Why would you do that, Magesty? And please, Sire, don’t post a picture as your response 
[/quote]
Based on the Slate article I linked to, the studies he quoted, my considerable life experience and my royal infallibility. Shouldn’t you be more snivelling?[/quote]
Now that’s a good answer.
The discussion has gotten very vague and abstract, losing sight of the subject of the OP: polygamous pedophile preacher Tony Alamo. I recognize that the State of Texas recently bungled its raid on a pedophile polygamous cult, but do any of you really believe Alamo and his girls are just engaging in a matter of freedom of choice and a natural, healthy lifestyle?
Seems more like a wacko con man preying on vulnerable children to me.
[quote]These days, he can be heard regularly defending the breakaway Mormon sect in Texas. . . During an April broadcast, the pastor proclaimed that the government had no right to take 10-year-old wives away from their rightful “husbands”: “[color=#FF0000]What I’m doing is fighting for these people that they, the ungodly beast, is throwing into prison for marrying someone 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11-10[/color], if they’ve reached puberty.”
. . . [color=#FF0000]The IRS eventually revoked the church’s tax-exempt status [/color]in 1985 after determining that it was really a profit-making entity meant to fund Alamo’s luxurious lifestyle. However, the pastor continued to ignore his taxes, and the [color=#FF0000]IRS eventually seized millions of dollars in Alamo’s church property [/color]and business interests and put him behind bars. After [color=#FF0000]Alamo served four years of a six-year sentence[/color], all of his properties, businesses, and nonprofits were registered under the names of his followers. Since his release in 1998, he’s been trying to make a comeback and has targeted New York/New Jersey as one of several areas for growth-and for his polygamous radio message. . .
[color=#FF0000]Ondrisek says his sister began taking “field trips” to Alamo’s house with other girls when she was just 10[/color]. “She would come back with, like, new clothes,” he says. “By the time I was old enough to realize what was happening-it was just disgusting.” Now, he says, she is 19 years old and lives full-time at Alamo’s house as one of his “wives.”
. . . [color=#FF0000]Sarah, the youngest, was only six years old when she says she first realized that something strange was going on between Pastor Alamo and some of the girls [/color]in the church. “It was just totally obvious. I went to go visit Tony in prison, and he kissed all the women,” she says. It was her first indication that Alamo had multiple wives, many of whom, ex-members say, he married when they were still children. A naturally rebellious and skeptical kid, she says she was beaten and confined for her many infractions, which included talking back to a teacher and listening to music not approved by Alamo.
. . . Alamo eventually ordered Sarah and Angie, the two youngest, to live at his house for months at a time while their mother remained in another of the church compounds five hours away-Sarah because she needed to be watched, and Angie because she was being groomed to be Alamo’s next wife. Phoebe and Sarah say that [color=#FF0000]Angie went to live at Alamo’s house permanently when she was 12. By 13, she was wearing a wedding ring, and, at 14, she was spending the night in Alamo’s bedroom.[/color] Eventually, Sarah was kicked out at age 15 for kissing a young man that Alamo didn’t approve of;
. . . Alamo waxed poetic about menstruation: “The Bible is filled with stories where God commanded young women to get married. When they start their periods, they are women, according to God’s word. [color=#FF0000]They should be able to be married at 13, 14, 15 years old, and in cases if they’ve menstruated already, 12 years old[/color].” He also contends that Mary was as young as six at the time she conceived Jesus, and sarcastically asks if God could be considered a pedophile
. . . While Alamo publicly says he’s not a polygamist, and challenges outsiders to “find marriage licenses about me being married to anybody,” [color=#FF0000]ex-members say he has unofficially “married” at least eight girls as young as eight years old[/color][/quote]
rickross.com/reference/alamo/alamo14.html
[quote]children, and in some cases adults, being violently paddled for what Alamo deemed as bad behavior.
“There were a number of boys who got spanked. They’d hold them up, spread-eagle, then one of the big brothers would just take the board and let them have it over and over and over,” she said. “I couldn’t tell how or why they held it together. Many of them fell apart, screaming bloody murder.”
Not unlike [color=#FF0000]11-year-old Justin Miller, who at the Saugus, California church in 1988, received more than 100 swats on the orders of Alamo by phone. . . . In 1990, U.S. Circuit Judge Morris Arnold awarded Miller’s family almost $1.5 million in Fort Smith federal court for the beating[/color]
[/quote]
rickross.com/reference/alamo/alamo13.html
[quote] Six minors have been temporarily placed in state custody as part of a child porn investigation after a raid on a ministry run by a man who says “consent is puberty” when it comes to sex. . .
an e-mail that authorities inadvertently sent to media members last week referred to 12-, 13- and 14-year-old girls.
. . . News of the raid brought Anthony Justin Lane, 34, into Fouke from his job roofing in nearby Texarkana, hoping for some word about his family.
Lane said he has been [color=#FF0000]trying for 10 years to reunite with his children, who belong to Alamo’s ministry. Lane said he saw a 13-year-old girl marry a man of about 40 [/color]just before he was kicked out of the church for asking too many questions.
Lane hired a lawyer and said that he is trying to subpoena his girlfriend, but that it remains difficult as she moves among Alamo’s churches in Arkansas and California.
Lane said he last saw his oldest daughter, who would now be 13, in 2005. She offered him a pamphlet as he sat in his car reading a newspaper outside Alamo’s church in Fort Smith in 2005. When Lane told her he was her father, he said, she ran off.
He has received only a few photos since then of the 13-year-old, an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son from a relative. His longtime girlfriend was pregnant with the boy when Lane said he was expelled from the church for questioning its practices. [/quote]
rickross.com/reference/alamo/alamo20.html
[quote] If only she prayed hard enough, she could make Susan Alamo rise from the dead.
[color=#FF0000]At age 12, having not set foot outside a religious compound in Arkansas since she was 4,[/color] Elishah Franckiewicz believed it was possible.
Day after day, she lay down beside the corpse, dressed in a wedding gown, for Susan Alamo was “the bride of God.” And day after day, she endured beatings by church elders because the dead woman – wife to sect founder Tony Alamo – did not open her eyes.
“We prayed over her open coffin for months,” said Franckiewicz, now 37 and an English teacher at an area community college. “When she didn’t come back to life, Tony (Alamo) started losing his mind. He believed that it was because the devil was in the children, because we had weak souls.”
On Sunday, the morning after federal investigators raided the Arkansas headquarters of Alamo’s ministry as part of a child pornography investigation, Franckiewicz, for a brief moment, became that 12-year-old again.
In a resolute voice, [color=#FF0000]she made clear how she and others in the greater Portland area endured and escaped unspeakable abuses at the compound. Franckiewicz fled in 1985 at age 15. [/color]
. . . Franckiewicz says she was the first baby born at Alamo’s first compound in California. Years after her escape, [color=#FF0000]she testified against Tony Alamo, now 74, whom she describes as a “seriously dangerous man[/color],” in his tax evasion trial in 1994.
. . . Franckiewicz said Sunday she decided to tell her story because she worries that the public will be swayed by Alamo’s arguments that his group is being persecuted. At one time, she says, [color=#FF0000]Alamo was married to 10 girls ages 15 and younger[/color], including her two nieces
. . . Followers were expected to get jobs out in the world, Franckiewicz said, but were ordered to give their entire paychecks to the Alamos’ foundation. . . .
bonds between parents in the compound and their children were often broken and the Alamos made all decisions.
“Whatever the leader says to do, happens,” Franckiewicz said. “The parents of children in the compound are not what we understand as parents. They’re not protectors. They’re not nurturers. They do whatever Tony tells them to do to their children.”
Children were taught in a school on-site and rarely if ever permitted to leave.
Nearly everything - including playing house - was considered “evil,” Franckiewicz said. . .
[color=#FF0000]“We didn’t know that wasn’t normal,” she recalls. “We only knew what they told us.” [/color]
. . . Week after week, she recalls attending prayer vigils, and even lying down and curling up next to Susan Alamo’s rotting corpse. “She smelled,” Franckiewicz said. “She was cold and really, really hard. She was dead.”
Soon, children were being subjected to horrible beatings for every day Susan Alamo remained dead. “That’s my worst memory,” she said. “The beatings were severe. We were hit with 2-by-6 boards drilled with holes.” [/quote]
rickross.com/reference/alamo/alamo17.html
Would you argue it is all perfectly decent and natural if your daughter was one of his “wives”, had been held captive in the compound for years, and was cut off from the outside world?
Aren’t most sexual relationships between men over age 40 and girls under age 16 also coercive and predatory and statements to the contrary by the man are simply rationalization for his illegal acts and desires?
I don’t think Tony Alamo is saying that puberty marks the age of consent. I think he’s saying that puberty is consent. In other words, once a girl starts to bleed, that means that Tony Alamo is allowed to sleep with her, whatever her own feelings on the matter.
Ages of consent are inherently problematic. On one hand there’s obviously no stark dividing line for maturity in real life; on the other hand, the legal system kind of needs one. And how is the law to deal with underaged teenagers who have sex–or those on either side of the (arbitrary) boundary line? Some countries allow consent from an underaged person (probably a girl) provided the boy is within a few years of her in age, and this seems wise to me.
Interesting side-questions: Is it different for girls and boys? (Developmentally, surely yes.) Is an “underaged boy” harmed when a substantially older woman seduces him? Before you answer, what if the woman becomes pregnant? Would that change your answer? Or what if it were a homosexual relationship? (And then we need to ask, are lesbianism and male homosexuality the same in their effects on youth? I tend to doubt this.)
I would say 25 should be treated as a minimum age of marriage (socially, not legally, since this is unenforcable), not as a minimum age for sex which is of course ridiculous. 16 year olds are perfectly capable of using birth control, and if things go wrong…well, 16 year olds are also perfectly capable of setting their school on fire, but we seem capable of containing this danger. Anyway there’s always abortion.
No good information is available on the age at betrothal or marriage of Jesus’s parents. Medieval church tradition encouraged the speculation that Joseph was substantially older, since a previous marriage might explain Jesus’s “brothers” and “sisters” who are mentioned in the Bible (despite the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity). Rabbinic sources are from several centuries later, and an entirely different political environment. (And anyway, they say his true father was Ben Pantera!)
for a christian heretic, fortigurn, you’re so ORTHODOX. 
this is an internet forum, it is not a zone for academic discourse. you can bring your academic credentials if you wish, but i like the way you so readily dismiss academics who don’t agree with you. me, i spend all day in academia, and forumosa is a discussion and shoot-the-shit place, a welcome break. it’s not like i am saying anything indefensible here, on the other hand, despite the way in which you so often strenuously deny the validity of my comments.
so, back to the topic:
tony alamo is a schmuck, cloaking his greed and his desire for underage flesh in his interpretation of religion. he is not alone, by the way: the state of texas is pursuing cases against several people including warren jeffs. a similar case of religion perverting the pure going on there. can’t blame religion, i guess, the world is full of arseholes, religious or not doesn’t seem to make any difference.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]The discussion has gotten very vague and abstract, losing sight of the subject of the OP: polygamous pedophile preacher Tony Alamo. I recognize that the State of Texas recently bungled its raid on a pedophile polygamous cult, but do any of you really believe Alamo and his girls are just engaging in a matter of freedom of choice and a natural, healthy lifestyle?
Seems more like a wacko con man preying on vulnerable children to me.[/quote]
Same here. But I’m one of those boring ‘orthodox’ people who believe that the age of consent should be significantly higher than typical menarche.
Scientific research over the last 10 years or so has established an evidential line for maturity in real life which is substantially more demonstrable than the point at which a foetus is typically considered viable.
The same way they deal with other underaged crimes.
It makes no difference as far as I’m concerned.
Although 16 year olds are perfectly capable of setting their school on fire, they tend to do it a lot less than they have unwanted pregnancies. The reason for this is the significant difference between the two situations. The average 16 year old has no overwhelming urge to set their school on fire, still less an urge comparable to their sex drive. The average 16 year old is far more likely to have an unwanted pregnancy than set their school on fire because of their hormonal drive, lack of self control, lack of comprehension, lack of planning and cognitive skills, peer and social pressure to have sex, and general stupidity. There’s no comparison between the two.
But abortion isn’t supposed to be for birth control, remember? And 16 year olds are typically not supposed to have abortions.
There’s good information on their likely age.
But we don’t have to worry about medieval church tradition.
Not all the rabbinic sources are from several centuries older. The Targums, and certain of the Mishneh and Talmudic texts predate the 1st century. The Ben Pantera legend is only found in the later Talmudic texts.
Well I am a Christian, after all.
I realise that. But when it comes to discussing serious subjects, if people are going to make certain dogmatic truth claims, I’m going to ask for evidence.
I don’t appeal to any of my academic credentials, and I’d like to see examples of me readily dismissing academics who don’t agree with me. Can you give me a list?
I come to Forumosa for discussion, and when I discuss serious subjects I do so seriously. And it is like you’re saying something indefensible here. You often do. Your whole ‘cultural genocide’ thing is an example.
[quote]so, back to the topic:
tony alamo is a schmuck, cloaking his greed and his desire for underage flesh in his interpretation of religion. he is not alone, by the way: the state of texas is pursuing cases against several people including warren jeffs. a similar case of religion perverting the pure going on there. can’t blame religion, i guess, the world is full of arseholes, religious or not doesn’t seem to make any difference.[/quote]
All true. But if it’s ok for girls to have sex at menarche, then there’s no big deal, right?
But religion is based on wild speculation. There are no rational arguments based on verifiable evidence of any god.
The fact of the matter is that nobody has any idea bout the actual age of Mary when she got knocked up. Does it really matter?
There must be a reason that biologically our hormonea are raging at that age. The body is physically ready for reproduction. The animal kingdon is like that. Humans place laws which are contrary to nature.
Our youth now have the benefit of many years of education that was not available all that long ago.
[quote=“Fortigurn”]
Sorry, I’m used to discussions on a forum with higher standards. A place where wild speculation and personal prejudices are not considered evidence, where posters are required to make intelligent, rational arguments on the basis of verifiable evidence, and where use of appropriate scholarly literature and recognized academic works is both common and encouraged. It’s a religious forum…[/quote]
Surely that would be a better place for you to pursue such discussions, in that case. There’s a lot of godless heathens here who don’t consider ANYTHING in terms of religion to have “verifiable evidence” – other than the incontrovertible and immutable fact that you’re trying to use scientific discourse to discuss fairytales.
Fortigurn’s views may be a lot of things, but orthodox isn’t one of them, at least not if you look carefully. Sui generis seems a better description. I’m being polite now, because he was nice to me earlier 
You know I used to use Sui Generis as my nom de souris, but illiterates used to think I was a woman and hit on me.
What do you think of the slate article I linked to?
Oh yes, I forgot that, sorry.
Yes, some people do actually have some highly probable ideas about the actual age of Mary, but no it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t have a problem pursuing them here.
Yes I’m aware of that. But that’s not what we’re discussing. There are hundreds of academic journals on a vast array of subjects concerning religion which have nothing to do with the supernatural claims of religion, though they frequently address the verifiable evidence for certain non-supernatural religious claims. Textual criticism, archaeology, historiography, source criticism, anthropology, ethnography, literature, ethics, psychology, philosophy, you name it. This doesn’t appear to be well understood by the general public.
But no one here is trying to use scientific discourse to discuss fairytales. The age of consent is the relevant subject.
fortigurn: you said: I don’t appeal to any of my academic credentials, and I’d like to see examples of me readily dismissing academics who don’t agree with me. Can you give me a list?
yet much earlier you also said: “I don’t think ‘many scholars’ who are actually academically relevant think she was in her early teens”. that’s all i meant.
on another note: John and mary are two placeholder names for Anyone, not necessarily to be cast into a religious context. maybe you want to call the Odin and Stella instead, or Tab A and Slot B.
earlier i wrote: so 25 years old is the new line, then?
and you replied: I don’t think anyone has suggested 25 years as the age of consent, no.
but you had also said: “I think breeding is best done when you’re able to support yourself financially, and you’re mentally and emotionally mature. There’s a wealth of evidence indicating teenage mothers are less than the best choice”.
and: “There’s no need for that. If you read the relevant scholarly literature (and I would advise people participating in this thread to do so, it will mean we’re not simply all airing our personal prejudices), you’ll find the relevant intellectual and emotional maturity is fully formed by 25 at latest.”
and: “Why? Because pre-teen, teen, and even newly post-teen brains are tiny, underdeveloped, and immature. This is why their decision making, forward planning, evaluation, cognitive assessment, judgment, and rational thinking processes are so pathetic, and why if not restrained and guided they make complete disasters of their lives. As much as they hate to hear it, adults do know better and are smarter than teens.”
“The main problem is that young people have underdeveloped brains in which the key areas concerning forward planning, judgment, careful reasoning, self control, and all the other things I mentioned previously, are still immature. These areas don’t finish developing until after 21 years of age”.
and: “That’s not the subtext here. All kids are ‘stupid’ before 25 (for a given value of ‘stupid’).”
so, i thought you were saying that kids should not have sex until they’re ready to have kids. maybe I’m wrong in my recollection of he dominant Christian viewpoint, whcich is that sex outside marriage is a sin, and that sex should be useed only for the purpose of procreation.
but perhaps you’re a christian who doesn’t mind birth control. ( i must have you confused with the catholics in that case. my apologies) see, i knew you were a heretic 
i also don’t beieve that sex should be banned until they’re 25 (or 21) or so on. i don’t believe that sex between, say two 14 year olds is inherently evil either. sex between two people where one is less than, say, 20 and the other is much older, i do think is wrong, as it represents a misuse of a powered position. Elvis and Priscila Presley, for example. Tony Alamo and his myriad child brides for another one. but you would have to agree that any specific line IS arbitrary. what is the difference between an age of consent of 15 and an age of 16? basically zero, or at least indefensibly zero.
notice i am NOT claimng the Alice Cooper defence here: that menarche is the appropriate age of consent. i am saying that the line is grey, even though the law may have to be constructed so that it appears black and white.
[quote=“urodacus”]fortigurn: you said: I don’t appeal to any of my academic credentials, and I’d like to see examples of me readily dismissing academics who don’t agree with me. Can you give me a list?
yet much earlier you also said: “I don’t think ‘many scholars’ who are actually academically relevant think she was in her early teens”. that’s all I meant.[/quote]
So I haven’t actually dismissed any academics who don’t agree with me. You didn’t even provide any.
Thanks, I misunderstood that.
I am. But I didn’t suggest 25 as that age. I think we could be generous and say 21.
[quote]maybe I’m wrong in my recollection of he dominant Christian viewpoint, whcich is that sex outside marriage is a sin, and that sex should be useed only for the purpose of procreation.
but perhaps you’re a christian who doesn’t mind birth control. ( I must have you confused with the catholics in that case. my apologies) see, i knew you were a heretic 
[/quote]
I’m not sure what the ‘dominant Christian viewpoint’ is. There’s the Catholic’s official position, then there’s the Catholic’s unofficial position, then there’s the liberal evangelical position, and then there’s the very much smaller fundamentalist evangelical position. In all that you’d find that only the Catholic’s official position is that ‘sex outside marriage is a sin, and that sex should be useed only for the purpose of procreation’, you’d find that pretty much all but the liberal evangelicals believe sex outside marriage is a sin, and you might find that some of the more extreme fundamentalist evangelical groups hold the same view as the official Catholic position.
As for myself, I believe sex outside marriage is a sin, but I don’t believe procreation is the only purpose of sex.
For the reasons I’ve given, I don’t believe any specific line is arbitrary. I don’t believe teens should be given responsibility for which they are practically biologically programmed to mishandle and abuse, whether with each other or with people older than themselves.
Yes I understand that. I am saying that the most recent scientific evidence indicates that the line has a far higher contrast than you suggest.
It may be the official line, but not all Catholics are opposed to birth control.
Oh, and I see that the chief posted his answer in the wrong thread, so I’ll copy it to here for him:
[quote=“Fortigurn”]
Sorry, I’m used to discussions on a forum with higher standards. A place where wild speculation and personal prejudices are not considered evidence, where posters are required to make intelligent, rational arguments on the basis of verifiable evidence, and where use of appropriate scholarly literature and recognized academic works is both common and encouraged. It’s a religious forum…[/quote]
Ooh! Where is it? I’m looking for a forum with fewer dumb*sses.
I don’t get this bit either. I mean, sure, there may be places like that on the internet, but what does that have to do with us? We weren’t bothering you. All in all I find your entire attitude terribley unschristian. :no-no:
The same way they deal with other underaged crimes. [/quote]
And for this you want to use the term “crime”? That has always been the problem with Christians, they seek to put people at war with the most natural parts of themselves.
Anyway, I agree with you in a way, if teenagers weren’t so stupid they would be more inclined to set their schools on fire.
What does that mean? Speciffically what is “sex” and what is “sin”. In the interests of academic rigour I think we should clarify the terms.
It’s a private forum. If you weren’t invited, you won’t be. A forum I frequent of similar rigor is here, and you’ll find that a lot easier to join.
And you’re not bothering me either. This has nothing to do with you. I was asked the reason for one of my posting habits, and I gave the reason. Simple. Nothing to do with you.
No you don’t, you’re just trolling mindlessly.
No bob, that’s not my term for it. That’s the term used in secular Australian law, which forbids minors from sexual intercourse, even with other minors. Under secular Australian law that is a crime, namely statutory rape. Now go and complain to your local atheist.
No they don’t, they simply encourage a little self discipline of the sort that scientific research indicates is absolutely necessary for mature mental and emotional development. The legal systems of pretty much every country do the same, only not as well and not as comprehensively.
In this case ‘sex’ is ‘sexual relations’, and ‘sin’ is ‘theologically defined disobedience’. Not that you actually care about this discussion in the least.
[quote=“Fortigurn”] That’s the term used in secular Australian law, which forbids minors from sexual intercourse, even with other minors. Under secular Australian law that is a crime, namely statutory rape. Now go and complain to your local atheist.
[/quote]
No, I’m complaining to you. You said you think it should be dealt with like other crimes. What I’m wondering is: 1) How something as natural as two kids playing with each other came to be considered a crime at all, and 2) Why you would think criminalizing the behaviour was the answer to anything.
That’s irrational. I am not responsible for classifying it as a crime, yet you claimed that ‘crime’ was my term. It isn’t. My term was ‘sin’, not ‘crime’. Your posts simply don’t demonstrate any coherent reasoning, let alone any cognitive interaction with what I write.
Well yes, in the context of Australian law, under which it is classified as a crime. Which part of this is confusing you? you asked how it should be treated, as if this was some kind of huge problem. It’s not a huge problem. If it’s a crime under Australian law, then it’s treated as a crime. This is not rocket science.
You will have to ask the secular authorities of Australia who were responsible for criminalizing the act.
I didn’t criminalize the behaviour, and I do not believe that criminalizing the behaviour is an answer to anything.
Yeah, but we love him anyway.