TPE, started by two brothers who were exiled from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, takes place in the non-magic kingdom of "The Creek," the FLDS community on the Utah-Arizona border. One of the brothers, Richard Holm, has said the tours will be "respectful" and will answer FAQs like "Why the prairie dresses and long braids? No makeup? More than one wife?" As the literature states, "A passenger bus seating 29 people will ferry tourists into Arizona, where guides will discuss the origins of fundamentalist Mormonism and will give travellers the opportunity to take in the town's famous sites, and even includes a picnic." The FLDS, according to UPI, is predictably not into being made into attractions - these are folks who prefer to preserve their isolation under normal circumstances, after all, particularly after their head, Warren Jeffs, was charged with about a thousand counts of child-marrying. Said one community leader, "They want to come into the community like it's a spectacle, when for us, it's like the circus is coming to town. We hope people have more of a life than to be suckered into that sort of scam."

One blogger describes former members' leading the tour as "like a former Nazi concentration camp's warden leading a tour in Auschwitz." Which I think is totally unfair: has he not heard of "the lost boys" phenomenon? After all, the tour's founder, Richard Holm, whom Warren Jeffs kicked out, has been a prominent critic of the FLDS since long before it captured the popular imagination. And on the one hand, it's a brilliant idea. Why not take advantage of overweening public interest and morbid curiosity, prompted by lurid news reports of child brides, tell-alls like Carolyn Jessup's Escape or dramatizations like Big Love or the new film version of Jessup's memoir, in which she'll be played by a pompadoured Katherine Heigl? And for those expelled from the community (Holm's two wives and children were "reassigned" to new men; Holm is now anti-polygamy) this is the ultimate revenge. What could be more painful than to expose the secrets of a community that prizes secrecy? To encourgae contact with a world that prefers to stay isolated? And in the process make money - which, if you believe Jessup's memoir, is made hard for anyone who's not in a position of power?

But, at the end of the day, why would we be there? Why do we even know about it? Because of child abuse and sexual abuse charges. Because of crimes against women, children and young men. And there's no getting away from that. And if we're going to condemn human zoos in the rest of the world, how can we encourage something so dehumanizing here? At the end of the the subject is unwilling - therefore, by definition, it's exploitative. Now, you can argue that this is another matter to the Amish, who've done nothing more than tried to live their lives and have to deal with throngs of apple butter-scarfing tourists in bonnets. In the current FLDS, if we're to believe the accounts of Jessup and others, situations like those in Texas, or involving Jeffsm aren't uncommon, but standard - with children being taken to wife against their will and young men literally thrown out on their own for the sin of being under 30, and community-centric law enforcement who are a part of the problem.

But the fact remains: what would we gain by exploiting people further? Yes, knowledge is important. Making things public is crucial. But disseminating half-information in a sense trivializes the real legal issues and serves to dehumanize its victims. Never mind the fact that those who aren't doing anything illegal, and merely pursuing a fundamentalist doctrine, shouldn't be held up as curiosities merely for doing so. In a sense, I don't think the fact that someone has proposed this business is inherently bad: it means people are aware of the FLDS, which means, hopefully, that actual agencies and the government are more aware of potential issues - and that those who wish to leave the life are given options and sanctuary. But at the same time, this shouldn't be reduced to either a harmless tourist attraction or a chamber of horrors: it's people, living their lives. If you want to see it, watch Escape. Chances are you'll see a lot more, anyway - I'm guessing these tour buses won't catch a lot of the lurid polygamist action Big Love fans might be hoping for, at most maybe a woman with a braid getting into a minivan. And frankly, these guys would probably be happier not dwelling in the past. If they want to help the community, there are organizations for Lost Boys and escapees. And given their entrepreneurial spirit, well, there are a lot of opportunities out there. It's a big world - and about one thing that FLDS guy is right; we should have better things to do.

'Polygamist Colony' Is Focus Of New Tour [UPI]

Scarier than "Ghost Town Tours"- "The Polygamy Experience". [Adventures -WA]
FLDS Exile To Offer Tour Of Polygamist Communities [SL Tribune]

From Polygamist Royalty To FLDS Lost Boy [NPR]
Ousted FLDS Dads Stuck With Aching Stigma [ReligionNews]

It seems like every time these people are questioned by the press, they are lying through their teeth. The same goes for Betty Jessop (no relation to Willie Jessop, although who the hell knows because FLDS family trees look more like braids), whose mother Carolyn escaped from the sect with her children, only to have Betty return to the compound, of her own volition, four years later. In this clip, Betty tells Oprah that she doesn't know any females who were married under the age of 16, despite the fact that it's well documented that during the raid, 12 underage girls who were removed from the ranch were married, more than half of them already mothers.

Last May, Oprah had Elissa Wall on her show, the star witness in the trial against Warren Jeffs, that ultimately led to his conviction. She was forced to marry her first cousin when she was 14, despite her begging not to. Throughout her two-year marriage to the man that Warren Jeffs assigned her, she was raped repeatedly. Elissa wrote about her experience growing up within the FLDS, becoming a child bride, and how she escaped in the book Stolen Innocence.

I've read the book, and distinctly remember passages about how she, and all the other children in her FLDS school, were taught to regard black people as evil. Here, she talks about her brother—who was kicked off the compound as a teenager—was living in the secular world, and had moved in and had a child with a black woman:

The mother of his child was African-American. Hearing this came as a huge shock to me, although today I am embarrassed to admit it. All I could think of were Warren's words from Alta Academy that nonwhite people were the most evil of all outsiders. His racist remarks and hate-filled bigotry were a routine part of the classroom experience at Alta Academy, and from them, I had developed a prejudice about anyone whose skin looked different from my own. I had been told that my brother was damned to hell for even associating with Whitney.

Warren Jeffs recorded his teachings and sermons, and eventually, FLDS members were no longer allowed to listen to secular music, because as he explained it, when you do so, you are "enjoying the spirit of the black race," an activity he says will "rot the soul and lead the person to immorality, to corruption, to forget their prayers, to forget God." They were instead encouraged to listen to his tapes. Here are some passages from those recordings:

You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth or rude and filthy, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.

So I give this lesson on the black race that you can understand its full effect as far as we are able to comprehend. And that we must beware, if we are for the prophet, for priesthood, we will come out of the world and leave off their dress, their music, their styles, their fashions, the way they think - what they do, because you can trace back and see a connection with immoral filthy people.

Today you can see a black man with a white woman, et cetera. A great evil has happened on this land because the devil knows that if all the people have Negro blood, there will be nobody worthy to have the priesthood.

If you marry a person who has connections with a Negro, you would become cursed.

Oprah said that she couldn't leave the ranch without asking the women one very important question: What's with the hair?

As bitchy and scheming as Nicki can be in her suburban life with Bill, Barb, and Margie, it's hard not to sympathize with her character when thinking about her in the context of the compound, brainwashing, Joy Book, and forced, underage marriage.

FLDS women are raised to be mothers and wives and nothing more. They are often denied any education beyond eighth grade, robbed of choices regarding their own lives, and conditioned to think that men should do all the thinking for them.

Seeing her daughter — whom she was forced to abandon in order to get away from her ex-husband — have an active interest in things that girls on the compound aren't supposed to (desire to go to school, playing in the dirt, etc.), Nicki knew Cara Lynn was destined for a life that lacked personal fulfillment.

Some of Cara Lynn's behavior, at first glance, seemed a bit "off," like when she spoke with enthusiasm about killing and dissecting a frog and lying to her stepmother in order to get more dessert. But Nicki recognized those actions as survival techniques in an environment in which girls' best interests are not looked out for, and ambitions are squashed. It makes Nicki's own deviant behavior suddenly make so much more sense.

Before I get started, I'd just like to say that I personally believe that all organized religions are weird, including the one I was raised in, which told me that I had to eat a piece of someone's body and drink his blood once a week, and fess up to all the bad things I'd done and thought to a man hidden in a little cubby hole. Rituals always appear odd to those who haven't grown up with them.

But that's also because rituals are often odd, especially when they're shrouded in secrecy. So when we got to see the Freemason-esque LDS Endowment ceremony, the secret handshakes, the costumes, the props, and the Celestial room, it was a bit jarring. Perhaps it's because Mormonism is a fairly young religion founded by pioneers — who, in fact, were Freemasons at one point — this makes their practices seem bizarre to outsiders. And that's may be why Mormons guard them so carefully.

Church members aren't even supposed to discuss the ordinances of the Endowment outside of the temple, and until as recently as 1990, part of the ceremony included a "blood oath," in which members promised that they understood that they'd be disemboweled or have their throats slashed if they revealed any of the secrets of the ceremony. That's why some LDS members are upset with the Big Love episode, and why Barb's mother was so reticent to "monkey around" with Mormon procedure by allowing her polygamous daughter to access the temple through her recommendation.

The LDS takes the Endowment very seriously because it reveals to members key words and tokens they need to pass by angels guarding the way to heaven. Barb was facing a disciplinary hearing and excommunication for being involved in plural marriage. Excommunication to Mormons means much more than being banned from the church on earth. It means they're banned from entering the Celestial Kingdom after death, and cast into the "outer darkness" for all eternity. Fearing this, Barb had to beg her mother and sister to give her a temple recommend in order to receive her Endowment, as an of-chance way to gain entrance into heaven.

In the end, Barb was excommunicated from the LDS because of her plural marriage, but more importantly, because of her knowledge of the LDS's purchase of an official letter that stated that the church never intended to outlaw polygamy, and the LDS's intention of hiding the letter from the public. This storyline makes the church look incredibly corrupt; I wonder if they're as pissed off about that as they are about the depiction of the Endowment ceremony.

During her hearing, the church officials asked her if she was wearing her "temple garments," which are special underwear to be worn under the clothes.

According to Wikipedia, FLDS members wear something similar under their clothes, but a little more modest and more like the original garments that the founding members of the church wore. These garments, among other things, make me wonder if FLDS members aren't as different from some mainstream Mormons as LDS members would have us believe. They just fly their freak flags more publicly.

"Joy Books," as they're called, have been mentioned a lot in news stories regarding Warren Jeffs. They list the names of girls who are eligible for marriage, most of whom are underage (usually around 14 years old). The "Joy Books" have been talked about by members of the church who have fled their respective compounds, but the assumption was that the books merely listed the names of the girls who were to be married off without warning or consent. In the books on Big Love, we see pictures of young girls' faces, feet, hands, backs of heads, and backs of knees, as though they are slaves or cattle. In this clip, Nicki looks through some of the books, which she'd never seen before, and, after finding her own entry, maybe comes to terms with how gross the practice of shopping out girls is.

The Department of Family and Protective Services in Texas reports that 12 girls between the ages 12 to 15 were sexually abused "with the knowledge of their parents" and spiritually "married" to older men within the Mormon breakaway group. Of the girls, 7 of them had one or more children:

The report, an unusual step taken to help satisfy expected questions from the state Legislature when it convenes in January, summarized individual investigations and the history of the case. The findings, though shared with law enforcement, are separate from the ongoing criminal cases.

The individual investigations, which covered 146 families, concluded that 91 families had children who were abused or neglected. Crimmins said that conclusion confirmed what investigators initially suspected — that girls were being forced into underage marriages and other children were exposed to that harm.

The case "is about sexual abuse of girls and children who were taught that underage marriages are a way of life," the agency said in its report. "It is about parents who condoned illegal underage marriages and adults who failed to protect young girls — it has never been about religion."

Authorities say that an additional 262 children were listed as neglected because their parents failed to remove their children from a situation where the child would be exposed to sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop said that the the department has made "many allegations that it's never been able to back up" and that the department "needs to learn how to say we're sorry instead of trying to justify their actions."

So far a dozen FLDS men, including the sect's prophet—Warren Jeffs— face charges of sexual abuse and bigamy based on evidence gathered from the ranch. The agency has also identified 124 "perpetrators" who were either parents who arranged illegal child marriages or men who married a young child.

Abuse, Neglect At Polygamist Ranch [MSNBC]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Polygamist Sect Raided On Charges Of Abuse Of Girls

• The "celebrity stock indices" for famous females like Gisele Bundchen and Angelina Jolie outperform the Dow. • According to one Russian woman's English-language wholly unscientific Google search, post-Communist women from Russia and Ukraine all want foreign husbands. • The science behind common food-related aphrodisiacs reveals there is some truth behind the myths. • A baby whale who lost its mother off the coast of Sydney, Australia faces judgment today to asses if it should be put down by the National Parks authorities. • Don't read this account of tortures inflicted on Tennessee walking horses if you have a weak stomach. • The alleged 14-year-old wife of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs has been sent to foster care after a Judge order on Tuesday. • Today in history: Soviet pups made a safe landing after going on a journey in Space in 1960! • No, Olympic gold medalist Nastia Liukin did not get to meet Michael Phelps. But she will get a parade!

If you'll recall, Jeffs is already serving a jail sentence for being an accomplice to rape, and since his incarceration in Utah, there have been rumblings of a new prophet being anointed. Merrill Jessop, the former husband of Carolyn Jessop, who wrote the anti-FLDS memoir Escape about her awful experiences as Merrill's umpteenth wife and the tyranny of Jeffs' reign. A change in leadership could definitely be a positive, as Carolyn Jessop wrote in her book that things in the sect were much more reasonable before the power-hungry Jeffs came to lead the FLDS.

Texas Grand Jury Indicts Polygamist Sect Members [AP]
Sect Leader Jeffs Charged With Child Sex Assault [CNN]
A New Prophet for the Polygamists? [Time]

Earlier: Big Love
Please Do Not Cry For Those Poor Polygamist Wives, Fox News

In the email, Teresa claimed that Malonis is "trying to restrict me from every person in my life that I want to talk to or have anything to do with," adding, "The most help you will be to me now is for you to step aside and let me get a different lawyer that I feel like can help me….Natalie, quit all your lying about everything."

For her part, Malonis isn't backing down. She tells the AP that she will not fight her client in the media, though she said to the Salt Lake Tribune, "There is no question I am absolutely looking out for [Teresa]. What's happening is really a shame because people who purport to care about her are really doing her a disservice." Malonis believes that Teresa was spiritually married to a sect member at the age of 15, though Teresa now denies it. Teresa was slated to speak before a Texas grand jury in the FLDS hearings today, though the prospect of that actually happening seems unlikely.

Polygamous Sect Leader's Daughter Wants To Ditch Her Attorney [Salt Lake Tribune]
Key Teen Witness In Sect Case Denies Abuse [CBS News]
Texas Judge Bars Contact From FLDS Spokesman[Salt Lake Tribune]

While Kinkade's egalitarian, Marxist, hippied-out community, Twin Oaks, was "as far from fundamentalist Mormonism as it could be without being lunar," she still felt a kinship with the FLDS children because "I grew up in a place where my 'normal' was far enough from the average American childhood to make Dick and Jane books read like cultural anthropology."

She also identified with the FLDS's unconventional kinship structure. While Kinkade didn't live with her biological mother, there was a woman who she considers her mother emotionally; a woman who was her "purveyor of mac and cheese, warmth, and safety." And though she thinks that marrying off 13-year-olds to gross old men is "indefensible," she does fear that the media is painting the FLDS with the freak brush a little too often for her liking. "I wonder what degree of empathy is possible in a social structure that persists in defining the lives of the children it is trying to help as bizarre," she muses.

Look, I'm no fan of the FLDS. I don't have evidence that every family within the church is sexually abusive or cruel to children — though clearly the structure of the religion makes it easy for abuse to happen. But Kinkade's plea for tolerance and compassion is something we should all consider. Though really, Warren Jeffs — what a sick fuck, right????

We Are (All) Family [Slate]
Judge's Orders Aimed To Protect Jeffs' Daughter From Sect Member [Dallas Morning News via Newser]

Earlier: Please Do Not Cry For Those Poor Polygamist Wives, Fox News

• Hillary suffered a coughing fit in South Dakota today and might give up altogether tomorrow. I have been suffering coughing fits all weekend and I haven't even managed to give up smoking, so I'm not placing any bets, but apparently there's a deal in the works for the Obama campaign to Bernanke her Bear Stearns. [Huff Po]
• Speaking! Krugman defends Bernanke on the grounds that there are no unions in America sending inflation spiraling of control with their wage demands like there were in the seventies. But hello Paul, you know what the Chinese were making in the seventies? [NYT]
• Also, I bet Americans had slightly less than a trillion dollars in credit card debt in the seventies. [WSJ]
• Stuff we did have in the seventies besides unions: regulations and trade barriers. Without those things to eradicate economic growth may be so hard to achieve that Barack Obama can call himself the "growth candidate" with his proposals to focus on preschool. [Wash Post]

• Ahmadinejad said something about how Jesus will come back and kill all the Jews this time. [Breitbart]
• Sadr City: 110 degrees, lacking potable water or a decent sewage system, but — your boss will be so stoked! — there's totally decent BlackBerry service! [WSJ]
• "I used to watch this mooncalf blunder his way through press conferences and think, Exactly where do we find such men? For the job of swabbing out the White House stables, yes. But for any task involving the weighing of words?" Hitch suggests you forego Scott McClellan's tell-all in favor of Doug Feith's epic defense of Don Rumsfeld, on account of a bunch of bullshit retorts to straw arguments no one seriously makes — "that there was no consideration given to postwar planning," for instance; oh please — and also, Feith's superior prose style. Natch. [Slate]
• Can "parenting classes" save the next generation of inbred underage incest victims from the clutches of Fundamentalist Mormon mind control? Well… [AP]
• Ted Kennedy's brain surgery was successful. Now comes the fun part: radiation and chemo. Good luck.[WSJ]
• Matt Drudge as microcosm for the nation's ideological shift. [Politico]
• Henry Louis Gates talks to James Watson and finds him to not be a racist but a "racialist"; Gates explores his own love-hate relationship with DNA; generally depressing story reveals James Watson has a low IQ. [TheRoot]

MOE: The Douche-oisie?
MEGAN: You gotta thank T-Rex for that one. "I have a new term for all those nebbishy young men in DC/NY with their unsold novels and their delusions of literary lionization. The Douche-oisie."

MOE: Um there are dudes in DC like that? Nevermind, I don't want to know. Don't spoil it for me. I was very content assuming everyone in DC liked to peddle their fictions "nonfiction." Insufferable, in a way I've always been slightly more inclined to suffer. But it's reminding me of the Marxist critique of the Sex & The City movie my sister just sent me…

MEGAN: I am sitting here trying to reconcile the mental picture of a Marxist paying $10 (or sucking up to PR people) to see a movie (let alone actually watching it) that, at a minimum, glorifies conspicuous consumption. Also, I will admit I sorta don't care to see it, even if I have to give up my girl card. I never thought she should end up with Big, I always thought he sorta sucked and I thought the finale was a disappointing cop-out and so I don't care anymore.
8:30 AM
MOE: Yeah, I basically thought Big was the only good thing in a sea of really fucking boring people. Miranda's husband I also liked. Aidan gave me the vapors.Peggy Noonan on McClellan. She defends him, says he should be defended as a contributor to the historical record, finds the triteness of his insights and the obviousness of his argument "all too believable" — not to mention the fact that he has no defenders. "I want to quote his defenders, but he doesn't have any." OH PEGGY. You might have checked this little blog we know… It only quotes you every Friday…

MEGAN: Did we really defend him? I mean, I guess I do believe him because he doesn't say anything that isn't playing into Bush's shitty approval ratings.
MOE: ARGHHHHH SO WHAT.
MEGAN: Also, I give a hells yeah to Steve (Miranda's husband) and Aidan. Yum.
MOE: He's not running for anything!
MEGAN: Bush? Yes, thankfully.
MEGAN: I mean, I hate to find myself agreeing with Peggy here, but it's like, wow, Scott McClellan felt out-of-the-loop and lied to? I'm actually only surprised that he noticed and said something about it.
MOE: McClellan. That's the thing. Dude writes a book. No discernible agenda of self-servingness. About the excesses and evils of the "constant campaign." And everyone's like, "What's the campaign?" and "I don't see how this is going to affect the campaign," and "Why didn't he tell us this when it could have impacted a campaign?"
MOE: In any case he's got a crush on Obama
MEGAN: Oh, well, he didn't say it when it could affect a campaign because he was still working there. Duh. Also, would it have changed anyone's mind in 2004? Doubtful. Kerry lost by a bunch.
MEGAN: I love how it's him and Jenna against the world on that one.
MEGAN: Whoa, wait. Maybe it's not Obama on whom he has a crush?
MOE: Milbank mockery
MEGAN:

He's a bit thinner around the middle, and the sideburns are comically longer

MEGAN: Damn, dude, mocking a man's facial hair?
MOE: Dude do you remember Robbie in My Three Sons? Those were some comical sideburns, especially when it switched to color.
MEGAN: I have seen comical sideburns, sir, and I pronounce McClellan's wispy and a bit sparse, possibly in need of a good shaving, but I wouldn't call them "comical"
MOE: Oh shit some dude is aping your steez but …so much more cringetacularly!

Soup to nuts? Campbell's and Planters are here for the looking. I can't think of a single sector of the American economy that directly or indirectly doesn't have some sort of Washington representation.

MOE: Um I love how Condi Rice is recovering from being so pilloried by McClellan.
MEGAN: That's a week late and a dollar short, dude. Also, Mr. Korologos is a former Bush appointee, and is now a "strategic adviser" which means he does everything up to the point of official lobbying in order to avoid registration. So, um, what a great defender. Someone who uses his former position to almost lobby but stay under the radar.
MEGAN: Ugh, I seriously, seriously cannot see Gene Simmons anymore without flashing back to the demoralizing experience of seeing his sex tape. That was cringetastic and unimpressive. Spits on his finger to be able to finger the fake-titted chick. Small penis. Never removes his shirt. That line from Bridget Jones never seemed so apt: "Coitus is brief and perfunctory."
MOE: Ah! I often use the word "perfunctory" to describe sex sessions. I didn't realize Bridget Jones — well, that and distinctly shitty taste in dudes — was to blame. That is so depressing. Let's talk about something else!! Victory on Al Qaeda perhaps? That epic Bear Stearns series? The Fundamentalist Pedophiles being awarded their inbred children? It's all so heartening.

MEGAN: Oh, don't forget Obama's new clergy problem. This time, he's white!

MEGAN: Oh, by the way, you can go watch it right here. Why in the world would they not have stopped taping the sermons, anyway?
MEGAN: Oh, by the way, speaking of bombshells, 111 countries formally adopted a treaty to eliminate cluster bombs yesterday. Just guess who the big hold outs were? Us, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. We're always in such great company on these things.
MOE: Hahahaha China and Pakistan! They're just like US!
MEGAN: On this and the death penalty and torture! Hoorah!
9:20 AM
MEGAN: Oh, great, the Burmese junta has decided that it doesn't need any stinkin' refugee camps.
MOE: CIA director Michael Hayden:

"The fact that we have kept [Americans] safe for pushing seven years now has got them back into the state of mind where 'safe' is normal," he said. "Our view is: Safe is hard-won, every 24 hours."

Inspiring! Me to throw up!!
MOE: So what's the deal with the polygamists? Why do they get their kids back? How did that happen? Etc. etc.

MEGAN: They get their kids back as soon as they can, I guess. It seems that the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state had failed to prove immediate danger to all the kids, since that's the standard.
MOE: Oh god and more.
MEGAN: Like, obviously, infants weren't about to be married off and shit. The state tried to argue that just being raised in the community was turning the boys into cousin-marrying pedos, but the courts didn't buy it.
MOE: BUT WHY?
MEGAN: Because they couldn't prove it.
MEGAN: I mean, let's just all admit that our legal system is pretty fucked, but it's less fucked than a lot of others.
MOE: Here's the dissenting opinion though it also concedes:

On this record, however, I agree that there was no evidence of imminent “danger to the physical health or safety” of boys and pre-pubescent
girls to justify their removal from the YFZ Ranch, and to this extent I join the Court’s opinion. Id. § 262.201(b)(1).

Maybe we should just redefine "imminent."

MEGAN: I guess it's just, like, parents have the right to fuck their kids up, home school them and teach them that humans co-existed with dinosaurs in the garden of Eden and that a woman should aspire to no more than to be a good wife to whomever she's told to marry.
MEGAN: They just don't have to right to physically abuse them or force them to have sex.
MOE: NO THEY FUCKING DON'T
MEGAN: Well, legally they do. Whether they ought to is a different question.
MEGAN: Should the state decide which religious views are valid, short of one that requires or encourages physical or sexual abuse?
MEGAN: Should the state decide by which moral values you should raise your kids?
MOE: What's on the books w/r/t cults? This is fucking mind control. They created their own totalitarian parasite state within a state, which is the only reason it's managed to survive for more than a century, and it has nothing to do with values!

MEGAN: I mean, I guess I feel like, great, if they choose my moral values, that could be totally cool but do I trust the government to choose my values? And I sure as hell fucking don't. I don't trust that they won't decide that some ignorant fucking Christian piece of shit females-aren't-as-good pastor gets to decide.
MEGAN: There isn't anything on the books about cults. As long as there's no physical or sexual coercion, they're legal. You're allowed to brainwash your followers as long as you don't stockpile weapons, try to kill everyone or fuck children.
MEGAN: Luckily for law enforcement, the really scary ones rely on physical coercion, stockpiling weapons, killing people and fucking underage girls. I mean, that's obviously unlucky for the people involved.
MOE: You know about Germany. Don't they have some decent laws on this matter?

MEGAN: Sort of. I mean, Germany's basically a two-religion state (Lutherism and Catholicism) with some provisions made for Jews. In fact, your tax dollars support the Church to which you belong, interestingly. They don't recognize Scientology as a religion, I'm given to understand but will no doubt be corrected, in no small part because to advance within the religion costs you money. They view Scientology (and, in my opinion, rightly so) as a money-making enterprise. They do allow regular LDS (i.e., Mormons) despite the tithing "requirements" of that Church.

Three of the Texas Supreme court members wrote in a dissenting opinion that while the Department of Family and Protective Services was wrong to take all the children, there was proper evidence given in order to remove adolescent girls from "a pattern or practice of sexual abuse."

While the Department of Family and Protective Services clearly abused power, some of the evidence presented by the Department was incredibly damning. According to the Texas Supreme Court decision, "the Department presented 'Bishop’s Records'— documents seized from the Ranch — indicating the presence of several extremely young mothers or pregnant 'wives' on the Ranch: a sixteen-year-old 'wife' with a child, a sixteen-year-old pregnant 'wife,' two pregnant fifteen-year-old “wives,” and a thirteen-year-old who had conceived a child." The expert witness from the FLDS themselves "confirmed that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints accepts the age of 'physical development' (that is, first menstruation) as the age of eligibility for 'marriage.'"

Texas Court Upholds Polygamist Removals Ruling [Reuters]
FLDS Ruling Upheld By Texas Supreme Court [Los Angeles Times]
FLDS Ruling [Texas Supreme Court]

Whether the state of Texas violated the rights of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints when it removed 400 some-odd children from the Yearning For Zion ranch is up for debate. What's not is the creepiness of these photos of former FLDS honcho Warren Jeffs sucking face with his child-brides. The Smoking Gun got a hold of images of Jeffs with two of his spiritual wives, Loretta and Merrianne. Merrianne, pictured here with Jeffs, was 12 when this photo was taken. These photos were used as evidence in the ongoing FLDS custody trials. Jeffs is currently in jail for coercing a 14-year-old girl to marry a 19-year-old. [The Smoking Gun]