Cowards. The defense of civil liberties always involves "competing" values, rights and interests. If these children were of a different color or race, the ACLU wouldn't hesitate to take action.

never mind, aclu. i'm sure that somewhere there's a child sketching a cross during class or humming a Christmas hymn that you can come down on good and hard.

Freedom of religious expression? You may as well declare the american mafia a religion and defend their criminal activities based on the grounds of religious freedom. The whole purpose of the FLDS is to practice polygamy. Polygamy is a crime. Their goal is to isolate children in a way that they can be bartered and traded and molested and to the victims it seems "normal." Where's the freedom of religion and religious expression for the kids? Isn't completely and absolutely isolating children from birth and beyond from the all other religious thought a violation of the child's right to choose their OWN religious beliefs? When are people going to "get it?" If I did what the FLDS does, took my children, never let them leave the house or locked them up in a room or a cage until they were 21, it would be called abuse. A violation of their freedom. Just because the FLDS has a larger "compound" than my house with fences around it doesn't make it any different. Without those fences, the polygamist communities would die a natural death. The kids would leave on their own or widely report the abuse. The fences say it all.

You do not know of what you speak. The polygamous towns of Colorado City and Hilldale have no fences.

The ACLU certainly is the right organization to get involved in this issue. This is an organization that has filed lawsuits against the Boy Scouts, a variety of Christmas displays, and attempts to stop children from accessing porn at public libraries. The ACLU opposes parental notification in abortion cases involving their underage daughters, opposes restrictions on late term abortions, and opposes
doctors informing police about possible statutory rape in abortion cases.

Although I don't always agree with the ACLU, this seems like a pretty clear case of parent's civil liberties being violated. To take away children from their parents based on an unsubstantiated phone call and rumors from anti-FLDS seems like the government is way out of control. Why weren't social workers in the compound working with the kids and families before police with semi-automatic weapons stormed the place? If there was abuse going on, isn't it the job of the social worker to figure this out and then remove the kids that were being abused, not the whole town? And now the state is worried because they haven't found any evidence of abuse, so they lied to the mothers and, similar to the Nazi methods, had them escorted under false pretenses away from their children. If they are lying to the mothers, who knows if they are lying to the children, just to get them to say something that will get them taken away from their homes and put into the ever so great foster care system. I really thought Americans were above such tactics.

This is a tough one

One the one hand, ACLU is always looking for an opportunity to push underage sex, exploitation of children and anything to destroy the family, so a bunch of polygamist child abusers are natural clients for them.

On the other hand, ACLU works just as hard to destroy all other religions (all other than secular humanism), so the fact that our child molester ring parades as a religion makes it hard for ACLU.

They'll have to get back to us on this one.

ACLU get involved! Imagine being an American citizen, in a free society and having charges leveled at you based on an unreliable source & being forced out of your home and your children taken from you... getting any feelings of Nazi Germany? Would you want these tactics used against you? Who is next the Amish? Jews? Gay Couples with Children - Oh wait...you would help them! Shane on you...