What intrigues me is the way reporters covered the story.

Remember news coverage last spring about "that polygamous compound in Texas"?

First, it was all about perverted sex! Texas officials took more than 400 children into protective custody. Allegations stated that underage girls were forced into "marriages" and intimate relationships with much older men.

Then, suddenly, it was all about civil rights! The children were returned to their parents, who claimed their unusual lifestyle was good and wholesome. They just wanted to be left alone.

Confused news media

The legal fight continues for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and the Yearning for Zion Ranch.

It played out like this. Initially, news reporters said children had been rescued from deranged religious radicals. But soon the media expressed great sympathy for the parents, who did not seem crazy after all. Reports swung back and forth—calling the religious group fanatics, then branding Texas officials as authoritarian dictators.

Essentially, the reporters couldn't decide who was more wrong, or if anyone was right in this case. That's because their normal standards didn't apply.

Indecisive American society

In American society, it's unfashionable—sometimes unacceptable—for a person or group to claim their beliefs are the only ones that are correct and moral, especially if they believe in something as unusual as polygamy. Yet concepts of tolerance and political correctness make commentators hesitate to condemn such groups.

Consider that throughout the United States, it is illegal for a man to have more than one wife, as the FLDS claims he should be able to have. However, it's considered perfectly legal for a man to have extramarital sex with as many women as he pleases and to live with any or all of those with whom he has relations. How did we come to such a contradictory mess?

Confusion about what is a family and who should decide such questions has grown greater in recent decades. In our shifting moral climate, Western societies make laws based on what the majority of voters agree. Yet modern democracies also contradict this principle by insisting that individual rights must be protected from the "tyranny of the majority." Thus Massachusetts and California have legalized homosexual marriages even though polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to them.

Who decides?

Is there no end in sight to the contradictions and confusions in legal definitions of morality? No, not as long as lawmakers ignore the true basis for morals.

Whether we believe it or not, a Creator God made mankind and He revealed in the Bible what is right and what is wrong.

God knew that people could not figure out right and wrong on their own. He inspired one of His ancient prophets to make that point in these words: "O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps" (Jeremiah 10:23).

The real answers are readily available in the Bible. For help in understanding its basic moral teaching, request or download our booklet The Ten Commandments.

While most people struggle to find a standard to apply in cases like that of the children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, you don't have to be confused. VT