Judge Says Parents Can't Teach Pagan Beliefs to their Child

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Thursday May 26, 2005 · 4:45 AM PDT

2005/05/26 · 04:45

Update [2005-5-27 10:4:38 by mhojo]:I've posted a follow up diary for anyone who might be interested.

---------------- (Original entry): There has to be something else going on here. Otherwise, I just can't fathom how a judge could think for a second he was acting constitutionally. Kevin Corcoran for the Indianapolis Star has an article entitled Judge: Parents can't teach pagan beliefs

Republican Marion County Superior Court Judge, Cale J. Bradford, put a provision in a couple's divorce decree that prohibits the couple from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." Both parents practice Wicca, a spiritual belief that concentrates on worship of nature.

The Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights, appears to have gotten the ball rolling on the religious interference by the State of Indiana. The child attends a parochial Catholic school. (It's not clear whether that school is Bishop Chatard, but the article mentions that the father had attended that Catholic school as a non-Christian.) The Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau put in its report to the court, "There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones' lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages."

The father says that the court inserted the religious restrictions on its own, and not at the request of either parent. Hopefully there is more to this story that makes the judge's order something other than wildly and obviously unconstitutional.

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