Sam sent me a link to an Andrew Sullivan post discussing alleged discrimination against parents who were atheist. Eugene Volokh wrote a law article that cited 70 recent cases in which atheistic parents faced tougher obstacles in child custody cases.
Sullivan points to this because he believes he has found an example of the hypocrisy of the Christian Right, with whom he has declared war on because of gay marriage.
He closes out his post with this:
Of course, this is an outrageous attack on religious liberty. Imagine if Christian parents were denied custody because of their faith. O’Reilly would have weeks of programming. But atheists? Naah. When Christianists declare that they are fighting for religious freedom, bring this issue up. It will determine whether they are in good faith, so to speak, or not.
If you agree with Sullivan, you are in "good faith." If not, you must be a hypocrite. I will not accept his premise because I both agree with and disagree with Sullivan.
I would hold that children who have the opportunity to nuture and grow the spiritual part of their nature would be more wholly educated. Countless studies show how much happier, healthier, etc. devout people are compared with the general population and the irreligious.
Ignoring one aspect of a person, be it their physical, mental, emotional or spiritual side, will hinder the overall growth of that person. It is better to encourage the entire person.
Now having said all that and enraged atheist parents, let me say that none of that should be enforced by the government. Courts should not be able to mandate a father go to church, in order to obtain joint custody of his child.
The decision to keep a child from church, may be detrimental to that child. Even if one ignores the spiritual side of life, in general, regular church attenders come out better in life. Just for the social aspect of it, church attendance is beneficial to an individual.
However, the government’s job is not to mandate that everyone act in the best possible way. Their job is to keep us safe from bad guys, be they criminals or terrorists.
Even in child custody cases, the judge’s job is not to deny custody because of what they think best (often times they are wrong). They should evaluate each parent and as long as the parent loves the child and wants what is best for them, the court should have no issues in granting some type of custody or visitation.
I do not want to go down the route of government using religion to determine who is a suitable parent. That is a dangerous road, one that Christians, especially, should be forcefully against.
Sorry, Sully. I won’t be caught in your "hypocrite trap." Just as gays are not some monolithic, uniform group, neither are Christians, even conservative, evangelical ones.
One should try being an agnostic homosexual man hoping to adopt one day; those atheists are a bunch of whiners. (I am being facetious if one could not tell.)
I don't think we should be filtering people based on their religion. But sociology supports the idea that the best home for a child is with a mother and father. I think we should think twice about placing children in single-parent or same-sex parent homes.
Of course you would Seeker, primarily because you simply don't care about the vast majority of children who go unadopted in this country. Quite frankly, I'd rather than children end up with parents who want them: straight, gay, single or otherwise.
But Christians who oppose things like gay adoption are crucifying children stuck in foster homes, in state homes, and in state care for the rest of their lives. In other words, the victims of profound abuse at the hands of their "parents" aren't allowed to live anywher but in emotionally cold shelters, because god forbid a child live with two women, or two men.
I sometimes wonder if you have any idea of what you're saying. We shouldn't "think twice" about placing children – we need to place thousands of them that are unwanted by most adopting couples. We need to place them in homes willing to accept them. You're so cruel sometimes Seeker.
Aaron,
Sullivan makes an excellent point: all of those Christians who care "so deeply" about religious freedom don't actually give a hoot about the religious freedom of anybody but other like-minded Christians. That's why we'll never see a defense of non-religious parents on those stupid religious news shows. Or, we'll never see a defense of Muslims prayer in school. Or whatever.
I just wish that the (some) Christians who feel this way would be honest. "It isn't that we believe in religious freedom for everybody. We just believe in religious freedom for ourselves."
Finally, raising a child religious hardly seems like a good thing to me. This is all a matter of interpretation of course, but I think there probably exists as much evidence pointing out that conventional religious followers faith is as harmful as it is good.
So, if I lie to my son, that will make me a good parent?
Of course I am being inflammatory here, but it does touch on a very simple principle that I believe you are missing, Aaron… I do not believe that God exists
Therefore, to me, it would be a greater misstep for me to tell him I believe in something when I do not. Will I discourage him from attending church or asking questions about God? No. I will, however, explain to him the questions I have pondered and discuss the conclusions I have come to.
Where do you get off making these blanket statements? Oh wait… that is the point of the blog…
And please show me these "Countless Studies" on the happiness of Christians you speak of. Who were they sponsored by? The people in Jonestown were happy right up until they drank the Kool-Aid… WTF does that matter?
The BTK killer is a Christian… is HE a good parent?
Well, Aaron, you finally got me mad about something… Good job!
I wonder if we'll ever have an atheist – or even agnostic – president. Atheism is political poison in this home of the brave.
Lonnie,
I'm not advocating lying to your son. I simply said that ignoring the spritiual side of humanity will, in my opinion, hinder the overall growth of a person.
I think you should be honest with your son, tell him what you believe and let him make up his own mind. You won't find me arguing with you on that.
You take what I said, filtered it through your perceptions and had me saying things I never said.
I never said anybody who calls themselves a Christian is by default a good parent or even a good person. I never said that a non-Christian is by defalut a bad person or a bad parent.
If you will notice what I wrote, I didn't even say Christians are happier. I said devout, just spiritual people in general. The most recent study linking church attendance with overall happiness was done by the Pew Research group, hardly a right-wing advocacy group.
i hope everyone knows that the title was not my actual opinion, just the stereotyped opinion presented by Sullivan.
Sam, I think the point would be stronger for your adoption argument if there were not countless families waiting and hoping to adopt. There is no shortage of potential adoptive parents, even if you exclude gay and unmarried couples. The adoption process in this country is way too bureaucratic and expensive.
I also agree that unfortunately many Christians can be hypocritical, but that is simply human nature. Everyone wants to protect and encourage their own. Not many people want to stand up for (vocally) the rights of those they disagree with.
Louis, possibly but probably not soon. I agree that atheism probably is "political poision," but so are advocating anything that the vast majority of people disagree with.
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in some type of God, so a politician better at least pay some type of lip service to that or he/she has isolated a huge chunk of the population.
I agree with Lonnie on a couple of points:
– parents should model integrity of belief, not feign religion because it might be "good" for kids
– bad religion can definitely be bad for kids. But values and belief can be imparted in a healthy way, and should be. But in all cases, kids should be taught how to reason for themselves so that when they become pre-teens, they are prepared to do a good job of developing their own world view
– good religion, including healthy community with xian values and emphasis on developing an innter life w/ God can be great for kids
Yeah, what seeker said.
No really that reminded me that I wanted to make clear that people can use religion to exploit people, including children, there is no question about that.
However, just as atheists don't want to use murderous communist dictators as the logical consequence of their belief system; neither do Christians want to use kooks as theirs.
So the moral is, if you are a Christian and want to impart your values to your kids, you should do so. And, if you an Atheist and want to impart your values to your kids, you should do so. I don't think much can be stated beyond that, depite the claims of some here.
Agreed.
Aaron,
The issue is that adoptive parents don't want to adopt the dregs of society: abused and battered and emotionally unstable children. What I find cruel is this nonsense about preventing gays from adopting. There will ALWAYS be more kids available than parents who want to take them, because most prospective parents aren't interested in adopting damaged goods. They want pristine babies who are perfect, not abused seven-year-olds who might not be perfect.
That's the cruelty.
Agreed, more parents want to adopt "perfect" children, but do you think that gay couples are going to be any less likely to do the same?
Adopting an abused seven-year-old would be a difficult thing, a challenging thing and unfortunately not many people want to do so.
I can't say that I wouldn't think twice about it, but I did offer to take in a 18-year-old, drug addict, high school drop-out who was in jail when I talked to him. I didn't have room for him in my house, but I felt like God wanted me to offer him a way out. He didn't take it and he ended up in the same mess once he got out. He now has a baby with no way of supporting it. I feel for him and pray for him.
Too many Christians, including myself, walk on the other side of the street when we see a "problem" person. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We should know better, above anyone else with the example of Jesus.
Aaron,
Of course, on the one hand, you're right to observe that gays wouldn't necessarily adopt those children. But they certainly ought to have the chance to. These drives to ban gay parents drives are downright cruel and unAmerican. There exists absolutely no evidence that has been fairly collected and understood that indicates that gays are bad parents. For the victims of abuse, being in a somebody's home is far better than being in a state run home.
But then that is too seperate issues. I know you are passionate about children and seeing them in better care. I understand that.
But the arguement for allowing gays to adopt should not be made from the abused child angle because nothing says that they would be more likely to adopt the "problem" children.
You can argue on the basis of freedom, rights, etc., but it is disingenious to use the emotional issue of child abuse as a reason for gay adoption when no evidence suggests that one has anything to do with the other.
Aaron,
I worked in social services. I knew gay parents who had adopted these children. If the (some) Christians in question have their way, those kids would have nowhere else to go. I think that this is precisely the reason to use this argument. Those Christians opposed to gay adoption are willing sacrifice the well-being of children to forward their unAmerican gay hatred. It is as simple as that.