Friday, December 10, 2010

More Polygyny and FLDS Bashing

Doris Wrench Eisler disagrees with Kate Heartfield.

Incest, for instance, is against the law, and is not enforced by routine interference in the lives of families. We can't ever be sure that all cases are prosecuted and rely instead on the community of neighbours, teachers, etc., as well as the general informing and conforming effects of open media.

She's probably referring to child molestation, child rape, and rape by a close relative. All child molestation and rape should be illegal. But it is senseless to have a law that can also be applied to prosecute consensual sex between close relatives.

Polygamy in Bountiful does not fit in with this paradigm. Bountiful is a closed community whose standards and beliefs are in many respects opposed to the larger community whom they regard even as evil to be avoided, derided and opposed.

What does she propose? Forced integration? "Get on the bus!" How about social worker checks? Wouldn't that be reasonable?

Otherwise, these cases would come to light too late, if ever. "Forced marriage and rape," Heartfield asserts, "Are already illegal."

Yes, true, but again we are dealing with paradigms involving definitions. What is "forced" and "rape" to us is not the case with them.

Again, what is this woman proposing? Is Doris going to decide that consensual sex is really rape if Doris doesn't think one of the participants is desirable enough? I've known urban, nonreligious couples where I could not understand what one person saw in the other. Should I have assumed there was something sinister going on?

But surely these rights end where a man may have as many as 30 wives, of various relation to each other, and when the "freedom" involves a woman's choice between acceptance and being consigned to pariah state on Earth and to "hell" for eternity, as they are conditioned all their lives to believe

Some have left. So it is possible to leave. I can understand why someone can't imagine living a certain way themselves. Some people can't imagine how anyone could be sexually attracted to someone of the same sex. But to insist from one's personal disapproval that nobody could want to live that way or be happy living that was is arrogance.
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