Category — Religion

Here’s the FLDS quote of the day. The Herald News Daily (have no idea from what hamlet in Texas) reports that one of FLDS mother, when asked to sign a CPS “safety plan” requiring her to keep her and 9- and 10-year-old daughters away from what CPS calls “men involved in underaged marriage,” refused to sign, telling a caseworker she felt it was “an insult to common sense.” My feelings exactly. When given the chance to showcase its ability to craft an intelligent, family-specific safety plan, Texas CPS instead retrogresses to a caveman, one-size-fits-all, biggest-bully on the block approach. Pathetic. Stupid. Typical.

More evidence in from CNN that Texas CPS is back to their old tricks, playing nasty with the FLDS. The fiction that CPS wants everyone to buy is that every child in an FLDS home with a father indicted for “sex abuse” (for underage marriage) is in “imminent danger” of being sexually abused.  But this ain’t a case involving run of the mill “sex abuse.”  And by treating it as if it were, Texas CPS is effectively thumbing its nose at the Texas Supreme Court. [Read more →]

Deseret News and San Angelo Standard Times report that Texas CPS has filed to put eight FLDS children (six girls and two boys) from four families back into foster care on the grounds that “their mothers have refused to limit their contact with men involved in underage marriages.”

More information about the alleged relationships between the eight children and the “men [allegedly] involved in underage marriages” is provided by the San Angelo Standard Times. Funny how that word “allegedly” is so easily discarded in reports about the FLDS. DNA is questionable in anthrax cases but not in FLDS ones?  What isn’t clear is how the boys could possibly be in danger of abuse.  I don’t think anyone has alleged that the FLDS marry off boys at a young age. [Read more →]

Strange but true.  The Times of London last month (see headline below) announced,”The death and resurrection of Christ has been called into question by a radical new interpretation of a tablet found on the eastern bank of the Dead Sea.” Huh?  This “radical new interpretation” is neither radical nor new but it is a comedic non sequitur.

The logic (actually, illogic) behind the headline goes like this: [Read more →]

Over the weekend, I had an extended phone conversation with Natalie Malonis about the Texas CPS case. In keeping with the motto of this blog — “by proving contraries truth is made manifest” — I’d like to quickly share a few insights from that conversation.

First, I no longer believe, as I suggested on July 26, that Malonis began her involvement in this case with a “grandiose agenda” or that in taking up the case she was in over her “intellectual” head any more than other attorneys who, on the spur of the moment, were dragged into a case with 500+ parties on three sides — parents, children and CPS. Imagine playing Kriegspiel chess in three dimensions. It’s not an easy game for anyone. [Read more →]

In West Texas, “DNA” may mean “Don’t kNow Anything.”  One attorney ad litem in the Texas CPS case told me this afternoon:

It is true that some DNA tests are coming back inconclusive. I received results today on one of my clients and the DNA analysis was unable to establish a mother or father of the child. I’m not sure what this means in a practical sense, but I was surprised at the result. I thought DNA analysis was very very specific.

Input from scientists or defense counsel with expertise in this area would be most welcome.

For what it’s worth, I do not personally believe it a good idea for kids to routinely marry anyone at age 14. I do think that it should be legal, in special cases under judicial or other independent supervision. I would not choose to live polygamously (even if my wife would go along with it), but I can find no moral or public policy rationale to prevent others from doing so.*

Nor do I believe that it is acceptable to grant one government, religious or family leader the unqualified power to decide who will be the husbands and fathers of which wives and children. I cannot in the same breath deny what amounts to a ” familial death penalty” power to Barbara Walther or Angie Voss and grant it to Warren Jeffs or Chaudhry Rashid. Rashid, some readers may remember, was the Pakistani man who, on July 6, 2008, strangled his 25-year-old daughter, in Atlanta, for objecting to an arranged marriage. [Read more →]

Here’s a reader quiz. Please read the following two (relatively short) paragraphs and then choose the author/editor from the options provided below.

In the case of parental rights, “[t]he natural right which exists between parents and their children is one of constitutional dimensions.” A parent’s right to uninterrupted access to and care of her child ranks as “far more precious than property rights,” and indeed is a “fundamental liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.” . . . the right of the individual to … marry, establish a home and bring up children, [and] to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience” [are] liberty interests entitled to due process. [Read more →]

Almost two months ago, I praised the the ACLU’s Texas Supreme Court Amicus Brief in the Texas CPS vs. FLDS case. That brief — which helped produce the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling that Texas CPS and Judge Walther had violated Texas law in removing and holding FLDS children back in April — is just as compelling today as it was back then.

The brief is a great primer on legal issues that will continue to simmer over the next several months in San Angelo. You don’t need to be a lawyer to appreciate much of what is says and it will help you become more conversant. If you haven’t read it, I hope you’ll take time to do so. If you have, read it again. More voracious legal beagles might dig into the Texas Supreme Court’s entire portfolio of filings in the case.

In light of extensive evidence that Texas authorities — governor, legislators, Texas Rangers, local sheriffs and judges — combined in an effort to either genocidally wipe out the FLDS as a religious group (by taking all of their children) or drive them out of Texas, consider this short excerpt from the ACLU’s brief: [Read more →]

The National Enquirer has been hammering away at John Edwards (pic right, courtesy of National Enquirer), accusing him of keeping a “mistress” on the side, arranging hush money to keep her quite, and setting up an elaborate cover-up in which an Edwards campaign worker holds himself out as the father of Edwards’ love child.

The story raises a host of questions, some of which may send readers running for the exits.  Oh, well.  [Read more →]