Parenting = “Coaching”?

Lately I’ve been madly running around to various legislative hearings to testify on an assortment of bills. Yesterday, there was the gay marriage bill, which (no surprise) passed from the Judiciary Committee. There were also several other bills, one dealing with protecting the rights of religious foster parents to dictate morality in their homes. The opponents of this bill are afraid that religious foster parents will be too restrictive with the children in their care. They don’t think that the foster parents should be able to impose their set of moral standards on children. Basically, their view is that parents are there to affirm the child’s behavior unless it’s against the law. So, it would be okay for a parent to tell their child to not smoke (as a minor) but it would not be okay for a parent to tell Johnny he can’t cross-dress. One opponent even said that a parent shouldn’t be able to forbid a child from swearing in their home, since that would be placing a moral judgment on what’s appropriate for the child to say. (See how out-of-hand this “tolerance” business has gotten?)

To these people, parenting is about “coaching.” It’s not about being an authority figure for your child. And it’s certainly not about directing the moral upbringing of your child. Unfortunately, insane laws in California that target religious foster parents are driving many good people out of the system. People of faith, who just want to open their homes to a needy child and show them love (which often involves “loving discipline”), are being blacklisted.

And today … I’m testifying against a bill that would force pharmacists in California to dispense contraceptives and emergency contraceptives against their moral or religious convictions. A handful of other states have “freedom of conscience” laws that protect religious pharmacists. California, of course, would be the first state to compel a religious pharmacist to violate his/her conscience. Don’t you ever buy the pro-choice rhetoric. The pro-choicers are not for “choice,” they’re for abortion. If they were for “choice,” they would respect a pharmacist's right to choose too.