What happened to "freedom of religion"?
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Sunday, April 21, 2024 23:47
VIEWED: 7822
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Where exactly did I say that? I didn't, I said I'm not aware of any cases of it in the U.S. OBVIOUSLY such an idea is abhorrent, I hated it as much in Afghanistan, where I actually SAW a man's hand cut off. So trying to misrepresent what I said is inexcusable.
So you would allow flogging, cutting off limbs, stoning to death and "honor" killings if it was done by people of a certain religion to another person of that religion, as long as it was done under color of their religious practice?
Also, we’re talking LAWS and the prosecution of same, not what the result of a polygamous marriage means to the multiple wives. Let’s stay with that, please. As to polygamy being enforced, you’re wrong:Quote:
http://proclus.tripod.com/radical/faq.htm
About 1953, the state of Arizona National Guard raided a polygamist colony called Short Creek on the Utah/Arizona border, and separated the kids from their mothers, and threw the men in jail. The people of the nation were so outraged by it, that there have not been polygamy prosecutions since. (Unless you want to consider Waco to be an anti-polygamist raid.) So while polygamy is not legal, the laws against it are not enforced. Quote:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Polygamy
Parts of the United States, however, criminalize even the polygamous lifestyle; these laws originated as anti-Mormon legislation, although they are rarely enforced.
I believe child-marriage laws ARE enforced, but not very seriously in many cases:Quote:
http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2008/07/17/life_and_arts/art1.txt
While American news journalists frequently report child marriages in Third World countries, the matter is largely ignored in the United States.Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage
Until 2008, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints practiced child marriage through the concept 'spiritual (religious only) marriages,' as soon as girls are ready to bear children, as part of its polygamy practice and laws have raised the age of legal marriage in response to criticism of the practice.
NOT because of prosecution, note, but because of criticism.Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage#United_States
In March 2008, the state of Texas believed that children at the Yearning For Zion Ranch were being married to adults and were being abused. The state of Texas removed all 468 children from the ranch and placed them into temporary state custody. After the Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Texas acted improperly in removing them from the YFZ Ranch, the children were returned to their parents or relatives.
Given parents or relatives were probably within the cult, I wonder if there was any follow-up on child marriages within the group?
As recently as the 19th century, child marriage was common in America ( http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009637.html) Even more recently, Quote:
http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/8D0A30C9-1883-418E-B9FD-2CC38E509098/ I believe Loretta Lynn is still alive? I suspect there are many child marriages in poorer, more ignorant states and among religious cults. Whether they are prosecuted or not is another matter; it would seem that in many cases, they’re ignored.
Country star Lorretta Lynn was married at 13. History has been forgotten that marrying before 16 even was not entirely rare.
Then there’s “forced marriage”:Quote:
A shotgun wedding is a form of forced marriage occasioned by an unplanned pregnancy. Some religions and cultures consider it a moral imperative to marry in such a situation, based on reasoning that premarital sex is sinful and unsafe. The phrase is an American colloquialism, though it is also used in other parts of the world. The use of violent coercion to marry is no longer legal in the United States, although many anecdotal stories and folk songs record ins
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As someone who lives in Utah, I can vouch that polygamists live around here as pretty much an open secret. It's only when they upset someone in the higher ups that anyone goes after them.
Warren Jeffs eventually pissed off too many people. The Texas FLDS compound had some baptists in the police and the state national guard down there that had been looking for an excuse to raid the mormons anyway.
As for Sharia Law, eh. It's not like communities that all these people practicing Sharia Law are moving into don't already have their own laws about harm you can do to a human being. Where personal/religious law and community law overlap is where a jury comes in. This is why a story like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_David_Mitchell
Ends up with Mitchell being both diagnosed a crazy AND convicted of a crime. Freedom of Religion is one of those "right to swing your arms ends at my nose" kinds of thing.
However, care must be taken to not interpret that as "this religion MIGHT do something, so let's stomp out the ability to practice that religion."
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Niki, you say that things aren't prosecuted unless there is criticism. Well it doesn't seem like you are willing enough to criticize, if people just pussy foot around bad behavior like 14 year olds being married off to 50 year olds then it isn't prosecuted enough, sure we do have laws about it, but people need to push for those laws to be enforced sometimes because the law establishment gets lazy, or they get so busy prosecuting other things that they don't pay attention. So we need to be more vocal about criticizing such behavior, just because it happened to Loretta Lyn doesn't make it okay.
I think child marriages are worse than polygamy, I mean polygamy is a bit groty in my opinion and I agree it should be illegal but enforcement of it isn't as important as enforcement of other laws. From what I know the only enforcement of it is that subsequent wives don't get legally recognized as such, meaning they don't get marriage rights, which I'm totally okay with. If people want to do it at home its their choice, but don't expect me to recognize it.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Pffth, some members of my family *still* do the whole shotgun wedding thing, and the shotguns are not whatever metaphorical - not that most of those on the business end are all that reluctant, tis more a matter of tradition these days than anything.
Of course this didn't stop Yuriko (who has some bizarre ideas of how our culture works) from threatening to come over here and marry me in that fashion - I pointed out that she didn't have a shotgun and she retorted "Yeah, but you're in america, I can just buy one at the grocery store over there..." 
I'm not entirely sure whether Shinto beliefs allow for such a thing, but coming from a culture in which arranged marriages still exist (been talkin to Maltquake about hers as of late) it's certainly credible, even if her threat really isn't.
-Frem
PS. Been worried as hell about them recently, she lost her beloved uncle to the carnage and will not listen to me or her family as we encourage her to get the hell out of dodge, but then I wouldn't listen either, she's busy with relief efforts and communication has been difficult.
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I have to admit I don't really care what people do so long as they're consenting adults and I don't have to hear or see it.
Consent obviously becomes questionable the younger someone is, and with teenagers there's the whole hormone thing clouding the issue.
Of course, there's ways that the law gets abused and teenagers get labeled with sex offender felonies that I don't approve of either.
I need to remember to send some cash to a Japan relief fund. I've been meaning to. I have a friend over in Japan right now too. Think she's in Osaka, which should not be in the danger zone, unless the fault slips again.
As for Yuriko, just point out the difficulties between a kitsune-human relationship. Sad, about her uncle. We have some Japanese in our town, migrated here from Topaz after being thrown out of most everywhere else, and so now and then I hear about people still lost and missing.
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I don't have a problem with arranged marriages as long as both parties are grown and concenting and both willing to do it. I think that my family would do a decent job of finding me a mate, I haven't had any luck the Western way of choosing your own.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Well, Maltquakes problem is that she is tall (like 5'10" - VERY tall over there!) and curvy, which wouldn't mean so much to most americans but in her culture is considered by many to be unattractive, and when you add in that her canines stick out kind of straight, cause cosmetic dentistry isn't as common overseas, well.
One of her pole-up-ass relatives from her oh-so-very-proper-lets-not-offend-anyone family referred to her as an ogre and about reduced her to tears, this was before the disaster and she had stress enough running things (she's next up in line in their heirarchy) while Yuriko was in Italy at her studies, so it kind of fell to me to comfort and counsel - she asked me to send her a Texan to marry, lololol..
I gave her a fistfull of tips on how to drive her oh-so-proper parents completely batshit (this got me oh-so-politely bitched out by them via a quite, quite diplomatic email) and encouraged her to be a little bolder towards the one potential who *did* like her - they were still at the playdate/"interview" date stage of things, and most of em couldn't wait to get AWAY from her, but one of them who is on the low end of socially-acceptable for her (apparently her family is pretty upscale, so there's the whole shame factor of being unmarriable) actually liked her, in part because she has certain, uhhh, endowments up front which are for the most part lacking amongst her peers, you see, and because the gent in question has a bit of a thing for warrior/amazon type chicks - he's sweet enough even if he is something of a goofball, and just barely well off enough to qualify for attention, bonus points for that being his own founded biz and not family money, either.
So, stealing a page from american culture she snuck out to go see him and upon her return found both parents with THAT look goin on - and instead of handing off the little speech I gave her about how if all she's gonna get for being the good always-do-the-expected-thing girl, is crapped on, well maybe that isn't going to happen...
She flat tells em *I* gave her permission. *wince*
Thus the bitching out they delivered - and then they invited her paramour to tea, and bitched HIM out for an hour and a half, but that was actually a good sign cause the manner in which they did so placed him as idiot boyfriend or errant husband, indicating a begruding acceptance of his interest, AND praise to his loyalty cause while he did drive her home, he did NOT rat her out.
She was dancing around in little happy circles till the disaster hit, but for days after he was missing and she was totally insane about it, one of the things that prompted Yuriko to go running back despite both me and her own family telling her not to.
Apparently the whole neighborhood was flooded, and since the temple was on a hill, it was the only structure which wasn't wrecked, and thus happens to be the core of the relief efforts, so someone has take charge of the situation, and Maltquake wasn't coping so well.
Anyhows, I dislike the whole concept of arranged marriage since it leans toward regarding people as property, which always gets my back up - but if they're okay with it, then it ain't really for me to say, other than to "officially" throw my approval at it since that's such a comfort to her - ain't about what *I* believe, but what they need to believe in order to get through the day, so for the time being I gotta grit my teeth, bite my tongue and play along, cause the last thing those kids need right now is me provoking a crisis of their faith, however misplaced.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Concisely put, and pretty much sums up the argument for me.
Freedom of Religion is one of those "right to swing your arms ends at my nose" kinds of thing.
However, care must be taken to not interpret that as "this religion MIGHT do something, so let's stomp out the ability to practice that religion."
No, Rione, I never said things aren't prosecuted unless there is criticism. I mentioned that one sect changed its practices because of criticism, I didn’t connect that to prosecution. I was indicating that we HAVE some of those things in America already, so pointing at Islam and saying it has them so we should deny all Muslims freedom of religion is disingenuous self-righteousness. And I never, ever said ANY of those things were okay or that I wanted to pussy foot around them, I merely pointed out that they EXIST, so condemning Islam for having them when we don’t even bother to eradicate them in our own culture is hypocritical. I agree with you that they should be prosecuted, and I believe they would be prosecuted if brought to the attention of the law, as actually has been the case in many instances.
Look at the quote above; THAT is the essence of what I was saying, nothing more. Quote:
That’s a judgment, in my opinion, and I don’t think each of us has the right individually to decide which law is more important to prosecute. If a law is bad, we should change it. If it is not, it should be prosecuted, and polygamy and child marriage are both wrong in my opinion and should be prosecuted. I just don’t think it’s right to point to ALL Muslims as practicing those things while ignoring that we allow them.
enforcement of it isn't as important as enforcement of other laws
Byte, I agree to a point:Quote:
I would say rather “I have to admit I don't really care what people do so long as they're consenting adults and harm no one.” Unquestionably it can be extremely difficult for those who don’t want to abide by a religious law to appeal to the authorities, as it would mean being shunned by their community. But the law IS there to protect them if they choose, as it is with any other thing people choose to appeal to it for. (sorry about the grammar!)
I have to admit I don't really care what people do so long as they're consenting adults and I don't have to hear or see it.
Consent obviously becomes questionable the younger someone is, and with teenagers there's the whole hormone thing clouding the issue.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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I would say rather “I have to admit I don't really care what people do so long as they're consenting adults and harm no one.”
BDSM crowd wouldn't like that.
Love hurts, or so they say. People lie, they reject, they lead people on, they break promises, they're unfaithful, they neglect. Ethically a good person will avoid too much of any of that, or at least soften the blow, and do their level best to not intentionally harm anyone. But people aren't perfect, either.
We already have laws about assault, abuse, and murder, and unlawful detention, and I already mentioned non-consent, so those're covered. People have to make their own choices, and some of them will be unforgiveable. Sometimes people can intervene, but when they can't, friends, family, or society as a whole will do for the victims what they can.
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Byte, your first line made me laugh out loud, that's one of those ... fuzzy ... areas of life, fuzzy as in, what should I do/think? I tend to lean against such things, but ... anyways.
Frem how old is your friend whose parents want her to be married? Is hersister Yuriko married? At least she found someone that she sort of fancies and that seems to like her, maybe it will work out. But of course I believe she shouldn't be forced to marry him, nor should he be forced to marry her. They need to be willing etc. I hope they're doing okay right now, what with being earthquaked and all.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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