According to the Supreme Court, the battle is over for the Romeike family. The Court denied the request for a review of their case. The Romeikes, for those who may not know or have forgotten, are a homeschooling family from Germany who came to the United States for the freedom to teach their children in the way they believe God intended. They were fleeing their native country because Germany has a law that requires all children to attend government-sponsored schools. The parents felt those schools would be detrimental to their Christian faith and sought to homeschool instead. For that basic human right, they were threatened with having their children taken from them.
When they first came to the U.S., they were granted asylum. Then, out of the proverbial blue, the Obama administration, via its Department of Justice—known more often lately as the source of a string of abhorrent injustices—singled out this family for deportation back to Germany where they almost certainly will lose custody of their children.
My friend Michael Farris has served as their attorney throughout this long legal battle. Yesterday was a discouraging day for him as all his effort seems to have been for nothing. Well, it’s never an effort for nothing when you stand for the principle of parental rights, but this is a disturbing result nonetheless.
The argument that won the day for the DOJ is that the German law isn’t targeting this family in particular; rather, it applies to every German citizen. Therefore, the argument goes, it is not a basis for asylum. Never mind that the law is unjust to begin with; never mind that it tramples on the basic right of parents to raise and educate their children as they see fit; ignore the fact that this law puts the state in charge of all children over the natural rights of parents. As George Will commented last night on Fox News, the Court may be technically correct, but why did the Obama administration go to such lengths to single out this family?
Charles Krauthammer, normally a commentator of profound insight, couldn’t grasp how this could be perceived as persecution since, he said, the majority of Germans are Christians and don’t find any problem with this law. All that reveals is that Krauthammer, who is an agnostic, has no understanding of what constitutes a genuine Christian. For him, it’s primarily cultural. Yet even Krauthammer sympathized and argued there has to be some way to allow them to stay in America.
So why did Obama and his lackeys target this family? I think it has a lot to do with their own biases against a dedicated Christian family asserting parental rights. In the process of this deportation, the DOJ argued that parents don’t really have the right to homeschool their children; the government has the final say.
Well, some contend, that was only in the context of the German family and doesn’t apply to American citizens. No, it was a broad statement, and even though it is not currently being applied to Americans, it gives a giant hint as to what the Obama people believe and how they would like to proceed, given the opportunity.
Others will attempt to gloss over this attitude by saying they wouldn’t dare cross that line. We would never see a law in the U.S. that bans homeschooling. Why, that would be almost as absurd as believing that someday the government would put its stamp of approval on same-sex marriage.
Oh . . . wait a minute.