Exorcise The Demons
Posted: September 6th, 2007 | Author: Sam | Filed under: Blog Posts, Children, Frustration, Politics |
Let’s suppose I came over to your house, tore off your clothing, and poured olive oil all over you before you were able to call the police. Suppose that when those officers arrived, you told them that I was trying to exorcise your demons. Do you think that the police would let me walk away, without being charged? Of course not.
Take almost exactly the same scenario, but instead, let’s assume that you were my child. I still tore off your clothing, and still poured olive oil all over you before could escape long enough to call the police. Upon arriving, do you think that the police would let me walk away, without being charged? Everybody who said of course not needs to think again.
I’m basing this off the scantest of available information in the above article. (Here’s a bit more.) Still, does it make even the slightest amount of sense that these parents would walk away from this apparent assault scot free, without ever having to go to trial?
The District Attorney claims that there isn’t enough available evidence to prosecute the parents; apparently, the daughter’s testimony just won’t do. Still, there is a troubling story here of children being treated very, very differently than adults would be, given similar circumstances. (Oddly, the “child” in this case was 18, which confuses things even more. She had to be taken into protective custody, which is unexpected given that 18-year-olds can usually just leave. I don’t think the state can force an 18-year-old into anything, although this is worth exploring. Was the child unable to care for herself?)
No matter. I have used my tiny little soapbox to protest the treatment of children before. In that case, I was protesting something that adults don’t think matters, because to the minds of many adults, children don’t matter. This case is obviously different. Here we’re not talking about a dresscode. We’re talking about the health and well-being of an individual and the refusal of the state to step in simply because her health and well-being was threatened by parents.
A judge once told me that I could anything I wanted to my child as, “long as she doesn’t end up bleeding.” I was completely taken aback by this. Imagine a judge telling another adult that, because his assailant didn’t make him bleed, no crime was committed. The outrage would be unbelievable. But when it comes to children, we mistakenly believe that parents have this sphere of invincibility that prevents intervention in anything except the most hideous of examples.
Why? Why would we ever set the standard that we’ll allow abuse to occur, but only to those most vulnerable to it? It as if we’ve got our logic and priorities exactly backwards.
Part of the answer is the insistence by parents that any attempt by the state to raise their kids is over the line, and as a parent, I completely agree. I’ll raise my daughter to be a godless, gay-loving heathen if I so choose (and I do). But surely there is a difference between the state raising our children, and the law intervening on behalf of those who simply cannot defend themselves. This sort of egregious double standard has been witnessed before, of course, in which the adult places his or her needs (rights!) ahead of the child’s for no reason other than vanity.
This attitude though, of children as property and not as people, is counter-productive for our society. Although there are obviously times when parents must intervene for the safety and well-being of their children, allowing them free-reign to do as they please has lead us to a place where the rights of children are conceived as only being those which don’t come into conflict with those of adults. Frankly, that is unnacceptable.
Sam, you haven’t proposed any solution. What if parents encourage their children to not only be gay-loving, but to be gay, even though statistics show that gays have shorter life expectancies and higher incidence of suicide, depression and substance abuse?
If you were conservative, you might call that abuse. And you might want the state to step in. You see, the shoe can go on either foot.
The sad fact is, legislation can only do so much - it is limited in whom it can protect, and in what situations.
The best (and biblical) answer is that each of The Five Spheres of Government has its own responsibilities.
And if parents are, for instance, abrogating their responsibility, someone else, often civil government, must step in, if to do nothing else than to protect the innocent and try to get the responsible party (the parent) to take responsibility again OR ELSE.
While casting out demons of our children may be mental abuse as bad or worse than telling them that promiscuity or homosexuality are ok and natural, the law can really do nothing in this arena unless physical harm is done, I think.
The answer is, of course, that legislation has limits, but there are other things we can do to renew and redeem society. I don’t have time to go into it now, and haven’t written on it, but basically, based on The Tripartite Makeup of Man, we can address:
- man’s body through legislation (physical rules)
- man’s soul through education
- man’s spirit through regeneration (preaching salvation bring rebirth to the spirit)
Of course, you don’t believe in the last, and perhaps that some other spiritual/moral preaching might change the spirit of man, or you might altogether ignore the spirit of man or confuse it with the soul, and stick to education.
In any case, legislation is limited and you will have to move to the other arenas (education and regeneration) in order to affect the change you want to see, imho.