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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (53082)	7/16/2002 5:24:11 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The test cases in this area have made it clear that parents have enormous latitude in the religious instruction of their children. I happened to do my moot court argument on a case involving the interface of the religious rights of the parent over the child, and child abuse. Parents have unlimited rights in the instruction of their children as regards beliefs. Religious beliefs as they affect the child are limited where the belief of the parent is going to cause serious harm to the child (or at least this is true most of the time). There are cases where children are beaten for allegedly religious reasons, for example. If you are looking for the limits of parents rights to the indoctrination of their children, it is when they cause extreme bodily harm with their beliefs. Should it be there? Hard to say where it "should" be. If you take away the parents' rights to inculcate their own children in the parental faith, then you leave the children vulnerable to what the state will provide, or what the first apostolic person the child meets happens to profess. Children are born with their gullets wide open, for food and for belief. Whatever you tell them is true, is pretty much what they will swallow.

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (53082)	7/16/2002 5:25:08 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

I think your point about religious coercion by parents is useful only at the point where kids are in a position to choose on their own. Until they're old enough to vote and live on their own, the rights of kids are limited and the rights of parents great. If the kids have been raised in the wrong religion for them, they'll figure it out when the time is right. In the meantime, there religion is whatever their parents say it is.

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (53082)	7/16/2002 9:00:18 PM
From: E	Respond to of 82486

. I believe such indoctrination raises it own questions about "freedom of religion." If parents hold a religious view contrary to the mainstream, such as Atheism, Christian Science, or Quakerism, the practice of which may be life-altering in important respects, do we just assume that it is a parental right to impress that belief upon the malleable minds of children? And where does that right come from? You didn't mean to differentiate between mainstream and non-mainstream religious views where presumed rights of parents to impress those religions on their children, did you? Were you making the theoretical point that possibly parents in the religions you cited should, in fairness to their children, be accorded less of a parental right than parents in other religions to inculcate their children with their religious views? (Or were you conceivably just proposing for discussion the idea that no religion at all should be taught to children?) I think you won't get anyone here to argue in favor of either position seriously. (As you said, we do of course already interfere with the exercise of parental beliefs when we consider it overtly abusive and dangerous to the child.)