As Texas Goes....

So goes New Mexico (although not nearly to the same extreme). Because of its remoteness, the Southwest, in general, is host to a number of breakaway sects with oddball (though usually not harmful) beliefs:

State police have removed four children from an apocalyptic church whose leader claims to be the Messiah and acknowledges having sex with some of his followers.

The three girls and one boy—all under the age of 18—were taken from the northeastern New Mexico compound following an April 22 investigation, Romaine Serna, spokeswoman for the state Children, Youth and Families Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday.

The children were taken into state custody because of allegations of inappropriate contact between minors and the adult leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, Serna said.

"I understand that it was very calm and they (state police) did not meet with any resistance," she said. Serna said she wasn't aware of any other youths at the compound.

...Wayne Bent, who is in his 60s and is known in the church as Michael Travesser, established the church at a rural site called Strong City, north of Clayton in extreme northeastern New Mexico. It has at least 70 members, Serna said.

Bent, on an April 27 posting on the church's Web site, accused the state of kidnapping the children. "My children are kidnapped because some demon wrote a letter to people in authority accusing me of some crimes," he wrote.

"When the state came against our children (seed), the state came against God, and this will NOT ever be forgiven them," he wrote.

He acknowledged having sex with the wives of two of his followers.

Jeff Bent, who Serna said is Wayne Bent's son, denied in an April 29 letter to Gov. Bill Richardson and posted on the Web site that any child had been abused or neglected at Strong City.

The group educates its children "to avoid the slavery you seek to impose on them, and to experience the freedom they have in God," Jeff Bent wrote.

"We have given everything to prepare them for an eternity with God. We haven't oppressed them with your atheistic globalist curriculum, socialist indoctrination, and 'alternative lifestyles' dogma that comprise modern public education. We have taught them higher values than the values of your slave-state, and have sought to shield them from the abuse that is institutionalized in your system," he wrote.