Religious Right again pushes ‘Parental Rights’ Amendment

July 19, 2012 | Filed under: School Vouchers,US Politics,Views | Posted by:

The Religious Right and its allies are nothing if not persistent. They’re also not very original. 

Today, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is discussing a proposed constitutional amendment dealing with parental rights.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), chair of the subcommittee and friend of the Religious Right, seems pretty harmless at first glance — like any reasonably clever scheme. The proposal has only three short points, one of which is that “the upbringing, education, and care of their children is a fundamental right” that all parents have.

The so-called “Parental Rights Amendment” (PRA) was first introduced in the mid 1990s. Supporters portrayed it as an effort to make sure that parents would have the right to educate and raise their children as they saw fit. Despite a major effort, the proposal quickly flamed out.

The Religious Right and its allies dug up the dead proposal in early 2009, but it didn’t go anywhere that time, either. Franks is surely hoping that the third time is the charm, but no matter how you look at it, the PRA still isn’t very charming.

The PRA doesn’t get any less threatening with age because critics have said that it could still open the door to school voucher plans that subsidize religion. The theory goes that states would be required to pay for private school tuition to help parents exercise their “constitutional right” to oversee the education of their children, which is exactly what the Religious Right wants.

The amendment could also create problems in the public schools. Parents could use it to demand modifications to curriculum or to insist that their children be excused from instruction they don’t like. Creationists, for example, could demand their children be excused from biology courses.

Child-welfare advocates also say the amendment could make it harder to prosecute cases of child abuse.

Americans United has pointed out that the Supreme Court already ruled that parents have the right to direct their children’s education in a 1925 case called Pierce v. Society of Sisters. A more recent case, Troxel v. Granville, invalidated a Washington state law guaranteeing grandparents visitation rights with their grandchildren, leaving such questions firmly in the hands of parents.

Given all that, it seems the PRA isn’t really about “parental rights” at all. As my colleague Rob Boston said in 2009, this is actually about you being forced to pay for someone else’s decision to patronize a private religious school or to engage in home-schooling. It’s also an attempt to give fundamentalist Christians a powerful new weapon with which to harass public schools.

Let’s hope the latest PRA crusade will be the third and final strike for this highly flawed concept.

Related articles:

  1. Dial And The Decalogue: Alabama Senator Pushes Commandments Amendment
  2. Alarming Amendment: Missouri legislators are placing religious liberty in jeopardy
  3. Fischer: No First Amendment Rights for Muslims
  4. Misleading Missouri measure: Amendment harms, not helps, religious liberty
  5. The Equal Rights Amendment Finally Arrives

4 Responses to Religious Right again pushes ‘Parental Rights’ Amendment

  1. avatar ORAXX July 19, 2012 - 3:19 pm

    It is, invariably, those people who make the most noise about their “consvatism” who are the most willing to play fast and loose with the constitution.

    Reply
  2. avatar jay July 19, 2012 - 5:08 pm

    I wouldn’t mind seeing some clear limits on how far the state can go, because there is quite a hodgepodge at the moment. But I have a suspicion this is probably not that. [As a side point, I am somewhat bothered by the 'could make it harder to prosecute cases of child abuse' argument. We have a large number of very bad laws in place just to make certain things 'easy to prosecute'. Law should not be determined by the convenience of law enforcement]

    Reply
    • avatar Charles July 19, 2012 - 6:53 pm

      I disagree. Laws are only as good as their enforceability. A law that does not provide for its enforcement is nothing but an empty political statement on the part of legislators. Unwise laws clog up the legal system and hamper law enforcement. Practicability is more important than morality when it comes to law. An unenforceable law can actually end up working against its own aim and hurting those it was meant to protect.

      Reply
      • avatar jay July 20, 2012 - 8:22 am

        This is the problem. It’s what the ACLU and others have called the ‘lazy policeman’ approach, making the law so loose, so encompassing that law enforcement doesn’t actually have to clearly prove a real criminal act was committed. Drug laws are structured this way (especially definition of ‘possession’ and ‘intent’, laws involving confiscation of property, laws allegedly to prevent ‘money laundering’. Making laws ‘easy to prove’ generally means lowering the bar of ‘criminality’ to an unfairly low level. If it is easy to prosecute a law, there is a very good chance that law has snagged too many innocent people.

        Reply

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