I am not sure how many times I have used Isaiah 5:20 to introduce – or conclude – an article, but it once again comes perfectly into play here. Although written 2500 years ago, it perfectly describes the age we are now living in, in the secular West.
The passage says this: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” We seem to be doing this constantly in the post-Christian West. We have managed to condemn virtue while we celebrate vice.
Two recent news items illustrate this so very thoroughly and tragically. Both stories have just appeared this week, both have to do with children, and both demonstrate that the West is now about as morally rotten and debauched as it can be.
The first story has to do with a family in Sweden which had been busted up by the coercive utopians who run that secularist paradise. Because two parents dared to lovingly smack their own children, they have been chucked in jail, and their children have been snatched away from them.
Here is how one news outlet has covered the story: “A Swedish district court has sentenced a couple to nine months each in prison and fined them the equivalent of US $10,650 after they admitted to spanking three of their four children as a normal part of their parenting methods. Corporal punishment of children by parents was made illegal in Sweden in 1979, an early step in what a U.S. parental rights lawyer called the nearly total take-over of parenting by the state in Sweden.
“Court documents, quoted by Sveriges Television, said that the parents, who have not been named in the press, ‘explained that they had used, what they themselves described as spanking, physical punishment as part of their methods for raising the children.’ There is no indication of abuse by the parents in the released documents, with the court noting that the parents ‘had a loving and caring relationship with their children’.”
A loving and caring relationship? Who cares? The State clearly knows far better than any parent how to properly look after children. In the People’s Republic of Sweden faceless bureaucrats are obviously considered to be far superior to mere biological parents when it comes to the wellbeing of children.
The article continues, “Mike Donnelly, Director of International Relations for the US-based Home School Legal Defence Association (HSLDA), told LifeSiteNews.com that it is ‘extremely unlikely’ that the children will ever be returned to their family home. Donnelly said that the case is typical of the stories of many families with traditional values in Sweden: ‘In the area of family rights in Sweden things really aren’t going well there.’
“While the HSLDA does not hold an official position on the use of corporal punishment, Donnelly said it is clearly up to parents to determine whether corporal punishment is an appropriate form of discipline. ‘Parenting has been outsourced, or simply directly taken over by the state in Sweden,’ Donnelly said. ‘And these parents have been jailed for doing what in America would be perfectly normal.’ Ninety percent of Swedish children are in publicly funded day care from extremely early ages, as young as a year or 18 months, he said. It is the position of the state that parents are overruled by the state in areas of child rearing, he said.
“Donnelly said, however, that the best interests of the child are not the state’s highest priority: ‘So let’s take these kids who have had a loving and caring relationship with their parents and send them to foster care, and throw their parents into jail for nine months.’ Donnelly cited the now notorious case of Domenic Johansson, the boy who was snatched by state officials because his parents were homeschooling him, an act that is also illegal in Sweden. ‘The bottom line is, don’t go to Sweden. Don’t move there, if you want to have a normal family’.”
The second story has to do with a family law “expert” who believes we are being far too harsh on child sex offenders, and we should not be so “discriminatory” as to ban them from children. This English egghead is obviously far more concerned about the wellbeing of perverts than she is about the wellbeing of young and vulnerable children.
Here is how this story has been reported: “A ‘blanket ban’ on convicted sex-offenders adopting children is discriminatory, says a report from Helen Reece of the London School of Economics. Reece, a family law expert, has said that each case should be examined separately ‘on its merits.’
“‘Sex offenders shouldn’t all be tarred with the same brush,’ Reece said. ‘People need to be carefully screened for adoption and fostering, but each case should be taken on its merits. There shouldn’t be blanket rules. What somebody has done before is not necessarily what he or she will do again. When someone has served a sentence, as far as you can, you should treat them the same as anyone else.’ The report was published in the latest edition of Child and Family Law Quarterly.”
Here we go again. Here’s the “D” word which trumps everything else. It is now discriminatory to look upon those poor paedophiles as if they are all the same. After all, they have their rights. How can any just and caring society take away their rights?
Besides, their predisposition to children is obviously genetic. They cannot help wanting to rape and abuse children any more than a person can help being red-haired or left-handed. How heartless we have become as a society to deny those poor child abusers the right to freely live as they were born to be.
Sure, a few more innocent kids might get raped, or even killed, but hey, we have to show some compassion here. Those paedophiles have rights like anyone else, and we dare not discriminate against them. After all, such discrimination is the greatest moral evil of our day.
I don’t have to strain my brain very much to imagine what Isaiah would have to say about all this. In fact, what Jesus has to say about it will do rather nicely: “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!” (Matt 18:6-7)
BTW, I did a bit of sniffing around, and just happened to find the contact details for the Swedish Embassy in Australia, just in case any of you are concerned enough about this ripped-apart family to make a little stink about it:
Postal address: Embassy of Sweden, 5 Turrana Street, Yarralumla ACT 2600
Address: 5 Turrana Street
Phone: +61-2-6270 2700
Fax: +61-2-6270 2755
Email: sweden@iimetro.com.au
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/swedish-parents-jailed-for-spanking-children-seized?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4a336034bb-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines11_30_2010&utm_medium=email
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/prohibiting-sex-offenders-from-adoption-discriminatory-says-report?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=081b6c955e-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines12_01_2010&utm_medium=email
[1169 words]