I just want to issue this warning to authorities, lawyers and pundits: before passing judgment on the FLDS philosophy and lifestyle, study the Amish first. There many similarities between the two societies and it's conceivable that the attributes that we find repugnant in the FLDS communities might also exist in the Amish communities, a society widely admired in America.
I grew up around the Amish in northern Indiana. The average person knows very little about how the Amish raise their children or their lifestyles. The one thing not present in the Amish community is the FLDS's forced marriages between young girls and older men. I've never seen any evidence of that, but it is possible that girls in Amish communities marry at a younger age than in the outside community.
The Amish are a closed society, they send their kids to their own schools that only prepare them for life in the Amish community. Is this okay, or is it child abuse? I've also been privy to stories of life in the local Amish community and, if true, it's possible the Amish could be at risk of facing some of the same criticisms the FLDS is facing.
The point here is, what we find reprehensible in the FLDS community might be present in a community of people we widely admire. We need to make sure the decisions we make in the FLDS case aren't fueled by our disgust of their sexual practices.
NEW: I posted this post as a comment to an Orcinus post about the FLDS and received some interesting feedback:
Mrs Robinson -
Trakker, you raise a valid question, and one I may yet get to. I'm a
direct descendant of a northern Indiana Amish great-grandmother -- and
have a house festooned with her quilts -- so this one's close to home.
The difference is choice. Amish kids do graduate from high school. From
there, they're encouraged to go out into the world for a few years and
see how they like it. Some stay, but about two-thirds of them decide to
come back and make their adult lives among their own kind.
The girls don't marry until they're of age, and have had this
experience of the world. The boys get jobs that pay them a living wage
-- nobody's dumped in town, or forced into slave labor. Young couples
are encouraged to have their own homes and farms -- the clan patriarchs
do not control who lives where, and do not have the power to evict
people.
It's a closed society -- but being Pietist in their theology, they have
retained a strong commitment to the sovereignty of individual choice.
The FLDS does everything it can -- to a degree I find stunning -- to
undermine people's ability to choose. And that, in my mind, has made
all the difference.
Beezer -
Trakker, I don't know about the Indiana Amish communities, but in
Pennsylvania they are Anabaptists meaning that they are not baptized in
to the church until they are adults. As teenagers usually around 16 -
18 they are sent out to the experience the 'English world' during what
is called Rumspringer. During this time they can take advantage of
everything from phones, to driving cars, to TV, to the internet, and so
on. If they decide to rejoin the community they are baptized then marry
in the church.
Most do go back. But the point is they make an effort and the kids are supposed to make an informed decision.
Of course, there have been problems, spousal abuse, child abuse, some famously, but that is true in any culture, closed or not.
They may face some of the same criticisms as the FLDS now that this has
started. But they have lived side by side with modern culture for
decades and are friendly and well respected in the area. It is also
important to note they they do not wall themselves off in compounds.
NancyP -
Trakker, the other difference between Amish and FLDS is that the Amish
allow their young adults to spend a year or two in the outside world
before permanently settling down to the Amish lifestyle (being baptized
and brought into the adult church community). If they want to leave the
community and not come back from "rumspringa", that's up to them. The
community has no desire to keep adults who prefer the English life.
And so on.
Evidently I didn't make it clear enough that I understand there are many differences between the two societies, that I am concerned about the similarities - that if we're not careful we could end up defining certain FLDS behavior as abusive only to have it used against the Amish, Hutterites and similar communities.
Here is how I responded:
A couple of comments about the Amish. In Indiana I was under the
impression that Amish children's education ended at the eighth grade.
Wikipedia confirms this.
Years ago, before the draft ended, males of draft age in Indiana were
bussed to Indianapolis for a physical that determined our draft rating.
The day I had to go there were about 40 guys on the bus from my home
county. Four were Amish boys of about 18. They sat huddled in the back
of the bus, obviously scared. After an hour or so some of us tried to
strike up a conversation with them and make them feel more comfortable.
They wouldn't speak to us. They wouldn't even look at us. They were
petrified. It was almost as if they had been taught, like the FDLS
children, that the outside world was to be feared.
If ALL Amish children are required to spend time in the non-Amish world
to work and experience the modern world before they are baptized, I'm
not aware of it. There would have been a lot of Amish kids working in
the towns nearby and I never saw it. That doesn't mean it's not true,
only that it was below my radar and went unremarked by the people I
knew. My brother's wife grew up on a farm surrounded by Amish farms so
she spent her childhood among Amish. We've had a number of
conversations about the Amish that put them in a somewhat different
light than the conventional wisdom, but she might be biased.
The bottom line is that some who didn't like the Amish, could misconstrue what I've observed as child abuse.
In my community there was a fair amount of animosity toward the Amish.
Some resented anyone who was different, others resented the fact that
the state bent their laws for the Amish but stirctly enforced it on
non-Amish. Then there were the fundamentalist Christians who strongly
criticized their beliefs and behavior.
When I started reading about all the complaintes people had about the
FLDS, it brought to mind some similarities between the two, and I
wondered if some fundamentalist Christians who strongly oppose the
Amish might try to seize upon some of the aspects of the FLDS case and
try to apply them to the Amish (but upon further contemplation, I might
have it backwards. The FLDS might be able to use some of the exceptions
federal and state governments have made for the Amish as setting a
precedent for making exceptions for religious practices. That would
really suck).
I am not anti-Amish. I admire their pacifist beliefs and their ideal of
reliance on the community. I don't want to see them harmed by any
blowback from the FLDS case.
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My wife's sister died suddenly Monday night so I will be offline a lot in the next few days.
--Trakker
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