Imagine not knowing who your mother is, the possibilities laying between 33 or some seemingly identical women. Imagine living in a safety blanket society where girls are betrothed at 12 and the men are brainwashed robots.
We get all hyped and bothered when a teacher consensually sleeps with one of her students like in the Mary Kay Letourneau case (can’t blame her, he looked like he was 30), yet we don’t attribute enough of our focus and outrage towards enormous zealot sects like the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints that marry off girls as early as 8 and proceed to rape, impregnate and abuse them.
Earlier this month, a hunting retreat near Eldorado, Texas, named the Yearning For Zion Ranch, was raided when a female inhabitant of the retreat called for help to a local domestic violence hotline. Her husband had allegedly raped and beaten her multiple times, according to the Associated Press. The YFZ ranch, like many other secluded Latter Day Saints retreats, had been under suspicion for quite some time.
After the second largest religious raid in U.S. History, according to FOX News, 416 girls and women were taken into protective custody and released for lack of proof on the abuse charges. Later on, people began questioning the validity of the raid and the governments “right” to do that. For Christ’s sake, the founder of the YFZ, David S. Allred had previously been with being an accessory to the rape and early marriage of a fourteen-year-old girl to her cousin! Moreover, in an interview with Access Hollywood on April 21, one of the ringleaders of the cult claimed he was never aware of the Texas law against polygamy.
However the Mormon Church is not to be blamed for this. The FLDS split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints more than a century ago when the mainstream Mormon Church renounced polygamy. The Mormon Church rejects members found to be practicing plural marriage.
Despite the lack of physical evidence in this case, there is more than enough factual evidence to prove that people of the FLDS and specifically YFZ are psychologically ill. They dress like they’re from M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” and base their entire lifestyle on seclusion and restraint. They move into the desert and build tall, barbed-wired walls to keep the rest of the world out. One must wonder if these people have any knowledge of the outside world at all.
All U.S. states should massively expand their involvement in religious sects of all kinds. The freedom to believe in whom you want should not legally extend to marrying little girls and having multiple wives.
I don’t care what sick and twisted sect one belongs to, all people should have a clear understanding of right and wrong. Polygamy and the forced marriages of minors are sick no matter how these pathetic religions justify them.
The government should prosecute these actions at all costs. Keep in mind: if it’s secret and elusive, it can’t be good.
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