Voltaire famously said, “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”I don’t think I’m prepared to go to that length to defend the statements made by the FLDS in custody hearings in San Angelo.

From the San Angelo Standard Times website, news that many of the FLDS children’s individual custody hearings — required under state statute — are now on hold pending the (indefinite) progress of the appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court, which wants the parents’ lawyers to present their evidence against Texas by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Unlike most AP sources, though, the Standard-Times denies legitimacy to the “marriages” of the polygamous (oh, and in that CBS report last night, the next-door neighbor of YFZ reported that the people in the compound didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor when he asked whether their religion allowed a woman to have more than one husband at the same time) fundamentalists.

As the S-T puts it: Since the initial en masse custody hearing in which 51st District Judge Barbara Walther granted the state temporary custody of more than 450 sect children, CPS investigators have discovered more sect documents listing underage girls at its Schleicher County compound as “married” to adult men, Meisner said. “We were prepared to present evidence to the court today,” she said Tuesday. “We do not know if the parents or FLDS agreed to a quick solution in this case to avoid a public disclosure of that evidence.”

That evidence probably involved more pictures like the ones brought to court Friday in a custody case over an infant — photographs showing Warren Jeffs, then 52 and on the run from the law, lifting a girl who barely stood waist-high into his arms, and then kissing her — passionately, sexually, sensually, in the manner of a “you may kiss the bride” moment. The girl was twelve.

As Bringiton aptly notes in an earlier comment, the “religious freedom” of the FLDS has led to some mind-numbing comments from members of the cult.

The current hearing is in regard to the custody of an infant girl, the daughter of FLDS members. The infant’s mother, Louisa Bradford, was evasive and contradictory in her testimony but did concede that former FLDS Prophet and convicted felon Warren Jeffs had been at the YFZ compound while he was on the run and evading arrest for facilitating child rape. Watchers of the FLDS had speculated that Jeffs was using the YFZ compound as a part-time hideout, considered likely because the FLDS at YFZ are his hand-picked elite and most loyal disciples.

The infant’s father, Rulon Daniel Jessop, testified that he has no problem with his children being around and openly exposed to older men associating with underage child “brides,” including seeing them in close physical contact and deeply kissing. “Everyone has their free agency,” he stated; “It seemed a little wild to me, but you see a lot more wild things driving down the streets of the city at night. I do not consider a girl kissing a man sexual abuse.”

Just everyday living with the FLDS at the YFZ compound according to Jessup even, if the underage girl who has been “spiritually married” to a man 40 years her senior is his little sister. He identified the young girl shown in the pictures below as his sister Merrianne. The photos introduced into evidence are among several showing Jeffs embracing underage girls that were distributed throughout the FLDS community, as announcements celebrating their “spiritual” marriages.

Spiritual marriages, by the way, have no validity in the State of Texas. Bigamy is a crime here. Religiosity is no defense against charges of rape,  Read more