Yet another religious cult raided

[kandrathe]

The key factor is the safety of the children.

I see the assumption here of guilt for all the parents of this community. The State has seized all the children from their parents on the assumption of guilt. The language used by the State is that this is a dangerous environment for children, and the intent from the beginning was to seize the children and put them up for adoption and foster care. It was not as you characterize a spur of the moment thing because they saw some young pregnant girls. This was a well planned out action, where all the ducks were in a row. I think they just needed a pretext, and the alleged phone call was the trigger. I agree with the State intervention in that they should question the legality of the "spiritual marriages" as polygamy, and also that this is performed on under aged girls. If they had served each of the parents with warrants based on probable cause and treated each family individually, then I wouldn't have a single issue with this case. Imagine if this were an native tribe practicing long held tribal traditions (including marriage of their 14 yr old girls), and the white man swept in an took all the children from the tribe to be adopted by white families.

I don't want to seem calloused, but I'm not sure I buy the whole "think of the children" argument. Nationally, statistics show that at least 23% percent of all 14-year-olds and 30 percent of all 15-year-olds have had sexual intercourse. The pregnancy rate among 14 year old girls is about 20 per 1000. I don't think YFZ ranch is the source of the Texas teen pregnancy problems. Society has lately made the shift since the 60's to treating teens as children even now up to 21 in many states. Back in the 1850's, which is where these people still live, the age of marriage was mid teens. In fact, until the law was changed in 2002 iirc, 14 year olds could marry in Texas with parental consent.