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SAN ANGELO, Texas-The state of Texas made a damning accusation when it rounded up 462 children at a polygamous sect's ranch: The adults are forcing teenage girls into marriage and sex, creating a culture so poisonous that none should be allowed to keep their children.But the broad sweep - from nursing infants to teenagers - is raising constitutional questions, even in a state where authorities have wide latitude for taking a family's children.The move has the appearance of "a class-action child removal," said Jessica Dixon, director of the child advocacy center at Southern Methodist University's law school in Dallas."I've never heard of anything like that," she said. Rod Parker, a spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, contends that the state has essentially said, "If you're a member of this religious group, then you're not allowed to have children."Attorneys for the families and civil-liberties groups also are crying foul. They say the state should not have taken children away from all church members living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Church members said that not all of them practice polygamy, and some form traditional nuclear families. One sect member whose teenage son is now in foster care testified that she is a divorced single mother."Of course, we condemn child abuse and we don't stand up for the perpetration of that," said Lisa Graybill, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. But "what the state has done has offended a pretty wide swath of the American people with what appears to be an overreaching action to sweep up all these children."State and local officials had been eyeing the sect suspiciously since it bought the ranch in 2003 and moved hundreds of its members in. They raided the property April 3, with heavy weapons and SWAT vehicles, after a female claiming to be a 16-year-old girl at the ranch called a family violence shelter and said her 49-year-old husband beat and raped her. That girl has not yet been identified...By MICHELLE ROBERTS
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As in the days of Noah...
