Not in the Constitution

Say hello to your constitutional right to shag 15-year-olds:

Lawyers for a polygamist sect that is the subject of a massive child-abuse investigation argued in court Wednesday that although its members' multiple marriages and cloistered ways may be unusual, they have a right to their faith and privacy.
Gary Goldstein, a Sant Antonio lawyer representing the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), also told a judge that the search of the temple in the sect's West Texas compound is analagous to a law enforcement search of the Vatican or other holy places.
Goldstein asked the judge to throw out at least some of the search warrant as unconstitutional. . . .

(H/T: AOSHQ) This investigation began with a girl who says that, at 15, she was forced to become Wife #7 of a 49-year-old convicted sex offender. (I blogged the details earlier.)

Now this lawyer is arguing that Texas laws against polygamy and statutory rape, etc., are unconstitutional. Hmmm.

Where on earth would would a lawyer get the idea that the U.S. Constitution could be used to overturn a state's basic laws governing sex crimes? I wonder . . .

Try to picture James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington in Philadelphia in 1787, arguing for a federal government empowered to deny states the right to punish polygamy, child molestation or sodomy. It's absurd, and yet that is what liberals would have us believe.