Polygyny

This word means having more than one wife at a time.
Polygamy means having more than one spouse at a time.

The thing in the news the last few weeks about these FLDS or fundamentalist later day saints has caught my attention. From what I understand they seized 400+ children because one child 16 year-old child, whom they did not know the whereabouts, phoned in, and stated that she had been married and had a child and was being abuse by her husband. Ok, I can see that this is a problem and the child should be found. But I just don’t understand why all children from this community were taken from their homes. I thought for the state to take your children they had to have reasonable belief that the children were in some kind of immediate danger. The women (mothers) don’t seem to neglect their children-children appear to be clean, fed, loved, and even in a way educated. Are they being physically abused; are their marks that prove beatings? Are all 400 children being sexually abused? Are the parents locking the 400 children in closets? Do they do drugs in front of all 400 children? Do they line all 400 up for wire hanger beatings and comet tub scrubbings and tie them to the bed in a straight jackets?

Doesn’t the state need to make a case for each child not just lump them together because they practice the same religion in order to take the children from their homes? How is this happening? I understand the Catholic Church had many problems with priest sexually assaulting children- will the state start rounding up all the catholic children because they are at risk? What is next? All the brown eyed people? Or maybe the blue eyed people?

It is not that I agree with the practice of the religion the FLDS choose, but can we really think that all of these kids are being abused and the abuse is to the point that they need to be removed from their homes.