Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily
10/3/2012
A judge in Germany has ordered a couple to turn over custody of their four children to the state because their homeschooling practices fail to meet the government’s demand for “integration.”
The word on the ruling comes from the Home School Legal Defense Association, which advocates worldwide for parental rights to homeschool their own children.
Judge Markus Malkmus in the German district court in Darmstadt ordered the four children of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich transferred to the state’s “child protective agency,” called the Jugendamt.
“This points out the need for a legislative solution in Germany for homeschooling,” said Michael Donnelly, the director of international relations for HSLDA. “Homeschooling is a legitimate form of education – Germany’s oppressing of people who do it violates their obligation to protect their citizen’s most basic human rights.”…
…“The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter. “You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. … In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”…
…Homeschooling is recognized as a right by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The complete article is at WorldNetDaily.
Related: German Catholics lose church rights for unpaid tax
…Unless they pay the religious tax, Catholics will no longer be allowed receive sacraments, except before death, or work in the church and its schools or hospitals.
Without a “sign of repentance before death, a religious burial can be refused,” the decree states. Opting out of the tax would also bar people from acting as godparents to Catholic children.
“This decree at this moment of time is really the wrong signal by the German bishops who know that the Catholic church is in a deep crisis,” Christian Weisner from the grassroots Catholic campaign group We are Church told the BBC…
German court backs Catholic Church against tax opt-outs
Germany’s top administrative court agreed with Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday that German believers who refuse to pay a special church tax could be shut out of Catholic worship.
The verdict, based on German corporate law, upheld the system by which the state collects religious taxes from registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews with their monthly returns and distributes them to the religious communities…
