[Editor’s note: This article was co-authored by Bob Morrison]
Do elections matter? You bet they do! Until last November, there was a real threat that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) would be ratified by a liberal U.S. Senate majority. And we’re still not out of the woods on this one. But thanks to timely action by Sen. Jim DeMint, effective action is being taken to blunt this threat.
Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.) has introduced S. Res 99 to prevent the Senate from ratifying the CRC (or, as some wag has called it, the CRoC). Sen. DeMint has garnered considerable support among senators to prevent the necessary two-thirds vote to ratify CRC.
Don’t we agree that children have rights? Of course, we do. First, we agree that children have a right to be born. The UN CRC says nothing about that. Then, we agree that children have a right to what that great Irish statesman Edmund Burke called “the inheritance of their parents.” This is a natural human right. Burke didn’t just mean the right of children to inherit their parents’ wealth, although that’s certainly a part of it. He meant children have a right to the full inheritance of their parents, including as he movingly put it, “the consolations of religion.”
The UN CRC lets children choose their own religion and parents have only the right to “advise” them. (Unless, of course, those children live in Muslim lands. There, they can be killed for choosing Christianity.)
We all know what the UN thinks about religious freedom. The vast majority of its members have no religious freedom. In many of its member states, converts to Christianity suffer death. Crosses are banned in Saudi Arabia, but not crucifixion.
Just this week, religious freedom advocates at the UN prevailed in their years-long fight to beat back a “defamation” code that would have criminalized any criticism of Islam. God bless these brave fighters for international religious liberty. But the constant need to watch UN apparatchiks like hawks should alert Christians throughout the world to this grim and undeniable fact: the UN majority is not our friend.
Parents’ rights? Religious freedom? The UN CRC is about none of that. This dangerous document is one way of codifying Hillary Clinton’s famous dictum: “It takes a village to raise a child.” What she doesn’t say is that it takes a village to come between you and your children.
If it should ever be ratified, the CRC would stand above our Constitution, and above our laws and Supreme Court rulings. (With the terrible exception of abortion, there are actually a number of very good Supreme Court rulings on parents’ rights.)
Do we really want Muammar Gaddafi deciding what Human Rights are? He continues to be a member in good standing of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Along with China and Cuba!
The UN CRC is one way that International Planned Parenthood gets access to the children of the world. If ratified by the U.S., it could help them get access to your children in America. That’s because it gives minor children the “right to information” about so-called reproductive health instruction and services.
Bluntly, Planned Parenthood lures your kids into sex outside of marriage without your knowledge or consent. And then, they get to kill your unborn grandchildren without notifying you.
You have rights, too. Your rights are limited, though, to the right to pay for all this with your tax dollars. That’s the view of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but it’s not mine [ours]. And I [we] doubt it’s yours, either.
So far, DeMint has enlisted thirty-four other U.S. Senators to co-sponsor S. Res 99. That’s more than enough to defeat the UN CRC–provided they will hold “as with a chain of steel.” Those thirty-five senators–all Republicans so far–can prevent a treaty from being approved. It takes sixty-seven votes to ratify. We need to thank Sen. DeMint for his courage and his wisdom. And thank him for his leadership in defending American parents’ rights.