Posted on 08/27/2009 5:51:11 PM PDT by Iam1ru1-2
A Christian homeschool girl in New Hampshire has been ordered into government-run public school for having "sincerely held" religious beliefs.
An attorney working with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed motions with a New Hampshire court, asking it to reconsider its order to send the 10-year-old homeschooled girl into public school.
According to ADF allied attorney John Anthony Simmons, the court acknowledges that the girl in question is doing well socially and academically, but he adds that the court went too far when they determined that the girl's Christian faith was a "bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews."
Simmons contends that parents have a "fundamental right to make educational choices for their children." However, the girl's parents divorced in 1999, and she is now living with her mother who has been homeschooling the child since first grade. As part of the schooling, the young girl has been attending supplemental public school classes.
(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
God have mercy on the Body of Christ for our inaction, and selfish lifestyles, too busy to be concern about our religious freedoms.
They got divorced just before or after this child was born. So sad.
“determined that the girl’s Christian faith was a “bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews.”
HOLY smokes! We are no longer the United States of America.
We are now the Soviet States of North America.
This is outrageous.
Why don’t these stories ever NAME THE DAMN JUDGES? “Courts” don’t make rulings, judges do; juries do. These people should be identified, by name and location, so the people in the communities where they live know what they are up to.
The judge overstepped ~ unfortunately he’s just another New England hillbilly who hasn’t got a clue.
what stupid a$$ judge thinks he has the right to interfere with families
The “Live free or die” state, is dead?
The gulags are coming, people.
So much for “Live Free Or Die”. Sounds discriminatory based on religion. I’d sue them silly.
who was the judge?
Isn’t time for a revolution yet? They take our kids, they take our property for shopping malls,they take tax payers money to bailout their friends, they take money from those who are productive and give it to the worthless. It isn’t time to tell them enough is enough? The beast is growing and it will not be satisfied.
I guess the court never read that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the FREE EXERCISE THEREOF, ...”
What bastards!
Solution: leave New Hampshire.
My objection was to the fact that the story doesn’t say.
Some judges need to report to the principals office.
Did a little Googling. Apparently daddy wants her in public school (!!!!!), and while mommy has primary custody, they have a shared parenting agreement.
Further on in the story, it explains that the parents, as part of the divorce agreement, agreed to joint decision making for parental decisions. Dad doesn't want his daughter homeschooled by her mother, and the mother wants to continue teaching at home, though it is also noted that she already attends some public education classes already.
So, well, gotta put the onus on the parents here - they can't come to an agreement, even though they promised to make such decisions jointly. It would not surprise me if the father's filing includes more than religious issues - after all, if they held such strong religious beliefs, they would have taken their vows far more seriously and remained married.
Lucinda V. Sadler
Judge, Laconia Family Court
Names at https://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=5050 :
“Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view” and then recommended that the girl be ordered to enroll in a government school instead of being home-schooled. Judge Lucinda V. Sadler approved the recommendation and issued the order on July 14.”
It would seem the people in the communities where this happens are unconcerned or too lazy because it is a matter of public record and can easily be researched with a trip to the courthouse. Reporters do it all the time yet withhold certain information that may prove inconvenient.
“Solution: leave New Hampshire.”
“I will not sacrifice my country. We’ve made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our states and we fall back. They assimilate entire cities and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make them pay for what they’ve done.”
I say she stays and fights.
(with apologies to Star Trek, et al.)
I think his secularism is “a bit too sincerely held.”
ping and a reminder why HLSDA is a good investment.
Um..... That was right before Picard set the auto-destruct to blow up the ship.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.....
“Um..... That was right before Picard set the auto-destruct to blow up the ship.”
Yeah, I know. But outside of the Herman Melville quote from Moby Dick, it was the best line of the movie.
“And he piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.”
Slow down a minute. I suspect there is more to this than the obvious.
A lot of what is going on here, at least from the point of view of the court, may be to look at the motives of the parents. Looking at this objectively, what I would first like to do is talk with the mother’s religious leader, if she has one.
Some Christian sects have a legitimate and firm belief in proselytization, even to an obnoxious degree, and that is their right. However, theirs is a minority view among Christians. Is this the belief of her sect, or just the mother?
From the point of view of the court, they are trying to find out if the mother is using the *excuse* of faith, in an effort to drive a wedge between daughter and father. This sort of thing happens a lot in ugly divorces, and parents can be very mean this way. Her religious leader could be very enlightening in finding this out.
“The guardian noted that during a counseling session, Amanda tried to witness to the counselor and appeared “visibly upset” when the counselor purposefully did not pay attention.”
Again, this could be legitimate in their sect. However, it raises questions. But the real big question comes from:
“The guardian also noted that Amanda’s relationship with her father suffered because she did not think he loved her as much as he said he did due to the fact that he refused to “adopt her religious beliefs.”
This sends up warning flares. At some point, the daughter would ask her mother about her father’s religious beliefs. If the mother replied something to the effect of, “Your father is damned to Hell because he is a heathen and pagan, and unless he embraces the one true faith it means he hates you”, something very rotten is going on.
And while this sounds improbable, the truth of the matter is that divorce often brings out the meanest, nastiest, conniving, lying, and downright vicious side of some people.
It’s the job of the court to figure that out.
Granted, directing that the girl have to go to public school is a stretch. But she has to be in some situation out of her mother’s control for some days, around other people, to see what is going on with her.
Again, it could all be very legitimate. But I have my doubts.
If this is the logic that they will use, then public schools should have religious classes to give them a more well rounded world view too.
Absolute and stunning violation of the free exercise portion of the First Amendment.
IMHO This would be a FINE case to run by Bill O’Reilly. Sometimes BOR is a pain in the butt, but he DOES have a penchant for exposing these commie-lib judges.
What’s outrageous about it? This is a case where a court was forced to mediate between the utterly divergent belief systems of two divorced parents. The mother who has been directing the girl’s education is raising her with a religious belief that alienates her from her father, and the court has to be fair to both parents. The court, having been forced to participate in the education decision, chose to order a route which would give the girl more exposure to beliefs that won’t alienate her from her father.
Homeschool advocacy groups really should steer clear of trying to make showcases out of these cases where a court intervenes between battling parents. The court had no objection to the girl’s schooling program, it was the father who objected, and in the context of the parents’ divergent belief systems, the court could only be fair by ordering a change in the schooling program which would tilt things more towards the middle ground. The girl will continue to live with her mother, and will continue to get constant support for her existing religious beliefs at home.
Show me a case where a court orders children into public school while BOTH parents want the child homeschooled, and I’ll scream “Outrageous!” too. But in this case, the conflict originated between the two parents, not between the parents on one side and the court on the other.
Oddly, though, she was already attending public school part-time, apparently with her mother’s blessing. Sounds like there might be some heavy-duty brainwashing going on at mom’s home and church, for the girl to have such a rigid view of her obligation to proselytize that she would, at age 10, insist on trying to proselytize a court-appointed counselor who was interviewing her and get upset when the counselor declined to participate in this process. If she’d been kept isolated at home and church, so as to have almost no experience dealing with people who didn’t share these religious beliefs, it would be expected that she’d behave this way, but if she’s been spending parts of each week in a public school setting, it’s pretty odd.
The part about thinking her father doesn’t really love her because he won’t adopt her religious beliefs really does sound like a notion she got from her mother and/or church leaders. I can’t blame the father for going to court over this. If my 10 year old was coming over on visitation days, repeatedly trying to proselytize me and insistig that if I really loved her I’d convert to her religious beliefs, I’d be plenty annoyed and take some action.
Look at the flip side. If a child of divorced parents is living with a militant atheist parent who is directing her schooling, and spending visitation days with the other parent expressing hostility or ridicule towards that parent’s evangelical Christian beliefs, a court would be correct in responding to the latter parent’s complaint by ordering the child to participate in some religious youth activities of the religious parent’s choosing, such as Sunday school, weeknight youth group meetings, summer camp, etc.
We have a clash of two irreconciable worldviews. The father wants his child educated in a godless government schools, and the mom is determined to educate the child in a God-centered Christian worldview.
One side will win. The other will lose. There can be no compromise.
If the mother has primary custody, then it should be that the mother should have the final say when there is a disagreement between the two, but the judge decided in favor of the father because he probably hates God too.
Ah, yes. Do it the republican way and compromise. GIve completely into the liberals. Now, bend over B-Chan.
Ping
This should alarm EVERY parent who wishes to teach their child their beliefs.
Mind boggling. Maybe the judge’s faith is a “bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews” such as islamofascists and bull queers in prison.
IMO its the “bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews.” part that concerns most people.
If the decision was for the father who wanted public there wouldn’t be the outrage.
Or do you think is appropriate for the govt to dilute a persons religions beliefs?
If the mother said, “Your father is damned to Hell because he is a heathen and pagan, and unless he embraces the one true faith it means he hates you”
************
I can attest that this does happen. My husband’s ex-wife said this to their daughter when she was only five or six years old, in almost the exact same words you used.
Many people may not believe this would ever happen, that it is just too evil a thing for any mother (or father) to do to their own child. I wouldn’t have believed it either. Yet, not only did it happen to my stepdaughter, but my husband’s lawyer said it’s not unusual at all for one parent to demonize the other to the kids for different religious beliefs or practices.
Why? The child is not being physically abused. Because you disagree with the expression of her religion, are you going to decide it is not healthy? Who are you to say?
Let's apply the same standard to the union thugs--I mean public school teachers. They could use a little bit of exposure to different points of view.
Read some of the other responses, this may not really be about religion at all, but the effort of one bitter parent against another.
I don’t think I have ever been as shocked and appalled as when watching a divorce court in action. Blatant perjury and foul accusation are the norm, and judges are seemingly indifferent to it. Parents use their children as weapons against each other, often scarring the children for life. Efforts to use the process to impoverish, humiliate, or criminally accuse are even encouraged by attorneys, who profit handsomely from hatred.
This is why I mentioned that the testimony of the woman’s religious leader is so vital. Not just for the case, but for the mental health of the daughter.
If it is right and proper in her Christian sect to do this, it is one thing—the daughter has the support of a group of people, and a trained minister. But if this is done solely by the mother for her own purposes, especially if it is motivated by intense hate, this child is at grave risk.
And unfortunately, this happens a lot. Again, see the responses of other posters who have seen such tragedy.
For anyone under the age of 16, they are here, and have been.
If this child has been well grounded in Christ and the Bible, she will be armed and protected against even the most base ministrations of the public school system. I pray, for her sake, that is the case.
This may backfire, in that she has a possible role to play exposing those in the school to a Christian worldview.
I’m afraid you are right.
Yes, in public school she can learn all kinds of things. God help her.
I wonder if there’s a Christian school nearby she could go to.
I am a divorced, single mom who home schooled her kids. I made a very poor choice as a rebellious teenage girl in who to make children with. But God saw me through that and we were incredibly lucky that I have been blessed with employment that allowed me to be home to raise my children.
Their dad really couldn’t give a rats ass about them, other than to threaten us from time to time that he would make them hate me when they grew up.
So DON’T LECTURE ME on talking to people who have been through it.
I lived it.
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