The move has the appearance of a class-action child removal. I’ve never heard of anything like that.
Jessica Dixon
director of the child advocacy center
SMU law school
Of course, we condemn child abuse and we don’t stand up for the perpetration of that, [But] what the state has done has offended a pretty wide swath of the American people with what appears to be an overreaching action to sweep up all these children.
Lisa Graybill
legal director
ACLU Texas
[The state has essentially said,] if you’re a member of this religious group, then you’re not allowed to have children.
Rod Parker
FLDS spokesman
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One Response:
April 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Some gleanings from this post:
Article II of the UN Convention against Genocide defines genocide as:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
My emphasis.
Also, since the law raising of the age of consent and the anti-carpetbagging law were specifically aimed at this group, it may violate Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. the City of Hialeah, where the Supremes said that you can’t pass a law that targets religious practices. (I have no problems with the two laws; just the manner in which they were passed.) This could also apply to the Utah laws passed against the FLDS.
As far as polygamy goes, after Lawrence v. Texas went down, some conservative pundit opined that this ruling would allow polygamy, among other non-standard family structures, as the states couldn’t pass laws governing relationships between consenting adults. He may well have had a point. If so, the Supremes 19th century ruling against polygamy may be history. (Orthodox LDSers take note!)