I couldn't understand, when I first read about this, why the State of Texas was removing ALL the children and putting them in foster homes, but I figured they must know something about whole-scale child abuse. Right? I didn't like reading that all the children were going to be required to have DNA tests taken. And I also wondered why, when there was even a question that perhaps a crank caller from Colorado was the one to allege child abuse, this wasn't factored in more. But the real issue is. Can you take ALL the children away from a practicing religion without FIRST finding, for certain, that there was abuse going on with ALL the children?

Lawyers for the FLDS parents and civil rights groups complain that a chaotic mass custody hearing last week prevented state District Judge Barbara Walther from hearing any individual stories that might have led her to allow some parents to keep their children.

One FLDS member who did testify said she and her husband and their three children form a traditional family and live in a separate house from other sect members. An FLDS expert who testified at the hearing and a former member of the sect say only about half the marriages in the sect are polygamous.

Walther agreed to keep all the children in state custody after 21 hours of testimony in a hearing involving hundreds of lawyers.

"That's the hard thing about this. They want to paint everyone with the same brush," said Shelly Greco, an attorney who represents several children in the case.