Posted on 09/07/2009 7:58:13 PM PDT by Steelfish
SEPTEMBER 7, 2009
Christian Girls, Interrupted How much say should parents have over their children's faith?
By WILLIAM MCGURN
Two Christian girls. Two sets of distraught parents. And two state courts smack in the middle of it.
One of these courts is in New Hampshire, where a judge recently ordered that home-schooled Amanda Kurowski be sent to public school. The order signed by Family Court Justice Lucinda V. Sandler says the 10-year-old's Christian faith could use some shaking up—and that the local public school is just the place to do it. So while the child's lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal outfit, filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider, last week Amanda started fifth grade at a local public school.
At about the same time Miss Kurowski was starting school in New Hampshire, a state court in Florida was considering what to do with 17-year-old Rifqa Bary. Miss Bary fled to Florida from Ohio a few weeks back, where she sought refuge with a Christian couple whose church she had learned about on Facebook. She says she ran away from home because her father discovered she'd become a Christian—and then threatened to kill her.
On Thursday, Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson ordered the girl and her family to try mediation and set a pretrial hearing for the end of the month.
Miss Bary's case doesn't fit neatly into the standard categories. On the one hand, Mr. and Mrs. Bary are flying the parental-rights flag typically associated with conservatives. They say that whatever fears their daughter has of them have been put in her head by evangelical Christians hostile to Islam.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I’m sorry. I just don’t see how the cases are similar.
One court chooses a side to send a home schooled girl into the lions den ... the other intercedes to keep one out.
In the case of the 10 year old...isn’t this a case of viewpoint discrimination, or intervention?
The gist of the editorial is that, in both cases, the courts have seen fit to place themselves in the middle of supposedly religious controversies, and that places the courts at odds with parental rights with regard to their kids' upbringings. There is some reason to be concerned about that. So, to that extent, they're "similar" stories.
But of course, we still have to wonder whether we, or the WSJ, is operating on full facts. Stories like this are very often quite long on outrage, but scant on a full exposition of the situation.
In the first case, however, the real context is that it's a divorce/custody situation, and we still have not heard the full story of what's behind the court's decision -- the WSJ is just repeating the story told by the mother's lawyers and publicity firm (the activist arm of Focus on the Family).
In the second case, we have a claim by the girl that her father has threatened to kill her for being a Christian. Possibly ... but then, she's also a runaway, and may be subject to undue influence by the folks with whom she's currently living. Was Miss Bary actually threatened, or did the people she's with convince her that her father had threatened her? Well.... we don't really know. You don't want to take chances, but at the same time, is she telling the truth?
When confronted by stories like this, I find that it's generally best to be skeptical.
“..we still have to wonder whether we, or the WSJ, is operating on full facts. Stories like this are very often quite long on outrage, but scant on a full exposition of the situation.”
PS: In English, “we” is followed by “are”, not “is.”
In some dialects we is followed by be - webe goin to da store, for example.
>>> In the second case, we have a claim by the girl that her father has threatened to kill her for being a Christian. Possibly ... but then, she’s also a runaway, and may be subject to undue influence by the folks with whom she’s currently living. Was Miss Bary actually threatened, or did the people she’s with convince her that her father had threatened her? Well.... we don’t really know. You don’t want to take chances, but at the same time, is she telling the truth? <<<
No, I don’t want to take chances with a young woman’s life. Do you?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321486,00.html
What dialect would that be? Southern Californian? New Englander?
The two cases are similar because the involve the parental rights of custodial parents.
It seems logic would say:
1. Either you support parental rights and the NH girl continues to be home schooled and the Ohio girl is sent back home from Florida.
2. Or you force the NH girl to go to public school and the Ohio girl is allowed to live away from her parents.
But the facts of course differ in each case. The NH girl is much younger. The Ohio girl is very nearly able to move where ever she wants, ie within months.
I tend to think that the NH court was wrong [that the girl is a pawn in a dispute among divorce parents] and the Ohio girl should be sent back to her parents by FL. I do not think Moslem’s should be presumed to be religiously intolerant, though I know the data and the seriousness of being wrong.
My preference in the court systems would be for the NH court to be overturned and the case in Fl dragged out long enough so that while the parents win, the girl never is sent back and put at risk.
Here’s some more info (from Rifqa Bary’s counsel):
http://orlandolawyer.tv/documents/Noor%20Memo%20of%20Law.pdf
Yes, prissy missy, I did notice that after I posted. My grievous sin was that I missed the verb while making real-time changes to what I wrote. Really severe stuff, that.
As for the WSJ having "more facts," their editorial offers no hint of that, their stated information being nothing more than a rehash of what one interested side has said, in each case.
My "bias" is that I don't trust media stories like these, because they only give one side of the story. Your trusting nature is cute, but I seriously doubt that it will lead you to a proper appreciation of the truth.
Quite obviously not. I sure wish I had said that. Oh, wait ... I did say that, didn't I?
That said -- did Miss Bary's father really threaten to kill her? Or did somebody convince the girl to say that?
Don't you want to know the truth? Or are you simply gonna rely on non-related stories to make up your mind for you?
Since there is no way to prove that the father threatened to kill her, in the interest of justice, we must look at the reasonable possibility that it is true — does this group of people have a record of honor killings? Have there been any memebers of this group here in the US who have doene theat? If the answer is yes — which it is, then the #1 priority is protecting the woman
Agreed. But we should also look at the other possibility.
that makes no sense — you’re doing what Mrie Louise von Franz called “being charitable to evil”.
If this oman’s life MAY be at risk, then she cannot be reutned to the people she has fled. period.
You're committing what is called "the fallacy of assuming the consequent," which in this case means that you have a priori assumed that the father in question is actually evil ... when in fact, that is precisely the question that has not been answered.
If this oman’s life MAY be at risk, then she cannot be returned to the people she has fled. period.
The question being, of course, whether her life really is at risk -- or perhaps she was wrongly influenced by the people who took her in, to merely believe that her life is at risk, when in fact it is not.
If the father really has threatened to kill her, then he's subject to criminal consequences.
Given that we're still a country governed by the rule of law and the Constitutional guarantee of due process, don't you think we have a moral obligation to determine the true nature of the case?
NO, because the criminal consequences — his prosecution for murder would occur AFTER HER DEATH.
And I have not asumed he is evil — I simply know that there are documentated cases of honor killing for this very reason, and we can’t wait to seeif he’s going to kill or not, we have to protect her from the possibility.
The legal case in Ms. Bary's case turns on the question of whether or not she has been so-threatened. It's obviously not a settled matter.
I'm not saying "send her back." I am saying that it's proper to determine whether or not the threat really has been made.
Or are you, perhaps, suggesting that people who practice certain religions are not subject to due process?
If the 17-y.o. were already an adult, she would at least have the option of seeking the "protection" of a restraining order, based simply on the assault against her (i.e. the death threat). At a minimum, in her case, it seems that the court should order some sort of protective custody (foster care, maybe), until she either reached adulthood or is able to pursue a case for emancipation.
A girl who is scared enough to flee from Ohio to Florida probably feels sufficiently motivated - this isn't like throwing a tantrum and hiding from Mommy & Daddy in the bushes or at her best friend's house - that the courts should err in her favor.
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