Our Awful Situation

MSNBC: Legal questions follow polygamist raid

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 26th, 2008

Broad sweep of FLDS children raises constitutional questions; critics cry foul.

Interesting to see questions about the legality of the FLDS raid finally hitting the mainstream media:

The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect’s ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.

But the broad sweep — from nursing infants to teenagers — is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family’s children.

The move has the appearance of “a class-action child removal,” said Jessica Dixon, director of the child advocacy center at Southern Methodist University’s law school in Dallas.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” she said.

Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, contends that the state has essentially said, “If you’re a member of this religious group, then you’re not allowed to have children.”

Attorneys for the families and civil-liberties groups also are crying foul. They say the state should not have taken children away from all church members living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado.

Here’s some additional analysis from Joel Skousen of World Affairs Brief:

I waited a week to comment on the Texas case, separating 437 children from their FLDS parents, to see if any substantive evidence of abuse would emerge. It hasn’t. Even if it had, those could have been handled individually. But no, Texas plans instead to make every member of the group pay the supreme price: to strip away their beloved children. This case is about group punishment. In spite of a search warrant tainted by a false witness (the “Sarah” who doesn’t exist), no actual specific evidence of abuse, or any unwilling participants in this polygamous compound, a self-righteous Texas judge had decreed that all 400 + children will not be returned to the custody of their parents. Texas has gone too far to rid itself of this awkward religious sect that built the “Yearning for Zion” (YFZ) ranch in order to evade persecution in Utah and Arizona. As this tyrannical order clearly meant separating even nursing children from their mothers, a wave of outrage began to sweep the nation. The media-sensitive judge immediately changed her order (allowing children under 1 year of age to be nursed) in order to keep the tide of public relations on the side of the authorities. But this should not deter the nation from realizing the danger of the tenuous legal proposition that mere membership in a group (that may have isolated examples of marrying underage girls) makes all unworthy of possessing any children at all—ever. That is wrong, especially when legal remedies exist to prosecute specific wrongdoers.

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MSNBC: Legal questions follow polygamist raid

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