UN official: Children have a right to religious freedom, too | Christian Examiner Newspapers

A high-ranking United Nations official has expressed concern over the growing loss of religious freedom among children around the world, especially in places where young girls are treated as property or bounty from conquests.

Heiner Bielefeldt, a German diplomat and the UN's special rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief, said in a statement Oct. 23 that all governments represented in the UN General Assembly had an obligation to "respect religious practices by children and their families and support families in fulfilling their role in providing an enabling environment for the realization of the rights of the child."

On the surface, the statement might seem like an attempt to emancipate children from their parent's instruction, but that is not Bielefeldt's goal. He said parents play a key role in leading children into religious belief.
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Bielefeldt also claimed that the traditional family is the environment in which the child best develops his or her religious ideals and first learns to express them. As a result, he said, any attempt by the state to remove the child based on the pretext that the religious opinions of the parents may be harmful is "illegitimate."

"As a matter of fact, in some countries, far-reaching State interventions into families in the spheres of religious initiation, socialization and education of children actually do occur — at times also by invoking an alleged interest of the child. Such problematic State interventions disproportionately affect families belonging to religious minorities, new religious movements or small communities often stigmatized as 'sects.' Depending on the country, families not professing any religion may also be under increased threat of undue State interference. In extreme cases, children have been taken away from their families, for instance under the pretext of saving them from ill-defined 'superstitious' religions — a pretext often invoked against indigenous families in the past."

Please note that my comments are focused on the perception that the Christian Examiner wants the reader to leave with - that parents have unrestricted power to act, in regard to the (religious) upbringing of their child(ren), void of any governmental oversight.  In other words, laws be damned.  I have not yet read the actual document/statement and I have a hard time fathoming the following, according to the Examiner.

Does Tomlin even realize what he is implying here?   Don't want a gay child, send them off to get "conversion therapy".  Who cares if it doesn't work.  Want uneducated, illiterate children because the "rapture"?  Well you now have carte blanc.  Think religion doesn't kill?  Now you can pray till your hearts content to "cure" your child. 

Sounds like Tomlin attended the recent World Congress of Family gathering in Salt Lake City, Utah where the "traditional family" canard is highly touted.  The WCF featured speaker, Mark Regnarus, whose "research" on gay parenting has been debunked.  Or maybe he's been reading Donald Paul Sullins' flawed paper, Emotional Problems among Children with Same-Sex Parents: Difference by Definition, that incorrectly flaunts the benefits of "traditional" families.

UN official: Children have a right to religious freedom, too | Christian Examiner Newspapers