A Christian Fundamentalist mother, for example, forbids her child from attending classes on evolution: though she may claim she is doing it for the child and not of course herself, she is very likely motivated primarily by a desire to make a display of her own purity. Doesn't she just know that God is mighty proud of her for conforming to His will? . . The chief mullah of Saudi Arabia proclaims that the Earth is flat and that anyone who teaches otherwise is a friend of Satan(17): won't he himself be thrice blessed by Allah for making this courageous stand? A group of rabbis in Jerusalem try to ban the showing of the film Jurassic Park on the grounds that it may give children the idea that there were dinosaurs living on earth sixty million years ago, when the scriptures state that in fact the world is just six thousand years old(18): are they not making a wonderful public demonstration of their own piety?
What we are seeing, as often as not, is pure self interest. In which case, we should not even allow a mitigating plea of good intentions on the part of the parent or other responsible adult. They are looking after none other than themselves.
Yet, as I said, in the end it hardly matters what the parents' intentions are. Because even the best of intentions would not be sufficient to buy them "parental rights" over their children. Indeed the very idea that parents or any other adults have "rights" over children is morally insupportable.
No human being, in any other circumstances, is credited with having rights over any one else. No one is entitled, as of right, to control, use or direct the life-course of another person -- even for objectively good ends. It's true that in the past slave-owners had such legal rights over their slaves. And it's true too that, until comparatively recently, the anomaly persisted of husbands having certain such rights over their wives -- the right to have sex with them, for instance. But neither of these exceptions provides a good model for regulating parent-child relationships.
Children, to repeat, have to be considered as having interests independent of their parents. They cannot be subsumed as if they were part of the same person. At least so it should be. Unless, that is, we make the extraordinary mistake that the US Supreme Court apparently did when it ruled, in relation to the Amish, that while the Amish way of life may be considered "odd or even erratic" it "interferes with no rights or interests of others"(19) (my italics). As if the children of the Amish are not even to be counted as potentially "others".
I think we should stop talking of "parental rights" at all. In so far as they compromise the child's rights as an individual, parents' rights have no status in ethics and should have none in law
Okay, maybe not the dark side thing nor the hate, but I think it would be scary to be de-converted and feel like I was left hanging for awhile. 