Was the original call to authorities a hoax? It appears so. BUT... it doesn't sound to me like the Texas authorities invented this girl to call in order to get an excuse for a raid. That means they got a tip that they felt was credible at the time, and they were able to get a warrant from a judge. Although authorities didn't find the original caller, they did find evidence of crimes committed related to what the caller had said. In Texas, the age of consent is 17; in Arizona, it's 16 and in Utah, it's 16 for girls and 18 for boys (I mentioned Arizona and Utah because of the other FLDS area, which is in twin cities on the Arizona/Utah border). It appears girls younger than those ages have been having babies and have been "spiritually married" without being legally married.
Regardless of if the call was a hoax or not, if no crimes were being committed, then evidence of said crimes wouldn't have been found.
Now, it's time ot shoot down a few arguments.
jimpeel said:
So a full 130 kids have been declared unabused, two dozen teen boys have been declared unabused, only TWO of the teenaged girls, out of 462 children seized, are currently pregnant, and no more than 30 of the 462 seized children already have children of their own.
Sounds to me to be better stats than most high schools where the kids have multiple boyfriends and girlfriends and spend most of their day there. Sounds like polygamous dating at the high school compound to me.
Mus' be a who' lotta kid fuckin' a goin' on in them thar high skoos.
462 kids minus 130 under 5, minus 24 "unabused" teen boys, minus the two pregnant teens, minus the 30 that have kids already. That leaves 286 kids out of the original 462 that are questionable. Keep in mind the ages here range from 5 to 18. As most people know, kids do not reach puberty at age 5, or 6, or 7, or 8... most reach it at around age 11 or 12, some a bit earlier. But also, remember that girls are supposedly being married and fucked at puberty. We don't know how many of the 286 questionable kids ages 5-18 have reached puberty, and how many of them are boys and how many are girls. Also remember that the allegation is that young girls are marrying men that are much, much older... 30s, 40s, 50s. So of course underage boys aren't going to be having a lot of kids.
But let's do a few round numbers just to put it into easy-to-grasp terms. Admittedly, without knowing the ages and sexes of each kid, and knowing that puberty shows up at different times for different people, I'm having to make assumptions here. But if we can figure the average puberty age is about 11, that means six of the years 5-18 are prepubescent, and seven of the years are post-pubescent. That means 54 percent of the 286 kids that are questionable would have reached puberty... that's 154 kids. Then, if we figure that the split for boys and girls is around 50/50, that means there would be 77 girls that have reached puberty that don't have kids.
If we assume that 77 is in the ballpark, then add back the 30 teen girls that are known to already have kids, and the two that are known to be pregnant, that makes for 109 total girls, with 29.3 percent of them having at least one kid or one on the way. In Texas as a whole in 2004, the teen birth rate was 62.6 per 1,000... that's a percentage of 6.26 percent. So the teen birth rate for the compound right now is nearly five times the average for the state of Texas. Furthermore, there could be more kids in the compound that are pregnant and haven't found out yet. Also, pregnancy doesn't always happen the first time the kid has sex, meaning that just because there's no baby doesn't mean the law hasn't been broken. Plus, the high sex rate in public high schools doesn't mean it's legal, either. So when we look at it objectively, instead of with feelings, we see that the law is being broken and being broken often. We haven't even touched on how many girls are of legal age now that had kids when they were still minors.
As for the argument of this being a first amendment issue... I guess that means all the laws against polygamy are unconstitutional. So I guess I should see if I can marry 3 or 4 different women, from ages 12 and up, and then claim religion when the authorities show up. Hell, maybe I should find a religion that endorses gay marriage, then find a nice man to marry. After all, not letting me marry a man would be infringing on my right to practice my religion, right?
