BIG LOVE, BIG WELFARE
We pay for babies without �legal� daddies � and the FLDS is profiting

I watched the raid on the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas with indignant visions of Waco dancing in my head, as did many Libertarians. Reaction to our police state, at least mine, was horror. SWAT team tactics were in such stark contrast to the pastel rows of tearful pompadoured ladies. 

�We just want to be left alone,� was their plea.

The show of force proved overkill. America marched in, and as what is all too familiar, we received a mess. The maligned 16-year-old caller, along with the other instigators who we could not find, is somewhere hiding, probably in Iran, with those elusive WMDs and Osama bin Laden. 

�But! But! But!� you say, �there was pedophilia going on! There were babies having babies in there! We need to get those children in normal public schools where that could never happen.� And then over there � way over there � Libertarians explore the argument that children should be allowed to consent, or that parents can consent for children.

Here I thought we had all agreed on the simple litmus of �consenting adults.� Why is that so difficult?

However, the cry to be left alone, especially from the FLDS community, is disingenuous. Insultingly so, because of a practice called �bleeding the beast.� Being the self-righteous separatists that they are, FLDS followers consider the state to be evil and corrupt. They also feel society as a whole is corrupt. Collectivism, not so good. And it is a sacred duty to passive aggressively harm the state through elaborate, massive welfare exploitation.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. And if not, allow me to explain.

Since plural marriage is illegal, only first marriages are legally recognized. Every subsequent union is a �celestial marriage� that only the church recognizes. In an avaricious twist of life�s lemons, there are now a rash of �single mothers with dependent children� entitled (and I hate that word) to welfare benefits. Those oppressed, petticoated damsels all apply to get their due. 

�They are breaking no laws,� the caseworkers insist as they distribute the checks. After all, it is not the caseworkers� place to determine right and wrong, just eligibility based on set criteria. This practice is not only great for employment at the welfare-check office, but it nets the FLDS community millions of dollars. 

The whole in Eldorado is richer than the sum of its single moms.

Let�s suggest that you�re the prophet and you�re short on cash. Or feeling especially ambitious. Girls, it seems, just don�t age fast enough to keep up with the bills. If only little Sarah were 16, we could soon have another stream of checks to add to the pile. Then comes a rewarding revelation from God! �She is meant for my good friend Jebediah, even though a mere slip of 14 years. Love is ageless. God himself told me so. May they be blessed with many children in time to help pay for the new fence we�ve been needing. Amen.�

Do you see how that might just be the case? Is it remotely possible we�ve not been merely turning a blind eye for many years, but we�ve been literally paying these old men to turn younger and younger girls into baby factories? Haven�t we learned that you get what you pay for? Our society pays for babies without legal daddies. 

We have a pretty successful operation going on in Eldorado and other FLDS communities. But welfare checks know no religion. Our public schools and trailer parks are filled with different versions of the same scheme. Our War on Poverty, just like our War on Terror, perpetuates that which it seeks to exterminate.

How �bout this proposition? Stop funding it. Hold off on all that ungainly use of force, and just re-examine what we incentivize with welfare, food stamps, subsidies and so on. See what happens. Maybe, just maybe, that 12 year-old will look a leeettle less enticing if you weren�t being paid a mint in installments to impregnate her.

My other proposition is to ensure that not only are all sexual participants adults, but that all adults consent. People should not be held against their will. I don�t know how you go about that without offensive intrusion into a culture that is definitively reclusive, but this is why we have a discourse about these things. Surely, it would be better to find a way to let people leave than to forcibly remove them with paramilitary tactics. After all, interactions should be voluntary.