0702 Attack on Parental Rights
What does Democratic California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber’s no-spanking bill, the Michigan Legislature’s attempt to require the immunization of school children for sexually transmitted diseases, a lawsuit by a sperm donor for parental rights and a lawsuit in Michigan by the National Center for Men seeking a client’s release from $500-a-month child support to his ex-girlfriend, have in common?
What about a lawsuit by parents of 15- and 16-year-olds against an English department for screening gross obscenities and graphic deviant sex, the near loss of a couple’s parental rights after son and parents agreed to alternative treatment for his Hodgkin’s disease, and the assassination of a bill in Congress that would have protected pregnant minor girls from being transported across state lines for abortions without their parents consent?
Almost every case involved an attempt to apply a moral judgment to a family in complete opposition to the standards that the vast majority of Americans still espouse. Also in many of the cases there was an attempt to circumvent the parents’ right to determine medical, moral or spiritual standards for their children. Whether it was a local school system, a court, a state legislature or the U.S. Congress, the push was to apply bureaucratic “wisdom” to the situation instead of the wishes of the parents.
Between 1923 and 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down at least seven major decisions concerning parents’ rights. In every case it unequivocally held that parents hold primary responsibility and privileges for the upbringing of their children, even if the children are temporarily outside the parents’ physical presence. Yet between 1980 and 2000, lower courts have increasingly ruled against parents in spite of Supreme Court precedent. For example, according to lower court decisions, when children cross the threshold of their public school for the day, all parental ability to determine the content of their education ceases.
Because of developments like these and the inability of Congress to protect families, movements are afoot across the nation to codify parental rights. Groups like People for the American Way are scared stiff. They are afraid that if parental-rights initiatives catch hold, some truly horrible things could happen. Their list of social plagues includes parents challenging school curriculums such as promiscuity-assuming or homosexual-promoting sex education programs and evolution-based science programs. They fear the eventual elimination of public funding of abortion and a rise in calls for school voucher systems. The possibility of social-service agencies being accountable for ineptitudes or abuses has the American Civil Liberties Union worried.
None of these developments would be possible if it weren’t for the growing lack of respect, if not disdain in some quarters, for the family as it was intended to be from its creation. What most family deconstructionists claim is that their efforts are merely a matter of healthy redefinition. Redefinition might work if one is considering the status of Pluto as a planet, but matters get more complicated when trying to apply the same technique to deciding what constitutes a parent and/or a family.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that the family was the principal check on the power of the state. Wade Horn has noted that government is the most invasive at the point of marriage failure. Writing about the family inAmerica, Stephen Baskerville correctly recognized that tinkering with parenting and family could ultimately compromise boundaries between what is public and what is private. Gradually the authority of the parent could shift to the state and parenting become a form of government patronage or a badge of citizenship as various groups battle for power and “rights.”
Does any of this sound strangely familiar?
In every situation above, the bottom line is the same. Whether the perpetrators are individuals wanting to avoid the consequences of their lifestyle choices and claim new “rights” or judges and bureaucrats imposing their lifestyle agendas on families, the result against society is the same — the pilfering of parental and family freedoms. The singular most important mechanism for passing on bedrock values and cultural intelligence is sabotaged for the sake of gratification from forbidden fruit. It is undeniable that forbidden fruit is sweet and exciting, but it soon spoils and its serpent caretaker will eventually return for the strike.