In Defense of Family: Help the Romeike Family Keep and Maintain their Family in Freedom!

If you haven't read the story of Romeike Family yet, if you are not aware of what our government is arguing in the case to deport this family, then you need to take a few minutes and educate yourself. Obama’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, is arguing that parents have NO fundamental liberty in matters concerning the home education of their children. The US DOJ is arguing that the fines, looming prosecutions, and threats of removal of their children from their custody if they resist state education can't be considered persecution because the complete nationwide home school ban singles out no particular group. Essentially a ban on everybody's freedom persecutes no one.

German parents have not been able to legally homeschool their children since the practice was banned by the Nazis in 1938. The purpose of the ban was to force children to be indoctrinated by schools controlled by Hitler and the Third Reich. After that time, the ban has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Germany. According to the court, “preventing homeschooling was to counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies.” It is simply astonishing that our government would argue that such a ban jeopardizes no fundamental liberty. Not only does the DOJ's case ignore the perils of history, it contradicts thousands of years of tradition and a hundred years of constitutional case law that upholds the God given natural rights of parents to the custody and control of their children; which includes the right to raise their children as they see fit, to direct their upbringing and destiny, and to control their education and activities.

If the Romeike family is forced to return to Germany they will lose the God given right to nurture, teach, and guide their children in a way consistent with their closely held religious beliefs -- and if they resist this state control over their children they will face fines, prosecution, and even the forcible removal of their children from their care and custody. Is there any worse persecution than this? Is state control and abuse of your children worse than the control and abuse of their minds? Is there any kind of persecution worse than this?

I have tried to imagine which is worse, to lose my freedom to worship as I choose or to lose my freedom to control the education and upbringing of my children and have concluded they are one and the same! The unity of the family and a parent's God given right to protect and educate that child is in my mind our most sacred right under God, our most sacred responsibility, and essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Not only is it a fundamental human right and an American heritage it is central to my faith and religious convictions. I believe that this is the case with the Romeike family.

All of our natural God given rights acknowledged by our constitution as unalienable rights -- freedom of speech and thought, freedom of religion, property rights, privacy rights -- are in the support of this central human endeavor to form families, to bring children into those families, to love and nurture those children, to teach them and guide them, and to see them grown with those values we've instilled in them. It is central to our pursuit of happiness in this life to pass to our children our legacy of faith as well as our worldly goods. When any government degrades and undermines this fundamental human God given right then they are exercising tyranny over the human soul and mind and denying individuals the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

STAND WITH THE ROMEIKE FAMILY SIGN THIS PETITION

Under American law, the Attorney General has the right to grant asylum to the Romeike family at any time. A petition has been started on the White House website, We the People, requesting the family be allowed to stay. Although the first petition was taken down as it did not meet the threshold of 100,000 signatures within 30 days, a second petition was started on March 19. PLEASE HELP US REACH THE REQUIRED SIGNATURES!!