Keep The Authority Where It Belongs: The Case For Parental Rights

You may have heard about the Stanley family by now, as their story continues to gain more publicity. What is being reported is that the authorities investigated their home after an anonymous caller told them that the children were running in the snow barefoot. The children were then taken into custody upon the discovery of a 'dangerous' mineral supplement in the home, one that the father claimed he used as a water purifier.

I do not know this family personally. I've never met them and know very little about them, only what has been written about this incident. I also don't know if there is more to this story than what we have read, and there very well could be. I feel it's important for me to mention that because it's frustrating when people jump all over a news story and make decisions about it based on the very little information that the media supplies. Tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, so to speak.

That being said, I also know this is not the first time I have heard of a family being ripped apart based on someone else's poor judgment. This story comes on the heels of yet another story about parents who are under investigation for allowing their two children to walk HALF A BLOCK alone to a playground. And these two stories come on the heels of numerous other incidents of parents being accused of neglect because they left their kids alone in a car for two minutes while they ran into a gas station or had the audacity to disagree with their pediatrician. Considering over 3 million children are 'checked up on' by CPS annually, it's no wonder these stories are so common. DHS and CPS appear to wield an awful lot of power. All it takes is a phone call from a nosy neighbor. Maybe one day the authorities will show up on your doorstep.

Is there anything in your parenting someone else might disagree with? Have you ever done, said, or allowed anything that would be deemed questionable by the cranky lady down the street, or even your own friends? I don't doubt the way I run my household is a little different from the way you run yours, but I bet you love your kids. I bet they love you. Chances are we're both doing what we feel is best for our individual families.

But when it comes to these types of investigations, where the lines are drawn appear to be so discretionary, based on the whims of whomever is involved in the case. Who do you think deserves to be investigated? Or even deserves to have their practices outlawed? Deserves to have their children taken away?

Families in a polygamist community? A family who practices alternative medicine? A family whose parents spank their children?

There have been plenty of times when I have felt sorry for other kids and the way they were being raised, but I also recognized that they weren't my children. When it comes to issues of personal liberty and parental rights, you are not the authority on my family, just as I am not the authority on yours. At least, that's the way it should be. But as the state receives more and more power and more and more funding to place itself in the middle of our daily lives, it can't come as any surprise that this continues to happen. And it won't stop, not as long as we continue to wage war on each other's ideologies.

Ours has become a culture of self-righteous finger wagging. All I have to do to see that is read through a few threads on a parenting website. How dare you mutilate your child with circumcision! Breastfeeding your 3-year-old is abuse! You should never feed your child McDonald's! Spanking is the same as hitting!

That's precisely where this gets uncomfortable. Should your standards be applied to all people? Of all backgrounds and religions and cultures? Which perceptions should we allow to dominate as we apply arbitrary rules to how people live their lives?

Because that's what human beings do best – decide they're right, and then decide that everyone else should live accordingly. That's why we're now under the thumb of so many laws and why children are getting ripped away from loving homes. But I'm here to say that your parenting choices should remain precisely that – your choices.

It's horrifying to hear of tragic cases of abuse and neglect. There are some cases of severe harm, sexual trauma, and death that I've heard about that stick out in my mind and sicken me to my core. But one has to wonder if these cases would be fewer if less time and money were spent on investigating ordinary people just trying to live their lives and more attention was given to real problems.

So to the nosy neighbors who like to make reports, I'd like to ask you to consider these things: Consider striking up a conversation with the family instead of reaching for the phone. Consider that you are about to step on the constitutional rights of those parents AND CHILDREN in that household. Consider that the strange family next door just might be good people who simply do things a little differently than you do.

Consider that you're taking away help from a child who actually needs it.

Freedom of Religion - I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

One day long ago in my high school cafeteria, I was approached by several of my peers who asked if I would like to pray with them before lunch. To be completely honest, I didn't want to. I knew it would draw attention to me, and at that time in my life, that was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do. But in support of my friends and because of my belief that prayer is always a good thing, I put my reservations aside and agreed to participate.

We held hands in a circle while one of my friends led the short prayer, and then we began to return to our seats. A group of students a couple of tables over was eyeing us as though we'd just slaughtered a calf in the middle of the lunchroom. “Separation of church and state!” one of them called out.

I had it on the tip of my tongue to retort “FREE EXERCISE THEREOF”, but as I was accustomed to doing, I remained silent.

I'm not quite as content to remain silent as I used to be.

That was my first memorable experience with anti-Christian zealots, but there have been numerous encounters since. In college we argued over whether or not a student organization should be allowed to put up a Christmas tree in the student center. Of course it should, I said. That isn't infringing on anyone's rights. A girl responded, Oh, yeah? How about I go on down there and light a Menorah?

Go ahead, I said.
 

See, I'm all for other religions having rights too. That's the great thing about freedom – it allows you to live by the principles that you choose to follow rather than allowing someone else to make those choices for you. This includes running a company that you own according to your personal values – like giving employees Sundays off, paying them significantly more than the minimum wage, or not providing them with benefits that you believe to be immoral.

 

Ah yes, Hobby Lobby. Corporations are not humans, you say. They don't have rights. I'm sure the thousands of business owners who have shed blood, sweat, and tears over their life's work would disagree with you. The court made the right call on this one. Women have not been denied birth control, and real-life, soul-carrying human beings, who also happen to own companies, have not been denied moral autonomy.

But this is the problem that arises when you start creating more and more laws, more and more restrictions, more and more mandates. You have to start figuring out where to draw the lines. And you end up with lines drawn all over the sand until the tide inevitably comes in and washes them all away.

Religious freedom is so important that it is the first amendment to our Constitution. It is a right that our founding fathers saw fit to put first, but too many people misunderstand it when they cry 'separation of church and state!' That separation not only ensures that you can not be forced to practice a religion, but also guarantees the rights of those who do.

Even so, there are plenty of people who don't think I should have that right and work tirelessly to ensure that I am denied it, little by little, with each passing year. Every June I hear the same story – another graduate who 'shocked' people by deviating from his pre-approved commencement speech. What was so scandalous about his drafts that didn't make the cut? Why, because Christian ideology is taboo, of course. Quote Gandhi all you want, but Jesus Christ? No way. Sure, you can reference Buddha, but those red letters in the New Testament? Sorry pal, that's offensive.

Keep it in your churches, they say. I have the right to not have to see/hear it, they say. Idiots who believe in a thousands-year-old book of fairy tales, they imply, and sometimes go ahead and say.

There is no respect for beliefs in those comments, no understanding of basic rights. But they have the right to think them and say them. They have as much of a right to shout their words from the rooftops as I do to say 'Christ is Lord'.

(And if you think that getting rid of proselytizing sounds like a good idea, try living in a country where it's outlawed.)
 

I am a Christian, and I have no power to force you to become one too. And I wouldn't want to because I value freedom in your life as well. But if you seek to pass laws that will impede my ability to live according to what I believe is right, then you must ask yourself – which side of freedom are you really on?

Not all Christians agree with Hobby Lobby's stance on contraceptives. Not everyone agrees with the words of a Christian high school student's speech. But as Thomas Jefferson pointed out, we can agree that 'religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship'.
 

If we are denied the right to run our businesses according to our consciences or prohibited from freely speaking about our faith, then to whom are we actually being held accountable?
 

I stay silent no more, because I worry about what someone will say to my kids in their high school cafeteria. Or worse yet, I worry that they will never have the opportunity for someone to say something to them at all.

Warrior Poets {Thoughts On Freedom}

I often hear people say that they wish they could be a kid again, to be without a care in the world and without the responsibilities that come with being an adult. And I get it; I really do. There are parts of childhood that I suppose I might like to revisit…like innocent discoveries and imaginative play…but those are things I can relive with my own children.

The truth is I’m one of the weirdos who enjoys being an adult. I like cooking whatever I feel like eating for dinner and staying up late and planning vacations and choosing where to live and what to buy. Even as hard as it is sometimes, I like being in charge of my own life. I like being free. Independent.

It might be easier to lack responsibility, but I wouldn’t trade my freedom for the dependence that comes with unaccountability. Boundaries, though often necessary, are only worthwhile when you can trust the source from which they come. There are few sources that I trust with such a power. The only good boundaries come from a place of love.

I often wonder what kind of world my children will grow up in. Will they experience freedom in the same way I have? Do I experience the same level of freedom that my grandparents did? Blood has been shed over securing the right to freedom, and yet there are those who would be so quick to relinquish it for the very little they think they might gain.

From where one person stands, it’s hard to gauge freedom as it has been experienced in different times and distant places, but it’s clear that the world is changing – because it always has been. It morphs into something new with each passing moment, and it often feels as though there is little we can do to impact how it changes.

We can, however, choose the sources that we trust. And we can fight for what we know is ours.

The choices that we make – they are only made possible by the fact that we are free to make them.

I put Hannah down for her nap a while ago, and as I typed this post, I heard “Jesus Loves Me” coming from the other room. She has a stuffed lamb that plays it, and she was winding it up over and over, listening to the music until she fell asleep. It told me that she's at peace with her source of love and boundaries.

There is so much liberation in that.