The Ranch Revisited

I have been watching recent media attention given to the Fundamentalist branch of the Church of Latter Day Saints (aka FLDS aka those wacky Mormons) with a somewhat bemused lack of interest. And I have been hearing things like "abuse" and "neglect" and "What's with that hair?"

I was at a party yesterday where the FLDS fiasco was the topic of conversation. A friend whose opinion I deeply respect said something along the lines of "those poor kids will never recover (from their experience on this ironically-named "Ranch"). That is when I started to pay attention.

All of my years on the Ranch had me aware of how the Outside World viewed us. But only from the propaganda that came from within the Ranch. It was actually much worse from the real media. I lived in a "sex commune" filled with wacky red-clad people who spent their days working like dogs and their evenings swaying with arms raised exposing hairy armpits or shaking in fits of rapture. And the children, those poor children. How could they raise children in that environment?

I read that over 400 children have been taken away from their families. I can imagine the scene - chaos surrounding a raid, all children torn from their (young) mothers' arms, screaming and pulling at their skirts. Nursing babies were removed from their mothers' breasts. The thing that shocks me is not that this happened. What utterly surprises me is that it didn't happen to us. I can only attribute this to the fact that we were not in Texas, but in Oregon.

I am not saying that my upbringing was right and decent and not at all what is portrayed in the media. On the contrary. There was a sea of red-clad people dancing in rapture at the feet of a bearded man in robes. We did work 12 hours a day to build our city in the desert. But in our land-of-the-free-home-of-the-brave country, I have learned that freedom of religion only applies to the Judeo-Christians. We don't understand "cults" or "sects" and so give them those disparaging names to make us feel better about imposing our values on them. We don't believe the things they believe (and believe me, I have made my share of cracks about the Mormons over the years and I don't plan to stop now. Don't get me started on the Scientologists) and so that gives us as a society the right to move in, take their children, and fix their lives so that we are all more comfortable.

My childhood was just that, it was what was happening when I was a child. It was wild and certainly quite different from the childhoods that nearly all of my friends enjoyed. I have a few friends who grew up in that environment too and at some level, these are the only people who really get it. The only ones who shared a similar experience with me during my isolated and different childhood. But this does not make me less able to bond with people from the Outside World. I did marry a non-sannyasin. In fact, I often find the sannyasin "kids" precious and imperious. It's just that they are the only ones to whom I don't have to answer "What was it like?"

I have a daughter now. I can't imagine taking her to a Commune and giving her the childhood I had. I can't conceive of her living in a Kids' House, apart from me most of the time. I know that this would devastate her and me. She is also a very different kind of kid than I was. She is very attached, very sensitive, very emotional, very intense. I have provided her with an upbringing that suits us. My parents provided me with an upbringing that suited them and me. Some children suffered. Can you tell me that in our American Judeo-Christian society that children don't suffer?