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Thank you for this opportunity to testify in support of H.R. 1946, the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act of 1995. My name is Greg Erken. I am Executive Director of Of the People, a non-profit, non-partisan grassroots organization working to enact a proposed Parental Rights Amendment to state constitutions. Rep. Steve Largent is Of the People's National Vice Chairman. State legislators in 29 states are sponsoring the Parental Rights Amendment, and a citizens' initiative drive to enact a similar Amendment has recently been launched in Colorado.
Of the People strongly supports the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act as a much-needed redress to what has become a systemic violation of parental rights.
As others have noted, the U.S. Supreme Court has created a parental rights doctrine beginning with the Meyer and Pierce decision from the 1920s. But though these decisions still stand in theory, as a practical matter, parental rights are too often ignored in lower courts and in executive branch bureaucracies in communities across America.
For example, public schools are now routinely conducting psychological testing of children under the guise of standardized "tests" and "surveys." These "test" often include intrusive questions about the child's emotional state, the child's relationship with his or her parents, and private family matters such as values and habits. Last year in California, a statewide controversy erupted over one such test known as the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). Parents not only objected to some of the intrusive questions on the test, but the public school bureaucracy initially refused to let parents even see the CLAS test. A flood of litigation by parents against the school system ensued, and is currently pending.
Public school districts are also increasingly passing out condoms to minors without parental notice or consent. Court challenges to these policies have met with mixed results. For example, New York City parents successfully challenged the condom policy in their public schools in the 1993 Alfonso v. Fernandez case. In Alfonso, a New York appellate court by a narrow 3-2 margin ruled that distributing condoms without parental consent violated the parents' Meyer-Pierce right to direct their children's "upbringing and education." The court instructed the schools to adopt a parental "opt-out" to allow parents to remove their children from the condom program.
However, parents from Falmouth, Massachusetts recently lost a nearly identical case in which they challenged their school board's installation of condom machines in local high schools. Condoms are also being provided in Falmouth to children as young as 11 over the express written objection of their parents. In July of this year, the Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the parents in Curtis v. Falmouth, in contradiction to the ruling in Alfonso. The Falmouth parents are appealing this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is worth noting that the parents in both the Alfonso and Curtis cases were not challenging the distribution of condoms per se, but only the distribution to their children without any parental involvement whatsoever. These parents were merely trying fulfill their responsibility to monitor the upbringing of their own kids, without restricting the choices of other families.
As evidenced by these cases and many others, parents need better legal standing to guarantee their rights. The Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act would provide this better standing by making explicit the proper legal standard by which cases ought to be judged, namely, that parents' rights are fundamental.
The introduction of this legislation represents a milestone in the history of the parental rights movement now gaining momentum in communities across America. This movement ought to be welcomed as a sign that our culture is perhaps healthier than some might think, and a demonstration of the fact that true cultural renewal begins at home. For it is at home that parents find their most important job: raising the next generation. And it is at home that our children find what no government can ever provide: the love, nourishment and protection they so desperately need.
Properly understood, the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act is also a children's rights bill, because it recognizes that a child's first and most important right is to have an active, loving parent. A parent's first and most important duty is to look out for that child's best interests. And in the vast majority of cases, government's role is to respect that parent- child relationship and ensure that parents have the legal standing to carry out their duties.
Our nation has reached a consensus that the best way to promote children's welfare is to encourage parents to be more responsible. But while liberal and conservative policy makers alike call for more parental involvement, our laws continue to ignore parental rights. If we want parents to become more responsible, we must recognize their rights.
To say that parents have the primary role in raising children is to say that parents are irreplaceable. The Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act sends a message to public officials that parental rights must be honored, and a message to parents that parental responsibilities must be fulfilled.
We don't need the government to lecture parents on the right way to raise their children. America's parents are in a far- better position than the government to know the needs of their children, and to respond to those needs.
The parental rights debate boils down to this: Who decides what's in the best interests of children? Parents or the government?
Our Founding Fathers spoke of certain "self-evident" truths upon which our nation was founded. Surely the notion that parents ought to have the primary responsibility for raising children was just such a "self-evident" truth.
Congress now has the opportunity to codify the "self-evident" truth that, as President Bill Clinton said in his State of the Union address last year, "Parents, not government, raise children."
It is time to stop paying lip service to "family values." It is time to move beyond rhetoric as we look for ways to improve children's welfare. It is time for Congress to codify the fundamental rights of parents by enacting the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act.