Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas can be forgiven for thinking they are being punished for making just another "lifestyle choice."

The compound of the polygamous sect -- a breakaway from the Mormon Church, which long ago forswore plural marriage a century ago -- was raided by Texas authorities, who took more than 400 children from their parents. The group's family tree is so opaque that DNA tests are under way to determine which children belong to whom.

"It's just like in any society in America," one woman at the ranch told a reporter, by way of explaining the confusion over the children. "A mother might have been in two or three relationships, and a child may be confused about what name to give."

There's some truth underneath that self-justification. Family relationships in America have become broken and convoluted -- although nothing on the order of the bizarre sect led by Warren Jeffs, now serving time for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin. But with so many people divorced or having children out of wedlock, it's easier to elide questions of family structure and focus on child abuse.

That's the grounds on which the state of Texas moved on the FLDS ranch and confiscated all the children. The problem is that Texas authorities admit that the children were well cared for. The young children and the boys were in no danger. It's only the teenage girls who needed rescuing. That's because it's not child abuse that is the sin of the FLDS, but polygamy.

A polygamous society is inevitably going to tend toward the abuses of Yearning for Zion Ranch. This is why even if Texas went too far and probably will have to give most of the kids back, it acted out of the right motives. Polygamy is fundamentally inconsistent with our values as a society, and people shouldn't be able to maintain islands of it in violation of U.S. laws. Continued...