Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Local and state officials entered the temple of a secretive polygamist sect late Saturday, said lawmen blockading the road to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.
The action comes hours after local prosecutors said officials were preparing for the worst because a group of FLDS members were resisting efforts to search the structure.
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and Schleicher County sheriff’s deputy confirmed that officials have entered the temple but said they had no word on whether anything occurred in the effort.
The incursion into the temple caps the three-day saga of the state’s Child Protective Services agency removing at least 183 women and children from the YFZ Ranch since Friday afternoon. Eighteen girls have been placed in state custody since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.
Saturday evening, ambulances were brought in, said Allison Palmer, who as first assistant 51st District attorney, would prosecute any felony crimes uncovered as part of the investigation inside the compound.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said Saturday evening. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
Apparently as a result of action Saturday night at the ranch, about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, a Schleicher County school bus unloaded another group of at least a dozen more women and children from the compound.
Although members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, have provided varying degrees of cooperation to the sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers searching the compound, all cooperation stopped once authorities tried to search the gleaming white temple that towers over the West Texas scrub, Palmer said.
“There may be those who would oppose (entry) by placing themselves between law enforcement and the place of worship,” Palmer said Saturday afternoon. “If an agreement cannot be reached … law enforcement will have to — as gently and peaceably as possible — make entry into that place.”
Sect members consider the temple, dedicated by then-leader of the sect Warren Jeffs in January 2005 and finished many months later, off-limits to those who are not FLDS members, said Palmer, who prosecutes felony cases in Schleicher County.
Palmer said she didn’t know the size or makeup of the group inside the temple.
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl or her roughly 8-month-old baby among the dozens removed from the compound, Palmer said.
“Anytime someone says, ‘Don’t look here,’” she said, “it makes you concerned that’s exactly where you need to look.”
The girl told authorities in two separate phone calls a day apart that she was married to a 50-year-old man, Dale Barlow, who had fathered her child, Palmer said.
The joint raid included the Texas Rangers, CPS, Schleicher County and Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compound’s residents as cooperative, Palmer disagreed.
“Things have been a little tense, a little volatile,” she said.
Authorities removed 52 children Friday afternoon and 131 women and children overnight Friday. About 40 of the children are boys, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.
No further children have been taken into state custody since Friday, when 18 girls were judged to have been abused or be at imminent risk for abuse. CPS has found foster homes for the girls, Meisner said, and will place them after concluding its investigation.
Meisner declined to comment on the fate of the 119 other children and said authorities were still searching the ranch for others Saturday evening.
“They’re in the process of looking,” she said. “They’re literally about halfway through.”
Seems simple to me: "If you want to be a GOD; then you have to defend POLYGAMY."
Case closed.
Gee, Elsie, I think that we’re missing something here. If righteous Abraham could lie and still had God’s approval and blessing, then we can, too.
Whew, That’s one less commandment we have to worry about keeping.
Now we’re down to 8. Adultery’s off the list and so is lying.
Any more we can eliminate?
You DO that!
We’re talking the US here. That’s where all this is taking place.
Where in the US?
Perhaps if Jeffs had wanted to live in a desert climate and have hordes of females to sexually abuse, he should have moved to Saudi Arabia. No doubt he would have felt right at home there.
In at least one case, God commanded that genocide be commited. Which leads one to wonder if that makes genocide moral and justified for all time, or if it is a specific instance which does not necessarily apply to all time.
Personally, I think instances where God commanded specific people, or groups, to commit a specific act a single time does not necessarily mean that he intends for all people to commit that act anytime under any circumstances.
Considering this, even IF God had commanded a particular individual to cleave unto a woman besides his wife (which is VERY debatable), that is on a case by case basis, and does not necessarily mean ALL men should do it at all times. Context and circumstances must be taken into account. Another example would be when God’s messenger told Joseph to be accepting of Mary’s pregnancy, I do not think he meant for ALL men to overlook it when their soon-to-be bride comes up pregnant and the prospective groom knows he is not the father.
The simple fact that the male/female ratio is for all practical purposes one to one. is enough argument against polygamy. If few men have many wives, then many men hove no wives.
At the very least, it corrupts the gene pool as we see happening.
So then, why doesn’t someone set up a religion where one woman can have many husbands? That would balance the whole thing out.
Doesn’t it amount to, if you don’t achieve godhood, you burn in hell? Those are the alternatives?
God permitted slavery, too.
Don’t even want to go there....
Exactly. Good point.
As a matter of fact, the notion that God permitted it one time means we are then free to do it anytime reminds me of when my son was young. I had taken him out and taught him to fire a rifle at some targets. He was under direct supervision when we did it. This did not mean, which he discovered later, that it meant to could get the rifle anytime he wanted, without my supervision, and go out shooting.
Thinking that just because something was allowed one time under special circumstances means you thine have carte-blanc to do it anytime is a childish notion.
I'm thinking of changing my screen name to "Sunny Perdition"!
(For those without a mormon background, google "son of perdition".)
You’re in for a treat with Delphi User’s posts, now that he is cornered and getting excited. He loves to throw in ‘grin’ and ‘chuckling’ amd ‘snicker’ as little childish insults symbolic of his Mormonism condescension. He has alter egos who will then jump in to tell us how unChristian it is to question his motives and expose his fallacies without petting his ego which is apparently so frail.
Am I to assume he actually thinks that lends weight and credibility to his arguments? How silly. Perhaps someone of his intellect would buy into it, but of course nobody with an IQ greater than double digits will be impressed.
But he claims to be MENSA material!
Three year-olds are more reasonable. Two year-olds are almost as frustratng as some Mormons
You may have heard this elsewhere... I have no doubts that this probably has occurred to others as well... but it is something that occurred to me spontaneously, so to speak.
The main thing that convinced me that mormonism was false was when I took notice of the fact that the Book of Mormon is written with Thee’s, and Thou’s, and Begat’s, etc etc. The same sort of lingua which one encounters in a King James Bible. What struck me as odd was the realization that the Bible was written in that manner because in the time of King James everyone spoke that way. That is how English was spoken in that age. However, the Book of Mormon also is written in that form of English, when at the time the Book of Mormon was written English was NOT spoken in that manner, and in fact was much more like we speak it today.
So it occurred to me to wonder WHY it would be written in that manner. It appears to me that the language of King James era was intentionally used to lend the Book of Mormon a greater appearance of “authority”. An attempt to fool us all into believing it is equal to the Bible by mimicking the speaking style. In order to lend it credibility, a form of deception was used. And in the end, I have a real problem with reconciling the notion that God would resort to deception in order to further his goals. Deception is a tool of the other guy.
ROFL. Not much chance of that if he actually believes a condescending attitude adds weight to his arguments.
I think it is safe to say that the reverse would be true as well. This is one of the things I always wondered about those crazy muslims who blow themselves up expecting to go to Heaven and have 70 virgins waiting for them. 70 wives? Sounsd like anything BUT heaven to me.
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