If you were hoping for a racy article a la its title, all hope dies aborning.  This isn’t the stuff of which blue movies are made.  It’s an examination of a disturbing issue whose tentacles are far-reaching, as it concerns the recent, alleged kidnappings of a group of Haitian children by American Baptist ministers who’d journeyed to Haiti in the wake of the terrible earthquakes.

Not a lot of information seems to have surfaced concerning this story, and as frustrating as this, the lack of data is also understandable and just for the fact that the media is only handed so many facts to report.  Much of Haiti lies in ruins; she is grieving and wants for so very much.  Whether the outcome of this incident becomes the lynchpin of a crucial international incident and a precedent for future such occurrences, or eventually sifts like dust into the rubble of that shattered nation is, as of this writing, unknown.

What is known so far is this.

Accused of kidnapping, concealing the status of the children initially thought to be orphans, and attempting to secret the little ones across the border into the Dominican Republic, the fate of the missionaries charged with these acts remains to be seen.  It does appear doubtful that the Americans will receive a fair trial under Haitian Constitutional law.  As I understand it, that law has already been compromised in the manner that the accused parties have been held and questioned.  President Obama has, for now at least, washed his hands of this affair much like that consummate politician of old, Pontius Pilate.  While we are left to wonder about the destiny of the missionaries, we also wonder about their true motives.

It was stated that the missionaries actually went door-to-door, soliciting children to take back to the United States.   Reportedly, the Baptists had sought orphans.  But it then surfaced that some Haitian parents had actually thrust their children into the Americans’ hands, pleading for them to take their children out of the horror that is Haiti and to the United States, where they would receive a far better chance for survival and success than they ever would on their native soil.  Given these reports, the questions that plague me now are these:

1.   Were the missionaries’ objectives selfless or mercenary?  Did they intend to charge childless couples back home, or families who already have children and are willing to adopt the Haitian kids, a fee for their services?

2.   If the children went to good homes, would the fees have been justified?  If one travels overseas to adopt a child, one incurs two-fold fees: one sum for the government and the adoption agency, and one sum under the table, to “facilitate” transactions involving human flesh, including the hearts of the parents-to-be and adoptive children.   In light of this truth, this question becomes a not so little horned dilemma.

3.   If the answer to question #2 is “No”, why is it “No?”   Why are foreign nations sanctioned when exchanging money for flesh, but American citizens not?  Why are we held up to a different standard than the rest of the world (a world, by the way, that largely vilifies us as demon spawn)?

4.   Why are we held up to a different standard when so many people still wish to immigrate here, due to our freedoms, standard of living, and renowned generosity?  So much for us being demon spawn, eh?  Why are we measured by a different yardstick when America stands head and shoulders above every other nation in sending medical assistance, peace-keeping troops, and dollars sent to Haiti — the latter to the tune of $100 million from the Feds (taxpayers) alone, with even more from private donors as well as fundraisers such as last week’s concert full of luminaries?  The next highest contributor with $14.3 million, which is still extremely generous, was France.

5.   Is this really about the children, and Haitian law, or is it about something else?  Is it about a government machine (Haiti) trying to squeeze more out of another already squeezed-to-max government machine (the U.S.)?  Is it about the Haitian government, which historically has cared little for its people, scrambling to project an image of “We’re still in charge” and “We protect our own” to the rest of the world? 

6.   How moral was it for the parents of the children to have given them away just for the asking?  Some of the children were extremely upset by the sudden separation from their parents, even in the face of a horrible national crisis.  The child who cried the loudest was the one who’d alerted the guards at the border to this whole kidnapping-versus-salvation situation.  Did the parents know better than their sorrowful children?  Surely, the parents’ motives seem justified, at least, on the face of things.

7.   On the other hand, how moral, how justified is it to remove children from their birth parents when said children do not wish to be removed?  What long-term emotional scars could these children have incurred in transitioning overnight into a completely alien culture?  Would the lives they may have had in the States, via the missionaries, have erased those scars?  Or would they have created a backfiring whose long-term ramifications are best left to another article, or at least, the minds of readers with logical brains?

The most pressing question of all, of course, is the fate of the children.  What is to become of them?  What is to become of their housing, their health care, their education, their futures?  Balanced against the desires of some of these children to remain at home in Haiti, even under these recent horrific circumstances, the answers are anything but clear-cut.

When a resolution does emerge, I pray that the children’s welfare will be considered and honored, not politics or Xenophobia, and not the usual alpha male breast-beatings that favor oppression of what is right.