Coming Soon to New Jersey - Children’s Bill of Rights
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
As a homeschooler, one of my primary interests is how bills such as NJ’s Childrens’ Bill of Rights affect my choice to homeschool.
But this one is different - it will affect ALL parents and ALL children and EVERY taxpayer in NJ.
Carolee Adams, the president of Eagle Forum in New Jersey, has formed an advocacy group on Facebook called “STOP S.2334 - THE NEW JERSEY CHILDREN’s BILL OF RIGHTS!” In her recent post she states:
This Bill represents another unfunded mandate of the already bankrupt State of New Jersey,and a Bill that will undermine the sacred role of parental rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children. Under S2334, those parental rights will then be transferred to the State which will then have the unequivocal authority to decide what is in the best interests of the child in matters concerning health, safety, well-being, and physical and mental development. This intrusive Bill expands the role of the State into the privacy of the family structure in countless ways…
In June of 2006, I posted an article in my blog by homeschooling mom Alexandra Cohen about how her husband, the editor of the Brussels Journal was threatened with prosecution by Belgian authorities because they felt he had not adequately educated his children, and hence, neglected his duties as a parent, which is a criminal offense in Belgium.
This criminal offense is a function of Belgium’s status as a signatory nation on the totalitarian power grab known as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the same treaty that the sponsors of S.2334 are using as the basis for this dangerous New Jersey bill.
Michael Farris pointed out that in 1995 “the United Kingdom was deemed out of compliance” with the Convention “because it allowed parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes without consulting the child.” The HSLDA chairman said that, “by the same reasoning, parents would be denied the ability to homeschool their children unless the government first talked with their children and the government decided what was best. Moreover, parents would no longer have the right to bring up their children according to their own philosophical or religious beliefs, as the government, following the guidelines of a UN “committee of experts” would determine what religious teaching, if any, served the child’s best interest.”
Under President Obama, we are likely to see the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, CEDAW, and other UN treaties that have never been ratified brought up for another vote, sweeping us farther away from constitutional law. Obama has openly promised to “embrace the rule of international law.”
New Jersey, always proud to line up behind anything that will further tax or regulate its beleagured citizens, is only the first of many states that will be willing to pass similar bills.
Susan Critelli will mark 20 years of homeschooling in 2009! She has been blogging since 2006 about the challenges of juggling homeschooling and a home business at Mixing Home Business and Home Schooling, and is a regular contributor to Moms In The Right.
