Do the FLDS in Texas Deserve Due Process? I Mean, Polygamy’s Worse Than Murder, Right?

It’s *possible* that the State of Texas held hearings for each and every FLDS child in Eldorado prior to taking them from their homes. I mean, *possible* — it just seems like, if they did, then they should say something. Otherwise they’ve committed state-sponsored kidnapping based on an anonymous phone call from a person they haven’t even managed to identify.

Do they even know that the call came from that compound?

Listen, I *suspect* that the FLDS are some of the worst people in the country. I’m guessing they *do* marry off and impregnate 12-year-olds. I’ve read enough stories about “lost boys” in Utah to think that the FLDS really do abandon male minors when they become inconvenient, an utterly un-Christlike practice that royally sucks. But I can’t prove it. And no one else has done that in a court of law yet either. So how does Texas get off removing children from homes and asserting some sort of statist right to place them in foster care?

Am I crazy? The more I read about what’s going on with the polygamist kids, the more preposterous this seems. There wasn’t a trial. The entire action was based on ONE anonymous phone call. There did not seem to be any attempt during the “raid” to determine whether there were any improprieties going on with the kids there. I mean, did they *ask* the kids if they were abused? (No.) Did the kids voluntarily list off all the abuses they’d suffered when the cops came? (No.) The most damning evidence they found of anything was some information about cyanide (or whatever it was). Man. I have toxicology research sitting on my freakin’ hard drive. I have books about rifles and one about becoming a Marine Corps sniper of all things.

Is someone going to break into my house and take my Roomba away now?

And the women who went along with the kids have been stripped of their cell phones. Because people with cell phones can communicate. Use words. Speak. And Texas isn’t about to let someone have free speech if it, like, threatens their ability to kidnap children, I guess.

It’s easy to pick on people that are different — and, as far as I can tell, that’s what’s happening to the FLDS in Texas. There’s been no court proceedings that have shown the individual parents of the abducted children have done anything untoward to their kids. (None that’ve been even suggested publicly, at least.) What there has been is a religious group that has different practices than are observed in the “mainstream”. And since they’re different, well then, there’s not going to be much of an outcry if we strip them of their rights, right?

It also makes me wonder about religious tolerance in Texas, at least among the “public servants”. If there’s one thing that Mike Huckabee taught me over the winter, it’s that there’s still a substantial element in American society that doesn’t understand that the difference between an individual’s personal beliefs and that person’s objective worth as a human being. Mike Huckabee is *still* looking for ways to defame Mitt Romney. Because he’s Mormon, face it. There’s no other rational reason for that level of pit-bullish, vitriolic hatred toward a political rival.

And the FLDS? They’re even crazier than Mormons. Let’s just take their kids and raise them as proper Baptists, Methodists, and Secular Humanists. You know, normal religions. State-approved ones. Because, really, we only need the middle 90% of society, right? The rest can be out-voted. So we’ll take their kids. It’s too late for the parents. We can leave the adults destitute and grief-stricken and it’s a-okay, because they’re not like us cool people anyway.

I really think the FLDS are shady people who have done some bad crap. But just because I or you or some judge in Texas thinks that (and someone received an anonymous phone call), that shouldn’t mean that due process is out the window. But apparently it means exactly that. Lousy fascists.

bkd