<div>Spike wrote:<br>> Agreed that the FLDS people were doing wrong. The critical question now<br>> becomes this: if I show you a neighborhood with teen pregnancy numbers<br>> similar to these, is the government obligated to go into that neighborhood<br>
> and seize all the children who live there?<br></div>
<div>Kevin Freels wrote:</div>
<div>Ouch. That was so observant that it just smacked me in the face while I<br>wasn't looking. We have a lot of abuse and neglect in my own small town<br>and most of the time these parents just get a "talking to" by child<br>
protective services despite the fact that "everyone knows" what lousy<br>parents they are. And yes, many of them turn up pregnant - sometimes as<br>young as 12. But I guess it's not entirely the same. These are most<br>
often girls impregnated by other kids at their school. It seems that the<br>biggest concern isn't the teen pregnancy. It's the age of the penis that<br>caused it.</div>
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<div>"Age of the the inseminator" is a big part of it, but the largest issue is that the FLDS community had *formally institutionalized* their very exploitive and criminal behavior. Older Adult males at the higher echelons of power had formal societal control mechanisms in place to condition these young coming of age teenage girls to be their wives (and keep them out of the hands of younger males who might try to compete for them). </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Yes, there are poor ghetto neighborhoods with outrageous teen pregnancy rates, and sometimes many of the male inseminators are far older than the girls, but still, the level of overwhelming social control mechanisms/institutionalization of the FLDS society is not there.</div>
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<div>I want to thank BillK for his excellent insights as to why what was happening in the FLDS community was very wrong. </div>
<div><br>John Grigg</div>