Read this in the globe and mail today, and am somewhat conflicted.
*usual disclaimer*
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080707.cowent08/BNStory/specialComment
Thoughts?
*usual disclaimer*
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080707.cowent08/BNStory/specialComment
Case of the Hitler-loving mom
MARGARET WENTE
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
E-mail Margaret Wente | Read Bio | Latest Columns
July 7, 2008 at 6:44 PM EDT
There are plenty of bad parents in the world. But how bad do you have to be before they take your kids away?
In Manitoba, thought crimes can make you bad enough.
Three months ago, child-welfare officials removed a seven-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother from their home because their parents are white supremacists. The trouble started when the girl showed up at school one day with a swastika inked on her arm. The next day, when her mother came to pick her up, she was greeted by welfare workers and police. The kids are in protective custody until the case is heard in court.
Mom isn't shy about her beliefs. She used to have a Nazi flag hanging on the wall, until she replaced it with a banner that reads “White pride worldwide.” She's proud that her daughter is already able to recite the slogan of white supremacy. (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Even so, she claims that she is tolerant of other people – just a proud white nationalist who believes in the natural superiority of the Nordic races. “I really think this is about politics and freedom of speech,” she says. “This is government oppression.”
Some people are applauding the child-protection service. Parents have no right, they say, to send a kid to school inked with symbols of racism and hate, where she will doubtless frighten other little tykes and spread her poison everywhere. These people have a point. But couldn't the school just send her home and tell her not to return until she washes it off?
One hates to side with Aryan Nation, but the mom is right. Simply teaching your children odious and creepy beliefs is not enough to lose them to the state. If it were, we'd have a good case to apprehend the offspring of, say, Tom Cruise.
In other respects, our swastika-loving mom seems to be a reasonably good parent. After she lost the children, she dumped her husband, an unemployed devoted skinhead whom she herself describes as a “flamboyant bigot.” There was no evidence at all that the children had suffered any harm. The case for taking them away was based only on the possibility that the parents' conduct and associations might endanger their well-being.
This isn't the first time children have been seized because the authorities disapprove of their parents. We've just witnessed a mass debacle in Texas, where 450 kids were removed from mothers who belonged to a polygamous cult. You don't have to be a fan of polygamy to be appalled at the separation trauma inflicted by the state. In that case, the courts were appalled too, and quickly sent the kids home.
Back in 2002, child-protection workers in Ontario seized five children from their loving but devoutly religious Christian parents, who happened to believe in spanking. The kids were well-adjusted (at least until police and social workers arrived) with no signs of physical or emotional abuse. But the prevailing orthodoxy of the day declared spanking to be automatically abusive, so the kids had to go. (The parents got their children back when they promised to cease and desist.) The varieties of abuse that shock the conscience of the state are always changing with the times. A couple of centuries ago, parents who told their kids that God did not exist were thought to be every bit as wicked as we think people who love Hitler are. Today, it's all right to be an atheist, so long as you don't go in for Nazis or spanking.
But woe betide you if your kid's too fat. In Britain, obesity has been a factor in dozens of child protection cases. Last year, social workers threatened to seize an obese eight-year-old from his mother because she couldn't get him to stop eating. (He stood just over five feet tall and weighed 217 pounds.) Perhaps genetics or an underlying medical condition were to blame – but the authorities preferred to blame Mom. The moral of the story? Don't get on the wrong side of moral panics, or you might get trampled.
Thoughts?