Posted by Howard Richman on April 03 2009 at 10:08:58:
Faced with strong opposition in his upcoming primary race, Senator Specter has thrown his support to a constitutional amendment which would make homeschooling a right. Here is a selection from the story in yesterday´s Washington Independent:
The amendment, sponsored in the House by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) and in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), is a response to legal developments that have rattled the homeschool movement, if little noticed outside of it. The most recent precedent on homeschooling, the 2000 Supreme Court decision Troxel v. Granville, defended the right of parents to visit their child but did not find a fundamental right of a parent over a child’s education. Homeschool activists read, in the decision, a need to enumerate parents’ rights. The amendment would rewrite the Constitution to make a “fundamental right” out of “the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
Outside of Congress, the amendment is backed by a small coalition of conservatives who have appealed to Specter to support it. The purpose is not only to move the bill forward by putting a more moderate spokesman than DeMint forward, but to build support for Specter with homeschoolers. Specter’s office, contacted for this story, did not say whether or not he would support the bill.
“One of the challenges that the traditional values people have is that they’re seen as trying to impose their values on other people,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an early supporter of ParentalRights.org.
The amendment, Norquist said, is a politically popular way for homeschool activists to get something they want, while exposing the government-knows-best agenda that opponents of homeschooling are usually able to conceal. It might also be a way of bucking up Specter, whose chief of staff, Scott Hoeflich, gave Norquist a head’s up when Specter decided to vote against the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would have made it easier for workers to unionize. “Why would I want to go after Arlen Specter,” Norquist asked, “when he just saved us on the single most important vote in this Congress?”
The heaviest hitter trying to get Specter on board with the Parental Rights Amendment might be Mike Farris, the group’s president, and the founder and chancellor of Patrick Henry College, a conservative university in Virginia. Farris has spoken to Specter’s office about the amendment, though it wasn’t clear this week whether Specter was warm to the idea. “If Sen. Specter joined our efforts it would be an enormous help,” said Farris on Wednesday. “We would love his help.”
Howard