Joel Sogol wrote on 11/22/2005 05:16:14 AM:
> The Alabama Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision granting a
> Madison County father custody of his 6-year-old daughter, based in
> part on evidence the child had been beaten and alienated from her family.
The only relevant thing I saw here in terms of custody was the assertion that the child had been beaten. The article, though, later refers to it as corporal punishment, which I've always understood to mean a spanking, which is a far, far cry from a beating. If the child was truly beaten, then, without question, the child should be removed from the mother's custody. If the child merely received a spanking, then that's no reason to take the child away from the mother.
There are a couple things in this article that are more troubling to me from the standpoint of religious freedom:
"The Sniders also told the child her father and maternal grandfather are 'going to hell,' even though the Sniders knew the father and grandfather 'are loved and cared for very much by the child,' according to trial court documents. The trial court said the mother, Laura Snider, should be teaching religion 'by example,' and not in a way that would be disparaging or critical of the father's beliefs."
The question of whether or not a person is going to hell is a theological question. Some would answer it one way, some would answer it another. It's got nothing to do with whether that person is loved and cared for. And how does the trial court justify telling any parent what means they should use to teach their children religion? If the mother's faith teaches that the father's beliefs are wrong, is she supposed to lie to the child or pretend that it doesn't matter?
I do hope the mother takes this back to the trial court to raise the religious issues (if the "beatings" were actually only spankings). The trial court is setting a precedent here that is seems clearly hostile to the beliefs of any evangelcial that would comes before it, and I can't imagine how the judge telling the mother how to practice her faith could be anything less than an unconstitutional entanglement that violates the establishment clause.
Brad
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