Child Protective Services has complained that sect members refused to cooperate with their investigation, constantly changing answers or refusing answers to questions about age and parentage. Parker said the state ignored evidence the young mothers presented, including birth certificates and Social Security cards. He said that with their long braided hair, makeup-free faces and pioneer dresses, the women look very young.”

For those of you who think this was such a great idea for CPS to kidnap these children you may look very foolish very soon. By the way, you home schoolers out there-you’re next.

Texas authorities confronted with the question of what to do with the 416 children removed from a polygamist compound earlier this month face an unenviable choice, one brought home to outsiders by the wrenching media images of the youngsters’ weeping mothers. Anachronistic hairdos and prairie dresses notwithstanding, their pain at being cut off from contact with their children is apparent. Yet should the children be returned to a family environment in which underage girls are sometimes sent to live with older men who have multiple wives, or should they be placed in foster homes?

Last week, state District Judge Barbara L. Walther ruled that the children should stay in state custody for the moment. They are undergoing DNA testing to untangle the complex family ties in a community where children identify all the women in a household as their mothers, and where wives are sometimes reassigned to new husbands. Once the testing is completed, the children’s fates will be decided in individual hearings running through June.

At the heart of many of the cases will be determining whether children at the Yearning for Zion ranch are in danger even if they don’t live in households in which physical or sexual abuse has taken place. Walther found enough evidence of such danger to keep all the children away from their parents, at least for the short term. But if that kind of logic guides permanent custody decisions, it could set a very dangerous precedent, and ultimately harm the very children the state is trying to protect.

The DNA test results should make it easier for authorities to identify those responsible for abuse. If it’s clear that an underage girl gave birth, the father, the church elders who arranged the marriage and the girl’s parents (if it can be found that they were complicit in statutory rape) could be subject to criminal charges. But presumably there will be many families in which there is no such evidence of abuse.

The polygamist lifestyle is deeply distasteful on many levels, but society’s disgust matters far less than the welfare of the sect’s children. Does anybody believe they’d be better off inthe foster system than returned to loving, nonabusive parents who are fully capable of caring for them? If the courts are worried that the parents will train their children to perpetuate and accept sexual abuse, they can appoint child welfare officials to monitor individual families.

The alternative is to punish families for their religious ideology, not their behavior. That could well run afoul of the 1st Amendment and other protections, and it’s a legal can of worms that Texas would be wise not to open.

It will be interesting to see how many men appear for the DNA testing, and how many assert their privilege against self-incrimination.

My question is where are the men? Where are the men of this compound while all of the women sit in court day after day and face reporters. I think these women are guilty of allowing abuse; and they are guilty of being cult members first, and mothers last;
but why are these men hiding behind them? Why are these men allowing the women and children in their lives to take all the heat?If they so adamently believe that why they are doing is right, why are they locking themelves inside their compound and hiding from it all?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

She said that she did not believe that it would be safe for any of the children to go back to the ranch while the case is pending–not forever–and it had nothing to do with the fact that children are a blessing, birth control, or male leadership.

It sounds to me like you would be willing to allow people to do whatever they want to–legal or illegal, criminal or not–as long as the word “religion” is somehow attached to it.

This slippery slope argument you are making–that we better permit the FLDS to do whatever they want because, if we let CPS take the children, we will be next–is simply fallacious.

Look, we’re not talking about some victim-free crime that is being committed here. It’s not like the FLDS are guilty of smoking peyote as part of their worship services. They tell these mothers and girls that they must marry men three times their ages (contrary to the laws of the State of Texas) or else: 1) they will be eternally da.mn.ed to hell; and 2) they will be kicked out on the street without.

These children and mothers are not free actors who willingly decide to wear frontier clothes and play the game. (Not that it would make a difference if it was a willing decision. By law, a girl under 17 years old does not have legal capacity to consent to sexual relations.)

There is no free exercise of religion here–there’s just not. And you will see, once the spell is broken after the passage of a few months, these women and children will not want to go back. Right now they are afraid of what will become of them if they do not obey the leader.

I feel you think I’m voicing my opinion because I agree with polygamy and what is taught by the FLDS. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I abhor what they teach and stand for. As a Christian I say they are wrong. However, with the history of perseqution that christianity has undergone, are you willing to turn over our constitutional rights to free thought, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association etc to todays CPS when you don’t know what tomorrows CPS may define as doing Irreparable psycological harm. You can’t mention a husband and wife as the norm for raising a family in California Public Schools. How far is it from that law (which would have seemed ludicrous to all just 50 years ago) to one that says if your religion teaches _________ you are doing psycological harm to your children and big brother may steal them from you with no due process at all.

Our religious differences with the FLDS and our revulsion at their teaching does not change the fact that their constitutional rights have been violated. That more then 400 children have been ripped from their homes not for any criminal activity but because as CPS agent Voss says ” In fact, she testified that she could see no situation where these people should get their children back- not if their mothers divorce their husbands and leave the ranch and live apart forever and promise never to let their daughters marry before 18. Her stated reasons for that are not their practices but their belief that children are a blessing, that birth control is wrong, and in male leadership.”

With the history of perseqution that Christianity has undergone that comment ought to scare the bejeebers out of you.

You say “This is not about polygamy, this is about sexual assault of a child.” That is not the reason CPS or the State of Texas gives for holding these Children. The State of Texas alleges criminal abuse in only 5 cases so why has CPS Kidnapped over 400 children? Either for what might happen or for what one thinks. How is that not a violation of our constitution?

My Analogy was not to say the circumstances were the same and you know that. My analogy was to say what,except the constitution, keeps an overzealous CPS agent from doing the same thing in those 2 situations that are being done with the flds?

That’s referring to freedom of speech, not freedom to engage in criminal conduct.

This is not about polygamy, this is about sexual assault of a child.

Your analogy to the youth minister fails: the parents of the youth did not insist that their children be molested.

This case is different, in part because the children and the women had no right to come and go as they pleased. They had no way to escape from the situation, no one to call to report the abuse.

Your sympathy is misplaced. The leaders of this group are evil. The abuse has to be stopped and the compound broken up.

That is why we have a constitution. Something that is supposed to be absolute. Something that protects us from the whim of who is currently in power. I’m glad my rights are guranteed by that constitution and not by what you or anyone else feels about something. Gay’s feel abused if you speak against homosexuality, Adulterer’s feel abused if you speak against adultery, People who have aborted babies feel abused if you suggest it’s murder, illegal immigrants feel abused if you suggest that laws should be enforced etc. etc. I could go on and on but the point is that regardless of who is in control I am supposed to have guranteed rights. Rights that cannot be taken away without due process. CPS takes away peoples rights without proving their case and than the parents years later may get their children back after who knows what damage has been done. If someone phoned in a call that Highland C of C was teaching the abuse of girls because they knew of 3 teenage girls who had become pregnant while attending the Highland youth group would CPS be justified in rounding up all the children in the Highland Youth group and removing them from their parents? If you want to argue that would never happen how about someone calls in that the Youth minister at a Church in Midland Texas is in a relationship with a 15 year old has fled the state with her and all the parents of children in that youth group had subjected their children to probable abuse? (true case) Should they all be rounded up and removed by CPS and tried as one house instead of individual households? We all feel that is something that should not and would not happen but why? I suggest it is because we beleive we have rights and that somehow these situations are seen as anomalies or some sort. We all think in the case of the youth minister you prosoqute him (which is what the Govt. did)not the Church are the parents.If a CPS worker decided to persue such a case would you want it to be handled as this one has been? Remove first prove case later? I’m with Deputy Headmistress I think you have made up your mind based on the “yuuccck” factor of pologamy and don’t want to see the Constitutional rights that have been violated. Whatever happened to the saying “I totally disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?