A Libertarian’s Custody Conundrum
So how many female libertarians are there on the planet, anyway?
Ten? Twenty? Whatever the number is, it’s small enough for me to suspect that Jim invited me here as a guest blogger so that in the future he could brag “Oh, yeah, at one point I had fully two-thirds of the planet’s libertarian women doing guest posts for me .â€
(Did I forget to mention that I’m a guest blogger and my name is Jennifer? I think I did.) I hope Jim’s not the type of dishonest jerk who’d say “guest posts†with the sort of emphasis that implies it’s something sexual. Shame on him in advance if he does that.
Anyway, I guess I’m supposed to talk about current events, so here’s a story that gives me food for thought and mental indigestion:
A Mom and Dad got a divorce, and are fighting for custody of their twin daughters. Dad, according to the divorce papers, was involved in “domestic violence and drug abuse” back in the 90s, but now says he is a changed man and wants custody of the girls. Of course, such allegations are common coming from moms when dads seek custody, so I don’t know how serious they are.
The situation’s hardly unusual these days. But here’s the kicker: Mom is a white supremacist. Not just that, she’s a white supremacist stage mother–the manager of her daughters’ pop band, called “Prussian Blue,” which is quite popular on the white-supremacist circuit and has “been billed as a valuable recruiting tool for the white nationalist movement.” (Prussian blue, I have learned, is a sort of code-word among Holocaust deniers, who claim there would be large amounts of it on the gas-chamber walls if they’d really been used for killing people.)
The mom says she’s raising her children to have her values, just like any parent does.
“All children are espouse their parents’ beliefs. If we were Christians, they would maybe be singing Christian rock songs. But we’re not. We’re white nationalists and so of course, that’s a part of our life and I share that part of my life with my children,” she said.
I think Dad has a legitimate complaint about how his daughters are being raised, and I support his bid for custody. But perhaps that could open unpleasant doors to letting the government decide child-custody cases solely on the basis of the parents’ beliefs.
So what do you think?
Comment by Leonard —
June 6, 2006 @ 12:01 am
Might want to put some links into that thing. Though google works as ever. Still, part of the fun of the web is that it allows us to be deeply lazy, and access your referent with just a gesture.
Anyway, on the main point of indoctrinating children: it’s a fundamental right, and also, a duty that parents have. These parents have weird beliefs, true. But then, lots of people do. All those mutually incompatible religions can’t all be right… If ”we” set ourselves up to police what other people teach their children, completely privately, where does it end? There’s a slope here, and the bottom is ugly. How slippery is it? I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.
Look at it this way. Kids of Christian Scientists die every year when the parents refuse to consent to modern medicine, believing that God can heal, and will heal if He wants to. The Gaede twins may get beat up a few times, maybe, but they’ll probably at least reach the age of 18 where they can make up their own minds.
Comment by Jennifer —
June 6, 2006 @ 12:29 am
That’s funny–I did put a link in here. In fact, I went into the ”edit” function and added another one. It shows up on the ”edit” page, but not here for some reason. Very odd.
Well, here it is:
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=local&id=4231273
Comment by washerdreyer —
June 6, 2006 @ 1:11 am
Eugene Volokh has an article, in the May 2006 NYU Law Review, on the free speech issues involved in child custody decisions. Being a member of said Law Review, I will not give my opinion on the article. Take that any way you choose.
It’s also not clear to me why this is a peculiarly liberterian dilemma, though of course liberterians might resolve it differently.
Comment by wade —
June 6, 2006 @ 2:58 am
How about placing the children in the care of a nice black family? That would seem like the most appropriate solution in this case… Mom has clearly demonstrated that she is not mentally fit enough to raise these kids… then again, i’m no libertarian and i guess for some people principal would take precedent over a practical solution..
Comment by Anna in Cairo —
June 6, 2006 @ 6:40 am
Is there really a fundamental right to ”indoctrinate” children? Isn’t that sort of a violation of the children’s own rights?
Comment by Michael —
June 6, 2006 @ 7:40 am
So, two parents, both with the right to raise their kids however the hell they want, with the fundemental conflict ”not by my ex”. Someone has to decide and the girls are too young (although not by much). The state attempts to find the best interest for the girls, and no simple answer like ”grandparents” shows up. Dad was alleged to have been involved in criminal acts that endangered the family members some time ago, Mom is engaged in legal but repugnant activities and involves the children.
It’s an edge case, but certainly a real dilemma. (disclaimer: IANAL, so I can’t give you a libertarian answer). I wouldn’t want the state to take a away someone’s child custody for odious beliefs: some of my beliefs are odious to perfectly mainstream judges. I don’t want wiccans or abortion-rights supporters or Texas Democrats to live in fear that their alternative lifestyle might cost them their kids. As far as I know, wiccans have more to fear then Dems. Wiccans have lost custody because of intolerant judges.
The balance is ”is real harm being done to the children?” They’re not being abused, but they are being used by their mother. I hope they grow up to figure out what happened to them as children and break from their mother’s politics. Lots of teens and adults do.
I don’t hate the outcome, but I’m not sure if there is any outcome I’d’ve liked. If the girls got taken away from horrorshow mother, then it’s a bad precedent for all of us non-conformists. If they don’t, then they continue to be raised to believe something odious and be used as a propaganda tool of the racists.
I hear that Dad got visitation rights. I hope he’s eloquent enough to teach his kids to question Mom’s opinions. I’d be fine with a petition from the dad supported by the girl’s requests, to transfer custody to him. And while I’m wishing for things that would make this easier for me to have a firm opinion about, I wish for a pony, as well
Comment by Leonard —
June 6, 2006 @ 8:40 am
Anna, it’s debatable whether there’s a ”right” to indoctrinate children. What’s clear is that there must be a duty to do so – by someone. Children must be taught things, or they cannot get on in the world. Exactly who that someone ought to be is naturally an issue. But I’d guess most libertarians would want it to be the parents, because they are the people who are, a priori, most likely to have the child’s best interest in mind.
Given a duty to do something, it seems natural to me that would be an accompanying right to do it. But I’m not sure that logically follows. It just seems right to me. In any case, as an anarchist I need not worry esoteric semantic issues affecting my political correctness. I just talk about them because they’re interesting.
Comment by jlw —
June 6, 2006 @ 9:33 am
The mother is obviously revolting. But it doesn’t take much imagination to envision a world where one’s own slightly out of the mainstream beliefs could be construed as dangerous. (”Not buying into the consumerist culture? No crushing credit card debt load? You voted for WHO? What kind of weirdo are you?”) As painful as it is for me to say this, I don’t think even an ideology as ugly as Mrs. Gaede’s is grounds for removing custody.
Besides, don’t most kids wind up rejecting their parents’ politics?
Comment by fyodor —
June 6, 2006 @ 9:55 am
Face it folks, in a free society, Nazis got rights, too.
Comment by Mo —
June 6, 2006 @ 9:57 am
But it’s not like both parents want to indoctrrinate their kids this way. What say does the father have? Notice he was only accused of ”domestic violence and drug abuse” in the divorce papers. There was no evidence of such. So who gets the kids?
Comment by Phileleutherus —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:05 am
A lot of folks here have hit the nail on the head. There is a real difficult issue with line-drawing in cases like this, and it seems to me that at least one appropriate place of demarcation is that of physical harm.
Comment by Evan —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:15 am
This seems like it requires a compromise between relativism and majoritarian absolutism. On one hand, it’s a bad idea for The Majority (i.e. The State) to start making judgments about certain belief systems, especially when it comes to child custody decisions. On the other hand, when these beliefs can be shown to cause actual measurable harm, then how can you ignore them—especially when things such as the father’s past misgivings are a factor?
As for the ”right” to indoctrinate your child, I’m split on this. While it is ”your” child, we again find ourselves tiptoeing the line between relativism and absolutism. The wrinkle here is the idea of natural rights; if we believe in ”life, liberty, property”, then, can we deprive children of these things? And if something can be shown to cause not only harm to unsuspecting children, but also harm to their future victims, can the State not intervene? The only real compromise here is some level of acceptance that children are not the same entities as adults in every sense, and that they may be in need of special protections. Again, this brings us back to actual measurable harm.
Comment by bbartlog —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:16 am
The mother is apparently a separatist rather than a supremacist, though the news article also does not draw a distinction.
I would be inclined to grant the mother custody just to penalize the dad for bringing what is effectively religion into the picture – same if for example a father argued that he should be granted custody just so that his children not be brought up Wiccan.
I hope however that the case was decided largely on other grounds. In any case the girls seem old enough that their preferences should be one of the most significant factors.
Comment by Evan —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:21 am
Phil:
Your idea of drawing the line @ physical harm is nice and all, but, what about the externalities of harm that stop short of the physical variety. For example, what if I had a kid and trained him/her, every day for 18 years, to murder anyone with brown hair? Or how about to rape every woman he sees? I’m not, in the basic sense of the word, actually physically harming the child, but I am most assuredly harming him in other ways—-not to mention the externalities that will inevitably result from his effect on society. Would this still be okay?
Comment by SteveInClearwater —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:23 am
Well since no one else is going to step up, allow me to be the cad who notes, ”I think women liberterians blogging at will is Really, Really Hot.”
Now I’m off to plant some flowers and do some of that gardening stuff while noting that I’m also Really, Really Glad my kids are adults now and that my exwife and I still consider each other cool and don’t care if the other pitches any manner of what we might consider B.S. to our trio of fledgling young adults. (see-I can stay on Topic!)
Comment by Matt Stevens —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Maybe it would be better to resolve these issues with a coin flip, with the judge substituting personal judgment only when there are solid grounds for denying custody. It would keep irrelevant issues (”my wife is a racist!”) or unsubstantiated accusations (”my husband fucks chickens!”) out of the courtroom.
Comment by fyodor —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:36 am
Mo, you make a good point, but I think that addresses more of the vagueries of custody law than we probably want to get into here. Suffice to say that what the mother is doing should not automatically make the dad preferrable to her in the eyes of the law. There may such disagreements in how to raise the kids in many custody battles, but I think that’s another subject.
Evan, you’re right that there’s a line that can be crossed. But your counter-example of training kids to murder is useful for my argument. Murder is violence. Thinking that white people are superior, however repugnant, is not. Perhaps we could draw the line at ”indocrinating” kids into doing illegal things. Which would still pose some problem for people like me who think many of our laws criminalize behaviors that should not be criminalized, but I think there should clearly be no penalty for teaching things to kids that are unpopular but not illegal.
Comment by Bill —
June 6, 2006 @ 10:40 am
I don’t think he would have done so, but now that you’ve written that, I’m guessing he will.
If he does it in front of me, I promise to wag my finger at him and say ”for shame” though.
Comment by the talking dog —
June 6, 2006 @ 12:18 pm
Reality is that in a case like this, both parents and the kids get to meet with a ”forensic neutral”, to wit, a court-appointed, parent paid psychiatrist, who will interview (and possibly test) everyone involved, and make a recommendation to the Court.
The fact is, it certainly sounds like everyone is f***’ed up in this case; reality is, however, that unlike the job market, where women still earn well under what men do for the same job, women do very, very, VERY well in contested child custody matters (I believe over 90% still in my home Empire State). So, odds are, as awful as Mom is, she’s probably going to get custody (and that’s even if the allegations against Dad are baseless.) It’s unstated, its unlawful, but its there: the maternal ”tender years” preference.
The fact is, I agree with some of the sentiments above asking: is this really a libertarian issue? This is not the state dictating one’s own actions with little or no consequence to others (see ”drugs, war on”); these family law decisions turn on the state intervening for the best interests of the child, supposedly based on the best evidence available to make that determination. Given that there is nothing inconsistent with libertarian doctrine to have courts decide contract and tort cases, there seems no reason not to include this kind of case (which stems directly out of the marriage contract) as well.
If Mom is ultimately denied custody, it will be more likely because she could not convince a judge or psychiatrist that her hateful despicable views are not the product of a mentally unhealthy mind, not because of the views themselves.
Comment by linguist —
June 6, 2006 @ 12:51 pm
So if the father was against all this white supremacist crap the whole time, why has he not already told his daughters as much? Up until now he’s had full rights as a father, so what’s stopping him from voicing disagreement with mom’s beliefs? (And how does not having full custody stop him from continuing to do the same?)
Comment by Jeff P. —
June 6, 2006 @ 1:03 pm
Pardon me, but Jennifer’s having trouble posting comments here and I am just testing the comment window.
Comment by Seth Gordon —
June 6, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
I agree with Michael in #6 above, and would just add that IMHO, one of the mother’s ”legal but repugnant activities” is making money off her children’s musical talent (such as it is). When a few parents to rake in huge amounts of cash by milking their children’s images/voices, and therefore many many other parents are encouraged to invest large amounts of time and money in developing their children’s talent, I have to wonder whether the children’s best interests are truly being served. (See here and here.)
Comment by Protege of F.LeMur —
June 6, 2006 @ 2:53 pm
As long as the Feminist White Supremacist doesn’t request the illegal monetary support known as child support I don’t give a flying flip. The Dad has ultimate rights as a parent but if he doesn’t have custody then he shouldn’t be forced to pay for them.
Comment by fyodor —
June 6, 2006 @ 3:10 pm
Seth Gordon,
Are you sure you would hold the same standard for all parents (in custody battles) of money-making child performers? The thought that the mother was being exploitive occurred to me too, but then I realized that mothering child stars is hardly unique, and I doubt most people would think of it as grounds to lose custody if it weren’t for the viewpoint being expressed by their entertainment. Are you sure you’re really reacting only, or even primarily, to the kids being performers?
Comment by Phileleutherus —
June 6, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
Evan,
Well, there might be other appropriate areas where the ”state” (or if you are an anarchist whatever body exists to enforce things) might be allowed to intervene, but those areas would likely be less compelling. As to your hypotheticals, but those are some fairly extreme examples. I’d like to see some more garden variety non-physical ”harm” (and externalities) before I comment more.
Comment by Seth Gordon —
June 7, 2006 @ 8:38 am
fyodor asks: ”Are you sure you’re really reacting only, or even primarily, to the kids being performers?”
Yes.