As the story of the FLDS raid continues to be a major news story, I have decided to add my two cents to the issue. While I am not a fan of the LDS Church in any of its forms, in this inst5ance I have to side with the members of the FLDS because the actions of the state have concerned me since I first heard of the raid on their “compound.”

The first troubling sign for me was the way the Texas Rangers went into the “compound”, which seemed more like a community to me. The massive show of force and the instant removal of all of the children in that community, even though there was no evidence that the children were in any danger, quite frankly scares me. The thought that the state can break up families on a whim and a whiff of suspicion should scare all of us. While I understand that children need to be protected in cases of abuse, and that the state has been given that responsibility by its citizens in most cases, this simply does not seem to be a situation where this action was warranted. It seems to me that the state looked at the lifestyle of the people living in that community, made a decision that they did not condone that lifestyle, and made the decision to break that community up by way of “protecting the children.” But can anyone tell me what good comes from taking children away from their mothers, none of whom has been charged with any crime, and sticking them into the state’s child welfare system? How is becoming a ward of t he state in the best interest of those children, and why are we willing to condone the treatment of these women as criminals in spite of the fact that none of them has been charged with any crime?

Another thing that bothers me is the seeming collusion between law enforcement and the media to paint the FLDS in the worst possible light. I always get a little bit suspicious when law enforcement and news organizations get too chummy, especially in a case that has the potential to be this explosive. Did anyone else find it odd that the press was in attendance when the raid was taking place? We know the police had to have informed the press, but to what purpose? After following the press coverage and their reportage of every little tidbit of salacious rumor and gossip about the FLDS, and the great cooperation between the Rangers and the press I have come to the conclusion that the whole point is to demonize the FLDS. If they can be made to look sufficiently sinister, then that allows the Rangers and the child protection agencies to escape any real scrutiny of their actions in this case; making the FLDS out to be some weird sex cult allows the authorities to sidestep questions about their launching this massive raid and breaking up these families on the word of one alleged victim.

This brings me to the most troubling aspect of the case: the mysterious “Sarah.” If you remember, it was a call to an abuse hotline from a young lady identifying herself as Sarah that was used as the basis of this raid. “Sarah” claimed to have given birth to several children while a minor, having been married off to an abusive husband, and having been so severely abused that she had to be hospitalized with broken ribs. The only thing is, no one can find “Sarah” anywhere, and none of the many women/girls named Sarah living in the community seems to fit the story given in the phone conversations with the abuse counselors. The Rangers and child protection agents have done their best to link someone in the community to that story, but so far have come up empty. You would think that before launching this raid and creating this media firestorm that the authorities would have had their ducks in a row, especially as it concerned the witness/victim whose story set this process in motion, but they didn’t. They simply decided to believe this story and forge ahead against a group they obviously felt was outside of the mainstream; it was basically an attempt in my view to destroy a community that the authorities deemed strange.

The funny thing is, while there have been no arrests of any of the people living in that polygamist community, there has been one arrest liked to the case. It seems that the police have taken into custody a woman that seems obsessed with the FLDS and is suspected of faking the “Sarah” phone call to destroy the FLDS. There is a nice piece at the American Spectator that describes this person’s past and points out that the alleged husband of the mysterious “Sarah” lives in Arizona and has not been to Texas since 1977! Yet CNN, Fox News, and the alphabet networks have not reported that, and the Texas authorities are trying their best to keep all of this information under their ten-gallon hats.

If the authorities felt they should raid that compound because they had proof of polygamous marriages going on there, then fine. Polygamy is against the law, and the law should be enforced. But to raid this compound on testimony that was sketchy at best, and is looking more fraudulent all the time smacks of the abuse of power to me. If the Texas Rangers can raid a community and separate families simply because they don’t like their lifestyles, and if they are allowed to do this without presenting any evidence of wrongdoing or without pressing any criminal charges, then who’s next? Regular LDS churches, AME Zion, primitive Baptists, and Hindus? I’ll be watching to see how this all shakes out, because it will say a lot about how far we are willing to allow our law enforcement to go in the interests of “protecting” us.