Right or Wrong?

I'm writing from Utah,and lately, our news has been filled with the raid on the "Yearning For Zion" compound near Eldorado, TX. The police and Texas Child Protection Agency went into the compound looking, they said, for a sixteen year old girl, who had been "spritually"married to an older man and became pregnant. She has an 8 mo old daughter and is pregnant again. She made cellphone calls to 911 saying that she had been abused. The Texas officials ultimately, removed 416 children from the compound and their mothers went with them. The compound was searched and they even entered to search the Temple.

This group practises polygamy as part of it's religion. It is a break off of the original Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints or Mormons,as they are known. Mormans also practised polygamy in thier early days, many of us who are Utah natives can find polygamy in our family histories. Polygamy was stopped by the Mormans in the late 1800s when we became a State. We still have a small number of people living in polygamous groups here in Utah,some quietly, some quite openly. There have been court trials for bigamy, and more often, for forcing young girls into "spiritual" marriges. The head of the sect that is having the trouble in Texas, has been put in jail for putting a young girl into a marriage with an older cousin against her will.

We in Utah have seen that there are problems with this lifestyle,many of the women and children are forced onto welfare just to survive, as the men have more wives than they can support, so it is more than just a question of people being allowed to practise thier religion in peace.

The reaction among Mormans here in Utah has been mixed. We all have been touched by polygamy to some extent, and that influences our opinions. I have been withholding judgement through all this, waiting to see whether anything positive would come out of it. By most accounts, the compound has been pretty quiet, not abusing any laws and taking care of itself, not getting TX state welfare. I'm still not comfortable with the practise of marrying off young girls to old men, keeping women with the minimum of education and basically using them as breeders. But I'm also uncomfortable with police going though the temple that those people view as sacred. Now it seems that the state has removed the mothers back to thier compound, while still keeping the children in State custody.

I've no doubt that the state of Texas believes they are doing the right thing to protect those children, but they have acted on such a large scale that I'm afraid they are going to have a long,hard fight on their hands.