While conservatives rail against President Obama and his Administration’s threats to our liberties, a direct assault on our constitutional liberties is unfolding in Marathon County, Wisconsin. Dale and Leilani Neumann were sentenced on Tuesday to six months in jail and ten years probation in the death of their daughter, eleven-year-old Kara.
They didn’t beat her. She wasn’t locked away in a room. By all accounts, they were loving, attentive parents. Their crime was refusing on religious grounds medical treatment for Kara. During the sentencing, Dale Neumann said, "I am guilty of trusting my Lord's wisdom completely. ... Guilty of obeying my God.”
Even more dangerous to our freedoms than the conviction were the words of the judge at sentencing, as reported by CBS News. “We are here today because to some, you made Kara a martyr to your faith.” This direct attack upon the Neumann’s religious beliefs by an agent of the state is a disturbing moment. Any person who treasures our freedom of religion should tremble at those words.
It is gut-wrenching to consider the reality of losing a child. It is far worse to have an officer of a court of law inform you that your faith is in error. To insist, as the prosecutors did in this case, that the Neumann’s had a legal obligation to seek medical care for Kara against the tenets of their religious beliefs is an assault upon the Constitutional guarantee of the freedom of religion. The judge’s admonishment from the bench that their religious beliefs were wrong puts all who believe at risk of state intercession in the practice of their belief.
Suppose, in the name of improving our national educational standards, the state removed children from home schools, forcing them against their parents’ religious beliefs to learn about Darwin’s theory of evolution. Or perhaps a judge, acting on the tenets of his faith, would mandate nonsectarian moments of silence against the wishes of an atheist parent.
The constitutional protection of religious belief is meaningless if the state can decide that certain acts done in the name of religious belief are criminal. Our liberty to believe and live by those beliefs, whether others accept them as legitimate or not, are threatened when a judge can say, from the bench, that those beliefs are not only wrong, but criminally so
12 comments:
Yet, if their child had a traumatic brain injury, was in a coma, and they removed life support, the state would have had no problem with it.
We live in a very strange world.
So on what basis would you rule out polygamy when the whole community is desirous of living out their faith?
Or human sacrifice when the community, and victim, is willing to live out their faith?
Where is the line? Or is there no line? A defined faith community should be always free?
Actually, I have no problem with polygamy.
Since there aren't any major religious groups in the world that practice human sacrifice, that's more a hypothetical than anything.
As far as I'm concerned, the Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law" and the 14th Amendment applies that to the states as well as the federal government. Navajos want to use peyote in religious services? Fine by me. Sikhs want to wear turbans and not protective headgear? That is their prerogative.
If they had tossed the child in an oven because their religious belief told them that doing so would rid the child of demonic possession, I might have cause for concern; in this case, they lovingly and attentively did what they could according to the tenets of their religious belief to help their daughter. In context - and context really is everything - the state of Wisconsin made a huge mistake. When the state, in the person of a judge, tells someone their religious beliefs are wrong, we are already on the way down a dangerous road.
"If they had tossed the child in an oven because their religious belief told them that doing so would rid the child of demonic possession, I might have cause for concern..."
I'd be interested to know what shape your "concern" would take, and, if it were in the shape of any legal interest, how would you define that legal interest?
And hypotheticals like human sacrifice are precisely what are used in law school in order to understand the boundaries of legal interests on the part of person, family, community, state.
Abuse of children is abuse, and the society/state should understand quite clearly what it defines as abuse.
This definition may trample on certain groups and their practices (some educators want the paddle) but that is the price of membership in a society that is based on law and a grounding of rights in the Enlightenment tradition - as opposed to revealed truths.
No revealed truth overrides the interests of the individual - and when the individual is a minor, the state has a minimal amount of say; life or death lies within that small aegis.
And not just for life and death. In the case of the teen who ran away from her Muslim family to stay with a Florida Christian minister's family after an online conversion (and claims by the teen that her father would kill her for that [denied by her family with support of neighbors character testimony)... the judge has ordered her back to her Ohio home to has it out reasonably.
No, abuse of children is only what the law says it is, as interpreted by courts. Since I have dealt many times with people who believe that any kind of religious instruction, especially fundamentalism is or should be considered "child abuse", I think you understand my point.
This is neither neglect nor abuse. This was a loving family acting within the tenets of their faith - they are not described as members of a Christian Science church, but it sounds like one - and I guess I don't see where they did anything wrong. I also think the judge's comment from the bench would be cause for reversal should some crafty ACLU lawyer want to take the case.
We differ on this. Period. A child is dead, which is a tragedy. The parents are being punished not for neglecting the child's health concerns but specifically because their religious beliefs are different. Sorry, Feodor. That's what happened and it is more than wrong, it's dangerous.
I know a couple whose daughter contracted a particularly aggressive cancer from environmental contamination. At the point past which nothing more could be done, she was sent home with one of those morphine injectors. The mother was instructed how much would cause her child's lungs and heart to fail.
You can guess the rest. I will not hesitate to be contradicted by events and say I would do the exact same thing given the same set of circumstances. Yet, there are some who would see this act of lovingkindness as murder, pure and simple. I can even envision an aggressive prosecutor going after them, and what kind of arguments could be made to convince a jury this was murder, pure and simple.
Now tell me - is child abuse child abuse? Or perhaps do circumstances - including the religious beliefs of the family involve - need to be taken under consideration when dealing with a case such as this?
The fact is, this couple was prosecuted for the simple reason that they believed and practiced their beliefs in a way that was not in line with the rest of the community. They did not actively harm their child; they lived their faith. Apparently, that's OK with you as long as the folks in question adhere to a traditional interpretation of the Christian faith. The Constitution doesn't recognize such a distinction; neither do I. The gross judicial misconduct (as I see it) of the judge telling this couple their religious beliefs are wrong, and that this error was a criminal offense, is hideous to me.
One more then I shall await a response.
Let's leave the realm of Christian beliefs entirely. What about practitioners of homeopathic medicine? Or those who use traditional Taoist remedies? Are they suddenly under a legal obligation to toss those aside?
This is as clear a case of religious persecution I have seen in a court of law in a long time. The judge's statements from the bench go far beyond any understanding of judicial restraint as I understand it. To insist that parents, regardless of circumstances, have a legal responsibility to consult a certified physician or be punished by the state - this is a dangerous, dangerous road.
"No revealed truth overrides the interests of the individual".
I'm not even sure what to say to this. It is wrong on so many levels, and is the root of all sorts of horrors.
My "Abuse of children is abuse, and the society/state should understand quite clearly what it defines as abuse" is, for all intents and purposes, the same as your, "No, abuse of children is only what the law says it is, as interpreted by courts."
I chose to describe the foundational sociological ground to a society's laws. At the abstract level, a society makes its own laws, though clearly by the representatives you name. And continuing critical reflection on those laws is done by the society in an abstract and contracted way by our legal system.
__________
When I said, too briefly, that no revealed truth overrides the interests of the individual, I am just stating the obvious in western societies. This is why there can be no human sacrifice (your inability to directly answer even this simple hypothetical is what ought to cause speechlessness). This is why a community cannot cause pain or suffering, coercion or abridgment of freedom without that individual's consent (interest).
In the case of children, they are not of sufficient age to defend and protect their consent, nor are they of sufficient judgment to consider for themselves.
Thus, legally, they exist under in a nexus of parental liberty doctrine, in loco parentis doctrine, all while never ultimately relinquishing their civil liberties.
Civil liberties, GKS. Children are not without them. This is western law.
And in western societies, natural rights ground civil liberties, natural rights derived directly from the history of humanist descriptions and indirectly from religious values.
Thus, the intention of western law is that no revealed truth which acts violently against the civil rights of a child is protection for parents. The right to health and the means to protect or regain health is part of our guarantees. No one can be denied treatment. They may be denied good treatment, but not no treatment.
And refusal to take one's child for treatment severely strains the legal intentions of our society. Now this treatment may take several forms, not just classical Western medicine. But the intention should be to provide care and alleviation.
The judge's words may have been wildly off the mark, but the judge's decision is squarely in the tradition of western enlightenment, and represents the legal values of the society in which you live.
The judge's remarks were not "wildly off the mark" but went to the very heart of why I think this case is so dangerous.
I didn't answer the question about human sacrifice because, as I said, I don't know of any practiced. As soon as you can inform me differently, I refuse to speculate on that.
You seem to believe we have a clash of preferences, or perhaps even of rights. Not at all. The only right abrogated in this instance is the right of the family to practice their religion as they see fit. Period.
Once again, as far as I'm concerned, this discussion is done, because, frankly, I've made my point, and feel no need to spin my wheels.
You have no problem with polygamy? Would this include industrial and post-industrial nations?
You see no opportunity for an abridgment of the rights of the women in Western economies? Or an abridgment of the rights of the children of the second, third, and subsequent wives in comparison to the children of the first wife?
I wonder if you've paid any attention to reports, testimony, and studies?
Or, for that matter, any issues of basic family law.
You're new reluctance may be judicious, but it is not very sagacious.
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