hawkeye10 wrote:Quote:As the court's decision mentions elsewhere, the marital status of the minors is unclear. So for all the state of Texas knows, it isn't clear which, if any, sex partners of underage girls had other wives. And for all the state of Texas knows, men could have avoided the charge of polygamy by legally divorcing their wives once they reached the age of consent. The police didn't provide evidence that they didn't. All they provided were broad-brush assertions based on the fundamentalist Mormon belief system.
There is no dispute on what has taken place. The individuals consider themselves to married, documents were signed, a ceremony was held, but no licence was obtained from any government agency. The state says that they are not married, the citizens say that they are,
this is the dispute.
I'm not sure what you're saying when you claim there is NO dispute over the dispute.
For instance, I live in the same community as my neighbors. If my neighbor's teenage daughter, legally married or otherwise, becomes pregnant, does the State then have the legal authority to step in and take emergency custody of my infant child? of every single child in my community? Wouldn't we all be appalled if State authorities suddenly appeared, rounded up all of the children in our community, herded them into buses, and shipped them to distant housing facilities all over the State?
THAT is the issue (dispute) in the Texas case, and the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that the State does NOT have the legal authority to take emergency custody of ALL the children in the entire community based on a generalized fear that some children in the community might be in physical danger someday in the distant future.
In the United States of America, all residents (even Texas residents) have a constitutionally-secured right to DUE PROCESS pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Accordingly, if the State has grounds to believe that a parent is abusing his/her child, and the individual child at issue is NOT in imminent physical danger, then the parent is procedurally entitled to NOTICE of the grounds/evidence that the State is relying on to substantiate the allegation of abuse and an OPPORTUNITY to be heard in a court of law and to REQUIRE the State to PROVE its allegation by clear and convincing evidence
BEFORE the State has any legal authority to take any action whatsoever. Additionally, even when the STATE proves an allegation of abuse by clear and convincing evidence, removal of a child from parental custody is the LAST resort--not the FIRST resort.
By removing ALL the children from the entire community
en masse before any allegation concerning any particular child was litigated on an individualized basis, the parents of those children were deprived of DUE PROCESS.