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I share your concern about possible rights violations, but I also share most SANE people’s concerns about young (sometimes very young) girls being forced into sexual relationships with older men.

At this point, those are mere allegations, apparently from an anonymous phone call. This is my point. If the police had launched an investigation, found evidence of abuse, then raided the compound with a fully documented warrant, I'd feel a whole lot better about it.

However, the police apparently acted solely on a phone tip. They had no evidence that any abuse occurred at the time of the raid. For all we know, they still don't have any evidence. Sure, it should be easy to find some evidence now, but law enforcement would always be easier if the police could arrest people without cause, seize assets and incarcerate children at will, but what kind of society would we have if they were allowed to do that (the correct answer is: police state)?

Furthermore, this sets a precedent that any police force can perform a full military raid based solely on a phone call. That means neighbors can harass neighbors, ex-girlfriends can have their ex-boyfriends arrested, but most importantly, the police can do whatever the hell they want to any of us any time. They can kick down our doors in the middle of the night and haul us away. The police are now limited only by their own moral boundaries. A crooked cop can simply claim to have received a phone call, and off they go.

The implications of this are staggering. Let's say five, ten years from now, when Christianity is finally fully marginalized, banned from schools, offices, etc., you and some like-minded people decide that you're going to build your own community where you can worship freely. You have your schools for the kids, a church, and you even grow some of your own food. The local busybodies don't like you, however, because they think Christians are mean and oppressive, so they start referring to your community as a "compound" and they speculate that there might be child abuse going on. After all, none of your kids are in the government schools, so the "potential" for abuse cover-up is there. Then, one day, a local bureaucrat decides he's had enough of your kind and orders a raid based on an anonymous tip. Next thing you know, all the women are in one holding area, the kids are in another, and the men are in jail. Sounds like the Soviet Union to me, but support of this raid, in the manner in which it was conducted, with the flimsiest of excuses used, is nothing but an embrace of the Soviet method.

Sound paranoid? It is, I suppose, except that we've seen the most horrendous changes occur in the last 40-50 years which have brought about things that we never thought we'd see in this country: government can take your property to turn over to a private company to build a mall, all hints of Christianity are banned from public schools, city buildings, etc., homosexuality is now a protected behavior (and receives preference), and on and on, and each time these changes occur, it is because people allow them to occur a little at a time, thinking that taking a stand against them is just being paranoid.