Racist parents lose custody of children

[MicroBalrog]

I'm not suggesting that you be allowed to commit crimes against a child, murder them or assault them or whatnot.  Whether children have adult rights or not is independent of whether it's a crime to attack them.

I'm not sure what this idea of 'adult rights' has to do with the current thread.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Some people seem to be confused, thinking that children have all the same rights that's that adults have.  This is simply not true, there's a laundry list of things adults have right to that children do not.  I called these 'adult rights' to differentiate them from the smaller set of rights that children have.  That's all it is.

[Sergeant Bob]

I really don't understand what is controversial here. I'm not saying children have the right to do whatever they want. But nowhere – nowhere in the civilized world – is there a legal doctrine stating that children are the property of their parents.  At a minimum, children have a right to their own bodies in the sense that parents are not normally allowed to (for example) tattoo the children or beat them with baseball bats, or kill them. Throughout most of the world, children are at least formally guaranteed a long list of other rights.

Are pierced ears on a toddler abuse? Is Circumcision? Really stupid looking hair? Che T-Shirts?

[MillCreek]

I would certainly agree that children do not enjoy the same breadth of legal rights as do adults.  I also believe that children enjoy certain inalienable rights merely by virtue of being human.

[BridgeRunner]

Are pierced ears on a toddler abuse? Is Circumcision? Really stupid looking hair? Che T-Shirts?

Is hitting a kid with a hand abuse?  How about a switch?  A 2x4?  A leather whip? A chain? A loop of barbed wire?

Parents have the right to parent, but not to use their kids for their own gratification.  The line between the two is not always immediately clear.  One thing that often helps clarify which side of the line an action belong on is the other circumstances in the home.  Squalor+truancy+substance abuse+parents who are disinclined to get/keep work paint a reasonably clear picture of whether these parents' actions are part of parenting their kids or part of using their kids for their own gratification.  

That's why there's a two-step process: determining if the case meets the threshold where the court has a obligation to take jurisdiction, and then looking at the situation as a whole and determining what action needs to be taken.  We don't want courts just looking at the whole picture right off the bat: the court has no right to see the whole picture.  Once the need for the court to step in is established, then looking at the whole picture can help clarify if the parents are crossing some serious boundaries in their behavior towards their kids.

Look, I find child protection proceedings are horrifying as anyone here.  Possibly more so, considering that my family was once the subject of allegations made to CPS (they were dismissed as unsubstantiated; the report was ludicrous, and based in part on ideological disagreements of the kind APSers may well be concerned about).  But children are not objects to be used as a parent wills, and stepping in prevent abuse and serious neglect--including the sorts of things that occurred in this case--is one of the legitimate purposes of government.

[Perd Hapley]

  No wonder the final paragraphs were omitted from the OP.

Had I made any pretense of posting the entire article, there might be some reason to claim that the final paragraphs were "omitted."  I copy-pasted the article's thesis.  I linked to the article.  So much for your specious implications. 

And just as a matter of full disclosure, I did not read the entire article, and even if I had, it said nothing about the drug aspect of the case.  The comments by the judge were objectionable enough to make it worthy of discussion. 

Now let's take just another look at that OP.  I asked the question, "is this a terrifying development for ideological/religious minorities in Canada?"  As it turns out, it doesn't seem as bad as the early reports I heard.  Naturally, this reasonable approach will be ignored in the effort to portray me as a slobbering loon. 

 

I'm not sure what you read into BW's post but nowhere did I see her make an attack on you. 

And this business about children not having rights is pretty illusory.  Rights are a philosophical construct, extended into laws.  You can exclude a group of people (like small people, young people, black people, female people, etc.) from your construct, but to insist that somehow your philosophical construct is more real than one that say, does recognize the existence of certain rights in all people, is pretty silly.

My defense of parents' rights, and disbelief in one particular right that some ascribe to children was, maliciously, twisted into some wholesale denial of the rights of children, with women, blacks and others thrown into the mix.  It may not be an "attack," but I didn't claim it was.  I'd call it more of a dirty trick. 

Concerning your last post, though, Jamis, I'm confused.  Are you saying that my failure to respond to ad hom with ad hom was ad hom? 

[BridgeRunner]

My defense of parents' rights, and disbelief in one particular right that some ascribe to children was, maliciously, twisted into some wholesale denial of the rights of children, with women, blacks and others thrown into the mix.  It may not be an "attack," but I didn't claim it was.  I'd call it more of a dirty trick. 

Oh, for pity's sake.  It was neither of those things.  Get over it.

[Perd Hapley]

OK.  It seemed like it to me, but I will gladly take your word for it.  I is now over it. 

[MicroBalrog]

Look. I am a firm believer in individual rights. If you choose to be an IT expert, to go to college, to have a proper nine to five job, that's your right. It is also your right – if you so choose – to avoid work, to live in squalor and filth, to lie on the floor of your own home, covered in lice. As far as I am concerned, it should be your right to smoke, to consume alcohol – and even (if I made the call) – to use drugs.

But once you've chosen to have a child, rather than use contraceptives or give him away for adoption, you must contend with the fact that it is your obligation – morally and legally – to provide and care for this child. We should accept  that there exists a wide variety of lifestyle choices, religions, cultures, that a parent may make. It should be accepted – in my mind – that you may send this child to a Montessori school, or unschool him, or homeschool him. But what you are not allowed to do is to completely ignore your obligation to this child. You are not allowed – for example – to introduce your child to gratuitous amounts of vodka, or glue-sniffing, or whip him with a steel wire. You are to either homeschool the child or to provide for his schooling elsewhere – 'the child doesn't go to school because I can't be prevailed upon to get up in the morning' is not within the legitimate bounds of parenting. Neither is exposing a child to your alcoholic, drug-addled lifestyle. Again – there's a difference between consuming alcohol or drugs and being a complete worthless junky. A very big difference.

Children, being human beings, have rights.  Usually – USUALLY! - the best way to enforce these rights, to ensure the children are provided and cared for, is the family unit. But sometimes it's not clear if the child's rights are being  secured, and for this reason the law needs to step in.

[Sergeant Bob]

Is hitting a kid with a hand abuse?  How about a switch?  A 2x4?  A leather whip? A chain? A loop of barbed wire?

I asked you first.

[BridgeRunner]

I asked you first.

So you expect a Jew to answer a question with something other than a question? 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

maybe?

[BridgeRunner]

Alright

Are pierced ears on a toddler abuse? no
Is Circumcision? no
Really stupid looking hair? probably not
Che T-Shirts? no

hitting a kid with a hand abuse?  probably not
How about a switch? maybe
A 2x4?  yes
A leather whip? yes
A chain? yes
A loop of barbed wire? yes

[roo_ster]

Hmm, circumcision seems a whole lot more, ah, indelible than pmt marker, and is also for the parents' gratification.  The kiddos sure don't seem to enjoy the deal.

I think that by the standard you are using, the anti-circumcision screamers will have the juice to challenge in court the practice.

And somewhere in there is the practice of female circumcision... 

If (either male or female) circumcision is OK, why not other body modifications to the rug rats?  Oh, pierced ears are already OK, how about those big ol' hunks of wood in the ear lobes?  Maybe a stud in the nose?  Wacky implants to make you kid look like a critter?  A tattoo?   

I dunno, I think that "pmt" marker is pretty mild relative to permanent body mods, circumcision included.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

ear rings aren't gonna get you beat up by other kids

[Seenterman]

Quick question:

Would it be child abuse if I raised my children to be members of militant Islam?

Would it be child abuse if:

I wrote on their skin in permanent marker "*expletive deleted*ck Whitey" or "9/11 was Awesome".
Told them all Christians, Jews, Catholics, Atheist, Infidels needed to killed, which they then started to spout in class?

Same thing right?

Just like writing "Jets" on your child's face in grease paint at a football game is the same as drawing a swastika in permanent marker before school. 

These people sounded like horrible parents all around aside from all the racist crap, it just made them bigger targets.  Why is everyone all worked up about it again?

[GigaBuist]

So you expect a Jew to answer a question with something other than a question? 

Hah!  I got a kick out of that one.

[Sergeant Bob]

See, I think piercing a baby's ears is abuse. Circumcision is just a more accepted (than female genital) form of genital mutilation. Ya see where I'm going with this?

What I do believe is, it is better to err on the side of freedom than to arbitrarily pass laws against "things we don't like".

Done.

[BridgeRunner]

See, I think piercing a baby's ears is abuse. Circumcision is just a more accepted (than female genital) form of genital mutilation.

I agree with you.  But it isn't so much about what you or I think, but about a combination of parental intent + a community standard.

For whatever reasons, in this country, we have accepted that mutilating the genitals of baby boys is an allowable health-enhancing practice, and that ear-piercing for baby girls is an acceptable form of grooming. 

We haven't accepted that mutilating baby girls' genitals is ok and we don't allow tattooing of children.  Culture matters in these things, but a grooming/health practice that is not common is certainly a grey area. 

When an act conforms to cultural norms, it is easier to presume that it is undertaken in the role of parent, acting as custodian of the child and for the child's well-being.  When an act is less orthodox *and* has less or no relation to health or grooming *and* interferes with the child's person *and* is done without the child's acquiescence *and* appears to be done SOLELY for the benefit of the parent, then greater scrutiny is warranted.  Very often cases with this kind of issue also have other major red flags, like squalor, truancy, substance abuse, violence, unstable or non-existent housing, etc.

I'm sorry, but you cannot reduce everything to absolutes.  Life has nuance, and there is always going to be tension between one person's rights and another's. 

[roo_ster]

For whatever reasons, in this country, we have accepted that mutilating the genitals of baby boys is an allowable health-enhancing practice, and that ear-piercing for baby girls is an acceptable form of grooming.

We haven't accepted that mutilating baby girls' genitals is ok and we don't allow tattooing of children.  Culture matters in these things, but a grooming/health practice that is not common is certainly a grey area.

When an act conforms to cultural norms, it is easier to presume that it is undertaken in the role of parent, acting as custodian of the child and for the child's well-being.

Pretty much what I was thinking.  Using a sharpie on junior and getting the kiddos yanked by the state is a legal action done at the behest of / in support of local cultural norms and not necessarily something that is codified in law or meets some legal standard.

Two points:
1. I am not so leery as some others on this board about letting locals determine how their community is run.  I see federalism as a good thing, for this and other reasons.
2. I would prefer some of these sorts of pseudo-judicial culture/norm policing efforts done by means of social pressure and not the legal system.  Every time Something Bad^TM happens, some loser thinks we need yet another law to cover that circumstance.




"The Greatest Liberty Of Subjects, Dependeth On The Silence Of The Law...As for other Lyberties, they depend on the silence of the Law."
----Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan

(Gotta love the creative spelling of the old writers.  Liberty/Lyberty in the same book.)

[MechAg94]

ear rings aren't gonna get you beat up by other kids

Dressing up your kid like a nerd can get them beat up also, but it would be hard to find someone who calls that abuse or bad parenting. 

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

the difference is that putting the kiddies in their junior skinhead gear can get em beat by folks outside their peer group.   or otherwise subjected to punishment of a non physical nature.  you could get your kids dead.

[BridgeRunner]

...at the behest of / in support of local cultural norms and not necessarily something that is codified in law or meets some legal standard.

Those are not two different things.  Cultural norms often dictate what the law is or how it applies in a given situation.

[MechAg94]

the difference is that putting the kiddies in their junior skinhead gear can get em beat by folks outside their peer group.   or otherwise subjected to punishment of a non physical nature.  you could get your kids dead.

Death is one thing, but you don't need to do anything for your kid to be subjected to beatings by folks outside their peer group.  All that takes is some bully.  I don't like what they did, but I have a feeling that part of it wasn't the only reason the took the kids away.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

likely  but its the reason that folks will chose to get twisted over. a classic example of how folks need to serve their agendas and the kids are secondary