un-frickin-believable

[chelidon]

Clearly, these are the kinds of balanced, unbiased judges with which Bush & Co would like to flood the judiciary. Sounds like a potential Supreme Court nominee to me...

(thanks to idragosani for the link)

Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs

Note that neither parent involved in the divorce proceeding asked for this -- the judge decided to impose the order all on his own, for "the good of the child." Amazing.

Comments

[moonmelody.livejournal.com]

I, too, was both appalled and infuriated when I read the article.

The good news: the lawyers quoted in the article have the right of it -- this should be a slam dunk reversal. It's blatently unconstitutional.

The bad news: this idiot is still on the bench.

I cringe to think of what kind of Supreme Court nominees Bush will put up. The horror.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Ah-yup. Like you say, the good news is that this particular ruling is unlikely to stand. In the meantime, though, the family, already going through the stress and strain of a divorce, has to deal with the time, money and stress of a court case over this, and in the meantime, they can't legally raise their kids in their own chosen religion. Ye gods.

And the other thing that gets me is that this judge, supposedly a legal expert, didn't and doesn't see anything wrong with making this ruling, it make perfect sense in his mind. It's that kind of blindness, of routinely putting faith (presumably, in this case) over logic and reason that scares me as much as anything else.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I've gotta say, though, that the article itself was quite well-done, which is nice to see in a situation like this. For example, I liked that they found out and made sure to say in two places that Wicca is recognized by the US military as a legitimate religious choice for which it needs to provide chaplaincy support. I like that becaus that seems like a fairly simple way to get across to Joe Midwesterner "hey, this is actually pretty non-controversial".

The judge clearly is a moron, and it'll clearly get overturned, and you're right, the real shame is the stree on the poor kid and parents, that they'll have to go to such TROUBLE merely to get their constitutional rights.

I have to assume that the judge is simply ignorant of the tenets of Wicca, and is suspicious of the activities of its worship. I mean, let's be honest, here -- neo-pagan religions aren't the only ones that can get slapped when it comes to the treatment of minors under their tenets. There are fringe sects of Christianity that have been equally circumscribed, if their practice results in what the State feels is endangerment of a child (refusal to obtain medical treatment for infants, for example). So it's not *just* a simple matter of "absolute freedom of religion" -- and it never has been.

In this case, however, it's clearly a matter of a judge's ignorance of the actual religion in question, rather than a situation in which a religion's practices actually come in conflict with the secular society's rules.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

I agree, the article was uncomonly well thought-out and researched -- if it had been "mainstream" media, it woudn't have been half as good (and I say that as a sometime member of the 4th estate ;>) Let's hope this gets resolved quickly, for the sake of the parents and the kid.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

> Clearly, these are the kinds of balanced, unbiased judges with which Bush & Co would like to flood the judiciary. Sounds like a potential Supreme Court nominee to me...

From what I can tell, Judge Bradford has been a judge in Indiana for quite a few years. Shrubya has his faults but he can hardly be blamed for this one.

[chelidon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't blaming this nincompoop on Bush, I'm offering my opinion that this fellow is the kinds of "impartial, non-activist" nincompoops with which Bush is hoping to seed the courts.