The recent debacle with the exotic religious group FLDS founded and funded by Warren Jeffs and company has taken on a new and more sinister shade with the revelation that a large percentage of the under aged girls from that private ranch are either pregnant or have been. Though in other cultures and under other sovereign rule this particular situation might not create the same uproar that is does here it is nevertheless a significant find and may lend more credence to the State’s decision to enforce child protection legislation in this matter.

It is a curious and all too often undefined moral that governs our rationale in these areas where we witness and also draw a very fine line between tradition and abuse. The current law standards are not that old and the acceptance of such practices ( Polygamy excepted ) as we witness in Texas not too long outdated here in North America. Hillbilly weddings in the Tennessee hills as late as the 1960’s and maybe later were common with thirteen and fourteen year old girls. I don't think anyone will dispute the need to do something in behalf of the FLDS children and yet what do we offer them instead?

One wonders whether there is a certain overwhelming cultural balance of good and evil that cannot be obstructed in the ongoing evolution of our society, a sort of western version of the ying and the yang wherein the function of a race that must procreate for survival is in the most primal of senses tied to a pre-programmed social behavior such as the currently defined parameters of pedophilia.

At one time in our history women were forced to cover up from head to toe in order to satisfy the standards of propriety but at the same time they were more vulnerable to sexual advances that they were not able to turn down from husbands, fathers, relatives or even strangers regardless of age. They were also much less likely to be able to turn to law enforcement for protection especially the under-aged. In lieu of such pragmatic imagery we are forced re-think our common definition of obscenity when we consider that one circumstance seems to belie the other.

We shudder in righteous indignation when we see a fifteen year old pop star posing in a post coital suggestion with a silk sheet and a come hither look even though the impression given therein is far more harmless than the reality it pursues. Some call it artistic. Actions have always had more weight than words or pictures, at least until now.

In retrospect I find it both amusing and also tragic that even as the state of Texas moves in on the FLDS to enforce our more modern concepts of right and wrong, at the same time under the very same umbrella the greater society of law abiding and chaste citizenry grants tacit approval to the display of young women in sexually suggestive poses for national distribution. Where one has the appearance of chastity and the reality of obscenity the other it seems has exactly the opposite. Given a choice I am sure that a world of morally loose impressions that does not also bring with it carnal consequence is preferable to a world of chaste impression that is carnally corrupt. It brings us back to the question of balance and the ying and yang thing, sometimes oriental culture is inexplicably perceptive.

With our own versions of good and bad, right and wrong we appear to be always driven to supplement one in order to satisfy a lack of the other. Where we don't permit the reality we seem to long for the image and when we do have the reality we do everything we possible can to eliminate the image.... and then of course there's Brittany Speares who apparently embraces both with no difficulty whatsoever as she is both loved and hated by the self same environment that nurtured her and rewarded her so richly.

So we are left with another image, the man in the mirror who ultimately struggles with a preprogrammed instinct and against his own nature in pursuit of what he perceives to be betterment; Then, In the final analysis he legislates his morals and condemns his instincts in a confusing mix of social and cultural values where appearances and impressions seem to have more impact than reality itself.

jo

Needs a board unto itself, really. Touchy, touchy. Creepy as all get out.

But 20-21st century America tries to keep childhood going for far too long. Far longer than was meant by Nature. We try to protect kids from reality, and thus prolong their childhood. So that you have kids, sexually mature and curious, who still have the emotional development of children.

This creates all manner of tension.

Of course, such kids get frisky, and our obvious reaction is "they're being exposed to too much; protect them from more stuff." Which, alarmingly, fails to work. I blame video games. Or Paris Hilton.

Folks of prior centuries were more practical, but I don't see us going that way anytime soon. We shall continue to thwart human nature. In doing so, we get weird outlets like middle-aged guys marrying fifteen-year-olds in obscure cults.

10 - true fact - many catholic priests admit that they joined the priesthood because they were already struggling with homosexual and pedophilia impulses, and felt that a religious environment would provide strength to resist, rather than temptation.

9 - there is some sort of weird corrolary between religious fundamentalism and an obsessions with young girls. american polygamists and theorcratic muslim societies seem obsessed with wedding pubescent girls early and often. is there some sort of test we could adminster for this propensity, then work on a vaccine?

8 - i've never understood why, in this day and age of homosexual tolerance, places like airport and highway restrooms are more attractive than a bar for "meeting people". i mean, what is it - a death wish acted out through anonymous, risky sex?

7 - attractive young women will stop hooking up with wealthy old goats when the goats stop paying lavishly for the pleasure. or vice versa. i can't figure out which

6 - why is it legal to have 10 kids out of wedlock, but illegal to have 2 spouses? exactly whose interest is being protected here?

5 - it used to be illegal to marry a person of a different race, then they fixed it. it used to be illegal to marry a person of the wrong gender, and they're working on that one. it's still illegal to have sex with your sister or brother (or father), thank god. but is that the next step?

4 - why do attractive young female schoolteachers who have sex with 14 year old male students get such lighter sentences than male teachers who have sex with 14 year old female students? explain to me how equal protection under the law should apply here?

3 - what is it with firemen and sexy girls posing in lingerie in firehouses, etc. i don't get this fetish at all. it's not like the cop fetish where your boyfriend pretends to frisk you, after all.

2 - basically, the way our forebears lived in colonial america - the entire family in a one room cabin - would be deemed "an unfit home environment now" because of what happens between mom and dad after dark while the kids are still awake and listening in their beds. and these were PURITANS in new england. no wonder people's minds were warped back then. does this somehow explain the fundamentalist christian/muslim thing for little girls? not enough privacy at home?

1 - exactly when and why prostitution became illegal is largely absent from american history books. they (history books) do tell us that there were more than 500 "registered brothels" in washington DC during the civil war, and that union officers, right up to the rank of general, would commonly rent a room in them while in town on military busieness. a lesser known fact is that most of the "battlefield nurses" during the civil war were "camp followers" (prostitutes) who offered caring and succor to the tired troops after battle. at what point did we reach the stage that a US military admiral can now be forcibly retired for admonishing his troops, while on shore leave, to leave the local "civilian girls" alone and visit one of the legal brothels at that port if they couldn't stand to be without company. I believe that for all the raciness on TV, we're actually more puritanical than the puritans, or the good christians who fought in the civil war.