The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound in El Dorado, Texas, is undergoing a "Children of Men"-type scenario. Last week, more than 400 children were removed by protective services from the compound due to suspected or potential abuse issues. More than 100 women voluntarily left the compound with them to provide care for the children, who are currently in San Angelo.

Of course, the film "Children of Men" featured a disheveled Clive Owen battling his way across a gritty, apocalyptic England, while the actual FLDS compound brings to mind the stiff Amish farmers from "Witness." The FLDS are a largely insular group of polygamists, living a far more rural and isolated lifestyle than most Americans are familiar with. One of the most common media images of the group is throngs of women in long, plain dresses with old-fashioned hairdos.

Children were recently removed from the compound because of abuse allegations from a anonymous 16-year-old whose identity has yet to be ascertained. She asserted that teenage girls were being unlawfully wed to much older men, and that girls as young as 14 were bearing children from these marriages.

Such marriages are clearly illegal under Texas law and are properly considered child abuse by mainstream society. State authorities had good and just reason to remove the children from the compound, and should investigate those involved in abuse to the fullest extent of the law.

Unfortunately, even with strong evidence of wrongdoing and fairly clear moral, ethical and legal reasons for the state to intervene, it's also clear that the FLDS situation represents a problem that is beyond the state's ability to fully handle.

Consider, for example, the difficulty of finding foster care for the 400-odd evacuated children. Such an undertaking might be difficult for the state's foster care system in the best of times, but it may be particularly difficult in this case, given the children's FLDS upbringing and lack of exposure to the outside world. While the children may not be in as much danger as the "Lost Boys" of the Colorado City FLDS branch - teenage boys who are expelled with no support or guidance from their homes and families, essentially to provide a larger proportion of marriageable girls - it will still be extremely difficult for many of these FLDS kids to make the transition to mainstream life.

More problematic is the FLDS religion itself. Core principles of American democracy encourage privacy, tolerance and freedom of religion, so FLDS followers generally only intruded upon them in extreme circumstances. But the FLDS religion seems almost perfectly designed to push its members into such circumstances. FLDS members seem to have viewed it as almost a religious duty to "marry" underage girls. A recent police raid on their temple in El Dorado discovered a top-floor bedroom where authorities alleged marriages were consummated soon after the ceremony was complete. Former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was also convicted last year of arranging for underage girls to be married to older men.

But where does the state draw the line between fighting illegal behavior and fighting a religious environment and upbringing that seems to encourage illegal behavior? Repeated raids on the FLDS in the 1930s, '40s and '50s to enforce anti-polygamy measures did not break the church - rather, they only seemed to enforce FLDS followers' faith and commitment. It clearly seems beyond government's power to drag the FLDS kicking and screaming into the 20th century, much less the 21st. But at the same time, if state protective services has a mandate to remove children from potentially abusive situations, it seems hard to believe that the state could allow any children to be raised in the FLDS at all.

The FLDS church crisis has thus exposed a gap between society's legal and moral standards and the steps that society is willing to take to enforce those standards. How things play out in the Texas Hill Country over the coming weeks and months will show how much we are willing - or able - to close that gap.

Jones is a computer and electrical engineering graduate student.

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