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Candace
Talmadge
Read Candace's bio and previous columns
April 21, 2008
Balance of Power
Restored: Children Removed From Polygamist Compound
Thank goodness. A judge has ruled that the 416 children the state
removed from a polygamist compound near Eldorado, Texas, will stay in
state custody for the time being.
None of those young people should return to that compound or any similar
place until they are of age and old enough to make more mature and
un-coerced decisions about their religious beliefs and the way they want
to live their lives.
No
doubt these youngsters and their mothers are suffering from being
separated. The women have argued that Texas child protective officials
violated their religious rights by taking away their children. They
might have a case, except for one critical consideration.
No
one’s religious rights extend to subjecting children to the abuse of
sexual, emotional and reproductive exploitation.
Marrying a pubescent child to an adult several decades older is abuse of
the worst kind because it unites in a sexually and emotionally intimate
relationship two people of vastly unequal power. Any 13-year-old –
female or male – is in an inherent one-down position when pitted against
an adult. The balance of power is not even close. The child is very much
at the mercy of the grownup in such situations, and all the more so in
an intimate setting such as marriage.
Thousands of such unequal situations – middle-age men “marrying”
multiple girls barely past playing with dolls – have played out in the
desert southwest for more than a century. When the mainstream Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints renounced polygamy in 1890 in order to
gain statehood for Utah, many of their Mormon brethren broke away to
continue the practice, recently rebranded as “plural marriage” to make
it sound less objectionable. Only those living in a cave of denial can
be shocked at the unprecedented scope of this child custody debacle
involving Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS)
adherents.
Meanwhile, government officials in many states – Arizona, Nevada and
Utah as well as Texas – largely ignored the polygamists unless forced to
act by public outrage after some especially bad behavior came to light.
In refusing to step in when the balance of power was so out of kilter,
state and local government officials failed in their fundamental duty to
the children involved.
That’s because the legitimate role of government at any level is to
maintain the balance of power – in this case, between the FLDS children
and the adults. If the Eldorado compound (or other FLDS settlements)
involved only adult women in polygamous marriages to adult men, then the
state would have no justification to intercede, absent probable cause
for commission of a crime. In this instance, however, state intervention
is more than warranted and most likely long overdue.
Now Texas child protective officials and a district judge face a largely
thankless challenge. They must sort out how (and whom is) best to care
for hundreds of youngsters who have had little to no contact with the
world outside their cloistered community.
Their delicate balancing act will never be perfect, and may yet render
further injustices and heartache. Still, those involved should always
keep in mind their paramount role as guardians of and advocates for the
rights of the less powerful in whatever custody decisions they reach.
© 2008
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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