I didn’t have the same reaction as Claudia, in that I didn’t feel that the women were necessarily channelling responses that the FLDS men would have had them use. To me, the women appeared to actually believe what they were saying rather than saying what they felt they had to say, IOW. Of course, that still leaves the possibility or probability that their thought processes have been thoroughly controlled to the extent that they don’t question the practices of the group or anything else they are taught.

The only reason I mention it is that the reporters seem to be doing a lousy job when interviewing these women because they frame the questions as though the women have the same value system as our larger culture. Instead of asking if they are aware of any girls being abused, the reporters ought to more specifically ask about practices, in a value neutral way, to see if the women will admit that the FLDS members practice polygamy and at what age girls are permitted or encouraged to marry. If these questions were asked in a value neutral manner, it’s possible than the women might reveal more information; when the questions are framed in a negative value manner, the women will deny the allegations and they may not even be lying or intentionally covering up activities that they simply do not believe are wrong.

CS, you’re probably right about the reporters. But I would be shocked if they didn’t practice polygamy, or if they didn’t permit, encourage or even, on occasion, force underage marriages. These may yet to be determined by a court, but that’s a technical detail to me. What is obvious is obvious!

What I am not sure of is, does the larger society and its law enforcement arm willingly turn a blind eye, hence condone, polygamy and underage marriage when practiced by a closed religious group? Until such time as there is a complaint from inside the group? This strikes me as a pretext, or a work-around around that freedom of religion motto. Rather, as being cornered to do something. Why wasn’t the group investigated when ex-members exposed the goings-on from outside the group? IMO, it is precisely because of this turning a blind eye thing (guilt?) that the whole group was herded off and children as a whole are put in protective custody, not just the parents or husband of the one plaintiff. I guess, I am saying something like the State of Texas felt busted… and badly so.

Why tolerate polygamy legally? Why not just accept it, or be agnostoic (or neutral) about it legally? Unless women outnumber men four to one (four, being the Islamically inspired number), it can’t be a universal practice to the detriment exclusively of women anyway (if there is something detrimental at all). In other words, if the practice were to be widespread, some polygamous unions would have to go the other way around.

Yep, Pat. That’s a good reason. The economic power-wielder aspect of it needs to be remembered.

Hey, the only thing I know about swinging is what I read… purely in scholarly journals, of course…

And that is precisely why it is appropriate to forbid polygamy. Little if any harm is done if it practiced on small scale, by the sort of people we might call "swingers." But if practiced on a large scale, it can have a tremendous impact on our culture and our society as a whole. And "large scale" can be a relative phenomenon. The FLDS "compound" is a large scale for purposes of the surrounding towns. As their population grows, either they start having a bunch of young men with no sexual and familial outlets, who may then begin causing trouble in the area, or those young men must go out into the surrounding community to entice more women into that lifestyle. It is entirely appropriate for society to protect itself from these consequences, which are an all-but-inevitable result of polygamy.

Similar justifications could be found to ban just about any religious practice.  In fact, there are many who claim that ALL religious practice is harmful to society.  The net result of consistently applying any such standard would be the complete destruction of religious freedom.   The net result of inconsistently applying it (since I doubt Pat endorses banning all religious practice) is gross hypocrisy and selective discrimination directed towards any group that deviates "too much" from some arbitrary norm (e.g. mainstream Protestantism") — "good" religions shared by some large majority get a free pass while "bad" religions that are practiced only by a minority get targeted for state action.  That amounts to a clear establishment of a state religion whether or not promoters of such a standard choose to admit it.  Either way, whether applied consistently or inconsistently, the net result is a complete betrayal of principles of individual liberty that conservatives universally CLAIM to value.

It’s certainly not an easy issue, especially when dealing with groups where the culture is so domineering that the line between choice and coercion becomes blurred, but I think that treating abuse cases as individual children in individual families, when authorities are talking about seeing MANY underage girls pregnant (and wait, if the weeks turn into months, more could turn out to be pregnant in early stages), ignores what seems to be a larger issue.

There are already existing legal tools to deal with that as well. They are called "conspiracies" and if the authorities can meet the NORMAL LEGAL STANDARDS for providing a conspiracy (RICO laws make this quite easy), then I would be fine with stripping the church of any tax exempt status and with shutting down its operation and removing children from its grasp.

Trouble is, the state of Texas and its enablers among the bigoted and the unaware are trying to short-circuit all that by using what amounts to nothing more than guilt-by-presumption against any religious group they find personally bizarre. The net consequence of that process is the de facto abolition of religious freedom for everyone not a member of a conventional Christian denomination. I oppose it on that grounds, NOT because I find this group particularly wonderful. I find them creepy. But anyone who cares about religious freedom has to include tolerance for creepy.

My problem with you, Pat, is your rather curiously selective standard for "affecting the community". It is a fact that nearly ANY religious practice can be found by SOMEONE to be negatively "affecting the community". Whole books have recently been written about how all of Christianity allegedly has negative "affects" on the "community". Should Christianity be banned?

Of course not. You’re only acknowledging SOME claims of negatively "affecting the community" as being worthy of banning. And that selectivity is something I think is totally destructive of any meaningful religious freedom, since it empowers the majority to ARBITRARILY select which "affects" it will act upon and which it will not.

When purely arbitrary standards are made the basis of public policy for the purpose of justifying/rationalizing action against one group that is not taken on the same basis against other groups, I think "bigotry" is the properly applicable word.

Anyway, I’m curious, Pat. What other “lifestyle choices” should be banned by the state? Homosexuality? Alcohol? Tobacco? High-fat foods? I’m curious to see exactly how much of traditional conservativism you have abandoned in favor of a state-centric enforcement of comprehensive ideals about the Good Life. Should the state be empowered to mandate 5 hours a week of gym time for every individual in order to prevent the negative “affects on the community” of rampant obesity?

Should large colleges like the Air Force Academy be required to maintain a 50/50 gender balance to prevent imposing large numbers of dangerously hormone-crazed males on surrounding communities? Or is your concern for those “affects” just COINCIDENTALLY limited to minority religious groups?

But we don’t have a democracy, Pat. We have a constitutional democracy where some issues of personal liberty are placed off-limits from arbitrary and selective regulation by the majority. Religious liberty is one of those areas, as are sexual relationships between consenting adults.

The notation that society has chosen to outlaw polygamy begs the question. Society also chose to outlaw homosexuality until that was found to be incompatible with personal freedom in Lawrence v Texas. Do you challenge the validity of that decision, or are you remaining arbitrarily fixated on ONLY banning polygamy and to hell with consistent and neutral legal standards?

And who’s "safety and happiness" are you trying to protect here? The women involved in polygamous relationships testify that they do not feel themselves repressed. And your "affects on the community" justification would also justify banning high-fat foods and other over-the-top projects of contemporary liberalism. So I return to my question — how much of conservativism have you abandoned in the process of justifying discrimination against religious groups you don’t like?

So you are challenging the legitimacy of constitutional protections for individual sexual choices. Fine. At least you’re back within an identifiable political tradition, though one deeply hostile to many forms of personal liberty that we take for granted. I wonder if your contempt for judicial fiat is restricted solely to decisions in the area of sexual liberty or whether it goes all the way to condemning Marbury v Madison too.

And I’m lobbying only for consistency and fairness to minorities. I do this not out of a love for polygamy (which I have emphasized several times in an effort to prevent the seemingly inevitable lies that distort my position in an attempt to straw man it — I’m disappointed that it had to be YOU that embraced this particular distortion that I knew would be hurled at me eventually), but rather out of a concern for the irreducible logic of majoritarian regulation of personal decisions. The way I see it, you’re lobbying for a position that inevitably justifies things like banning high fat foods and requiring fat people to register their gym activity with the government, always in the name of "protecting the community".

In short, your position leads inevitably to the logic of the most corrupt and repressive forms of contemporary statist liberalism, whether you choose to recognize those links or not. The fact that you flee from the debate rather than engage those implications shows a lack of confidence in your position.

And conservatism’s historic principles about individual rights lie firmly within the libertarian philosophical tradition. I’m surprised you don’t know that. The basic principle of individual liberty is that the state has no legitimate basis to regulate any activity that does not harm another person DIRECTLY, without intervening acts. Protecting “culture” is not a power granted to the state and is, in the case of religious “culture” specifically prohibited to the state by the First Amendment.

But then again, I am sure that all of those “hormone crazed” young men are a devastating enough threat to justify throwing out that principle. Of course, once that becomes a valid scenario for state intervention, well, there isn’t going to be much left.

And conservatism’s historic principles about individual rights lie firmly within the libertarian philosophical tradition. I’m surprised you don’t know that. The basic principle of individual liberty is that the state has no legitimate basis to regulate any activity that does not harm another person DIRECTLY, without intervening acts. Protecting “culture” is not a power granted to the state and is, in the case of religious “culture” specifically prohibited to the state by the First Amendment.
Jason, it seems to me that you are taking a purely libertarian view of conservatism, while Pat on this issue is espousing a more Burkean view. Your rebuttal of that basically boils down to saying that it has to be all or none, one way or the other- either one is a pure libertarian and agrees that the state has NO interest in regulating sexual relationships or one takes Pat’s view but then also has to allow for regulation of all kinds of personal behaviors. I simply don’t think the dichotomy works; conservatism in our country historically has intervened in sexual behaviors as they relate to preservation of the two parent family structure. We can preserve individual liberties for people to engage in whatever consensual relationships outside marriage that they choose, but the state doesn’t have to sanction those relationships by allowing them to be called marriage or giving the participants any of the legal benefits of marriage.

I honestly don’t know how all the state laws handle polygamy and don’t know if you or Pat is more correct about it; but assuming you are correct that it’s not technically illegal, then how are the legal rights handled in those cases? Can more than one wife be granted the benefits that come from marriage, in inheritance, retirement and disability benefits, for example? Can a man legally be the head of more than one household? How in the heck does this work? I have to confess to being apparently naive if these arrangements are commonly being permitted, because I’m not familiar with it at all. And does the state have any interest in making sure the arrangements are really consensual (IOW, do the laws at least ensure that wife #2 and wife #3 are aware of wife #1, so that you don’t have polygamists who are secretly having families on the side?)

There are many traditionalist religions that posit strongly differing gender roles. I don’t see how a neutral and consistent application of your standard could fail to intervene against all of them.

Anyway, the issue you consistently fail to deal with is the one of consent. Leaving aside the question of young girls forced into marriages (which no one here is defending), the women who participate in polygamist marriages do so voluntarily. For an outsider, using the power of the state, to trump that individual choice because of an application of a purely secular concept of gender equality would completely destroy any meaningful concept of religious freedom, as the state can always find some "inequality" to justify an intervention when it wanted to.

It is clear to me that the real issue here is the "ick factor". Because polygamy is perceived as creepy, otherwise fair-minded people seek contorted rationalizations to justify state intervention in areas that they would never countenance it in more familiar contexts. I think that natural human tendency is precisely why the free exercise clause of the First Amendment was put in place — to prevent the indulgence of the majority in a repressive use of state power that would have the inevitable affect of eliminating all meaningful religious liberty for those who might choose "icky" beliefs or lifestyles.

My admitted purism on this issue results from a very strong belief that the slope towards the elimination of religious freedom actually is very, very slippery and that we have already seen many cases where “cults” are, once labeled as such, extremely vulnerable to the construction of “exceptions” to religious freedom that collectively amount to the elimination of religious freedom. The fact that standards for state intervention are constructed ex post facto as rationalizations instead of derived through consistent application of pre-existing neutral standards pretty much proves that it is bias rather than principle that drives these efforts.

Nonetheless, it is more than clear that I have as usual worn out my welcome again (pretty much every time I write anything about anything), so I will stop writing again. No one ever changes their mind once the debate begins on a blog anyway, so what’s the point.

Also, I think it’s poor form to assert that our real opposition to polygamy is strictly the "ick" factor. Personally I do find it icky but if polygamy in practice involved both men with multiple wives and women with multiple husbands, then I would agree that it’s not inherently discriminatory (I’d still say that the state has an interest in determining whether or not such unions should be given legal sanction or not, but that’s a different issue.)

And in societies where the idea of men having multiple wives has been sanctioned, I see a strong correlation with a general lack of equality for women, so I think it’s logical to have concern. You are right when you say that many religions (including my own) have tenets which involve delineation of gender roles that secularists (or people of other religions) might feel are discriminatory- but where I differ with you is in your thinking that we can’t draw lines, that we either say that anything goes or we risk having the beliefs of all religions on gender equality questioned and potentially disrupted. I think reasonable people can find logical places to get a foothold so that it doesn’t have to be a slippery slope to say that some practices are compatible with secular ideas of equality while others are not.

where I differ with you is in your thinking that we can’t draw lines

I understand that it is always possible to draw lines, but unless there is an underlying neutral principle, any line drawn will be arbitrary and unstable, vulnerable to arbitrary change later using the exact same kind of reasons used to justify the original line. Thus, a line drawn that singles out polygamy for gender inequalities is vulnerable to being changed later to be applied far more broadly.

Once the door is opened to state regulation of religious doctrine using purely secular criteria about "good" gender roles, I don’t see any way to build a stable bulwark on the slippery slope. Things like age and consent are neutral standards that can be maintained, but "inequality" is purely subjective and arbitrary and therefore prone to bias and expansion. Age is neutral and principled and easier to maintain because it attaches to an objective standard for adult consent with broad application elsewhere in society. Consent similarly attaches to neutral principles about individual autonomy and freedom of religious choice. “Gender inequalities” are, on the other hand, easy to perceive differently and the role of the state in enforcing them is in conflict with strong principles about individual autonomy and freedom of religious choice.

I should emphasize YET AGAIN that I do not endorse polygamy and I don’t even (as a practical matter) advocate its formal legalization. I merely say that the “dodgy” form of polygamy that is being practiced by the FLDS (plural marriages without seeking state sanctions or state marriage benefits) should not be used as a reason to override or circumvent normal legal protections in other areas, such as parental rights. The fact that we find their religious lifestyle distasteful is a view that we should resist indulging in with the use of state power.

I would also like to note for Claudia’s benefit that neither myself nor my family members have ever been members of a polygamist religious group. The relationship claimed by the polygamists is rejected explicitly and repeatedly by the mainstream LDS Church. Those Mormons found to be polygamists are immediately excommunicated from the mainstream LDS Church. Most Mormons find the common conflation of their religion with polygamy to be slanderous and offensive. Thus, my analysis is NOT part of a personal protective impulse.

Religious freedom should flow from this without any particular religion becoming oppressive of its adherents

The problem lies in finding a neutral and principled way to define what is "oppressive" to a degree that the state becomes justified in infringing on individual religious choices. I think at the point that those choices directly affect others who do not affirmatively consent, the state is justified in stepping in with minimally invasive means to limit the affects of religious liberty. Children cannot consent, so the state has a legitimate role in investigating and countering physical abuse, even under a claim of religious liberty. Those investigations should make use of normal legal standards and laws, including those governing conspiracies. But we should not allow the "ick factor" to result in a de facto and unlimited presumption of group guilt as the state of Texas has done.

But when the intervention is based on an assumption that consent given by a legally competent adult is not legitimate (as many secular analysts of the FLDS women ask us to do when they ask us to discount or ignore the direct testimony of FLDS women as to their individual consent to polygamous relationships that we individually might see as demeaning to them as women), we find ourselves on an inevitable slope to the outright elimination of religious liberty, as it is always possible for an outsider to find others’ religious practices incomprehensible and religious followers incompetent by definition. (Christopher Hitchens finds all of Christianity to be insane and harmful by definition, for example. Do we want the state empowered to act on Hitchens’ bigotry?)

And when intervention is justified based on indirect scenarios constructed out of presumptive second-order effects like "hormone-crazed males", then we would be empowering the state to act on the basis of hypothetical crimes based on underlying "thought crimes", in effect opening the door to unlimited state regulation of religion and any number of other personal choices.

Age of consent is "neutral" in the sense that it is applied equally to all religious groups.  It need not be the same in all states nor need it be permanently set in stone.  "Neutral" refers to a standardized process of application, not a permanence of defintion.

The establishment of an atheist state church is not a necessary condition for an unacceptable and repressive degree of state intervention against religions that state officials just happen not to like. My point is that anti-Christian bigots like Hitchens could find excuses to target all Christians for state-sponsored discrimination in, say, child custody battles WITHOUT bothering to explicitly set up a state-sponsored atheism.

Anyone who drags someone back can and should be prosecuted under normal legal standards for kidnapping. Same goes for crimes of custodial interference, assault, etc. I have never advocated religious liberty as a shield against the normal investigation and prosecution of crimes. I don’t know why I need to keep repeating that. Perhaps the reason I seem “mad at us” is because I keep having to repeat my defenses against the same distortions and misrepresentations over and over and over.

Separation from children is a bit ironic of a charge to be leveling against the FLDS at the same time that the state of Texas asks a court to endorse it against ALL FLDS women.

Equation between the FLDS and the Taliban would require a lot more analysis and evidence to be legitimate than anything heretofore revealed. It should not be merely assumed based on the assertions of a few bigots and embittered ex-members. If crimes are found, they should be prosecuted under NORMAL LEGAL STANDARDS. We should not change those standards just because the group is "spooky" or weird.

if the polygamous arrangements, and the life on a compound as sort of a very large extended family are in some way meant to extend normal parental rights of the entire group of parents over the entire group of children, then I don’t think the state has to recognize that right.

That would not meet "normal legal standards" and so it is not part of my advocacy.

My beef with the state of Texas is that they have not conducted an individual investigation of the childrens’ situation AT ALL. Rather than focusing on cases where some young teenaged girls may have been sexually abused, the state of Texas swept up ALL of the FLDS children of ALL ages and BOTH genders. Then, having already taken an unprecedented and sweeping action to take away ALL of the children, the state has sought to make it permanent by assigning those children to foster homes away from their parents BEFORE any legal determinations have been made AT ALL about the fitness of those parents or the conditions faced by any of those individual children.

In short, the state has presumed guilt based SOLELY on group membership, even in cases of children who are of the wrong age and gender to even potentially be victims of the type of crimes being alleged. It is a staggering abuse of state power and it sets an unbelievable set of precedents if you think about it. If the state is empowered to strip the entire FLDS community of their children BEFORE a single court hearing takes place merely based on the unsubstantiated allegations of a witness that they cannot find of a set of crimes that it is physically impossible for all of those children to have been victims of, what other religious or even secular groups could be targeted with similarly sweeping presumptions in the absence of any identifiable legal checks?

That would not meet "normal legal standards" and so it is not part of my advocacy.
I’m suggesting that you come pretty close to this though when you argue that the entire group of children shouldn’t be removed based on probable cause of concern for safety and welfare of one or a few of the children. It seems to me that if the group admits to a communal lifestyle, then the entire group of children is subject to the same dangers as a subset of the group is.

some of the ways that cult groups operate

Once the label "cult" is applied, it is a red flag that presumptions are being made.

I’m suggesting that you come pretty close to this though when you argue that the entire group of children shouldn’t be removed based on probable cause of concern for safety and welfare of one or a few of the children. It seems to me that if the group admits to a communal lifestyle, then the entire group of children is subject to the same dangers as a subset of the group is.

Interesting that a communal lifestyle is something that is "admitted", as if it was presumptively suspicious and shameful.

Anyway, I appear forced to YET AGAIN clarify my argument in the face of a distortion.  If normal legal standards are used to determine that all of the children are endangered, I don’t have a problem with it.  But the seizure of children who are of the wrong age and gender to even potentially be victims of the crimes alleged doesn’t meet even the most cursory test.  Additionally, the placement of those children in permanent foster homes prior to any legal showing of proof is not normal legal standards. 

And the way that communications were seized and visitation prohibited was excessive.  The state could have legitimately required supervision or monitoring but the fact is that they didn’t even attempt less intrusive means of ensuring children’s safety against the legally unproven threat.  The fact that it was a "cult" was enough for the state to suspend normal standards of caution.

And apparently the label "cult" is enough to change individual standards of caution among some around here too.  Better hope your religious group is not the next one labeled by some bigot to be a "cult", huh?