Apr 08
24
Polygamists and you
I’m departing for a moment from the FSBO articles to comment on something that’s currently going on in the news. Recently Texas law enforcement received an anonymous phone call from a girl claiming to be a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS). She claimed that she was abused by and being forced to marry Dale Barlow, a leader of the FLDS church. With this phone call, Texas authorities obtained a search warrant and raided the FLDS temple in El Dorado, Texas. They seized marriage documents and removed 437 children and their mothers and took them to a nearby shelter. The 437 children are now considered in state custody.
I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The FLDS church branched off from the main church over 100 years ago when church leaders stopped the practice of polygamy and excommunicated members who still practiced it. The FLDS church has become a small group that mostly lives near the border of Utah and Arizona. Their community in Texas was built not that long ago in response to increasing pressure from the Utah and Arizona governments concerning their propensity to marry off underage girls.
I don’t condone much of what the FLDS church does. Really, the FLDS church has brought a lot of this upon itself. If it would just refrain from marrying underage girls, most of the governments would probably just let them be.
On the other hand, the heavy-handed tactics of the Texas government is beyond compare. On a single anonymous and unsubstantiated phone call, they were allowed to enter a property and take 437 children from their families. They’ve sealed off communication from within the shelter confiscating cell phones so that the media could not see what was going on inside. They’ve removed all mothers from children over 5 years old.
Now we’re getting even more shocking reports. The judge in the case has determined that the remaining mothers are to be removed, even the nursing mothers. They are not allowed to use the telephone except to communicate with their attorneys. She is allowing them to gather for prayer meetings but it must be supervised by a “mainstream” faith such as the LDS church showing a complete lack of understanding of the schism between the two churches. The judge considers the teachings of the FLDS church as “unhealthy” to the children foreshadowing a likely decision to separate these kids from their families permanently.
So what? Why should anyone else care? FLDS members are weird and believe weird things that are definitely not mainstream. The issue is that if they can do it to a small minority group, they can do it to anybody. So what if a state determines that what you believe is weird and “harmful” to your children? Can they come in and take your kids too? What if being gay is considered a “harmful” belief, will they be able to take children away from a parent that is gay? What if living outside of marriage is considered a “harmful” belief? What if living more “green” is considered harmful? What if homeschooling is considered harmful? What if being a Libertarian, Green, or Independent is considered harmful?
Everybody is part of some minority in some way. Regardless of how you feel about any one of those items listed above personally, the state should be very reticent to take a child away from their parents especially based on a belief system. Unless there is true, genuine abuse taking place, the state has no business removing children from a home.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence how big of a presence the Southern Baptist church had in the raid. I have a feeling this whole thing has more to do with religious bigotry than genuine concern of abuse. I think it’s the goal of a lot of people involved with this to get those children adopted into “good baptist homes” so they can finally be “saved”. That may be cynical of me, but just the impression I get the more I learn about the situation.
The more we let governments stomp on other people’s civil liberties, the closer they get to stomping on ours.