Tom’s Big Picture

I feel really torn over the Mormon sect out in San Angelo. On the one hand, I recoil at the thought of the government taking kids away from their parents. Their practice of polygamy and teen marriage is deplorable, but it’s not acute child abuse so much as it is a warped alternative culture. What bothers me is how this is portrayed in the media, as they harp on the fact the kids wear modest clothes, don’t watch television, don’t eat junk food, are homeschooled and are polite. I think they’re pulling a guilt-by-association to smear homeschoolers in general.

And I do have a natural loathing of Child Protective Services, and all the little tyrant social workers who in their heart of hearts hate parents with a traditional view of childrearing and family, eager for the least reason to use the guns of the state to remove children from homes they deem “abusive” because they have the wrong political views. And now we learn that the whole raid was triggered by a fake abuse claim, yet they still keep the kids.

But at the same time state governments have been dealing with various sects of polygamous Mormons for over a hundred years, and they simply violate Western norms of society to such a high degree that their tolerance is impossible. But, really, they aren’t doing anything that wasn’t done in the Old Testament by Abraham or others that we admire. They’re wrong of course to do so, but still.

We’re talking about people of essentially Scandinavian descent (Mormons pull from the same high-latitude stock as the Quakers historically) with all the discipline, fertility and extended kinship solidarity of Muslims. If allowed to grow, they might be unstoppable.