There was a very interesting ruling last week by a panel of the Colorado Supreme Court on the rights of divorced parents who lose the right to make decisions about their children's religious upbringing. I think the ruling has some very serious implications on our ever-eroding right to privacy, and I will have more thoughts about this soon.
The case concerns Rebekah and Joseph McSoud, who divorced in 2001. In 2004, a court gave Joseph McSoud the responsibility to make decisions regarding the religious upbringing of their sole child, a boy who is now 7 years old. The couple would share decision-making responsibilities for all other issues.
The boy had been baptized Catholic and the father wanted him raised in that religion. Rebekah McSoud, who is Protestant, challenged the constitutionality of several provisions in the ruling that she said improperly limited how far her religion might influence the child.
This was the first time a Colorado court had been asked to decide this issue. A three-judge panel of the appellate court agreed with the former Mrs. McSoud and overturned the provision in the district court's order that restricted her right to take the boy to her church unless she agreed to allow him to participate in Catholic activities during her parenting time. The case was remanded to the district court to resolve other issues.
Many states are wrestling with child custody cases in which one parent insists that their religion take precedence over that of the ex-spouse. This is a very thorny issue and parents can quickly come to an impasse.
But I am concerned whenever a court - or a government body for that matter - starts to intrude on fundamental issues of privacy, and certainly there is no matter more private than a person's religious beliefs and a couple's right to infuse their child with their beliefs.
We need to give some serious thought on where our rights to privacy are going in this nation.
It seems to me that people are fine with invasions of privacy when it comes to issues of national security; at least the polls show that people are not overly concerned with any extralegal means the Bush Administration has used to eavesdrop on potential terrorists. But even some Republican leaders are starting to realize that 'acceptable' invasions of privacy set precedent for other invasions that many people are unwilling to accept.
In that same way, incremental invasions of our privacy in child-rearing decisions may seem acceptable on a case-by-case basis, but they set precedent which in the aggregate may cause some concern.
I'm going to ponder this issue further and post again on this subject.
|
|