Last month Michael Farris, the chairman of the American Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), warned that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child could make homeschooling illegal in the U.S., even though the US Senate has never ratified this Convention.
According to some activist judges the UN Convention is “customary international law. [...] The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence.”
Under the Convention severe limitations are placed on parents’ right to direct and train their children. Under Article 13 parents could be subject to prosecution for any attempt to prevent their children from interacting with material they deem unacceptable. Under Article 14 children are guaranteed “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” – in other words, children have a legal right to object to all religious training. And under Article 15 the child has a right to “freedom of association.”
Here's more:
"In the 2002 case of Beharry v. Reno, one federal court said that even though the Convention was never ratified, it still has an 'impact on American law'," Farris explained. "The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence."
[...]
Farris explains that, in 1995, "the United Kingdom was deemed out of compliance" with the Convention "because it allowed parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes without consulting the child". Farris argues that, "by the same reasoning, parents would be denied the ability to homeschool their children unless the government first talked with their children and the government decided what was best. This committee would even have the right to determine what religious teaching, if any, served the child's best interest."
I cannot fathom a line of reasoning that would make Americans accountable for laws that have not been written and approved by our various legislators and then signed into law by our elected executives.
When talking about the gay marriage issue I've written about the idea that conservatives should abandon trying to write a specific defnition of marriage into the Constitution and start pushing for legislation (or an amendment, if need be) that would put some restraing on these judges who are intent on imposing their un-elected will on the citizens of this country. The situation described above is another example of this.
Judges should not be able to read "rights" into our Constitution that do not actually exist (such as abortion and gay marriage) and they should not be able to force Americans to obey laws that have not been passed through our legislative processes.
We need some judicial restraint in this country, and if the judges won't do it themselves then our other branches of government should do it for them.