Kevin Corcoran for the Indianapolis Star has a follow up article on the judicial decision to prohibit parents from exposing their child to “non-mainstream religions.” The article is entitled, Paganism ruling stirs outcry.
There isn’t a great deal of new information. The article says that legal experts expect the ruling to be struck down. Hon. Cale Bradford, the trial court judge who made the ruling, can’t comment because it’s a pending case. The father, Thomas E. Jones, Jr. said he posted to two pagan web sites asking that people not call the judge’s office to protest.
A relevant passage from the article:
Before the appeals court would consider constitutional issues of religious freedom, however, it’s more likely to fault a decision by one of Bradford’s commissioners to include the one-paragraph restriction without showing actual or potential harm to the child, said an Indiana family law attorney.
“This decision should be frightening to people of any faith, because who decides what’s mainstream?” said Donna Bays, chairwoman of the Family Law Section of the Indiana State Bar Association. “I have never seen a judge put anything like that in any order involving parties who were in agreement.”
The Indianapolis Star weighed in with an editorial that is entitled Judge Goes Too Far on Parents’ Religion and says that Judge Bradford “badly overstepped his authority.”
It’s blatantly unconstitutional for government, including the courts, to forbid parents from sharing their faith with their children. The only exception is in extreme cases when specific practices endanger a child’s health. That is not the situation in this case.
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