I don't mean to be flippant about the possibility of 14-year-old girls being forced into arranged marriages, but it increasingly seems that what's going on with the state seizure of all the children from a fundamentalist Mormon compound in Texas is producing scant evidence (to date) of actual abuse. Scott Henson, in the Dallas News, asks Where's the evidence of abuse?, while blogger Katie Granju queries where is the ACLU? (hat tip: instapundit). She writes:
I cannot express strongly enough how much I believe the state needs to take a strong, unequivocal stance in going after any of these individual adults in this group who have committed crimes against children in the name of religion. However, I am increasingly disturbed by the way the state of Texas is handling this matter. The wholesale rounding up and de facto incarceration of hundreds of women and children-none of whom have been individually accused of any crime-is very troublesome.
Also, David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy and Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute raise similar concerns about a disturbing overreaction by state authorities.
If the breakup of these families is based on the prejudice/contempt that both left-liberals and religious conservatives feel toward fundamentalist Mormons who practice polygamy, it raises issues of basic liberty in America that even those who oppose state-recognition of polygamy should take seriously.
More. Social conservative Rick Lowry may quote our own Jonathan Rauch, but his attempt to blame fundamentalist polygamy on "the liberal wave of nonjudgmentalism and of hostility to traditional marriage" is a stretch.
I did like the commenter to Lowry who suggests if polygamy is a risk factor for child abuse and so we take children away from polygamous homes, should we also not take children away if their single mom moves in with her boyfriend, as that's also known to greatly raise the risk of abuse?
GOP Congressman Cites Lawrence in Defending Polygamous Families . Said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), as quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune:
"I don't think it's the place of society to prosecute people who choose to cohabitate responsibly and are responsible for their children as opposed to men who are licentious or women who are licentious who are producing children that don't have place or context or male authority in their lives."
As Jonathan Rauch has pointed out, the criminalization and prosecution of polygamous behavior, as opposed to the state's refusal to license polygamous marriage, is unsustainable. It's important to make and sustain this distinction.
Furthermore. The AP reports: Sweep of polygamists' kids raises legal questions. Do tell.
