Problems with the FLDS church raid in Texas

"Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise (of religion)." Congress didn't in this case but Texas did. And a guaranteed, bonafide debacle is ensuing in the Lone Star state. Too many lawyers have descended upon the location for order to last.

Understand, I do not believe in the FLDS sect's religion, and I find abhorrent what I believe they find important to the practice of their faith. But another person's religion is not about me. Just as mine is not about someone else. If I do not support their "right" to practice their religion who can I expect to support mine?

Yes, problems abound in the Texas case. There are 416 children taken from their mothers and homes. None implicated in whatever the law-breaking was - just a class action government kidnapping of people privately living their lives. There are reportedly thirteen residences at the ranch, and all were raided. Imagine a crime reported in one dorm building of a college and all dorms raided, emptied and occupants held in police compounds.

If the charges that prompted the raid are true, there is still no justification to house in government compounds all of the children, or to simply give them away to foster families - keeping them all from their mothers. No justification. Period. We should be outraged.

It also is a bit oxymoronish that the sect members are being accused of polygamy - when there are no certificates of marriage, and in fact Texas would only recognize such a marriage between any two persons as "common law." How can you be guilty of violating a law that the state does not recognize you under?

While I do not like the "religious" practices of the FLDS people it appears the children were not in homes where their parents smoked, none lived in meth labs, they did not spend their days playing computer games or texting porn on their cell phones. It seems they had healthy diets, hard work and exercise...so what again was the problem?

Most likely young girls were being mistreated and abused. We probably needed to address it...but how do we not look the bully when we take small children from their mothers, by the hundreds, to investigate one reported crime? If the Chinese raided a strange (to others of us) religious sect settlement in Tibet the world would be in an uproar.

So how is it that we do this in the most free nation in the world...?