I have been amazed (in a bad sense) by the story of the raid by the State of Texas on the Fundamentalist Mormon compound in El Dorado and the removal of 460 children. It is indeed incredible that such practices are allowed to persist in the 21st century United States.
When it comes to religious fundamentalist movements and other reactionary and fascist groups, there is no better source on the Internet than the blog Orcinus (David Neiwert’s blog, with co-author Sara Robinson). In this cas, Sara Robinson got the thankless task of reporting on this and in this post (which is well worth a read), she recommended Daphne Bramham’s book, The Secret Life of Saints - Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect. I fully trust Sara’s judgment, so, I got the book and, boy, it was quite a read. Read more
If you don’t know anything about the Fundamentalist Mormon, this is the book you want to get the full historical and social context of a sect that has tentacles in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Idaho, South Dakota and British Colombia in Canada. Even though the title indicates a focus on the Canadian side of the sect (Bramham is a journalist for the Vancouver Sun and she has a blog there as well), the book includes a lot on the American branch of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FDLS, which has been in the news so much recently).
Ok, yes I saw the Wright speech on CNN tonight. I know I saw it because I just saw another thread on corrente where Wright talked about the right-brained creative black child vs the wrong brained who-gives-a-damn white child. I thought that I had fallen asleep on the couch and dreamed that. Now I have to reconcile reality with um reality. Yes, Virginia this is 2008 not 1846.
Letting that sink in.
Wright went on to say in a tone that was as if all whites during desegregation ran and met in a big assembly room and said “we know what to do, they are right-brained creative AFRICAN children, we will desegregate thus keeping them down forever and ever!” Read more
According to a 2003 article, the FLDS’ “Bleeding the Beast” strategy extends to keeping school-district posts, with the attendant salaries and control of the schools’ budgets, at least in Arizona, even after the FLDS withdrew its own children from the “apostate” schools. In a session of the Texas legislature about that same time, at least one Eldorado lawmaker was paying attention:
Rep. Harvey Hilderbran of Kerrville, alarmed by reports from Eldorado, the Utah attorney general and sect members who had fled the group, helped push new legislation into law in 2005 that raised the legal age of consent to marry in Texas from 14 to 16, that made it illegal for stepparents to marry their children and made officiates liable for performing illegal wedding ceremonies.
“We didn’t want to facilitate the things we knew they had been involved in before, including child abuse, sexual abuse, forced marriages, that were clearly detrimental to the safety and welfare of children,” Hilderbran tells NEWSWEEK.
“It’s not in the best interest of a 14-year-old girl to be forced to marry her uncle or stepfather or any other man in this cult, because the men are being rewarded for their obedience with these child brides.”
That, right there, is the key to it all — Read more
Annotated highlights from President Bush’s “Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools”:
… America’s inner-city faith-based schools are closing at an alarming rate. And so that’s why we’ve convened this summit: to discuss how we can extend lifelines of learning to all America’s children (without properly funding public schools, that is).
The problem is, is that while the No Child Left Behind Act is helping to turn around many struggling schools, there are still children trapped in schools that will not teach and will not change. (Student: “Teacher, what is 7+5?” Teacher: “That would be telling!”) Read more
Harry Reid thinks the Feds aren’t doing enough to investigate and prevent child abuse among polygamous communities. In San Angelo, meanwhile, the DNA testing and foster placement continue.
Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, a House Public Education Committee member who has served in the House since 1993, said the issue is a legal one.
“In all the years I’ve been in the Legislature, nobody has come to me with anything near a compelling case, or even a suggested case, that we should make a priority of greater inspection or regulation of home schools or private schools,” he said.
Y’all wonder how W got away with so much in Texas, Read more
The market value of Yearning for Zion Ranch exceeds $21 million — with the approximately 80,000-square-foot temple valued at $8.7 million, according to the county tax appraiser. One of the county’s biggest taxpayers, the sect paid last year’s $424,000 bill on time.
There is little mystery about the source of all the money and manpower it took to build the ranch, according to dissident FLDS members, who still live at the sect’s historic home on the Utah and Arizona border.
They say before Warren Jeffs was arrested in August 2006, the sect’s self-pronounced prophet aggressively solicited the faithful at its base in Colorado City, Ariz., for donations of cash and labor to build its “New Zion” in Texas.
Yet the money didn’t all come from inside the FLDS. Some came straight out of the contracts and Small Business Administration loans taxpayers’ dollars fund. Read more
“It’s dangerous for our children to even know your philosophy exists!” With Dems like these, who needs Iran? Seriously, I’m with Zorn: if this had been a Jew or Christian sitting in that chair and an elected rep harshed on their brand of faith? We’d never hear the end of it. But atheists are fair game, because we hurt children, or something.
Nice to see so many supporting comments at the original post, too. We’re legion, a true silenced but growing population and the fundies should fear us. Because they do our work for us, and make belief look bad all on their own.
Mike Finnigan alerted me to this clip, specifically the section between 3:15 and 5:40.
Seems to me that Fox News and ABC have some ‘splaining to do about why they left out a noteworthy context: that Wright’s citation of America’s “chickens coming home to roost” on 9/11 began with his attribution of the phrase to a white ambassador named “Peck,” whom he says — in the original, now controversial sermon — made that statement on a Fox News show.
Especially for Fox, putting aside that network’s “forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” exemption, stripping out this context is the kind of thing that used to be called unacceptable journalism.
As for Wright, however, I don’t find this additional context exculpatory. Regardless of how much his “roost” rant is a quote, paraphrase, riff, or whatever, he is still enthusiastically rationalizing the wanton murder of 3,000 innocent civilians. For some inexplicable reason, that doesn’t sit well with me.
Now, one has to wonder… did Obama know about this fuller context when he wrote his legendary speech of last week? It’s hard to believe that his staff didn’t comb over the “offending” source material, that they didn’t talk with Wright about the controversial sermons — and that no one brought the “white ambassador” context to his attention.
Why, then, didn’t he bring it up?
Even though I’ve been critical of Wright, I felt honor-bound to share this additional information as soon as I heard about it. Yet Obama didn’t, and
I am seriously puzzled about that. Read more
AL catches this interesting development about Saudi women:
The kingdom’s first hotel exclusively for females opened yesterday, offering plush lodgings with a full-range of health and beauty facilities for ladies to pamper themselves, away from the accusing eyes of a male-dominated society.
“Inside this physical structure, we are all women,” said the Luthan Hotel’s executive director Lorraine Coutinho. “We even have bell-women. We are women-owned, women-managed and women-run, from our IT engineer to our electrical engineer.
I see potential for a lot of subversion in something like this. Not that I ever will, but let’s say I’m a moderate Western businessperson and I have need to do something in the Kingdom. I’d patronize this place just for the statement it makes. I’d like to believe some of the women who own it also encourage other women to strike it out for themselves. Kingdom women are so restricted, but I bet they are just as competitive businesspeople as men. What do you think? Can anything good come from “gender apartheid?”
In Numbers 16, YHWH kills nearly 15,000 Israelites — the equivalent of about 15 Jonestowns, or 400 Heaven’s Gates.
Unlike with those crazy cults, he had an iron-clad reason to snuff out his people: they had murmured their displeasure about being dragged into a wilderness and condemned to rot there, and not receiving the promised birthright of a land of milk and honey… and also about seeing 250 of their princes summarily buried or burned alive.
Can you believe how sick some people can be? Complaining about that! Thank God, literally, for the moral values and system of justice to make things right.
Which of our candidates will propose that grumblers are dealt with in that uplifting and noble manner? Read more
The Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm is coming Easter Weekend, March 21-23. If you wish to participate, write a post to your blog in favor of the Constitutional guarantee of the separation of Church and State, and submit the URL via this online form.
Harvard University has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week, a move to accommodate Muslim women who, for religious and cultural reasons, cannot exercise comfortably in their presence.
As I see it, separate is inherently unequal.
I won’t think this is fair until someone like myself — a non-alpha male — also has the option of attending a gym whose locker rooms aren’t packed with menacing Dittoheads. If only I had God on my side….
Dildo Freedom now available in Texas. Good on you kids for joining the 15th century. Check out that whole “no slaves” concept, it works up here. Anyway, enough of slamming TX, lots of good people down there and I’m glad they are all free to reach orgasm in the comfort of their own home. “People complained” about a woman selling sex toys (and lame, bougie ones, at that) but nevermind the strip clubs or adult magazine shops that are all over the place? Hmmm. But I’m glad I found this link to the older story about her arrest. Someone finally said plainly what this is all about:
Gloria Gillaspie, a pastor at Lighthouse Church in Burleson, said she has met and counseled some women who had talked to Webb about the products she sold.
“It was causing problems with their marriages,” she said
Translation: some women had discovered how to orgasm, and their husbands didn’t like that, because they were inadequate as husbands. And Jesus didn’t seem to have much to say on the matter that was helpful. Thou Shall not Use a French Tickler? Read more
In a single sentence in one story on religion in the United States, CBS Evening News managed to insult the vast majority of the American people. Describing a major new study on Americans’ religious faith from the Pew Forum, CBS’ Wyatt Andrews suggested that atheism in particular and Americans’ widely shared belief in a secular society in general is immoral:
“The unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America. To the surprise of many experts, Americans are still deeply religious, with 84 percent of adults claiming a religious affiliation.”
So we’re asking why some people won’t stop it, and why others who don’t deserve it must suffer. I guess the moon is in that phase, or something, because driving around running errands today, I caught a few minutes of this guy on the radio. Ehrman’s journey is one I can completely understand: from teen evangelical who converted to save himself from “hell,” to ministry student and biblical scholar, and finally to atheist. I guess he’s written some famous books too; they said Misquoting Jesus was a bestseller and that makes me glad. Today, he was talking about the book of Job (among other stories) and although I didn’t catch all the show, I wondered if he considered that part of the story that has always increased my atheism. Specifically, Job’s wife and kids. Read more
In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.
Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.
Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened. Read more
In a sane world, this would be explosive news that would lead to world governments coming together in a massive judicial and law enforcement effort. Can I call their BFFs “traitors” now, please? Wild-eyed conspiracy foilsheet The Guardian
Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE. Read more
EJ has a new book out, about religion and politics in America. I was just skimming some info about it, and I came across something so wrong, so wholly illustrative of “the problem” it struck me mute and paralyzed for a moment. I’m hesistant to try to write a response. But it is also so simple! Sometimes I really am impressed with the mastery of Kabuki our Village players demonstrate:
E. J. Dionne is this country’s single most knowledgeable writer on religion and politics. Approaching this subject so central to the American experiment as a person of faith as well as a seasoned political reporter, Dionne brings an understanding and knowledge to the topic unique in the current debate.
