I Now Pronounce You Husband and Wives

Texas authorities overreach in FLDS case

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book…and also one of the lamest. We’ve all had the experience of being under the direction of a teacher, coach or Marine drill sergeant who uses the “punish ‘em all” routine. That’s when an individual does something wrong and everyone gets punished. The theory is that the group will then use its powers of persuasion to help the wayward individual learn the error of his or her ways.

Interviews with the mothers of Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas have helped spur interest in the new “Little House on the Prairie” fashion trend.

At least that’s the theory. In reality it has the tendency to make a bad situation worse. If the team is running punishment laps because of the actions of one player, that player is in danger of getting tripped or having an accident on the practice field. I’m just saying…

I’ve always thought that the “punish ‘em all” system was evidence of a coach or teacher who lacked true problem solving skills and proof positive that authority in the wrong hands is just as bad as anarchy.

I was thinking about the “punish ‘em all” method over the past two months watching the news from Texas. In case you missed it, authorities entered the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch outside Eldorado, Texas, in April after the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS) received a call from someone claiming to be a 16-year-old female victim of abuse at the ranch.

Rather than concentrate on that one possible victim of abuse, the overzealous CPS agents rounded up the 700 or so members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) who lived there and promptly separated all of the kids from their parents. After the raid, the CPS claimed that because it considered all of the children to be residents of a single household, it had no other choice than to remove them all. They then placed all of the children in 16 foster homes and group shelters spread all over the great state of Texas, making it nearly impossible for some of the parents to even visit their kids.

To my mind, there are only two reasons why CPS was able to get away this abomination. First, adults in this country have been led to believe that their children are in constant danger. They teach their kids not to talk to strangers instead of teaching them how to address a stranger when they need to. Second, because the FLDS has a long-standing reputation for polygamy (one husband, multiple wives), arranged marriages, and older men marrying younger women, it makes it easy to think of them as “others.”

While I might not approve of some of the courtship traditions of the FLDS, those “others” happen to be Americans with the same basic rights that I have. If I let state authorities trample their rights without saying anything about it, who am I to expect support when authorities decide to trample my basic rights?

As this case wore on, public sentiment turned decisively in favor of the FLDS families of the YFZ Ranch. Interviews with the men and women of the ranch revealed surprisingly calm demeanors in the face of incredible adversity, and the fact that the state could not come up with legitimate claims of child abuse only helped turn the tide of public opinion.

A few weeks ago the Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the state had not presented sufficient evidence to remove the children from their parents and ordered them to be returned. Last week many of those parents and children were seen hiking back to the YFZ Ranch.

Still, it took an army of lawyers, many of them provided by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to press the CPS into court where the removal of the children from their parents was reversed.

A spokesperson for the ACLU stated, “exposure to a religion’s beliefs, however unorthodox, is not itself abuse and may not constitutionally be labeled abuse.”

The ACLU pointed to the fact that parents were separated from their children without individual hearings and without specific claims of abuse, and that DNA testing was ordered without evidence that parentage was in dispute. Those actions, said the ACLU, “should not be indiscriminately targeted against a group as a whole—particularly when the group is perceived as being different or unusual.”

Authorities in Texas should think long and hard the next time they want to target a bunch of families that look like they just stepped off the set of Little House on the Prairie. They might not be as evil as they look.