Karen Selick Quotes
In many cases, if the custodial parent decides to move across the country, or decides to make it difficult for the access parent to obtain access, the non-custodial parent has suffered a loss that, while not as severe as the death of a child, is certainly a severe loss. That parent gets no compensation whatsoever for the loss of that child through divorce. In fact, what we actually do is we turn around and kick him in the teeth one more time by saying that not only do you lose your child, but you now have the privilege of paying money every month to the person who did this to you. That is why, in my brief, I recommended changing the custody laws.
Karen Selick, Canadian Legal Columnist & Political Philosopher, Parliamentary Testimony, Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, Ottawa, April 28, 1998
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
A fatwa is a religious legal ruling.
Theological & Legal Expert. A fatwa is a religious legal ruling. The frequent problem of Muslim men who marry American women, and if there is a divorce, the man kidnaps the child and returns to an Islamic country where the wife never gets to see the children causes a very difficult problem for American diplomats because even though there is an American court decision against the father, the very act of taking a custody dispute to a civil court contravenes Islamic law so there will be no extradition as the Islamic country takes the position that there was never an original legitimate court decision.
Citizen of U. S. & Israel
This is a fascinating quotation. In general we associate religious fundamentalism and especially theocracy with retrograde and ancient views of living with modernity avoided wherever possible. However, in Iran, where almost all other fundamentalist leaders have claimed that in vitro fertilization in general and 3rd-party donation in particular are against God’s law, the Supreme Leader, not only allowed this techniques but also instituted major programs of birth control and in vitro fertilization to allow the woman to control her reproduction. His stricture was that the parents of these children bring them up following Islamic law.
This was an amazingly controversial quotation. At first glance it seemed like a typical position that a very conservative, anti-government politicization might take—the government should not interfere with a parents bringing up their children. However, there was a more ominous part of the quotations. While everyone in America would certainly agree with Paul that the Government does not “own” the children, there are few who would agree with the point that follows—that the Parents “own” the child. Paul reveals the normally hidden aspect of his politics—that he is highly influenced by the extreme, Biblical Literalist Fundamentalist Christians and Jews. In the Old Testament, the Father really did OWN the child. The latter was his chattel. A father had the legal and duty-bound power of life and death over his children. Most American Christians and Jews have long since abandoned the literal biblical notion of children being owned by a father and today see a child as a person who can sometimes need the protection of the state just like any other citizen. And there are occasions where the child must be PROTECTED from the parents who may be acting within their fundamentalist notions of Biblical rights and duties, but not with their civil rights and duties. Ownership, of a child is not one of the modern civil rights of parents.
