Taking girls out of school for marriage when they reach puberty, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has institutionalized two illegal behaviors as tenets of its faith: plural marriage and child rape. From the site referenced above:

"Salt Lake City writer John Llewellyn, a former member of a fundamentalist LDS Restoration denomination, says:

'The key factor in controlling a polygamist cult is in brainwashing the young women to inculcate upon their impressionable minds that everything not condoned by the prophet is evil, that they cannot go to the celestial kingdom unless they live in a plural marriage, and that the gates of heaven will be closed to the disobedient'." 1

I am one of the people who believe the State of Texas acted rightly in its recent investigation of the FLDS' "Yearning for Zion Ranch," a 1,700-acre enclave settled by "the most loyal" of Warren Jeffs' followers when it was built as an escape from increasing scrutiny of the sect and its practices in Utah and Nevada and Arizona.

Kudos to all members of every local law enforcement and crisis response organization involved in cleaning out this rats' nest.

The livestock, property and crops belonging to the working families upon this land should not be let go to waste, nor confiscated by the state. Maintenance and upkeep are needful, and the families dependent on the 'ranch' for a living remain dependent on the proceeds of those enterprises for their meat, vegetables, bread, milk, butter and cheese.

But to a man the polygamist pedophiles of the FDLS belong in prison, at the very least, and the poison of their false "religion" should be exorcised -- the children brought up to believe in the falsehood that paradise waits only for girls obedient to enslavement, and that pubescent boys are fit only to be thrown away, deserve far better than to be encouraged to continue this 'faith' and its falsities.

Lest you believe I attack all religion, I invite you to consider the work of Christians trying to comfort the 419 children taken from this den of iniquity. Quilts, for warmth and security and a sense of the loving effort on behalf of the recipient, made by believers in a loving and forgiving God; prayers and song, shelter and food, and comfort have been more than offered to the victims of the sick, perverted, middle-aged male white "prophets" who ran this kingdom of pedophilia as a "religion" and pretended their faith made them targets of persecution (sound familiar? We hear it in increasing dinnage from the Religious Right every day), instead of acknowledging their practices were immoral as well as illegal, that their "prophets" were false and their behavior ungodly.