As a hyper-proponent of the First and Fourth amendments, it took a long time, but, after looking at the facts carefully, it is impossible not to defend and praise Texas officials for removing more than 400 children from the Yearning For Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Look, I vigorously defend the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion. I also vigorously defend the Fourth Amendment that guarantees that the cops can't bust down your door without reasonable cause. However, the facts speak for themselves:

• Of the 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who were removed from the Texas compound, 31 either already have children or are pregnant.
• Texas authorities are now saying there is evidence that boys, as well as the young girls, may have been victims of physical or sexual abuse.
• Medical examinations indicate that nearly 10 percent of the children have broken bones. In the real world, less than 1 percent of American children suffer a broken bone each year, according to one source.

These are, as Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said, members of the FLDS church who "wouldn't be in Texas if we didn't kick them out of Utah." Shurtleff defends Utah and Arizona law enforcement, which was roughed up pretty good a few days earlier by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who accused Shurtleff and his Arizona counterpart, Terry Goddard, of turning a "blind eye" to polygamy.

Obviously, this plays out really different based on your class background or the type of relationship you are in, but consistently, both in my experience, the experience of my peers and others, the majority of house work falls on the shoulders of women. It is the assumed default position, that if it isn't done, than guess who is going to end up doing it.

Who is expected to do what in the household is extremely political and it isn't just a matter of convenience or someone whining more than the other. It is based on a historical division of labor that is the crux of the nation. Furthermore, when middle class women do not have the time to clean their houses, who do they hire to clean them? So still, today, the majority of house cleaning is done by women and mostly women of color. 

There is substantial reliable evidence that abstinence-only programs fail to persuade young people to abstain from sex until marriage.

When youth schooled by abstinence-only programs do become sexually active,the programs’ anti-condom messages may actually discourage them from practicing safe sex, making the negative information the programs offer about contraception and disease prevention particularly dangerous. Such messages deny young people the opportunity to receive vital education to protect their health and well-being and, in particular, impede girls’ ability to avoid unwanted pregnancy and STIs to which they are more biologically susceptible.

The nativist motivations for such campaigns move beyond the subliminal at times. Elizabeth Krause, an anthropologist and author of "A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy," tracked that country's population efforts over the past decade and found politicians demanding more babies "to keep away the armadas of immigrants from the southern shores of the Mediterranean" and priests calling for a "Christian dike against the Muslim invasion of Italy." The racial preferences behind Berlusconi's "baby bonus" came into embarrassing relief when immigrant parents were accidentally sent checks for their offspring and then asked to return the money: the Italian government hadn't meant to promote those births.

We all know that the media likes nothing better than a woman telling other women how miserable they're going to be without a man. And that's what makes nonsense like this so dangerous - its potential reach. Gottlieb has already been on the Today show touting her article and going head to head with (sigh) professional matchmakers. Who knows how much more media attention this piece will get.