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Post by rosa on Aug 11, 2010 14:23:12 GMT -5
There's plenty of documentary evidence from people who thought, during the war, that everything was getting better at home...and then they came home, and it suddenly got worse. Black soldiers were disrespected while they were still in uniform, and an incredible number were physically attacked for not accepting the abuse. Women of all colors were pushed out of the workforce - Black women back into house servant work, White women back home (whether hubby was bringing home his paycheck or not.)
I just read Bill Mauldin's memoir about the immediate postwar years, and the way the young soldiers came home and tried to get reconnected in their communities but were shoved down or pushed out is amazing.
Shelly, that community takes a lot of work, and a lot of doing it with people who aren't like-minded. My neighborhood has it, a little bit, but it can be a lot more rewarding to hang with like-minded people even if they don't live next door (or better yet, convince them to move next door - we have a lot of friends in a 3 or 4 block radius because we all bought houses around the same time and talked up the neighborhood to each other.
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Post by rosa on Aug 7, 2010 9:49:02 GMT -5
This is partly a healthcare system problem, too - in many other countries, it is possible to place kids with unmanageable behavior problems into a professional care home and still be their parents - not disrupt the adoption, still visit and stay emotionally connected, but protect the people living at home.
In the United States that's not financially feasible for most families. (Though if you can hold on until the child is a legal adult, they become eligible for a lot of services through SSI - I'm not sure that applies to international adoptees, esp. if the family goes through a shady agency and never gets them citizenship.)
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Post by rosa on Aug 4, 2010 9:03:50 GMT -5
The point is to make you feel bad, so you will be more likely to do what you're told. If you feel too good about yourself, you'll analyze what's being proposed instead of jumping to a reaction through fear/doubt/anxiety.
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Post by rosa on Jul 21, 2010 13:22:59 GMT -5
Madame, divorce doesn't have to mean your kids lose their father - I've seen cases where a divorce gives kids the space to have a relationship with each parent that's separate from the parents relationship with each other. My stepsisters have that - they manage to be close to both parents, instead of being pawns between them.
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Post by rosa on Jul 12, 2010 13:44:43 GMT -5
Joining the choir, the new site is way more professional and looks really nice.
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Post by rosa on Jul 12, 2010 11:33:18 GMT -5
So does that mean the QF families who conceive over and over and over again are sort of pushing the vending-machine lever for God to make new souls?
That seems sort of overbearing, somehow.
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Post by rosa on Jul 12, 2010 10:39:54 GMT -5
Here's the part I don't get...do these folks believe that God creates a new soul for every fertilized egg?
I guess the way I always vaguely understood Christian belief on this it was that there was a sort of pool of already-created souls waiting for lives. Which a miscarried pregnancy wouldn't really provide.
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Post by rosa on Jul 9, 2010 11:25:34 GMT -5
I do not get why so many of these types think that it's okay to be INCREDIBLY RUDE to make their "teaching point."
I'm sorry, when a person tells you your name "what's your real name" is not one of the acceptable responses.
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Post by rosa on Jul 6, 2010 21:24:53 GMT -5
Is "accountable to no one" really a common choice, though? Someone is always paying the bills. Seems like it's either the congregation, or the main church hierarchy.
The UMC church I grew up in dispatches pastors and their families like military families, to where there's a need. Discipline comes from the central church, though complaints/voting by changing churches come from the congregation. There's some leeway in it - a really bad fit will probably be transferred, and a pastor with a special need (my grandma's church, the pastor was a divorced single father of a special needs child, so the council let him stay in the church until the child aged out of the school district.) But just because it's not the direct decision of the congregation doesn't mean there's no accountability.
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Post by rosa on Jun 25, 2010 11:11:10 GMT -5
Cindy, i think that's a perfect approach.
There's enough work in the world to do, if we all do the parts in our own spheres, we'll still never run out.
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Post by rosa on Jun 22, 2010 14:06:31 GMT -5
Cherylhannah, there was anti-semitism and people who think nonwhite people are subhuman there because Christian Identity is primarily a white supremecist group.
I'm actually shocked your husband got there via any sort of Christian community referral, I've never even seen them mentioned except in relation to white supremecist and reactionary militia groups.
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Post by rosa on Jun 18, 2010 16:29:20 GMT -5
Jemand, i completely agree with what you say - but I think the legislation may just be there for legislators to show off, not to actually be used, in most cases. I think the real problem is that creeping foot-dragging, which is the natural result of all the anti-abortion propaganda we've been steeped in. That kind of devaluing of a pregnant woman's life in the mind of doctors and other caregivers is really disturbing, and doesn't require any kind of legal or policy changes to have a negative effect.
Cindy, I'm sure it's not what they meant, but advertising Samaritan as an alternative to health care, instead of an alternative to health insurance, is bleakly hilarious.
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Post by rosa on Jun 17, 2010 23:53:05 GMT -5
I actually do believe there are very few doctors or nurses who would stand by and let a patient die because of an ectopic pregnancy. On the other hand, there are full and plenty pharmacists and pharmacy workers who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, refuse to unlock cases so people they don't approve of using condoms can buy them, or otherwise refuse to do their job when it involves other people's sexuality.
Oh, and I had a friend who got an abortion at a nonreligious hospital, but someone from her boyfriend's mom's church handled her records and outed her to the congregation. That's illegal, but it doesn't stop people.
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Post by rosa on Jun 17, 2010 9:20:53 GMT -5
This is plain evil. "You're a bad mom! Feel bad about yourself! I love you and want you to be my friend! But you don't live up to my standards!" It's like a real live talking version of one of those lifestyle magazines aimed at women. Oh, and btw, Ms. Bad Mommy Project "Friend", even though you're a bad mom you should work on having more babies.
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Post by rosa on Jun 10, 2010 11:21:12 GMT -5
Sierra, this post just makes me so sad. Some people get lost in grief like that, but it sounds like instead of helping her heal, the church just made it worse and worse.
That belief that if you are good enough you will be healed/blessed with what you most want is so damaging.
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Post by rosa on Jun 9, 2010 23:27:15 GMT -5
Tapati, can you imagine being Mormon and hearing over and over that you are going to be in the exact same family relationship with your family of origin or your husband for EVER.
Just the little pamphlets give me the heebie-jeebies.
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Post by rosa on Jun 6, 2010 23:02:30 GMT -5
Freefromtyranny, this is a thread about an article TELLING ABOUT AN ABUSED HOMESCHOOLED CHILD. We already talked about the Schatzes. I don't even know that many homeschooling families, and I've met homeschooled kids who were abused. PrincessJo posts on these boards. How many individual cases does it take before it counts as "hearing about it?"
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Post by rosa on Jun 6, 2010 10:11:38 GMT -5
Are you suggesting that homeschoolers are LESS abusive than other parents?
That seems like an unfounded assertion, more than the assertion that some homschooling parents are abusive, ESPECIALLY since we have several cases of death by parental abuse where the parents are homeschoolers.
And about the inspection of THE HOME that was brought up - if I want to sell homemade goods, aside from a few exceptions written into law in some states, I have to have my kitchen meet commercial-kitchen safety standards, and have it inspected to get a license to sell food. If I have a home office and claim it on my taxes, the IRS can drop by to look at it. If I take in boarders, there's a lottery chance the local housing inspector will drop by to check the safety of my dwelling. When you take a publicly regulated function into your home, you open yourself up to inspection.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 23:35:07 GMT -5
Exactly. Groups like the HSLDA are trying to draw the line at "no supervision, these are our children to do what we want with." Some people like Chandra are trying to draw it at "no homeschooling"
There has to be a middle path that offers some protection for the vulnerable without becoming like France.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 22:50:46 GMT -5
And Nikita, we do put some limits on religious freedoms. Female Genital Mutilation is illegal in this country; so is polygamy. There are cases where the courts will take medical decisions away from parents who are using faith healers and endangering their children's lives. It's illegal to allow a mentally incompetent person to go into the forest alone for a spirit journey, and it's illegal to run a sweatlodge off reservation land without basic safety regulations in most states.
This isn't a black-and-white issue. Religious practice is protected up to the point where it runs up against really strong feeling in the public or directly harms a person who isn't legally competent to choose.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 22:44:01 GMT -5
No, I don't think it will prevent abuse. (Though I do believe, based on the experience of friends of mine who were abused, that it will stop some of the worst or at least most visible abuses - abusers who can't isolate their victims at the very least have to keep the marks under clothes.)
But it will catch some of it, and stop some of it from happening again in the future.
If I knew the magic system that would stop child abuse, I'd be a lot more famous than I am.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 16:41:29 GMT -5
You know, I specifically said we don't have any system that 100% prevents child abuse. What I am saying is
Homeschooler who are anti-regulation make a big point of saying they don't need oversight because just because they're homeschooling doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. But that's not why oversight is needed - it's because by homeschooling (and for the people who don't take their kids to doctors, avoiding the medical system) they are eliminating the oversight all the rest of us have.
That oversight is just about all we have in terms of attempts to prevent child abuse. It's not perfect. But it's what we have. Those who opt out of the system in the name of freedom are choosing to completely evade the few checks we put on parents in the interest of defending their children's rights. So I think, if they want to have that opt-out option (which as a lot of people in the thread have pointed out, is a good option for many kids) they need to put in place an alternate system that gives their kids access to people who might be able to do something about abuse.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 9:45:58 GMT -5
Awesome, Vyckie.
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Post by rosa on Jun 4, 2010 9:24:17 GMT -5
Nikita, I don't see how a requirement of yearly public-site testing and a social worker interview would cause anyone who isn't already living in a compound to go join one. I mean, here's my experience as a mainstream mom: My kid goes to the doctor about once a year; it was more when he was preverbal, a little less for ages 4-5. The intake nurse asks me standard questions including "are there guns in the home" "Does anyone smoke around the child". She also directs questions to him, and I'm sure she would notice if he was acting like his answers were false or constrained. He's starting school this year, so we went to the Early Childhood Development Center and did a school-readiness check. I was present for part of it and part of it was an interview/written test in another room. Every day at daycare he's around trained adults who are mandatory reporters of abuse; every day in public school he will be around mandatory reporters; once he starts school he will also have free and mostly confidential access to a counselor. He will take standardized tests every year.
Now, religious parents are definitely not considered inherently abusive by the public schools. There are Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists and Muslim families in our public schools here, and while it's possible someone is asking them uncomfortable question, their kids are not being taken away from them or prevented from practicing their religion - the JW kids opt out of all the parties and other parts of school their parents don't approve of. A lot of the Muslim girls wear head coverings and leave class for footwashing and prayer. I am sure that in, for instance, Missouri, fundamentalist parents are assumed to be good parents. So why is asking a homeschool family to undergo even 1/100th of the scrutiny that regular families do so oppressive?
I wouldn't advocate for making home schooling illegal (and I agree with maicde, at least in the United States the chances of that happening are nil.) And of course we don't have a system in place that completely stops child abuse. But having no accountability at all is ridiculous, and that's the goal of some of the most vocal homeschool groups.
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Post by rosa on Jun 3, 2010 23:06:04 GMT -5
Chandra, just to clarify: would you like to see homeschooling banned completely? I assumed, reading what you wrote, that you were talking about legislation to tighten up the homeschool rules and protect against abuse. The conversation jumped right to whether or not homeschooling should be banned after that, so I don't think I read what you said the way everybody else did.
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