the madness, it happen(ed) in Jersey, too...

[acroyear]

Pharyngula: There is no such thing as a godless family?:

John and Cynthia Burke have adopted two children. By all accounts so far, they were a decent couple of an appropriate age and financially able to take care of the kids. The first was from the Children's Aid and Adoption Society in East Orange, New Jersey. They recently adopted a second child from the same agency — strangely, the article says their first son is now 31, which would put them in their mid-50s at the earliest, and I might see some grounds for objecting to the adoption on the basis of age…but no, a judge has ruled that they may not adopt on the basis of a rather interesting legal requirement.

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes' right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes' "high moral and ethical standards," he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that "no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience." Despite Eleanor Katherine's tender years, he continued, "the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."

Wow.

[...]

Of course, the typical reaction from Christians and creationists and wingnuts has been pure hysteria — the atheists want to snatch your children away if you take them to Sunday school! Now we can understand it all as a perfect example of projection: if you don't take your children to Sunday school, the Christians will try to take your children away.

And keep in mind,family values supporters: in defense of "faith" you ha[d] broken up a family.  And it's hardly the first time...

[UPDATE: it might have been the "first time", because apparently this was an archive entry from Time (didn't know they'd opened up their archives yet) going back to 1970, and the decision was indeed reversed by the NJ Supreme Court, unanimously, in '71.]

More madness, more hatred, more prejudice, and more wilfull, intentional pain, in God's name, and God damn it all I'm getting sick of it.  The very same assholes who want us to worship the (mostly unconstitutional, btw) ten commandments are the ones violating the spirit of them right and left.
--
jpf, in a comment this morning after the 1970 date was noticed:

I think the reason it is easy to believe that this case could have happened today is that there have been recent cases that aren't that much different.

In 2006 a Christian judge awarded custody of a child to an ex-boyfriend because the judge became personally upset that the mother was a member of the SubGenius parody religion. Eventually custody was returned, but only after the judge took a year making an ass out of himself.

Ed Brayton posted yesterday about two cases, one where a mother lost custody because she didn't take the kid to church like the (drunk, abusive) father would have.

Also, here's a post by Andrew Sullivan talking about a law article by Eugene Volokh on recent discrimination against atheists in child custody cases.

While the case PZ posted is 38 years old and was resolved sanely, the attitude expressed by the judge is still current among a certain segment of the religious, as seen by those quotes from Free Republic above.

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

...

Yeah. I'll be over here, screaming.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

*stares* *reads* *re-reads*

Excuse me while I shoot myself.

Why did I even bother getting a law degree when the JUDGES don't even give a shit about the Constitution!? WHY!?

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Actually, check the comments in that article. The case in question was from 1970, and the decision was reversed in 1971.

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Yep. That article is older than I am. :)

While some states might want to make the same ruling, I doubt it would fly today.

[jocelyncs.livejournal.com]

Thank gawd and the Constitution! I was about to throw myself off the roof of the Supreme Court.

[rsteachout.livejournal.com]

Bronxelf beat me to it. Lot of hyperventalating over something that was resolved (correctly, despite all the certainty that it wouldn't be) over 36 years ago. ([tongue firmly in cheek] Way before the neocons allegedly stole the country, Falwell had even conceived of the Moral Majority, or the religious right were accused of creating the United Theocracy of America. Heck, it was even before Jimmy Carter was president!)

Teasing aside, I don't know how many if this types of things I follow the links for to read the story and see that it's old news (though this one sets a record) and that the cause of alarm has usually already be dealt with; usually in a manner of which those alarmed would approve. Why don't alarmists ever check the dates on the stories before they go off?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Why don't alarmists ever check the dates on the stories before they go off?

Because we've gotten very used to the idea that "old news" doesn't exist on the internet. Time, Newsweek, the many Newspapers, we're all used to the idea that they used to have limited disk space and would wipe out (or force people to pay for) articles older than 2 weeks, so a link like that, going back to 1970, wouldn't have existed as a free page even a year ago. Even today, most AP and Reuters stories online disappear within a week and finding a more permanent link in order to keep a blog up to date is difficult.

The 'net changed recently as the larger sites realized subscription services weren't really selling and rather than just give up on that content, go to a "more ads, more content" model and just open it up (the NYTimes did this about 2 months ago).

Seriously, if someone gave you a URL to time.com, would you really think it would be 37 years old? Would you have even thought or known that time.com would have such archival posts (and present them so cleanly as to not make it clear their from the archives).

Or would the very fact that it is in Time itself, and on a subject that's been very active in the media today (especially since Mitt Romney's wonderful speech last month), automatically have you assume it's contemporary?

I apologize for not catching it myself, and have updated the post.

[rsteachout.livejournal.com]

No reason to apologize; those are very valid reasons for assuming an article is current. I also would assume a story is current if I had followed a link to it from the front page of the news provider; but I am more cautious when it's a story link someone is posting in a blog or an e-mail. After all, I don't know how the blogger/mailer found the article. Did he/she do a web search? Was it something that someone else had forwarded to them (as I suspect was the case here; I thought I saw a link to the story somewhere else on the web on Jan. 1)?

And I am especially skeptical about any story that reports something so out of character for the courts. I have to read about tons of cases at work. Yes, there are the occassional WTF rulings; but overall the courts are balanced and (as shown by the fact that even 36 years ago this wacko ruling was overturned) self-correcting.

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

Wow... how fun it is to live in a representative democracy with a Constitution.