Oh and BTW.. grok-U-rock
hehe.

The problem in Texas is that many of these children gave their consent, but they have been so conditioned (brainwashed) since birth that obediance is all, that they cannot truly give their free consent.

If the child is of an age to still be in school (K - 12th grade), then the child is too young to be making life decisions, including getting married.

I hope not.

The Texas FLDS group (Mormons, by the way) did not marry girls until they reached puberty, not before, as far as I understand it.

Not that I’m defending them at all, but many cultures have seen it as normal for girls to marry younger than we do now, although 8 years old is a bit extreme.

Seriously, any culture that would allow something like this to begin is backward as far as I am concerned. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me for that comment, but the last thing any 8 year old girl should be doing is getting married and having sex. That’s disgusting.I don’t think I am better than others, or somehow superior because I am a Western girl, but y’know what, I don’t think highly of legal pedophilia.

I suppose this kind of crap is one of the inevitable side effects of polygamous cultures. Too many men looking for somewhere to put their penis, and too few unmarried women to go around. Or maybe all the adult unmarried females in Yemen have been executed for “adultery” or “driving” or “unaccompanied walking” and other such high crimes.

Speaks volumes in itself. I feel pretty guilty now about how I “hated” school, when I could have been married off before becoming anything like an adult, and then denied education which will be her only way out, if she wants/needs one.

This makes me think of the current situation with the fundamentalist Christian group in Texas - child abuse or cultural norms?

I don’t believe it’s unreasonable for us to object to legalized pedophilia. If this story is indeed true, it would be morally reprehensible for any government or religious body to allow this practice to continue.

My point wasn’t to presume that western morality is superior to others. I threw the comment on moral imposition to defuse the attempt to use moral relativism as an excuse by saying that the cosummation was acceptable since Yemeni morals, or more accurately, laws would allow the union. The rest of my comments were on the individual himself. My thought? Regardless of whether or not the law permitted it, it was wrong.

As for my own “non-western culture,” I tend to embrace both the ways of the (non-western) country of my birth and those my my adopted nation, many times taking the best of both and finding a balance between the two. However, I still believe that there are some basic rules of morality, in this case protecting children, that are important, but may not carry as much importance in the morals of my birth country in some interpretations. The proliferation of child prostitution in some parts of East Asia comes to mind and continues to anger me.

Don’t mistake upholding a moral that I hold in importance and evaluating an individual based on that as arrogance - I just call it a judgemental observation. It’s also called an opinion. Arrogance would be me saying that the whole culture is broken and needs to be “fixed.”

By the way, lumping “power-hungry” to “western culture” is much too generalized and borders on ignorant and inflammatory in itself. I think that adjective can describe pretty much any political or social aggregation of human beings, and isn’t reserved for the west.

Long reply, but I just wanted to clarify. I’d like to say we agree to disagree. I’d also like to avoid drawing out this thread much further. Thanks for the discussion, though!

Hi, my name is ____.

I disagree with the content of this article because of ____ and because I am of _____ descent - and my people are way better than Middle Easterners.

Please post more articles about how messed up Middle Easterners are - but don’t do the same for my people, the ______, because if people write articles about how my people do crazy fucked up things too - then I can’t feel superior to Middle Easterners anymore…

I also read where wtf is sensitive to criticism from anyone from a Western culture. I would suggest that wtf save their indignation for the 8 year old girl. I see that what was done to her by her family and the 28 year old man who married her (i.e. physical/sexual abuse and the mental afteraffects of the same) to be far more serious than Grok stating their opinion. Let me say again, Grok was stating their opinion on the issue of the posted article. I cannot say that wtf’s comments had anything to do with the posted article unless wtf is one of the abusers spoken about in the article.

What you said was innapropriate and ignorant. I really hope you don’t think the western culture is the most ethically superior culture. In fact, western culture has brought many countries into ruins because of their power hungry ways. You should be arguing on the basis of ethics alone. You just glomped my “non western” culture and probably a whole bunch of other cultures and labeled it as secondary to the oh great western civilization.