Mormons are silly
But it's their right to be silly
I'm not going to lie, I think mormons are goofy. Reading magic rocks in a hat is silly to me. Beer costing like $35 in Utah because of special mormon taxes doesn't make sense to me. Buuuuuuuuut, what I personally feel about reading magic rocks from a hat doesn't define what someone else can do. That's why we live in America (and why I don't live in Utah).
Why am I prattling on about magic rocks? Well, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is one interesting crew. With Warren Jeffs now in prison (as a self proclaimed prophet, shouldn't he have seen it coming?) it makes the rest of them an easy target. Take for example the Yearning For Zion Ranch in texas.
So a guy goes and buys a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere. He then has a bunch of people start building a giant compound on said land. Odd? Maybe. Wrong? I think not. Maybe he's building a resort or something. It's a free country. Well, as it turned out he was building barracks and a giant church so that all his lil buddies could go live on a ranch in the way they saw fit. Man, even if it is a little creepy that still sounds like America to me. So, they like looking like they're from the 50's and doing stuff the hard way. That still doesn't seem any more boneheaded than being Amish to me.
Queue the nosy neighbors. Everyone in the area didn't really know what they were up to, and human nature kicked in. I mean obviously if they're up to something sinister if they don't act like everyone else, right? So the Sheriffs fly planes over and people get whatever glimpse they can. Nothing really seems amiss aside from a way of life to which outsiders can't relate. But last I checked, none of this is a crime.
Now in all fairness, we're also sitting around listening to the trial of Warren Jeffs who is off making cousins marry and do it, be they underage or what have you. So people being people it's easy to see imaginations running wild. But they still didn't really have any reason to suspect anything, and last I checked you're innocent until proven guilty here in America. This is not China. We do not have murder buses (sadly).
So then, in a most convenient turn of events a 16 year old girl from the Ranch
makes a call to social workers and says she is being abused by a 49 year old
man. BAM. Ladies and gentlemen, we have an excuse to finally get in there
and have a look around. So everyone they could find with a badge descended
on the Ranch 4 days later.
And so far this sort of makes sense. Nobody wants a child molesting cult running
around. The problem is: they had no real reason to believe that's what it
was other than a phone call from a mystery girl who as it turns out was NEVER
EVEN IDENTIFIED OR LOCATED. It might as well have been the damned tooth fairy
making that call. And even at that, pissed off kids make calls like that to
get revenge on their parents. It happens. Normally there would be some follow
up investigation I would think, as is proper to sort the wheat from chaff.
In this case they decided to swarm the Ranch, take all of the women and children
into custody, take away all of their cell phones and then seperate the women
from their children... all without ANY formal charges being filed. Does anyone
else smell bullshit?
Yes, they did find some teenage girls pregnant. You know what? I see that
every day walking down the street. Go to a high school. This isn't specific
to their stupid hat rock worshipping compound. Suspicion alone doesn't constitute
a crime. And for that matter if the abuse was as widespread as one would assume
it must be to justify a raid like that they probably would have found SOMETHING
by now. One of those kids would have pointed to a naughty place on a doll
and said bad touch or SOMETHING. I'm not saying it didn't happen. But I AM
saying it probably isn't anything more than proportional with the rest of
society.
My personal feelings for their religion aside, I wholeheartedly support their right to pursue it. The same rights that give me the liberty to sit and mock the whole situation on one little page of the internet that nobody will read are the same rights that should allow them to live as they see fit. We don't pick on the Amish, and I'd put money on them having the same levels of corruption, abuse etc as anyone else.
There are certain rules everyone can agree with. Do not steal, rape, murder and all of those. They are echoed by almost every major religion and more importantly by common sense itself. There are those that would argue that because they were born into the lifestyle of the ranch they never had a choice. Well the same could be said for anyone. Think about how you were born and raised and about what constraints you aren't even aware of because they've always been there. You could list parallels all day. They're doing things differently. That doesn't make them any more right or wrong than the rest of us because everything is relative after all.
I say they should be restored to their familes and homes immediately, and until they can find something they're actually doing wrong with normal investigation they should be left to do whatever it is that they do.