Kids returned as pogrom against FLDS fizzles

Members of the polygamous FLDS church are getting their kidnapped children back from the Texas authorities who swiped them in the wake of two court decisions, one from the Texas Supreme Court, saying that state officials overstepped their bounds by declaring that adherence to a specific religion inherently makes people unfit parents. As the Salt Lake Tribune editorialized, "under the law in the United States, a culture cannot be indicted. Only the specific people who commit specific crimes against specific victims can be. Thank goodness."

Texas authorities are still free to pursue allegations of child abuse, but now they'll have to do it the American way: by building evidence of specific crimes and naming actual suspects instead of engaging in a pogrom. Yeah, that's a pain in the ass. Every now and then, though -- if only when folks are watching -- government employees have to do things by the rules.

Interestingly, this is at least the second time that a wildly over-the-top campaign by government officials against the FLDS church has turned the members of the odd little sect from outcasts with some unsavory practices into sympathetic victims of the state. In 1953, a massive raid by Arizona law-enforcers on Short Creek (now Colorado City), motivated by precisely the same concerns that inspired Texas's assault on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, had much the same results as the 2008 controversy. Wrote the Los Angeles Times in 2006:

By day’s end, families and crying children were separated in a scene that would haunt political leaders for years to come. In all, 36 men were arrested. Authorities loaded 86 women and 263 children aboard buses to Phoenix. ...

As sympathy built for the FLDS, [Arizona Gov. J. Howard] Pyle was denounced and ridiculed by newspaper editorials. The raid was called "Pyle’s Folly."

The Arizona Republic said the action would have made the Keystone Kops "green with envy" and resembled "too closely the hated police-state roundups of the Old World."

Religious leaders and political rivals accused him of using excessive force.

Democrats decried the action as "odious and un-American." A prominent Mormon leader denounced the "tyrannical methods" used.

The raid’s results were meager in court as well. Charges of statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor were dropped. The men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate laws against bigamy, and open and notorious cohabitation. One-year suspended sentences were handed out. Many promptly returned to Short Creek with their families.

Pyle lost the subsequent election, and even he attributed his defeat to public reaction against the Short Creek raid.

It's too early yet to know whether there will be political fallout from the 2008 raid, but it's good to see that the courts are at least as protective of the individual rights of members of a despised subculture as they were in 1953. Once again, government officials took a step toward persecuting an entire community, and once again, they were slapped down hard.

The day those slaps stop coming will be the day it's open season on anybody who strays too far from the herd.