It is with shock and horror that I write this blog. Please do not think that I care more for this dog than for the 4,000 soldiers that have died in Iraq since the war began. However, this seems so…cruel, so completely pointless, so inhumane that I really am having a hard time believing it is happening. Soldiers make a huge sacrifice in Iraq everyday – and this seems completely unnecessary.

You can read the story for yourself here, but basically it looks like a soldier adopted a dog in the US and it was being sent to the SPCA to be shipped home to her parents when the soldier’s commanding officers confiscated the dog and are going to hold it for execution. The outrage is that this dog has served as a “pet therapist” of sorts to the victim (i.e., the soldier) and to rip him away from her to face death is beyond pointless, cruel, pitiless and stupid. If there were something we could do, some petition to sign, I would have posted the link. But there isn’t. I feel a terrible loss, not because of the “poor dog” but because the military is treating it’s wounded with such incredible insensitivity, disrespect, and arrogance. How can we do something like this to someone who has sacrificed already so much for this country?

Read the story from CNN here.

In short, 416 children aged 5 and over were removed from their homes where they live with a fundamentalist sect of the Church of Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons, after a single phone call from a 16 year old girl claiming to have been raped by her 50 year old spiritual husband.

I’ll be real honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this. In my most natural instinct it is wrong, base, horrific, and unconstitutional that Texas has felt it has the right to do this. Yet part of me is thinking, “But what if the kids are being abused?” Still, does the state have the right to remove HUNDREDS of children from their parents based on ONE phone call from ONE child?

Do I believe in the way they are raising their children? Absolutely not. Do I think it’s right, or good, or healthy? No. Does that matter? A resounding NO. If there is truly abuse going on, then it’s a different story. But I have known lots of Mormons in my life. I have lived with them and next to them and have gone to school with them. And if they are anything, it is NOT child abusers. It is true that you cannot classify people’s actions based on their religion, especially when comparing fundamentalists to those who are not, but I think people in general are so terrified of anyone practicing something that seems as deviant as polygamy that we tend to overreact.

So I’m really torn. I absolutely believe that these people have the right to raise their children however they please within certain basic human rights guidelines. Are we overreacting? I recognize that CNN does not have the whole story and that I have no idea what that phone call actually sounded like or said, and maybe they meant to lean my views this way with the way the story was written, but I’m having a hard time getting on board with the state about this one.

You know, it might be because I have had so much more contact with those who would be viewed as “outsiders” than most people in America. I absolutely adore Mennonites. I spent an entire summer once at a school where many of them attended and they are the coolest, sweetest, most devout, genuine people I have ever met. They scare most people, even Christians (can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve had over that one!), which is sad because they are genuinely exceptional people. I don’t have any experience with the FLDS church, but “sects” and “communes” as such don’t scare me, so maybe I’m looking at this situation from the eyes of someone who really believes that these are just people trying to live their lives in peace. I’m not sure if the government should have the right to destroy and disrupt what they hold so sacred all over one single phone call.