Open Letter to FLDS Parents

Dear Fellow Americans:

Congratulations on winning your appeals court ruling against Child Protective Services (CPS) in Texas. Some of you may be reuniting with your children right now. Best wishes for a speedy return to normal life and healing the trauma you have suffered.

Many Americans are relieved to see the government rein in a state agency and make it obey its own rules. They know that if CPS can take your children on an anonymous caller's say-so, their own children are far from safe.

CPS was unable to prove to a judge that your children were in danger. It failed to show that it had tried to preserve the integrity of your families, as its rules state, and has now been ordered to give your children back to you. This in no way undoes the harm caused to your families, but it is the best they can do. High government officials supported the CPS move, and their opinion is evident in the papers CPS filed in support of their actions. Those papers claimed that yours was a "pervasive system of belief that condones underage marriage and underage pregnancy." The word "pervasive" is rarely a positive one.

Sadly, many Americans do not know how to live and let live. Over the last 30 years, politicians have subtly encouraged intolerance, by seeking approval and endorsements from conservative religious leaders, themselves rarely paragons of tolerance. When these politicians had gained the power they sought, they found themselves beholden to others who were less enthusiastic about the rule of law than they were about furthering their own interests. In the end, these so-called public servants have turned over an inordinate amount of power to a base of people who would like nothing so much as to abolish the separation between church and state. Our secular nation, which was intended to allow freedom of or freedom from religion, is in grave danger from such people.

Unfortunately, the message these people spread is one of fear. They tell us that those who are different would destroy our way of life and that they hate our freedom. The actions of CPS seem to indicate a distaste for freedom much closer to home.

Nor is the intolerance limited to religion. America has become the great busybody, attempting to interfere with and regulate everyone except itself. Those who do not subscribe to our ideas about economics, government, drugs, or sexuality are equally likely to find themselves in our gun sights. The problem you faced was less religious than sexual. The cultural fascination with all things sexual almost guaranteed that you would receive governmental ministrations.

It is a sad irony that the underage pregnancy rate among your teenage girls is much lower than the national average. Americans may not condone teenage pregnancy, but they certainly practice it. They seem blind to that fact, as to the idea that many cultures both arrange marriages and permit girls as young as 13 to marry. They overlook that their own scriptures mention that Mary was a young girl betrothed to Joseph, who was a much older man. Nor are you the only people practicing polygamy in this country. Some Muslims, whose religion also "condones" plural marriage follow the practice. In short, Americans overlook the plank in their collective eye in order to remove the mote from yours.

As you try to establish some normalcy in your life, there is a tiny bit of history you ought to be aware of. In 1993, the children of another group whose religious ideas were far from the mainstream were placed in the care of CPS. These children had indeed been physically and sexually abused, and in this instance, needed to be removed from their home. Unfortunately, at least 17 children were still in the home when the FBI stormed it on April 19, 1993.

You have won this battle. Don't be misled into thinking you have won the war.