We need about 500 churches to take in 500 families. These children should be with their mothers, who are as much victims as their children are alleged to be. Splitting them up from their mother and their siblings is not going to be performing a service to these kids.

Just because we don't agree with their lifestyle does not necessarily mean that we can do a better job than the mothers can do in raising them.

We should keep in mind that the allegations against the FLDS remain speculative and unproven, yet the government rushed in and disrupted whole families on the basis of a single phone call from a teenager who, if she even exists, can't be found.

We've been through all of this kind of thing before. In the McMartin pre-school case during the 1980s, California government agencies acted on rumors that turned out to be absolutely false.

As Doug Linder wrote in 2003, the resulting McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, which he called "the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history," created a seven-year, $15 million investigation that led to not a single conviction.

"More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff," Linder recalled.

I'm not saying that the FLDS case is a replay of that notorious miscarriage of justice, but we surely must keep in mind the lessons it taught us about rushing to judgment and endangering the welfare of children before the real facts are known.

In the meantime, the Christian community needs to come forward and provide homes for the families and their children until all this can be sorted out.

Finally, as an afterthought we should be thankful that it is not Bill Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno, running this operation against the FLDS Waco-style. If she were, by now the moms and their children would probably all be charred bodies in the smoking ruins of their compound.