Posted by
Phil E. on Thursday, April 10, 2008 12:26:32 AM
Suppose it were the Salt Lake City version of the Mormon temple?
Freedom of Religion?
Drinking from a fire hose
I said in my previous post that I was planning to take the computers down and wouldn't be able to finish that report with fact check links.
Yet with that post languishing, I find myself compelled to write this post. (You can see I didn't take the computers down as planned.) As with the previous post, I'll try to come back to this one and supply fact check links for what I say.
Slippery slope
This whole thing with Texas raiding the Fundamental (a.k.a. "polygamist") Mormons in Texas is very troubling. And it raises a bunch of interesting questions.
Don't fall for the lie the Salt Lake denomination of Mormonism promulgates, that the media is so quick to swallow. (That media includes those supposedly on the right, including Hugh Hewitt.)
The Fundamental Mormons are NOT a sect. They are a bona-fide religion, just like the Salt Lake denomination is a bona-fide religion. Both believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Both believe that the Book of Mormon is the Word of (their) god, period. (That is, they don't have to qualify it with "as far as it is translated correctly," as they qualify the Bible, since both believe the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on earth.) BOTH believe that plural marriage is required for exaltation (i.e. "godhood").
It's simply that the Fundamental Mormons, like Fundamental Muslims, are truer to their scripture than the more liberal Salt Lake City Mormons, who disavow polygamy and let Blacks in their priesthood when politically expedient.
Who is the Salt Lake denomination that it thinks it can simply issue Press Releases and Style sheets and declare who, and who is not, truly Mormon? But apparently the press swallows it.
Some questions:
- At what point can the government determine what is right and what is wrong for your children?
Spanking? (About to be outlawed in California.)
Home schooling? (Recently "outlawed" in California, in that a 3 judge appellate court ruled that parents have NO say in how their children are educated. Similar story in Mitt Romney's Massachusetts.)
Suppose you teach Creationism? (See Ben Stein's new movie, where Intelligent Design is double ungood.)
Or suppose you teach your children a "fairy tail" about some guy coming back from the dead? This is the logic the Chinese government uses to persecute its Christians. That Christians must be insane for believing Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
This is scary.
- Suppose it was the Salt Lake temple that the police raided?
First of all, could that even happen in Salt Lake? A lot of the cops (most?) are Mormon. (At least the ones the Christians seem to keep running into there, myself included.)
Can you imagine the howl from the Mormon church if unclean Gentile armed officers raided their "consecrated" temple and "defiled" it? (Same comment with a Muslim mosque.) This is one of those unfortunate truisms in this fallen world, where "might makes right." The Salt Lake Mormon church has the power, the money and the lawyers (if not the police) to challenge such a raid. Whereas the minority polygamist Mormons in Texas do not.
Frankly, I'd like to see the ACLU take this one up. God can work it together for good.
- Here's an interesting conundrum. Suppose the FLDS lawsuit about polygamy goes to the Supreme Court and prevails? (Per John Eastman on today's Hugh Hewitt show.) What will the Salt Lake denomination of Mormonism do?
Will the Salt Lake denomination fight against polygamy, since it's invested so much time, money and effort trying to convince us all that, contrary to their own scripture, they're not polygamists? [It's ironic, because, when push came to shove, and the government challenged polygamy in Utah, the Salt Lake denomination caved in.]
Or will they, in typical Mormon tradition, will the Salt Lake denomination forget the past and embrace modern revelation that polygamy is once again okay since it will one day be the "law of the land"?
Michael Savage has it right
I was pleased to hear Michael Savage get it right yesterday. (Tuesday, April 8, 3rd hour.) As long as no child is murdered inside the FLDS compound—or YOUR home—government has no business busting in, telling you how to raise your children. With respect to Waco, the government decided (for the children and the adults) that it was better they be killed than "abused."
Isn't it amazing that the State hasn't been able to find the alleged 16 year old girl who phoned in, saying she was being abused?
Could it be that was fraudulent call made by a former cultist? Or maybe a neighbor who just didn't like the compound being in their back yard?
Or maybe the government made the whole thing up? I haven't heard the 911 call in the press, as you usually do with school shootings, etc. Where is that call? (Of course, the government could record its own call and present it as truth.)
While encouraging young girls to marry older men isn't in my set of beliefs, I'm troubled how much we're empowering children to use the government to undermine their parent's authority whenever they don't want to do something we deem "abuse."
You're raised Jewish but, as a 13 year old, don't want to be Bar Mitzvah? (Maybe you're terrified by men in black with long beards and sideburns.) Call the cops!
Truly, there are a lot of things in the Bible that wouldn't pass the Government test today. Isn't circumcising your child on the 8th day "child abuse?" Suppose he didn't want to be circumcised?
But it's okay to murder your unborn baby. The Government approves that.
Suppose you're from the old county and believe in pre-arranged marriages? We used to do that a generation or two ago. That was the norm.
My parents, first generation Americans, were married that way. It wasn't child abuse then. Is that any different from FLDS pre-arranged marriages too?
I knew a (Salt Lake denomination) Mormon kid at work about 30 years ago whose marriage was prearranged by his parent too.
Would you call the police if you knew Abraham had started to sacrifice his son, claiming it was God's command? (But Abraham didn't kill Isaac.) Was father Abraham a child abuser?
Suppose one of your kids doesn't want to be dragged to the church building on Sunday? Call the cops?
Or maybe they don't like that you "force" them to eat their carrots and they call the police saying they're being abused? (They could always take multiple vitamins to get their vitamin A, you know.)
Where does it end?
When did the government become the parents of YOUR kids? (I heard a story a few years ago in Utah, where some parents didn't want their kid to take a certain kind of chemotherapy for his cancer. They fled the State and Utah accused the parents of kidnapping. Kidnapping their own child?! So whose child is it? The State is saying its theirs.) When your religious beliefs dictate raising your children different from the heathen, is that de facto "child abuse?"
But my main point is the duplicity that if it were the Salt Lake (Mormon) temple being raided by unclean Gentiles, there would be a totally different approach by the government. And the press.
Remember that if you're Christian. For truly, God deals with remnants and Christians will always be a minority. Who will speak up for you when the government comes for you? So you had better think about this raid on the Fundamentalists Mormons. You may not approve of polygamy, but that's not license for a raid.
And what is Mitt Romney's (current) position on the raid of his polygamist brethren?