California Gov. Jerry Brown stepped into the middle of a debate over parental rights Sunday by signing legislation giving children 12 or older the power to consent to medical care involving the prevention of sexually transmitted disease.
via New law lets 12-year-olds consent to preventive care for STDs – latimes.com.
TAL Commentary: Who needs parents? We have the almighty state raising, educating, and nurturing our children. With the state as parents, children can’t use a tanning bed, but having sex is A-OK — just be sure to get your state-sanctioned STD treatment first. Confidentially, of course. In either case, the biological parents are irrelevant — their permission to let the child get a tan is irrelevant, and their permission to let the child get STD medical care is irrelevant. The implicit rationale is that children are too irresponsible to get a tan, but not to have casual sex. This is what happens when you give the state the power to rule over you and your children.
When did we take parenting away from parents and give it to the state? It’s a question worth asking, because if we can figure out when it happened, maybe we can undo it. Many state assaults on liberty are either direct or close attacks on the family, because strong families create independent (of the state), productive individuals. Who needs the state if you can depend on family, friends, and church in time of need? As the state’s business is to create dependency, the family is a prime strategic target.
Liberals support a broad range of attacks on family autonomy — welfare, union laws, child labor laws, contraception laws, public schools, same-sex marriage, the income tax, the estate and gift tax, and so on. Conservatives need to recognize these assaults on the family and counter them. If the Tea Party movement can install some small-government, low-tax candidates who take a strong stand on principles of liberty, it will be a step in the right direction.
For Liberty,
Manny Edwards
I’m not sure why you think public schools, welfare, same-sex marriage are attacks on family autonomy. Last time I checked we are able to opt out of all of these. You are welcome to turn down welfare, you can still home school or send your children to private school like I do, and no one is forcing you or me to marry someone of the same sex. While you may not like that the government created publi…c schools to give all children the opportunity of an education or that children living in poverty through no fault of their own receive help from the government I don’t follow your logic that this results in loss of family autonomy. Just consider the alternatives without public schools or any welfare at all. I like the sentiment, but I just don’t think your offering a workable alternative that would solve the problems. Continued on next comment…
I hate taxes as much as the next guy, but I just don’t hear any concrete plans from the Tea Party. The liberals may be wrong about many things, and the goverment often executes the plan poorly, at least they try to solve the problems. The only comment I’ll make about your stance on same-sex marriage is that is seems to run contrary to your goal of family autonomy. Your own arguments would suggest that you would encourage government to stay out of the marriage business. If two people of the same sex choose to start a family and wish to get married I would think you would wish to defend their right to do so without any government infringement, or does that autonomy only apply to families that meet with the Tea Parties approval.
Fantastic Stuff, do you have a twitter profile?