PRINCIPLE VOICES DENOUNCES Senator Reid’s “Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act of 2008″ bill, because it will not and cannot serve our families in any healthy or meaningful way, but will injure them. While we welcome efforts to raise funds for service providers to provide help and resources to abuse victims, we’re very concerned about this bill for a number of reasons:
1) Reid’s bill presupposes there are large numbers of women and children waiting to be rescued from polygamy. Not true.
Where there are cases of abuse, or where there are women who may wish to leave a particular family or community, there are already organizations in place to provide assistance and resources. Some victims of abuse do not wish to leave their families, communities, or faith, and services and resources should not be held hostage or made dependent upon a woman’s abandonment of her faith or family.
2) Reid’s bill and his anti-polygamy efforts are not focused on crimes but on a FAMILY ARRANGEMENT. He wants our families/communities treated like organized crime families. Utah and Arizona have both recognized that this type of aggressive prosecution of the practice of polygamy itself is ineffective and creates more harm than it proposes to fix.
Utah and Arizona have pledged to focus their prosecutorial efforts on welfare fraud, sex crimes against minors and abuse, NOT on consenting adult relationships and healthy polygamous families where no such crimes exist. Reid is threatening a way of life for all families in the culture, since all families will be targeted regardless of whether or not those families are guilty of anything but a belief in or practice of polygamy. Such aggressive state and federal action in the past served only to send these families underground, which cuts them off from larger society and the benefits of societal interaction, public/private education, social services, etc.
3) Reid’s approach endorses prejudice and encourages fear and distrust of government. Religious persecution is defined as
Reid has structured the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing in a one-sided manner, proving that our families have little hope of receiving fair treatment. Had opponents to his petition been allowed to testify, they would have provided evidence to support happy, healthy families, dedicated to being law-abiding citizens, which includes taxpayers who contribute to the economy, and a desire to be self-sufficient rather than welfare dependent.
4) If Reid truly cares about women and children in polygamy, then he should HELP them, not hurt them. Driving them underground, casting them out of society and dismantling their families is NOT HELP.
Societal acceptance, openness and interaction is the only way to cultivate healthy families, and reach victims where abuse occurs.
Principle Voices strenuously objects to any effort to characterize our families as anything but what they are: FAMILIES. When Senator Reid, and others, are willing to acknowledge that fact, then and only then, can they truly help anyone from our culture.
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The Las Vegas Review is reporting the following:
WASHINGTON — A bill to be introduced in the Senate today would establish a federal task force to combat polygamy-related crimes while offering grants to social service agencies that help former members of polygamous sects.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preparing to submit the bill and to promote it at a polygamy hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled for Thursday at his request.
The “Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act of 2008″ would establish a task force to focus on abuse, extortion, witness tampering, embezzlement and other illegal activities suspected to be associated with polygamous groups, according to Reid’s office.
“The federal government has a duty to help fight the serious state and federal crimes committed by these groups,” said Reid, who is one of 16 Mormons in Congress.
“My bill will improve federal enforcement, create a stronger federal-state partnership, and help the victims of abuse get out of these situations so they can start a new life,” Reid said.
The legislation would offer $2 million in grants to state and local police agencies to pursue suspected crime links to plural marriage communities.
Another $2 million would be authorized to provide witness protection, housing, child care, mental health services and other services to people trying to escape polygamous relationships.
Reid has compared polygamous groups such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to organized crime syndicates, and has called on law enforcement to approach them as such. The FLDS practices polygamy in Hildale, Utah, and neighboring Colorado City, Ariz., and at its Yearning for Zion Ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, which was raided by state authorities in April.
