Elizabeth Smart’s ordeal as a kidnapped polygamist child bride could have ended weeks after her abduction when a policeman challenged her captor to lift her veil.
But he backed off when Brian Mitchell insisted that it was an inviolable religious obligation, condemning the 14-year-old to another eight months as a sex slave.
…
When a police detective approached an oddly dressed teenager in a Salt Lake City library and asked her to lift her veil, Mr Mitchell refused, saying their religion only permitted her husband to see her face.
“He said he was looking for Elizabeth Smart,” Ms Smart told an engrossed courtroom…
Smart said that the policeman “asked if he could be a part of our religion for a day, just so he could see my face, just so he could go back and say, ‘No, it wasn’t Elizabeth Smart’.” When Mr Mitchell refused, the detective gave in.That moment she felt “like hope was walking out the door”, Ms Smart told the jury.
He was looking for her. He saw a girl of the right sort of size, with a veil over her face. He tried to check her identity. The kidnapper said no, citing an inviolable religious obligation. The cop gave it up. Smart got eight more months of misery as a result.
Maybe people should start to learn that a woman or girl with a bag over her head is a sign of something seriously wrong. That particular “inviolable religious obligation,” where it exists, is a symptom of a systematic social abduction of women. It hides powerlessness and helplessness.
Comments
56 responses to “An inviolable religious obligation”
I still get carded all the time—for booze and rental cars and such. The detective couldn’t have asked to see some I.D.? OK sir, if I can’t see her face, then how about a driver’s license? A passport? A damn library card?
I mean, sheesh. On routine traffic stops, I’ve been given the third-degree by cops who weren’t looking for anyone or anything specific. Here’s a cop who was specifically looking for a particular girl who’s been abducted!
It just proves how powerful—and how poisonous—the everyday kowtowing to religious silliness can be.
That just makes me feel sick. I mean literally nauseated.
What takes my breath away is that after the ordeal was over, Elizabeth still has still clung to Mormonism, becoming a missionary in France for her cultish, misogynistic faith. Brian David Mitchell was a Mormon, too, just a more fundamentalist version. The story is fascinating, and awful, and the US media will never acknowledge how much religion factored in to the kidnapping.
As horrible as this is, I really dislike this knee-jerk reaction. Are you sure you think that living in a state where the police can demand ID from anyone, even 14 year old girls, when there’s no evidence of a crime merely on the pretext that they’re looking for someone?
There’s a lot of crap to hate but using a single abduction to justify giving up more civil liberties and giving more power to the police isn’t going to create a safer more rational world.
I don’t support more giving up of civil liberties – the surveillance/police culture is bad enough as it is. I do, however, think it’s blindingly obvious that in cases where you’re looking for a kidnapped girl and you defer to someone who says “you can’t see her face cuz it’s my religion”, that is seriously, outrageously wrong. It’s perverse, in the strongest sense of the term.
Tyro, I honestly think you’re reading something that isn’t there. Andy didn’t use this scenario as an excuse to justify broader (and pretty unrelated) problems of surveillance culture. There was evidence of a crime; we knew a girl had been kidnapped, and the police were actively looking for her. This has nothing to do with the entirely legit. problem of creeping police power to demand our “papers.” I agree with you about those other problems, but I think your (justifiable) revulsion about them caused you to write your own narrative into what Andy said.
There are always girls that have been kidnapped, always some crime police are investigating (or say they are).
Remember that this whole article was written as a retrospective. At the time, it doesn’t sound like the police had much to go on and little reason to think that this particular girl was a victim of anything other than an oppressive religion. It’s only in hindsight that we tell a story saying “if only…” Some think there was a lot of solid evidence, I call shenanigans that the police wouldn’t have acted more strongly – calling in a female officer, watching the house, whatever.
So tell me, what sort of changes do you really think should happen? Should officers be allowed to demand ID from anyone on the street, at any time, provided they have some flimsy pretext like they’re looking for someone? Think this through.
Oh please. There’s a world of difference between abusive “papers please”-style harassment or the genital pat-downs of the TSA and a non-coercive request from a policeman that he be allowed to see a person’s face.
This slippery-slope baloney is the kind of thing I’d expect to hear from a fundagelical moaning about the war on Christmas.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Barney Allen and Ophelia Benson, Mike Daniels. Mike Daniels said: An "inviolable religious obligation" kept Elizabeth Smart a sex slave http://icio.us/ix0tba […]
A prediction: As this becomes more widely known, numerous people will come out to say that, yes, the man who did this deserves to burn in hell forever; but no, a mere secular interest in preventing crime should still never be allowed to override a claim of religious principle.
As the discussion unfolds, it will then become clear that what really has them worked up is not the horrible suffering inflicted upon Elizabeth Smart (since, after all, this is what True Believers do all the time, but with the Lord’s — and the girl’s parents’ — blessing), but the fact that the kidnapper has now made it more difficult for True Believers to use religious arguments to subjugate the girls and women in their lives.
It’s going to be just like the Catholics’ defense of the pope’s cover-up of the pedophile priest scandal — with “ethics” and “morality” twisted into monstrous and inhumane forms.
Oh for goodness sake!—officers in most jurisdictions in the US are allowed to do exactly that. Whether or not a citizen can be arrested for refusing, and whether or not that refusal constitutes “suspicious behavior” is another matter, but nothing prevents any cop, at any time, from asking to see a citizen’s ID. It’s not against the law to ask, and it’s not (necessarily) against the law to refuse.
A cop is looking for a missing girl. He sees a girl approximately the size and shape of the girl for whom he is looking, and she is closely accompanied by a man. She is in a get-up that covers her face. The cop questions them. That’s huge, right there, because it means his suspicion was piqued enough for him to take action. The man refuses to reveal the identity of his “wife.” Now, the cop was already acting on his suspicion. It would have been legal, and most proper, for him to request ID, to press on with his questioning rather than bow to the man’s religious excuse—which is the most flimsy pretext there is.
I think that I am thinking this through. And given the context of an active investigation for a kidnapped girl, where the officer in question clearly had a reasonable reason to question the parties in front of him, I don’t see how this leads all the way down the slippery slope. I’m just as opposed to police culture as you are, and by nature, far more apt to question the legitimacy of police actions than I am to suppor them. But I think you’re wrong in this case.
Cripes, that was inelegant. I’ll just retire to my gracious trailer home, thank you all. . .
@dzd,
He did ask and was declined. What now? Some people are saying that the police should be able to compel us to show ID based on their hunches or perhaps they can merely compel us to take off our clothing. I’m not talking slippery slope here – this is a big problem already.
@Andy,
There are thousands of missing kids of all shapes & sizes. Again, are you seriously trying to argue that this is sufficient grounds for an arrest or for police to forcibly remove our clothing?
Are you saying that asserting our rights and declining to show ID is sufficiently suspicious that it is reasonable grounds for an arrest?
@Josh,
Do you know that he had reasonable grounds for suspicion? I don’t see any hints about that in the article. If he did, there are many lines of investigation open to him – following the person and watching him for a start, an actual arrest for a second. None of this happened. He was suspicious enough to ask questions but that’s it. Just what sort of latitude do you think the police should have based solely on their suspicions?
If I’m wrong, I’d like to hear why. I’m not making a slippery slope argument, I don’t understand why you keep saying that I am. I am asking what general rules you think the police should be bound by when investigating us and under what cases they can demand ID or force us to remove our clothing. Listen to the comments above – the conditions proposed are laughably flimsy, basically whenever a cop wants to demand an ID, we need to provide it or be arrested!
I live in a country where the police do have the right to demand and look at your papers at all times you are outside your house, and the citizen is legally obliged to carry identification with him/her at all times. Usually this is no big deal, although it means I have to carry a handbag with me since the papers required don’t fit into a jeans pocket.
I find myself irritated by “fishing”, by which I mean cops just stopping people for no particular reason and demanding papers. I look like a foreigner and there are plenty of xenophobic cops around. I can imagine a black person (I’m white) getting really annoyed at being stopped all the time (15 times as likely in the UK apparently).
However, when police are stopping citizens and demanding papers for a reason, and they state that reason, and it’s a reasonable reason (i.e. it’s not fishing or annoying foreigners or blacks) then I feel, as a responsible citizen, a great urge to co-operate.
In the same way, I don’t mind an honest discussion with somebody who believes in God or Christ or Buddha, but I object strongly to being told or co-erced into respecting their beliefs, their religious hang-ups, their diet and all the other rights they assume to keep the unclean in their place.
I’ve been stopped in central Stockholm and asked for my identification. The policeman said at the time they were looking for someone who matched my physical description and type of clothing. Sweden has an ID card policy so people are used to getting asked for ID in shops etc when paying by credit card so it was no problem simply taking out my ID card, showing it to him and then going on. There may be a slippery slope but I think its a very long slope and there are pragmatic reasons for not getting too wound up over ringfencing every civil liberty when the strict application of these can result in the sort of things detailed in this story. As for Elizabeth Smart herself, its amazing how strong religious indoctrination can be when you think she is now a mormon missionary – out on the street in France, trying to ‘save’ more souls.
Let’s not forget that this all took place in Salt Lake City which is the private preserve of mormonism, and don’t you fergit it! This policeman was probably following departmental guidelines to the letter. In a place like SLC I doubt if veiled women are all that unusual – otherwise it wouldn’t have been much of a disguise……
Much as I agree with the general view here, there does seem a blindingly obvious slip-up by the police. They’re looking for a missing girl, but there’s no female officer on hand?
I’d like to think this could no longer happen in the UK, although the methods to prevent it don’t go down well with right wingers. For example, female police officers routinely liase with women through mosques in Muslim areas. There’s the inevitable whining from Daily Mail readers about police officers being issued with head coverings to do such stuff, but if it means they get to talk to women direct and pick up tales of forced marriages etc. without some nosy mullah interfering, what’s the problem? Police are there to serve the community – all the community – not impose law on it for the benefit of privileged sections of it. Might be an escalating struggle to do so as religious bods use each new initiative to their own ends, but it has to be done.
What I want to know is why Elizabeth didn’t rip the rag off her own head and say, “You’ve found me. Now get me out of here.”
The door to her freedom was wide open in front of her, in the form of that cop. All she needed to do was take one step through it. Yes, her abductor was a controlling creep; but what was he going to do to her with a cop standing right there?
The fact that we accept this passivity as somehow normal and unquestionable in women is a deep piece of the problem here. Yes, a woman with a bag over her head is a sign of something seriously wrong — and part of what’s wrong is that she was holding still for it.
Finding a female officer would have been appropriate, too; though remember we’re talking Utah here, where law enforcement isn’t all that far removed from the wild west paradigm and women cops are much rarer.
Mrs Robinson said:
“What I want to know is why Elizabeth didn’t rip the rag off her own head and say, “You’ve found me. Now get me out of here.”
From what I read about the story she was threatened with the murder of her family if she tried to escape. She was only fourteen at the time, so was essentially a child. I don’t think we should blame her in this instance. On the other hand reading some of her current testimony I would wonder whether there wasn’t some degree of religious compulsion involved also. Her testimony of her captors tell of people who talked religion all the time, mainly to justify their wicked actions. She is clearly still very religious (her captors are described as hypocritical since they did ‘bad’ things and therefore they couldn’t be doing God’s will). One wonders whether her initial reluctance to escape was a mixture of threats but also partly a deference to religious authority.
Stockholm Syndrome is a very real psychological phenomenon, and it happens to both genders, and in adults, and in kidnappings without any sort of religious overtones. Given this, I think it is very difficult to pass judgement on the actions of a scared 14-year-old girl.
I think Tyro’s comments should be taken (more?) seriously.
I too wondered why she didn’t take it off herself. Maybe she was afraid that the cop wouldn’t recognize her, and then she would be in big, big trouble from her captor. Maybe she felt total passivity was her only safety in that situation.
Why the male cop wasn’t with a female cop – my impression from the article is that he happened to spot the girl at the library, not that he was combing the library for the girl.
This was an active search, in a local area. There aren’t thousands of those. And a bag over the head is not “clothing” – it’s a bag over the head.
Tyro:
Who said anything about being arrested? In fact, in my previous comment I tried to explain to you exactly what the law already IS in the States, and I spoke to that very issue of arrest:
In my initial comment, I wondered why the cop did not press on with his questioning, why he didn’t request ID. I felt that bowing to religious silliness was the explanation—especially since citizens are routinely asked for ID in far less dire (and less suspicious) situations. You interpreted my comments as some kind of veiled advocacy for a “Papers Please”-style surveillance state. As Josh pointed out, that’s quite a stretch (one might say, a “knee jerk reaction”) based on what I wrote, and that’s fine. That’s your view. But let’s at least understand what the law actually IS. Once again, it is LAWFUL for a cop to request ID from a citizen, just as it is also LAWFUL for that citizen to refuse said request. There is no law that says we have to do everything a cop says under threat of arrest. It is only in certain, rather narrow situations that police orders have the force of law. (Notice that the kidnapper DID refuse to do what the cop asked, and that kidnapper was NOT arrested.) Given that Elizabeth Smart suffered eight more months of torment after that encounter, it is not unreasonable for some of us to wonder why that particular cop in that particular situation did not ask a couple more questions. It would have been legal to do so, and if the kidnapper told him to fuck off, well, that would have been legal too.
Christopher Hitchens wrote about such an encounter (http://www.slate.com/id/2223673/):
Note: No laws were broken in the above encounter. The cop was acting lawfully—albeit stupidly—as was Mr. Hitchens.
We have the right, in the States, not to be searched, arrested, detained, or formally interrogated without being told why and without going before a judge (in cases of arrest). We DON’T have the right to not be approached or spoken to by police officers. And police officers, in turn, cannot arrest us merely for not wanting to engage them.
There aren’t thousands, there are hundreds of thousands. Over 2,000 people are reported missing each day which means that any area will have any number of open cases. Plus there are robberies, rapes, murders and other investigations, all of which involve police looking for suspects. How much more civil rights do you think we have to give up so that police can pursue these investigations?
The article says “veil” and while Sam Harris jokingly (but aptly) describes a burqua as a “bag”, I’m pretty sure that the people wearing veils and burquas do consider them clothing, and important at that. But okay, I’m open to suggestions – should police be allowed to demand that people remove any head-covering while out in public?
And let’s not forget something else. Even though there are a huge number of missing persons, cases of kidnapping into sex rings is rare enough that a story in Utah gets reported in an Australian newspaper. If there were two of these a week in Canberra I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be reporting on Salt Lake City cases. So when we decide how to respond and what new powers to give to police, remember that there are millions of police interactions a day and the vast majority of people covering their faces or acting “suspicious” are not guilty of anything.
Lets also not forget that this was an eight month ordeal for this poor girl and the library meeting was a chance encounter that lasted seconds and which the officer probably quickly forgot (until now). In that eight months there were any number of other things happening which might also have saved her, not to mention things which might have prevented this in the first place. By fixating on a single, rare incident and using it as justification of stripping more civil rights, I think we’re in danger of acting like the paranoid right-wing loonies that constantly point to terrorism to justify their reactionary policies.
Elizabeth Smart was not just reported missing, she was reported violently abducted; there was a witness.
In some situations, police should be able to ask to see people’s faces, yes.
And I’m not fixating on the incident, but I am interested in it, because it appears to be a case in which a religious claim trumped a reasonable, sensible request from a cop looking for a violently abducted 13 year old girl.
Andy,
Yes, I know. It sounds like the officer did ask and they declined. He certainly asked to see under the girl’s veil and was refused. The question isn’t whether police have the right to ask for ID but how to handle the cases where they do ask and are refused. What then, do they arrest the person?
And you talk about “reasonable suspicion” which, considering it was only a person acting shifty and someone wearing a veil, that sounds like very unreasonable suspicions, basically targeting any Muslim.
It is a lot less reasonable than you are acting. By only considering cases where the cops turn out to be correct, we can justify pretty much any laws since only guilty people are targeted. To be fair and realistic we must remember that most of the people that police talk to are innocent. If we care about civil liberties, we need to consider all of the day-to-day interactions and ask what price we’re paying so that we can avoid regret in exceptional cases like this.
I know, and I think we should continue to fight for this right even if it means that we’ll hear about cases like this. That is what I’ve been trying to defend so far in this thread.
OB,
It wasn’t a religious claim – anyone can refuse to show ID, refuse to remove clothing and refuse to a search (well, decline to consent). Religion justified the type of clothing but the law is entirely secular and applies to anyone.
This wasn’t a manhunt which happened right after an abduction, it was a chance encounter in a public building, presumably well after the initial abduction.
And there are hundreds of thousands of people walking around with their faces covered and very few people who have been forcibly abducted. What about the rights of all these innocent people?
They declined? They didn’t decline – he declined. The two of them were hardly sharing one will!
It was someone of the right size to be a violently abducted girl, and a man who refused to allow a cop to see her face. Don’t minimize it. And don’t dress it up as reasonable, either.
1. It was a religious claim, according to the news article.
2. A bag over the head is not “clothing” in the sense that being made to remove it leaves a person naked. It’s also not “clothing” in the sense that it’s unremarkable.
3. The search for Smart was still active.
4. What hundreds of thousands of people walking around with their faces covered? What do you mean – in the world? Or in the US? There aren’t in the US, as far as I know. I think you have your stats wrong.
5. The putative “right” to wear a bag over one’s head is highly contested, as I’m sure you know. It’s akin to a “right” to be stoned to death for adultery.
Tyro, why do you ask this question as if I have not answered it?! As (I thought) my quote from the Hitchens piece illustrated, we’re in agreement. No, no one should be arrested for not obliging a police officer’s request. And, as I’ve tried to make clear to you, that’s not just my opinion—it’s the law in the U.S.
You ask how to handle the cases where they do ask and are refused. “Do they arrest the person?” Well, there’s a real answer to that question. As always in the law, the answer is “it depends.” In a case like the one with Elizabeth Smart in the library, the officer, by questioning the kidnapper, was already acting on basis of the reasonable suspicion/cause doctrine (which is not just a locution I’ve made up; it’s a very real legal standard that is operative in courts across this country every day). Had he asked for ID, and been refused, that refusal would not have been grounds for arrest. But it would have been interesting.
Also, the record of the case shows that the detective came to the library due to a tip that had been called in:
Huh. So this wasn’t just some rogue cop with a chip on his shoulder. A tip had been called in about the very odd pair Smart and her kidnapper must have made.
Just a reminder that this is how power-mad idiots bent on harassment behave:
How am I minimizing this?
Could it be that you’re constructing a narrative using hindsight and using it to justify expansive new police powers?
If this police was really that confident that this was the right girl, why the lack of follow-up? If this was so unusual, why didn’t anyone else raise an alarm? Based on what little information we have, it looks like this was a chance encounter that the officer did not think was especially significant. We’ve all heard cases where police have used trumped-up charges to justify arresting people and if he was at all convinced that there was something really wrong, wouldn’t he have found some excuse to pursue? Instead it was dropped entirely which tell us that he really didn’t think something was serious.
This encounter was significant to the girl no doubt but what could have been done without the benefit of hindsight and while still preserving civil liberties for the vast majority of times where innocent people interact with the police?
In the interest of having an evidence-based discussion, Smart’s multi-day testimony begins here: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50632966-76/smart-viti-yes-defendant.html.csp and sidebars include a photo of her in a veil, stories of other police and non-police encounters, and more.
WRT police obligations and individual rights in the US, I suggest googling “Terry Stop.” Tyro may not agree but the criteria certainly seem to have been met here.
Andy,
If you would kindly read what I’m saying, I *agree* that people should (and do) have the right to refuse to show ID and I’m saying that’s probably what happened here. I’m saying that it’s a terrible, unfortunate thing and preserving civil liberties means that sometimes guilty people can get away with crimes.
Now why are you still shouting at me as if I’m saying something horrible that you disagree with?
If the police did have reasonable grounds for a search, then of course I support them conducting a proper search. I didn’t see anything in the newspaper article which hinted that this was the case so if that was incomplete or misleading then of course I will change my opinion. I have mentioned several ways that, if the police had reasonable grounds to suspect something, they could have easily and tactfully gotten around any religious objections – female police officers, going to a private location, etc.
I’m going to repeat this: It was not a “chance encounter.” A tip had been called in SPECIFICALLY about the odd pair Smart and her kidnapper made:
(http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50650045-76/mitchell-smart-richey-lake.html.csp)
Sorry for the long quote, but this is integral to the discussion we’re having. It seems both “sides” (which includes ME) that are being argued are wrong about some very basic matters of fact:
Kevin,
If those conditions were met then yes, the police can demand to see ID. Based on what happened, it doesn’t seem like these conditions were met since nothing happened.
It also raises a point I keep making – these stops happen All The Time. A “Terry Stop” happens every time you are pulled over by a police while driving! Are we seriously suggesting that we change the laws to grant police new powers in order to catch kidnappers but which will be used most often for traffic stops?
Tyro, I don’t see anyone asking to “change the laws to grant police new powers in order to catch kidnappers but which will be used most often for traffic stops”
If during a traffic stop the officer was told they cannot execute their job because it offends someone’s religion, well, then yes I think we might have that discussion. But not today.
Who’s we? Who suggested changing the laws to grant police new powers?
What I do suggest, though, is that groups like the one Richey sat with in the SLC library should be seen differently. Groups that consist of a man doing all the talking and two bagged women whose religion forbids them to talk in public should be seen as deeply suspect. That doesn’t mean cops should tangle with all of them, but it does mean there’s a problem.
Snap, Kevin. (A UK word meaning “oh look we said the same thing at the same time.”)
It is not a civil liberty to put someone’s head into a bag.
Especially if it is a minor’s.
I read the testimony and the cop said he thought the tip he was following-up on seemed pretty thin. He said he had a hard time believing that someone could recognize a stranger just from the small area around the eyes that was visible.
And if he had demanded the removal of the veil and had been wrong (that is, not Elizabeth Smart), he would have opened his department up to a huge civil liability.
We yell “jinx” and demand that the person who failed to declare “jinx” first remain mute until the “jinxer” releases them. If they speak, they own some minor penalty (such as purchasing a beverage) to the “jinxer”.
Aaron, do you know that for a fact? A cop looking for an abducted child who insists on seeing someone’s face would risk civil liability?
What I should have wrote was that I think Tyro is entirely right in the sense that this cop, who apparently interacted with the trio for some 30 minutes, was satisfied that no further questioning was necessary. So I owe Tyro an apology, since I had implied that the cop probably walked away from the encounter dissatisfied and suspicious. The record indicates otherwise. My apologies.
Detective Richey had been thoroughly fooled. I can’t blame him; he did what he could. But I also can’t imagine that every detective in Salt Lake City would have likewise been fooled. I simply have to believe that there are many detectives on that beat who would have pressed further, who would not have been fooled in the least, and who would have shrugged off the religious excuse. I mean, the civilian who called in the tip sure wasn’t fooled, right? Apparently, that person said something to the effect of Hey, get someone over here—I think I just saw Elizabeth Smart!
@46
Such a cop would not have broken any laws, per se, but that kind of error by an officer would surely invite ACLU lawsuits. There’s a real fourth Amendment question there. It’s not the kind of gamble an officer likes to take, if she’s smart. (I vehemently support, and contribute to the ACLU, for the record.)
Thanks Andy; I wouldn’t have guessed that. My inner fascist, no doubt. :- )
My fault about the officer walking away – I extrapolated that from the article, which was a summary account, not the detailed version that you linked to just above.
Thanks Ophelia, but you didn’t really imply anywhere that the detective walked away suspicious and dissatisfied. That was my presumption, and it was utterly, well, presumptuous. In fact, Det. Richey was satisfied. I don’t believe him when he says he has “no regrets.” That’s just a thing cops do so that they can sleep at night. He’s telling himself he has no regrets, but I’m sure he wishes he would have waited outside and ran the plates of the car they all got into. I’m sure he wishes he would have pulled a Peter Falk and asked “Just one more question, sir…”
On the Fourth Amendment question, no inner fascist at all. Like I said, there’s a real question as to what constitutes “probable cause.” There’s actually a First Amendment issue, too, since the longstanding precedent is that certain garb is itself an expression of religious devotion, and so tampering with that garb may or may not be violating a person’s religious freedom. DisneyWorld is going through this right now—some lawsuit in which an employee wants to wear her head scarf on the job, and Disney tried to get her to take it off.
Ophelia, I am not a lawyer, but I would not be surprised in the least if the police department would have been sued if the officer had demanded removal of the veil and had been wrong, and I spoke with a highway patrolman friend of mine last night (Highway Patrol are basically state police instead of city police) and he agreed with me.
Easy solution for Disney: they should just put a big Mickey Mouse mask over her head. She can wear a veil underneath. And everyone will be satiesfied.
@51
I think the woman’s job was as a ticket taker, something non-costume related like that. But yeah, promoting her to be Donald Duck would have solved the problem nicely. (Would that be a promotion?)
@52: At Disney’s, certainly, I suppose :-)
But there’s still another question: is it a civil right to put anyone else’s (a minor’s) face into a bag?
That’s the question all right. I think there are competing precedents here – Yoder v Wisconsin in one direction, decisions that say parents can’t prevent lifesaving medical treatments in another. That’s a recurring theme here, and has been for years. Parents have a lot of leeway, but then again, there are limits.
The SLC library scenario is very creepy. One question about the man’s behavior should have been, why isn’t this guy worried about the wellbeing of the abducted child? Why doesn’t he want to confirm that the child with him is not that child? And what the hell religion is this where women are not allowed to speak in public?
Situations where men have custody of hooded silenced women just should set off alarm bells.
I now understand why the Americans are so keen to help the Afghans; they have so much in common.
They like to keep their women safe.
They give women the right to be silent and obedient.
They give more rights to men.
They esteem religion greater than any human rights.
Are the USA becoming the Afghanistan of the western world?
Oh lawz!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/elizabeth-smart-kidnap-utah-mormonism