Okay the women are very Stepford-y, the hairdos are aggressively retro, and five girls were positively identified as having had sex when they were under age. The latter constitutes abuse.
But all of the above did not justify the removal of 468 children from their homes and families by Texas Child Protective Services.
This is why Thursday’s 3rd Court of Appeals opinion was a welcome one. The court wrote that the previous court, which had allowed the mass kid snatching, had “abused its discretion” by relying on “legally and factually insufficient” evidence to maintain custody of children whose parents are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Scott Henson of the terrific Texas blog, Grits for Breakfast, points out that the heart of the matter is embodied in Footnote 11 of the opinion, which reads as follows:
The simple fact, conceded by the Department, that not all FLDS families are polygamous or allow their female children to marry as minors demonstrates the danger of removing children from their homes based on the broad-brush ascription of every aspect of a belief system to every person living among followers of the belief system or professing to follow the belief system.”
Everybody’s got articles and Op Eds on the case today. But the LA Times hits it dead on with its editorial Here’s the opening (but read the whole thing):
Texas’ top prosecutors and child services directors should have read their Arthur Miller before tearinghundreds of children from their mothers who belonged to a polygamist sect. In “The Crucible,” the playwright’s allegorical take on McCarthyism, a hysterical teen in Salem, Mass., sparks the infamous witch hunt as the adults around her give deadly vent to their own fears. With the sanctimonious certitude of Miller’s Judge Danforth, Texas officials assumed mass evil among the residents of the Yearning for Zion ranch and acted accordingly. Fortunately, the parents got a more impartial appellate court panel, which ruled Thursday that the state had overstepped its authority.
By the way, a big bouquet of virtual roses to Texas Rio Grand Legal Aid for taking the case…and getting a win.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if Clinton were President. She would have had them all burned out and that would have been the end of it.
When I first learned about this matter, I was against the State taking the kids. When they released information about the underage relations, I agreed with them. When the Court said that the evidence was bad and that not everyone fit the mold, I agreed with it. The only thing consistent in my beliefs that doesn’t change is that government is inept. I trust what seems to be bad families more than bad government.
I dare say that if you compared the children of the Polygamists in Texas to the same number of children from any inner city poor neighborhood, you would find that the inner city children are having more sex at a younger age.
Maybe the Texas CPS should remove all the children from inner city homes, so as to prevent the children from having sex before that age of 18.