The Top Ten Religious Tenets or Practices That Have Endangered Our Children and That State Legislators Need to Know before Voting for Extreme Religious Liberty Statutes like the State Rfras

Hamilton and Griffin on Rights
November 18, 2014

http://hamilton-griffin.com/the-top-ten-religious-tenets-or-practices-that-have-endangered-our-children-and-that-state-legislators-need-to-know-before-voting-for-extreme-religious-liberty-statutes-like-the-state-rfras/

It is an odd juxtaposition in history: Believers are demanding more “religious liberty” in the states (as in more than the First Amendment ever provided) when, at the same time, we have cascades of child sex abuse scandals in one religious organization after another and Islamic fanatics, untethered by law or human rights, beheading even converts on chilling videos. It is not as though we can any longer pretend that all religious actors are benign and praiseworthy. Some are downright scary.

Yet, religious lobbyists are demanding state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) with abandon, making it possible for believers to challenge and overcome unnamed laws to protect unnamed practices—even those that protect our children. And they are not satisfied with the vanilla version of RFRA, but rather push for an extraordinary burden on the government that virtually guarantees the law will not be applied to them.

The following describes ten religious beliefs that have contributed to the abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death of children and should be known by state legislators if they consider supporting a misleadingly named and misguided RFRA.

No “religious liberty” statute should ever make it easier for any adult–including believers–to abuse, neglect, abandon, or kill children or for religious organizations to perpetuate the same. No legislator should vote for child endangerment.

Refusing ordinary medical care to sick children based on faith, leading to their permanent disability or death from diabetes, meningitis, pneumonia, diseases otherwise prevented by vaccination like measles and mumps, or leukemia, among other ailments.

Faiths: Followers of Christ, Church of Christian Science, Church of the New Born, Jehovah’s Witnesses (belief against blood transfusions), Amish and Mennonite (failure to get immunizations), among others

The rule against “scandal” in the context of clergy sex abuse promulgated in 1922 and 1962 mandated secrecy by the hierarchy and clergy who learned about it and even the victims themselves.

Faith: Roman Catholic Church

Mesirah, the belief that Jews should not turn other Jews into the authorities, which has meant that numerous pedophiles were not reported to the police and, therefore, had more opportunities to abuse more children

Faith: Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Judaism

Shunning and/or banishment by their lifetime family and friends when victims disclose sex assaults by siblings

Faith: Amish

Disfellowshipping of those who report abuse, which means that the person is expelled from the community and cast into the outside world they have been taught is very dangerous plus a requirement that abuse was not to be treated as corroborated unless two elders have witnessed it

Faith: Jehovah’s Witnesses

Outsiders are not to be trusted; statutory rape and transportation of child brides are not to be reported to the authorities; rebellious boys are abandoned and threatened not to return; and even telling a court of law about their practices violates a belief in secrecy

Faith: Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Leaving is traitorous and believers are taught that the outside world is dangerous, leaving children to be sexually abused from a young age and engaging in street begging from a young age

Faith: Children of God

Telling those outside the faith about parents’ sex assaults is an affront to Jesus Christ

Faith: Evangelical Christians

Honor killings are threatened against girls who are raped, leading girls to delay or forego disclosure to avoid being disciplined or killed

Faith: Radical Muslims

10. Controlling young victims of abuse with threats of hell and damnation, threats against their parents, and threats against their lives

Faith: Small cultists like Tony Alamo, and clergy from all walks of faith