April 30, 2008

By now you know of the Texas polygamist cult, or “sect,” as CNN prefers to call them. Texas officials are investigating allegations that underage girls were having sex with men to whom they were supposedly married and bearing them children.

What’s the difference between underage girls having babies in a polygamist cult and underage girls having babies in a public housing project in our major cities? In those projects, we give them food stamps and welfare. In Texas, we arrest people and give their children to social workers.

Don’t we have it backwards when we punish one group and subsidize another? The polygamist religion is not to our liking, so we go after them, but kids having sex at younger and younger ages in housing projects is another matter. We have Planned Parenthood for that and they can have abortions before the “inconvenience” of another live birth.

And while we’re comparing things, what’s the difference between brainwashed women in Texas who wear the same clothing and brainwashed and oppressed women in regions of the Middle East? Ponder that.

---

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.