The more I dig into cases similar to this the more I think that judges should not be allowed to consider religion at all. It's just too ripe for abuse, too open for a judge to be prejudiced against one party to the case because of their religion or (more commonly) their lack of it. I am astonished at the fact that appeals courts have refused to overturn such rulings even when they've been outrageously wrong.
Ed Brayton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 4:22 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Shielding child whose mother is Catholic from father's Wiccan lifestyle? A recent New York state appellate court decision upheld a father's petition for overnight visitation, but stressed that this was done only because the father and his fiancee "agreed to refrain from exposing the child to any ceremony connected to their religious practices," and because the Family Court could mandate, in the visitation order, "protections against her exposure to any aspect of the lifestyle of the father and his fiancée which could confuse the child's faith formation." I tracked down the trial court decision, and it turns out the father's and his fiancée's "lifestyle" and "religious practices" were Wiccan. The trial court concluded that the child (age 10 at the time of the appellate court's decision) "is too young to understand that different lifestyles or religions are not necessarily worse than what she is accustomed to; they are merely different. For her, at her age, different equates to frightening. So when her father and her father's fiancé[e] take her to a bonfire to celebrate a Solstice, and she hears drums beating and observes people dancing, she becomes upset and scared." There was no further discussion in the trial court order of any more serious harm to the child, though of course there's always the change that some evidence was introduced at trial but wasn't relied on in the order. Given this, should it be permissible for a court to protect the child from becoming "upset and scared" by ordering that a parent not "expos[e the child] to any aspect of [the parent's] lifestyle ... which could confuse the child's faith formation"? Eugene _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
