The Texas court of appeals , to their credit, ruled the children should not have been removed from their mothers.
The state failed to prove their case. 400 children taken away en masse, then spread out across Texas in foster care. Children 3 and younger. The long term effects can be devastating. Unprecedented in the annals of jurisprudence.
At least in this case justice has prevailed .
So far.
Whether one agrees or not with Polygamy or the manner in which they live, our society is based , in part, on Freedom of Religion. That is what was taken to court , their lifestyle and religion. Not once were the men taken and jailed, they offered to go, but the mothers were separated from their children. Unless they can prove abuse , which they could not, then the only reason would be to remove them based on a lifestyle choice. The disturbing thing is without cause or due process, this was done.
In our country we intone patriotism and liberty and Freedom of Religion and call those who dissent unpatriotic , un-American. Hopefully the Jurists in Texas will read the Constitution and realize that even if we don’t agree or condone someone’s religion or lifestyle we do not go in and rip children literally from their mothers arms at gunpoint. That type of tyranny is what our Founding Fathers escaped and tried to ensure would not occur on these shores.
This was a test. To be sure this is the beginning of a long fight of the slow dismantling of the Constitution.
This Memorial Day weekend, when we honor so many who gave their lives for our freedoms, let us honor them by remembering we don’t have to agree , or even share others beliefs or values but we are still a nation that follows The Rule of Law. The test? Is Polygamy a protected belief or lifestyle as it is on other continents, or is it somehow like homosexuality was treated and still is in many parts of this country, offensive and therefore subject to discrimination and legislation.
Hoping the children will be reunited with their mothers, as they should be.
Happy Memorial Day.
This case is not about child abuse, but about the politics and the erosion of Constitutional rights. Yes, if there were/are children being abused in the FLDS then those adults doing the abuse need to be stopped. But the state is abusing the children they seized illegally.
http://goesdownbitter.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/kids-alone/
Comment by goesdownbitter — May 25, 2008 @ 8:15 am |
I think your conflation of Memorial Day and the FLDS case is very creative and compelling.
This piece could be easily expanded, using this conflation as a bench mark for examining both the erosion of the Constitution this past 6 years and our response to it in a highly literate/literary way.
I like this a lot: especially as Memorial Day is so typically patriarchal in so far as the U.S. military has historically populated by men.
To bring the issues of liberty and Freedom of Religion and yoke them with Motherhood and Memorial Day is provocative and full of imaginative richness, a nice way to crack open new ways of thinking about freedom and gender, given that every soldier that we are memorializing was born from a woman’s womb.
Comment by bluesmokeofparadise — May 25, 2008 @ 8:44 am |
goesdownbitter wrote:
“But the state is abusing the children they seized illegally.”
Yes, that is true. It will be interesting to see how it is handled on appeal, if they appeal. One wonders why they made such a move in the first place?
Comment by zacca — May 28, 2008 @ 12:35 am |
bluesmokeofparadise I agree. It all seems to go together in a way. The consistent oppression of the very women who gave birth to the men who would oppress them. A Constitution that guarantees certain rights to all men. It is rich with possibility. Thank you for pointing that out.
Comment by zacca — May 28, 2008 @ 12:38 am |
The Texas Supreme Court upheld the Appellate Courts ruling. The Children will go home!
http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_9426197
Comment by zacca — May 31, 2008 @ 2:44 am |