It has been more than two weeks since Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch, seizing more than 400 children on vague evidence of polygamy and child abuse.

To the credit of law enforcement authorities, no one was injured. Apparently, only two men were arrested, while another is being sought in another state for his role in alleged sexual abuse. Little resistance was offered by the sect's followers.

Now, I don't like polygamy.

And I don't like child abuse.

But, after carefully reading all the news reports covering activities of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I am left wondering if the action by the state was excessive.

An investigation of the compound had been under way for four years. A confidential informant, a former member of the sect, was providing authorities with details of activities.

The raid was prompted by an anonymous call from someone identifying herself as a 16-year-old girl who was being held against her will and claimed to have been raped and abused by a 50-year-old registered sex offender named Dale Barlow. He is on probation in Arizona for a 2007 conviction for marrying and impregnating another 16-year-old girl.

In other words, the chief suspect was known, in advance, not to be in the ranch compound.

Since the raid, the 16-year-old girl who allegedly made the complaint has not been found. In fact, she may never have existed in the first place. Authorities now suspect a woman in another state, known for making unfounded accusations, may have been responsible for the call.

So let's look at the criminal evidence that has been discovered since the raid:

• Investigators "found disturbed bed linens and a strand of hair that appears to be from a female head." (Wow! They'd find plenty of this at my house, too.)
• 12 of the kids have chicken pox. (12 out of more than 400)
• No one is sure whether the children have been immunized. (No one is sure if they haven't been, either.)
• Investigators say they have evidence of emotional, physical and sexual abuse of young children within the compound.

I don't doubt that some horrendous abuses took place within the walls of the YZR Ranch. Please don't label me as an apologist for this false religion, which I detest.

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What I do doubt is that it was appropriate and legal to seize more than 400 children on such skimpy and non-specific evidence of real criminal abuse.

Is there a community in America where child abuse is not taking place?

Don't we normally arrest individual suspects and try them for their crimes?

Do we normally and preemptively round up all the children in a community where it is suspected abuse is taking place without specific evidence?

When a government school teacher is arrested for abusing one student, are all the students in that school assumed to be victims?

And why aren't all the usual, dependable advocates of tolerance, diversity and alternative lifestyles actively protesting the disruption of life within a peaceful community based on society's imposition of its own sense of morality?

Is the secular state really better at determining what's best for the children of the YZR Ranch than are the parents of those children?

Don't get me wrong. It may turn out the raid was justified. Maybe the facts are just not in yet. But it has been more than two weeks and I'm beginning to have my doubts.

Do I want to see children raised in polygamist cults? No.

But neither do I want to see children abused at the hands of the state – which, I hate to say, happens every single day throughout America. It happens in government-run schools. It happens under the watchful eye of government-supervised foster care programs. It happens at the hands of the government-funded Planned Parenthood, which covers up the sexual abuse of children by adults and victimizes those children a second time by performing abortions on them. It happens when states willingly and knowingly adopt out innocent young children to same-sex couples. It happens when officials in states such as California actively try to ban homeschooling.

I don't like polygamy. I don't like cults. I don't like sexual abuse of children.

But cults aren't illegal, and polygamy and sexual abuse are crimes that need to be prosecuted individually, not collectively on a community that may have allowed them to happen.

In this case, the anonymous complainant, if she ever existed, has not been found.

The one named alleged offender is known to be in another state, under the watchful eye of a probation officer.

Was this raid really necessary? Was it really justified?