Protecting our children and the Family

Beetle Blogger and Kingfisher Column

Beetle Blogger and Kingfisher Column have quickly become two of my favorite and must-read blogs on issues that relate to marriage and family (hat tip to Tim at Latter-day Commentary). Links to both sites are in the sidebar on the home page of Believe All Things under the “Marriage & Family Bookmarks” section.

UNCRC

If you haven’t read their articles, you may want to visit their sites and add them to your list of RSS feeds. Here’s a sample post from Beetle Blogger about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that will effectively take away parents’ rights and transfer them to the state:

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is an international human rights treaty that grants all children and young people (aged 17 and under) a comprehensive set of rights. When a country ratifies the convention it agrees to do everything it can to implement it.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Rights for children is always of ultimate importance. We should all be eager to adopt this measure in our own country as well right?

Chillingly, there are many in the new Obama Administration who see UNCRC in this light and who are actively promoting the ratification of this international law in the United States.

See this information from www.parentalrights.org :

“International law that seeks to empower the government to intrude upon the child-parent relationship is becoming an increasing threat. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a seemingly harmless treaty with dangerous implications for American families, is approaching possible ratification by the United States.

If this treaty is made binding upon our country, the government would have the power to intervene in any child’s life to advance its definition of ‘the best interests of the child.’ The scenarios that could occur—and are occurring—as a result of this dangerous notion are both manifold and frightening.

Under the UNCRC, instead of following due process, government agencies would have the power to override your parental choices at their whim because they determine what is in “the best interest of the child.

In essence, the UNCRC applies the legal status of abusive parents to all parents. This means that the burden of proof falls on the parent to prove to the State that they are good parents—when it should fall upon the State to prove that their investigation is not without cause.”¹

Obviously, the UNCRC will dramatically curtail the rights of parents if children become more fully wards of the state. According to Beetle Blogger, only two nations have not ratified the convention: the United States and Somalia. And “President-elect Barack Obama has described the failure to ratify the Convention as ‘embarrassing’ and has promised to review it as president.”

Ten things you need to know about the substance of the CRC.

1. Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
2. A murderer aged 17 years, 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
3. Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
4. The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.
5. A child’s “right to be heard” would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
6. According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.
7. Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
8. Teaching children about Christianity in schools has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
9. Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
10. Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.