Home Schooling Families Taste Victory

By Theosebes

This week, Susan E. Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations made a visit along with UNICEF to a classroom at the Harlem Children’s Zone. She spoke with an audience of eighth and ninth graders about volunteerism and shared that she hoped they would have similar opportunities to engage with the United Nations and with young people in the developing world like she did at their age. She said, “Your generation will have more to do than any other generation with people in other countries.” According to the New York Times article June 22, 2009, In Harlem, Ambassador to U.N. Urges Volunteerism, she talked about the civil war in  The Congo, and the supplies that UNICEF, in honor of Harlam Children’s Zone, would be donating to this area. “Kids all over the U.S., and particularly here in New York, need to understand how their security, future and economic livelihood is linked to what happens in other parts of the world,” she said. “They’re not passive bystanders in this life, even as young people.”

Benign as this might seem, there is more to the story. Yesterday morning an email was sent out to members of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in regard to this visit. What the New York Times didn’t report was shared in the E-lert sent from HSLDA. According to the email, Susan Rice told this group of students that the administration officials are actively discussing “when and how it might be possible to join” (that is, ratify) the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As before, she also communicated what a disgrace it is that the U.S. would stand with only Somalia against such a widely accepted treaty.

Michael Farris, HSLDA Chairman, asked the members to take action by calling the White House and their Congressional leaders, letting them know that they strongly oppose the “anti-family and anti-American treaty”. He also asked that calls be made to Ambassador Susan Rice’s office at the United Nations voicing these concerns.

A few hours after the initial E-lert from HSLDA, another email came through sharing this fantastic news: “The office of UN Ambassador Susan Rice has been inundated with calls! The first phone line we sent out has been completely shut down, and the voice mail system for all of their lines has been crashed.”

Home Schooling families stepped up to represent not only their rights, but the rights of all Americans. The grassroots movement that took place yesterday must continue on a larger scale by educating all Americans about the danger of this U.N. treaty and placing calls to their elected officials.

Once again, our liberal friends in Washington, who claim to love America, are covertly hoping to ratify CRC making it the law of the land here in the United States helping to strip away the rights of parents in America and allow the U.N. to dictate what proper parenting looks like at a global level.

Both Drudge and Free Republic reported on this development on June 24, 2009, but this has been on the back burner for Barbara Boxer as reported earlier this year by FoxNews.com. “Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging the U.S. to ratify a United Nations measure meant to expand the rights of children, a move critics are calling a gross assault on parental rights that could rob the U.S. of sovereignty.”

According to J. Michael Smith, HSLDA President, in Washington Times Op-ed—U.N. Treaty Might Weaken Families

“Article 43 of the CRC establishes an international committee on the rights of the child to examine compliance by member nations. This committee, which sits in Geneva, has final authority concerning interpretation of the language contained in the CRC.

Two central principles of the CRC clearly are contrary to current U.S. laws related to parent-child relationships. The CRC provides that in all matters relating to children, whether private or public, or in courts, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. Additionally, nations should ensure that children are capable of expressing their views freely in all matters affecting them, giving due weight to the age and maturity of the child.

This is contrary to traditional American law, which provides that absent proof of harm, courts and social workers simply do not have the authority to intervene in parent-child relationships and decision-making. The importance of this tradition and practice is that the government may not substitute its judgment for that of the parent until there is proof of harm to the child sufficient to justify governmental intervention. It is clear that in two very important areas of the parent-child relationship, religion and education, there will be potential for tremendous conflict.

The international committee in Geneva, in reviewing the laws of practice of countries that have ratified the CRC, has expressed its concern that parents could homeschool without the view of the child being considered; that parents could remove their children from sex-education classes without the view of the child being considered; that parents were legally permitted to use corporal punishment; and that children didn’t have access to reproductive health information without parental knowledge.

The bottom line is the CRC would drastically weaken the United States’ sovereignty over family life, which would have a substantial impact on every American family.”

To find out more on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, visit www.parentalrights.org/learn.

Our sovereignty as parents in America will be threatened by the United Nations if our Administration and Congress ratify this treaty. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and teach my children to do the same. We must not lie down on this issue for the sake of our children and grandchildren. We must fight with everything we have to remain One Nation, Under God, not One Nation caving into the demands of the world.

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