David Cooper wrote:
> During Berlin Wall days, if a mother was climbing over the wall with her
> young son and the mother was shot and killed BUT managed to pitch the
> young boy on over to "the West", would we advocate sending the boy back to
> his father who was in East Berlin?
Unless we wanted to go to war with the USSR we would have!
Funny how much easier it is to tell a nation where to go when they are too
militarily weak to stand up to us, isn't it?
> During Civil War Days, if a mother who was a slave escaped to the North
> with her young son BUT was killed, would we advocate sending the boy back
> to the South to his daddy who was a slave?
Apples and oranges. We wouldn't have been sending the child back to his
father, we would have been sending it back to its _owner_ (which, by the
way, under US law is _precisely_ what we WOULD have done--slaves _were_
returned to their masters, remember?).
Incidentally, the image of the mother "unselfishly giving her life for her
child" is a straw dog. Let's alter that a bit and use the image of a woman
who is hit by a truck running across a Southern California freeway with her
child after illegally crossing the US/Mexico border. Would we refuse to
return _her_ son to his father in Mexico?
Better yet, let's take a somewhat different example. Suppose a woman who
was a US citizen chose to defect to China and was killed. Would _we_ accept
claims that distant relatives living in China were better suited to raise
the child than his US father because _our_ system is corrupt--or would we
threaten to impose sanctions on China unless they immediately returned the
child to his father?
Several years ago a Lesbian couple from a state where gay adoption is legal
went to a state where it is not recognized on a vacation. They had a 12 year
old daughter who was the natural child of one of the women (by artificial
insemination, if it matters) and the adopted child of the other. While on
the trip, the birth mother was killed in a traffic accident--and the state
took the girl away from the surviving parent (arguing that she had no legal
relationship to the child and that the child should be raised by a
heterosexual couple), and placed her in foster care. By your standards,
their action was clearly in the best interests of the child!
Claiming that we are serving the needs of the child by refusing to allow
him to return to his father is pure jingoism. Perhaps those who have no
knowledge of child psychology can be justified in believing that nonsense,
but as a psychology instructor you should certainly know better. Right now,
the child's interests will be best served by reuniting him with his
surviving parent--not by using him as a pawn in a political game with a
nation we have arbitrarily decided to punish for over 35 years for doing
something (hosting missile launchers) that we _praised_ our allies bordering
the USSR for doing for us!
Rick
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Rick Adams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Social Sciences
Jackson Community College
Jackson, Michigan
