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Got this link thru a message board I belong to. I have never heard of the amendment or visited the site before. I read the proposed amendment and decided I could support it. So, imagine my surprise when I followed the links to do so, and discovered that I had already signed it! Something is not right with your site, and I would appreciate your fixing it before I refer other folks to it. Visiting the site should not be construed as signing the petition. Your links are somewhat deceptive in their design if the same links to gain access to reading the amendment are simultaneously adding people’s signatures to the petition automatically.

C Delfin,
I was emailed this link from a friend and to my suprise also, I discovered that I had already signed it. When I told my friend about it, she told me that she figured that I’ll take forever to read my email and decided to sign my name for me. She new I wouldn’t mind being that I like to show my support but the point of the message is, don’t be quick to judge and point fingers at this site when it could’ve been anyone of your friends/family members that gave your name/email address on your behalf.

FEAR FEAR FEAR. If ANY of you can site just ONE incident of “Parental Rights Violations” (other than the “German case” (the ONLY example Farris ever speaks about… is there only 1?) then I will gladly keep quite. Until then, PLEASE don’t accept this FEAR TACTIC of the HomeSchool Legal Defense - HSLD. People who sign up for this “service ” are GOOD people who have been “Feared into joining” by Farris and his “lawyers” (by the way, they can ONLY practice law in states where they have law licenses… check out your state before joining… ie: they are NOT able to practice law in MOST ALL STATES, so your money and membership is useless… but they don’t tell you that upfront). So, they’re “selling” you a service that has NO GUARANTEE and NO legal right to be “defended” in many states. STOP fearing, and start getting involved with a <<<<>>>> homeschool group - that’s where the STRENGTH is, LOCALLY!! $100 a year - for what? So that Farris “MIGHT” defend you from who? SHOW ME 1 CASE where he has saved someone from their kids being removed from a home WITHOUT abuse or neglect - he hasn’t saved anyone that I can verify in the ENTIRE STATE OF IOWA… nor does he have a license to practice what he calls “law” here.

Iowa Homeschooler,

You seem to be very angry about something and I hope that you can find peace from that. Please read the section of our website called “Learn.” Start here: http://www.parentalrights.org/learn/the-attack-on-parental-rights

There are tons of examples. We also have lots of examples on the blog. Please don’t jump to conclusion.

Rich Shipe

Clicking the link to get here should not automatically add you to the petition. That’s shady practice.

Jack,

We are not adding anyone that way and agree that it would be a shady way to add email addresses. All email addresses have to be added to one of our forms and then the person has to click the submit or “sign-up” button. After that a thank you email is sent to the email address so that the recipient knows they were added.

We don’t want anyone on our list who does not support this important cause so we take extra care to be sure that everyone we have is a genuine supporter.

Thanks!

Rich Shipe

We were homeschoolers….I wrote a comment on here, but it seems to have disappeared…so again I find myself writing. I did sign the petition. My rights as a parent were taken from me under false pretences, because I was homeschooling my child. My child was taken from me, forcibly, and I was told by the attorney who I got on the phone that they could do this and that HSLDA could not help me in my case. My child was then put in a mental hospital for a week, in another state, and only God knows what happened to him in that place. The images of them (the room was full of people) taking my son away from me will never leave my mind. He is legally blind, and he had never been away from home, so imagine his terror. I don’t imagine it, for I saw it, I felt it. Yes, I was taking him for some help with behavioral problems that had developed suddently, but there was no reason why they couldn’t have been handled on an outpatient basis. In fact, I had already set up appointments for him, appointments which I had to cancel, for our local social services agency had other plans for him. Basically to terrorize he and I so we would do what they wanted, and I knew it was all because I was a homeschooling mom. He was released to me after that week at the hospital, but he was a different child, and I hurt for him. Its been a few months, and we are still working on healing. Right away after he got home, he was made to go to a day treatment program for two months where violence was a daily event. During that time, I knew it was important to get him into school so they would leave us alone and we could have any chance of healing. I had to let him be tested. He tested Superior and Above average on everything, except for handwriting which is difficult for him due to his vision. This one area significantly lowered his testing scores, which otherwise would have been superior. They said they have to test everyone the same, even though now he is in special education, not primarily for his vision but in a class of all boys with problems. He’s been there for about a month. He has behaved so well and the work is so easy for him. They will be completely closing our case soon. I asked the social worker who wrote up all the false allegations, probably from a family member who doesn’t support homeschooling, if the allegations were going to be dropped, and were they “founded” (a term I had been told to ask him about) or “unfounded”…his response was, “they were neither founded nor unfounded, this was not an abuse or neglect case.” Yet he says the information will stay on record for five years and will be destroyed after that if there are no further “reports”…I said that whoever made the allegations should be investigated. How has it come to, in this great country of ours, that someone can call in anonymously and completely tear someone else’s family apart, before the social service people do any kind of investigation, why should the anonymous people’s words be so powerful to be able to take a parent’s/parents’ rights away so quickly…..We have to face the facts…yes, the future of homeschooling is very uncertain, not just in other countries….It was a dream of mine, to be able to teach my child, and it was taken from me in an instant by a bitter and doubtful person. I thank God to still have my child, and no, I don’t live in fear, for I did nothing wrong, God knows that, my dear friends know that, but no one should feel safe or comfortable. For we are not. My child needs me very much, and that week that he was starved and drugged and came home bruised from “hurting shots” from that horrible place they call a hospital, I cried, I prayed, and some local homeschoolers prayed for us, too. That did help. They didn’t even know me, and they were my biggest comfort that week. I will most likely never meet them, for it was implied but not stated that if I wanted my son that he was to be in school. They are already talking about putting him in a “regular” class for one of his subjects as he is doing so well, yet nothing was said about his reading–he is seven years old and reading a computer manual cover to cover (he can see well right close to his face) and his vocabulary is excellent, to quote one of the many social workers we had who said ” it is better than mine”…..So in all fields there are kind and unkind people we will meet along the way. At least this particular social worker (not the initial one who wrote up the false allegations)told the school that my son definitely did not need speech therapy!

Where there is life, there is hope. And I hope and pray for all the parents in world. I know there are worse things that could have happened, and for that we are blessed. We have to count our blessings and treasure our freedom. Those who are able to fight for it, I thank you. I wasn’t able to fight, as I couldn’t afford the lawyer I was referred to, it would have been $1000 just to get him, and goodness knows how much more it would have cost. I did not have the money, and no one I knew offered to lend it to me. I still do not understand why HSLDA could not help me at all with my case, as I was an HSLDA member, and I had read all the wonderful articles about families who had been helped. I hope this will not be again deleted. If you truly want parents to have rights and to have a voice, then you should not pick and choose which entries you include in these blogs. I pray for all of you out there who are going through this alone like I did. Try to pray to God through your sorrow, it does help.

I am truly a supporter of this petition if it will help even one family not have to have their child taken from them, swiftly and unjustly. I don’t have the $25 it says that is required to get updates of how it is going, but I signed it anyway. Best wishes to all. Do all you can to hold on to your children. Don’t think “it won’t happen to me”….I was one of those people.

Fear, Fear , Fear. One of the great things about our country is that we don’t have to live based on fear. We don’t have to make choices based on fear nor do we have to allow ourselves to be continually subject to those who want to rule our lives based on fear.

We can speak up… we can engage our minds in the reality of what is going on in our world and our nation and use our voice to change the course of history. This is an opportunity to do just that.

I have never viewed the information or efforts of HSLD as tactics to instill fear in us to somehow urge us to disengage our minds and pay up or to deceptively aquire members they have no intention of helping. Actually, I have found the opposite to be true… the admonition is to engage our minds and look past the moment so as to insure the freedoms we posses today will not be gone for the next generation, in a year or even next month!

I remember in 1985 my history book in a public school opening with the line “The United States is a sovereign nation” and spending the whole first day of class talking about how we operate in the best interest of our country, it’s people and values and that we are guided by our Declaration of Independence and our Constititution above any other sources. I also recall talking about the Independence that we fight for so that we are free to make our own laws and govern ourselves. More and more courts are referring to European law for precedent in deciding American court cases. Law students are taught about other countries legal systems and a global approach is encouraged in both law making and interpretation before they are taught Constitutional law! More and more it seems we ignorantly sign away our rights to be a sovereign nation and to govern ourselves based on our values– we are handing our rights over on a silver platter–or at least our government seems to be willing to do that for us. We are headed down a road that pays heed to sources outside our country before it’s own establishing documents as the foundation to our nation.

Since our government seems to be willing to limit our freedoms by agreeing to global agreements with the United Nations that hardly seems “int he best interest of the child” to me. That means that a constitutional amendment becomes our “best shot” unless we are willing to wage the war that would withdraw us from the United Nations and well, since I don’t see that happening anytime soon this seems to be the battle we could win.