Religious freedom does not include the right to exemption from prosecution for violating the state’s duly passed and constitutionally adjudicated laws. Let’s be clear: The First Amendment’s religious freedom and free speech guarantees protect a person’s right to advocate polygamy and “spiritual” marriage with girls as young as 13, but the First Amendment does not allow you to act upon such beliefs when they contravene state or federal law. Adults having sex with underage girls is statutory rape and is illegal.
Like most Americans, I agree that the safety of children must always take priority in government’s actions. That does not give government officials a blank check to use children’s “welfare” as a subterfuge to justify governmental intrusion or to disrupt any practice it finds vaguely weird.
There is no more treasured language in America’s collective heart than these 16 words: “Congress shall make no Law respecting an Establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As invaluable to our heritage as these words are, they were never intended to exempt people from obeying generally applicable laws, which meet a compelling government interest, such as the ones prohibiting adult males from having sex with underage girls in or out of “spiritual” marriages.
To misconstrue the First Amendment’s religious freedoms to grant such exemption would be to desecrate those time-honored words and the sacred freedoms they guarantee.
Speaking as someone who has been dealing on at least a weekly basis with the Texas child-protection statutes for nearly thirty years, and as someone with more than a passing interest in First Amendment issues, I commend this article as a sound discussion of the issues presented by this extraordinary case.
Personally, I think it is an outrage that babies and boys were taken from their parents as well. This is simply massive overkill and I hate to think of the trauma being inflicted on these children by the state. It’s plain wrong.
Part of the problem is that the Supreme Court has all but written the free exercise clause out of the Constitution. If the Court’s can, without more, proscribe religious practice then they can, in effect, prohibit religion. As an old Doonsberry cartoon said, “You are free to sit in a closet with the doors closed, the lights turned off, in the nude and eat celery.”
The fact that something is proscribed by law does not make it sacrosanct, particularly when the ligitimacy of the law rests on nothing more than a 50% plus one vote in a legislature.
The fact that something is proscribed by law does not make it sacrosanct, particularly when the ligitimacy of the law rests on nothing more than a 50% plus one vote in a legislature.
This is one of the most profound observations on the silliness of democracy I have read in a long time. Thank you Br Michael.
Evan, I initally had the same reaction as you. A couple of data points have changed my mind (though I’m still uneasy in many respects): 1) There is evidence that many of the boys were also abused physically (broken bones) and even sexually. I am worried about the potential for a repeat of the 80’s day care center type injustices. I’m not sure if we’re dealing with allegations coaxed out of 5 year olds (which would not necessarily be false, but…) or from older boys (less susceptible to being confused by well-intentioned suppressed memory type counselors).
2) The odd family structures involved have led to instances where children do not know who their biological parents are. That’s very odd. Are these babies (or even older kids) really being taken from their actual “parents” in the first place? I understand that it’s a little like a kibbutz (but 100 times weirder)…
In any case, prayers are clearly needed for all involved.
I think that some action was required by the state of Texas in this instance, but to round up a class of people and/or remove minor children from mothers is inexcusable.
Don
Don [#5]
[i] … but to round up a class of people and/or remove minor children from mothers is inexcusable. [/i]
If that is what happened, I’d agree. But your idea of justice seems askew. The State removed these minor children from their abusing “husbands” and the mothers that allowed this to happen. It is much more inexcuseable for the State to allow this to happen!!
Steve