On June 25, attorneys with the Home School Legal Defense Association and Alliance Defense Fund filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights asking it to hear the case of a 7-year-old boy seized by Swedish authorities because his parents homeschool.
“We are gravely concerned about this case because of the threat it represents to other homeschooling families,” said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney for HSLDA and one of nearly 1,700 attorneys in the ADF alliance. “In response to our inquiries, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions. If the U.S. were to ever ratify this treaty, as the White House and some members of Congress desire, then this sort of thing could occur here,” he added.
Swedish authorities forcibly removed Domenic Johansson from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, in June 2009 from a plane they had boarded to move to Annie’s home country of India. The officials did not have a warrant nor have they charged the Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because they believe homeschooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise Domenic instead. Social services authorities have placed Domenic in foster care as well as a government school and are only allowing Christer and Annie to visit their son for one hour every five weeks.
Let this be a lesson to all you homeschoolers. Either you are going to have an influence on the world or the world is going to have an influence on you. And whatever you do, don’t think that you can be a social conservative without being a fiscal conservative. If you vote for big government because you like universal health care, then you are voting against your own liberty. Big government means small persons.
My advice is to get a college degree and go to grad school. And remember where you came from when you have influence to do something about it.
The mother of a 15-year old Seattle girl is furious because her daughter had an abortion with some assistance from the nurses at her school and she was never informed. She only found out after the fact when her daughter had an unrelated health problem and finally revealed she had terminated a pregnancy.
[…]According to the girl’s mother… her daughter was given a pregnancy test at the school clinic which was positive. She was then told by the nurse that she could have an abortion at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic without her parents’ knowledge.The girl was then called a taxi, which picked her up at the school and drove her by herself to Planned Parenthood. The mother says once at the clinic a Planned Parenthood worker discouraged her daughter from informing her parents. She claims the worker told her that if she kept quiet the procedure would be free, but if she told her parents they would have to pay for the abortion.
[…]A King County Health official would not speak about any of the details surrounding the case, but did say that no laws were broken. In Washington State a girl of any age can get an abortion without her parent’s being notified.
Public schools have zero respect for parents. Why should they? They don’t get paid more for pleasing customers. They get paid more by getting Democrats elected. The needs of parents and children are irrelevant.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse defends marriage at Columbia University in this short hour-long exchange. This is your chance to hear how anti-child advocates of same-sex marriage really are. And Dr. J links SSM to unilateral divorce at the end of the Q&A, too. Awesome! This debate really needed to go for twice the time, and I look forward to hearing MORE debates from Dr. J.
Details:
Columbia University’s Federalist Society hosts a debate between Dr J and Professor Katherine Franke based on the question “Is Marriage Equality Possible?” About an hour of audio includes opening position (Dr J), arguments (Prof. Franke), and rebuttal (Dr J), as well as a brief question-and-answer period.
1) same-sex marriage is not the equivalent of traditional marriage
2) if we legislate that they are equal, then we are really redefining marriage by changing the essential purpose of marriage
A case study from Ireland:
a known sperm donor for a lesbian couple was excluded from having a relationship with the child he conceived
after the child was born, the sperm donor wanted regular contact with the child, but the women opposed giving him access
same-sex marriage requires that courts are able to assign parental rights instead of having rights assigned biologically, as with traditional marriage
That is why SSM is different from TM
What is the purpose of marriage?
Marriage is about attaching mothers and fathers to children, and mothers and fathers to one another
Children are born helpless from two opposite-sex parents and they need parental guidance and care during development
In TM, there is no third party needed in order to have a child
In TM, the biological parents have rights and responsibilities for the child
TM is about providing the child with justice
Every child is entitled a relationship to both biological parents, and is entitled to care, protection and nourishment from both parents, and every child is entitled to a stable family environment
the problem is that children don’t have standing to sue for these rights in court
so the purpose of marriage is that we have a social construct to provide these rights to children naturally, without the state having to intervene
The purpose of marriage according to SSM?
In SSM, the essential child-centered purpose marriage is replaced with new purposes like pooling resources and having same-sex couples recognized by society
SSM redefines marriage in four ways:
it diminishes the entitlement of children to a relationship with both biological parents
it diminishes the identification of parental roles with biology
it requires the state to determine parental relationships, instead of recognizing biological parents
it enshrines the idea that mothers and fathers are interchangeable, that children don’t really need mothers AND fathers
Dr. Franke’s opening speech (20 min.)
Hard cases make bad law 1: the presumption of paternity
consider the case where a mother is married and has an affair resulting in a child
the Supreme Court has ruled that the father of the child has no right of contact
this is a case where marriage gets in the way of biological parents having a relationship with the child
so it can be the case where marriage is in conflict with the relationships to biological parents
Hard cases make bad law 2: the purpose of marriage can be changed
marriages was used to keep peace between families and communities
marriage used to be about trading and trafficking of women
so the concern for offspring was not always the greatest concern
TM and SSM are both equally able to create stability for children:
same-sex unions are just as stable for children as TM marriages
Same-sex unions do provide justice for the child:
giving the adults in same-sex couples the social recognition that opposite sex married couples have is good for children
Children can sue in court
children can use guardians to sue their parents in court to get their rights
Opposing SSM is racism
opposing same-sex marriage is equivalent to racism
we could abolish marriage completely and let individuals form private contracts, then the state would really be neutral on marriage
Dr. J’s rebuttal speech (5 min.)
The state cannot be neutral on marriage
what the deinstutionalization of marriage means is that the private contracts are made by adults and children will have no consideration in those contracts
Regarding the adultery case
the presumption of paternity is there to protect the marriage
such borderline cases almost never happen with TM, whereas in SSM these third party problems occur in 100% of the cases
Children are not happy being separated from their biological parents
adults do not have a right to exclude a child’s biological parents from having a relationship with them, and children are often not happy being excluded from their biological parents
WINTERY KNIGHT 