I’m talking about an Ontario Christian school’s decision to expel a high school freshman because she has two lesbians as parents.
Arguments in favor of the school’s decision:
• It’s a private institution that should be allowed to admit whoever it pleases according to whatever standards it adopts.
• It’s a Christian institution and lesbianism is incompatible with Christianity.
• The school can legitimately be concerned that a set of lesbian parents at school functions would help normalize immorality to its students.
Arguments against the school’s decision:
• Expulsion is not an act of kindness, and you’re supposed to be a Christian institution.
• The girl is only 14; perhaps your school could show the girl a better way to live.
• The girl should not be punished for the sins of her mother.
I find the last one most interesting.
When, if ever, should a child suffer for her parent’s wrongdoing?
The idea that a person should not suffer as a result of another person’s wrongs is fundamental in our legal system. With very few exceptions (e.g., spouses' mutual liability; a partner’s responsibility for partnership debt; employer liability for an employee’s actions), the premise of “no vicarious liability” is so fundamental that I think it has leaked into our mental landscape as a fundamental moral premise.
The premise meshes nicely with our warped sense of individualism, but I don’t think the premise is natural. We’re “hard-wired” to be responsible for others. Some of the greatest mystics have said that we’re all responsible for everyone, everywhere (in literature, the concept is perhaps best expressed by Fr. Zossima in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, who said one person’s sins hurt everyone).
But even putting aside such mystical considerations, most cultures have held that certain relationships result in binding forms of responsibility, such as a spouse’s responsibility for spouse, a parent’s responsibility for child, and a child’s responsibility for parent.
The child-for-parent responsibility becomes obvious as a parent grows old. The child is expected — and morally obligated — to take care of the parent. The parent’s problems become the child’s problems, and no amount of governmental interference (a.k.a. “assistance”) can change that. Thanks to the consequences of original sin, the parent grows old and starts to break apart, and most of us have no problem telling the child, “This is your burden.”
Yet when it comes to actual sin, we cringe. If the parent defrauds the IRS, we don’t want the child to be responsible for paying the back taxes. If the parent gets drunk and crashes into a school bus, we don’t want the child to be required to cover the legal fees and damages.
But here’s the rub: The law does impose a type of liability (or should we say “suffering”?) on children for their parents’ actions in these cases, albeit indirectly. If a parent dies with debt, the law will take the money out of the parent’s estate. The result? Less inheritance for the children. The parent’s actions have an impact on the child’s situation, regardless of the law’s position that a child is not responsible for his parent’s liabilities.
Shift back to that freshman girl in Ontario. Should she suffer because of her mother’s wrongful conduct?
Most of us, I suspect, tend to assume she shouldn’t.
But I say, “She already is suffering.” Regardless of the law’s position or what we think, a child naturally suffers the repercussions of a parent’s actions. In this poor girl’s case, the girl has been raised in an environment that contradicts the best building block of a healthy life: the traditional family with a mother and a father. The effects are going to follow her the rest of her life, and there’s nothing we can do to change that fact. It’s natural.
The school’s decision to expel her may have been harsh.
But not nearly as harsh as her mother’s decision to take a lesbian partner.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
