origin, which is also suspicious.

Most of these LDS branch cults actually stay within the law. Contrary to popular belief, most males within these sects have only one wife-only one, that is, recognized by law. All the other “wives” the man might take are, technically, concubines. This in itself is legal. Other sect members, of course, recognize the relationships as spiritual marriages. As such, this binds the husband in the eyes of the sect as much as in a legal marriage. Moreover, the sect views the children of such concubines as every bit the legitimate heirs of the husband and father as they do the children of his first and legal wife.

Of course, this does create an atmosphere in which the sect members find themselves secluded from the outside world, and this can lead to the potential for abuse. This is where the state comes in. Unfortunately, for the state, the abuse in the Texas state, so far as can proven, is the exception and not the rule. That is assuming there is any abuse at all, which is questionable. After all, as far as I know, no arrests have been made, and for the most part this seems to be a matter of guilt by association. Convicted pedophile Warren Jeffs is the “Prophet”, thus leader, of the sect.

They are a strange group, to be sure. The women dress in pioneer type clothing, wear no make-up, and wear their hair in buns, in what seems to be a calculated effort to desexualize their appearance in order to lessen the potential for lust among the men. For the most part, they seem to be happy and content with their lives, love their children to whom they are devoted, and are madder than hell at the authorities, yet understandably though still remarkably restrained in their public utterances.

Now that the State of Texas has stirred this hornet’s nest, here they are trying to herd all of them back to the hive. They are making that attempt now, while pretending to insure to the safety of the children and the fitness of the parents. After the next election, all of this will fade into the ether.

They seem to have jumped the gun when adhering to the words of a handful of disgruntled former members. After all, there are disgruntled members and former members of just about everything. The state of Texas may have made a fatal error in concluding that their word was sacrosanct. It’s too damn bad they rarely if ever pay such heed to the views of disgruntled former voters.