Thursday, January 19, 2006

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Can the Family LAW Legal System be made easier Legally...YES!

A CHILD's BILL of RIGHTS is PARAMOUNT to our FUTURE

Disputes involving both parental and children's rights have escalated in EVERY State in the UNION in recent years.

So the legal, moral, and ethical question naturally arises:
How should Federal and State laws react to these events?

Such an inquiry requires us to examine HISTORY for a reasonable and balanced legal answer.

An understanding of American history would help. The journey of the Pilgrims to Massachusetts was a journey of religious conscience from the orthodoxy of Anglican England. So, too, was the journey of the Society of Friends to Pennsylvania.Harlan Fiske Stone, later to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, drew on this history when he wrote: "Both morals and sound policy require that the state should not violate the conscience of the individual. All our history gives confirmation to the view that liberty of conscience has a moral and social value which makes it worthy of preservation at the hands of the state. So deep in its significance and vital, indeed, is it to the integrity of man's moral and spiritual nature that nothing short of the self-preservation of the state should warrant its violation; and it may well be questioned whether the state which preserves its life by a settled policy of violation of the conscience of the individual will not in fact ultimately lose it by the process."

As a society, we have long recognized the truth of Stone's words, refusing even to compel the religious conscience of objectors to serve in wartime.

Is "Identity Politics" the politics of group-based movements?

The accepted definition of the term is: "Identity politics is the politics of group-based movements claiming to represent the interests and identity of a particular group, rather than policy issues relating to all members of the community. The group identity may be based on ethnicity, class, religion, sex, sexuality or other criteria."

Identity politics divides society into distinct political classes and declares them to be antagonistic to each other’s interests: blacks against whites, women against men, gays against heterosexuals. The focus is on the "rights" of the specific group— that is, those things the group claims to deserve and wishes to acquire by law. The "rights" are commonly based on the existence of historical oppression.

Identity politics is a sharp departure from the traditionally American ideal that rights are universal, not particular. That is, that all human beings possess the same rights, which are not determined by differences such as sex or race.

The presence of slavery in the United States into the 19th century reminds us that the ideal was not always realized, and sometimes not even closely. Nevertheless, it was the ideal of the Declaration of Independence—"all men are created equal" — toward which politics consistently moved.

The abolition of slavery said race was irrelevant to the rights an individual could claim. The enfranchisement of women said much the same thing. When Susan B. Anthony argued for women’s rights, she did not ask for special treatment, only for the full embrace of human rights. She wrote: "We [women] have stood with the black man in the Constitution over half a century…Enfranchise him, and we are left outside with lunatics, idiots and criminals."

Identical rights under the law carries a strong presumption that all individuals share the fundamental political interest of having those rights respected. Consider freedom of speech. A woman benefits from the protection of free speech no less than a man does. Arguably, a history of oppression makes freedom of speech more personally important to a woman; it is part of what will allow her to rise through education and merit.

By contrast, identity politics says that women and men do not share a similar interest in freedom of speech.

For example, if a man expresses perceived sexist views, he is said to "silence" women and, so, his speech should be restrained through policies such as sexual harassment laws or campus speech codes. Thus, freedom of speech is converted from a human right into a tool of oppression that must be blunted by force.

The demand by women to have their rights equally recognized so they were no longer in a separate legal category "with lunatics, idiots and criminals."

The early feminists who fought for true equality did not speak of "special interests." They spoke of human rights."

Aren't our Nation's CHILDREN deserving of a simplified and non-adversarial process of FAMILY LAW that encourages "EQUALITY / Balance, Love and Commitment to the CHILD not to ONE PARENT over an other, and that of fundamentally simple "truth and basic common sense?"

"So It Shall be Done on Earth - as it is in Heaven"


Stephen Rene
e-Business-Professionals
Non-Profit: www.ParentsWhoCare.us
Bio: http://ebusinesspros.expage.com
Blog: http://FathersWhoCare.blogspot.com
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"ONLY when "we as a people bound by love" truly start to help one another - we will in the end - ultimately - help ourselves." Be a Part of the Solution - Join Parents Who Care today!

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