Spread it far and wide, folks.

[gridlore]

Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs
Father appeals order in divorce decree that prevents couple from exposing son to Wicca.

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.

Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.

Bradford refused to remove the provision after the 9-year-old boy's outraged parents, Thomas E. Jones Jr. and his ex-wife, Tammie U. Bristol, protested last fall.

Through a court spokeswoman, Bradford said Wednesday he could not discuss the pending legal dispute.

The parents' Wiccan beliefs came to Bradford's attention in a confidential report prepared by the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights. Jones' son attends a local Catholic school.

"There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones' lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages," the bureau said in its report.

And the conservatives complain about activist judges?

Here's the contact information for the court. Please let them know how you feel about this gross assault on the First Amendment.

The Office of the Court Administrator
City-County Building
200 E. Washington Street, T-1221
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
Office (317) 327-4747
Fax (317) 327-3844

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

At the risk of totally missing the point....

They've decided to send him to a religious school. Catholic, to be precise. I don't know any nine-year-olds with the mental maturity to handle being taught two different and contradictory religious systems. Surely the sensible thing to do is to put him in a secular school and teach him one religion, if that's what they want to do?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

That's up to the parents to decide. I've had friends who were Jewish and attended Catholic schools.

The outrage here is a judge has forbidden the parents from teaching their faith to their child because it isn't "mainstream" (read: Christian.) This is horrendous violation of the civil rights of the parents.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I find that weird. I just don't see sending your kid to a school run by another religion, especially one that (supposedly) persecuted your's.

Assuming what you quoted was accurate, the judge was apparently ruling that teaching the kid one religion at home and a totally different one at school was not in the kid's best interests. One assumes that the same judgement would have been rendered had the parents been Buddists...

Interfaith?

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who has explicitly decided to raise her children in 2 religions, I think that's bogus. The problem is NOT teaching two different religious systems. The problem is teaching that both are "the only right thing to believe and anyone who doesn't believe it is damned".


Let's see, my mother is an ethnic Jew, my father claimed to be Buddhist (but went to the Christian church twice a year, guess when?), my great aunts were all Christian Scientists, the Baha'i husband's step-family is Mormon, .....

Re: Interfaith?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

I used to work with a guy whose maternal family were Eastern European Jews, and the paternal family was Irish Catholics. He described meetings between his grandmothers as "Samurai Guilt."

[kengr]

The article specifically states that the kid is attending the parochial school as a non-Christian.

This *does* happen as in some areas the parochial schools are the best choice for academic reasons. That is, the students learn better there.

So if the school accepted him knowing he isn't christian, much less Catholic, I haver to assume they have rules about that sort of thing.

two different religions

[goldiesdream.livejournal.com]

Raising a child with two different religions isn't that unheard of, actually. I know quite a few people from opposite ends of the religious pool, as it were. My son will be raised with a knowledge in three and he will be allowed to choose. It's amazing to me that we live in a country that was formed, so the history books teach, to escape religious persecution (among other things) and yet here we are...

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

I would allege, with a far greater degree of proof based on sociological studies, that deliberately placing a young child in Catholic school amounts to emotional abuse.

As the joke has it, a young Jewish boy is in lots of trouble and is kicked out of both secular and Jewish schools. They enroll him as a last resort in Catholic school. He straightens out and gets top grades. A year or so later, the parents ask why.

"Well, the first thing I saw when I walked in was some Jewish guy nailed to a cross. So I knew they were serious."

The reality is much uglier. School-sanctioned harassment is only the beginning. Not to mention that one could easily allege a RICO conspiracy to violate boys' civil rights by sodomizing them.

But I feel certain that Mr. Conservative Judge simply sees a chance to pick on a religion he doesn't like. Men like that shouldn't be in positions of authority.

Getting off the subject, somewhat....

[kshandra]

I went voluntarily. None of us - not me, not murphymom, nobody - realized how much discrimination I would face. Not because I wasn't Catholic (I was, at least in theory), but because I wasn't as affluent as my classmates. (I attended two years on a full scholarship. They restructured the financial aid program at the end of my sophomore year in such a way that I was unable to remain.) It was subtle, but it was there.

Well, most of it was subtle. The day I walked into the bathroom in the 400 wing and found the "Kirsten Nelson Gossip Column," complete with ugly caricature labeled with things like "Funky shoes (from her funky mother)" - not so much. Nothing quite like being the freshman all the other frosh pick on, lemmetellya.

[razordemon.livejournal.com]

I was irritable when I woke up. Now I'm just pissed off.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

What's the problem? Isn't Wicca a mainstream religion? Heck, even "normal" people have heard of it, unlike my libertarian discordianism.

[tim-e-bear.livejournal.com]

Until relatively recently, Wicca was officially forbidden in Canada, oddly enough.