We’re going on three weeks since the Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas on the pretext of child abuse, polygamy, physical violence and rape.
So far, though, even though more than 400 children were seized from parents, precious little evidence of the crimes has been made public.
Now suppose this raid had not been on a compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but instead on your average public school.
I read the news. I know the statistics. The chances are very good there would be more evidence of child sexual abuse in government schools than has been produced at the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t approve of this cult. I don’t approve of polygamy. I don’t approve of child brides. But I also believe in the rule of law.
An investigation of the compound had been under way for four years. A confidential informant, a former member of the sect, was providing authorities with details of activities. And this is all they have?
The raid itself was prompted by an anonymous call from someone identifying herself as a 16-year-old girl who was being held against her will and claimed to have been raped and abused by a 50-year-old registered sex offender named Dale Barlow. Yet, he is on probation in Arizona for a 2007 conviction for marrying and impregnating another 16-year-old girl. And the caller turns out to be Rozita Swinton, apparently a Barack Obama superdelegate who lives in El Paso.
So, the chief suspect was known, in advance, not to be in the ranch compound. And the tipster is someone with a history of making false police charges and supporting really unworthy presidential candidates....
Again, I am forced to raise some key questions about this case:
Is there a community in America where child abuse is not taking place?
Don’t we normally arrest individual suspects and try them for their crimes?
Do we normally and pre-emptively round up all the children in a community where it is suspected abuse is taking place without specific evidence?
When a government schoolteacher is arrested for abusing one student, are all the students in that school assumed to be victims?
And why aren’t all the usual, dependable advocates of tolerance, diversity and alternative lifestyles actively protesting the disruption of life within a peaceful community based on society’s imposition of its own sense of morality?
Is the secular state really better at determining what’s best for the children of the YFZ Ranch than are the parents of those children?
According to the experts, 62 percent of girls are sexually abused by the age of 18 - outside the YFZ Ranch.
According to the experts, 31 percent of boys are sexually abused by the age of 18 - outside the YFZ Ranch.
According to the experts, most rape victims are under 12 years old - outside the YFZ Ranch.
Do I want to see children raised in polygamist cults? No.
But neither do I want to see children abused at the hands of the state - which, I hate to say, happens every single day throughout America. It happens in government-run schools. It happens under the watchful eye of government-supervised foster care programs. It happens at the hands of the government-funded Planned Parenthood, which covers up the sexual abuse of children by adults and victimizes those children a second time by performing abortions on them. It happens when states willingly and knowingly adopt out innocent young children to same-sex couples. It happens when officials in states such as California actively try to ban homeschooling.