Court Attempts to Take Away Child From Mother Over Confederate Symbol

At the present, the US is experiencing a woke cultural revolution where all levers of state power are being used to destroy free speech. 

Just ask one woman in upstate New York what happens when her child deviates from state-accepted behavior. According to Gabrielle Fonrouge of the the New York Post,  “The upstate woman has been told [by an appellate court] she needs to ditch a driveway decoration painted with a confederate flag or risk losing custody of her mixed race child — even though a family court judge didn’t consider it to be an issue when it was raised during trial.”

“Given that the child is of mixed race, it would seem apparent that the presence of the flag is not in the child’s best interests, as the mother must encourage and teach the child to embrace her mixed race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance,” judges belonging to the Appellate Division’s Third Department in Albany declared in a ruling that they issued on May 6, 2021.

The judges argued that when “viewed pragmatically” the “presence of the confederate flag” functions as a symbol that inflames “the already strained relationship between the parties.”

According to their ruling, the refusal to remove the rock by June 1 “shall constitute a change in circumstances.” In other words, the parents’ custody agreement could be modified, and “Family Court shall factor this into any future best interests analysis.”

The parents in question have had joint legal custody of the girl, who was born in 2014. However, Fonrouge observed that “the mother wants the dad to only see his daughter every other weekend, and the father wants sole custody.”

A New York appellate judge argued  “the presence of the flag is not in the child’s best interests,” and the mother must teach her “child to embrace her mixed race identity.”

Although the father brought forth the issue of the rock in the earlier stages of the custody trial, the father took a broader approach by arguing that his home was a more stable environment for the girl. 

The case has reached the appellate court, which made the rock issue the center of the dispute.

“Although not addressed by Family Court or the attorney for the child, the mother’s testimony at the hearing, as well as an exhibit admitted into evidence, reveal that she has a small confederate flag painted on a rock near her driveway,” the judges declared in the ruling.

Jason Leifer, the child’s legal counsel, asserted that the appellate judges “pulled something out of a hat” due to the rock not ever being the center of the parents’ dispute.

“Bringing politics into the family court is probably the worst possible thing you could do, and it seems like that’s what the appellate division has opened the door to,” Leifer said to The Post by phone. “Hopefully it’ll be fixed by the Court of Appeals.”

Such a dispute comes at a moment when the US has been undergoing a major culture war following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer. Since last summer’s unrest kicked off, confederate emblems and monuments have been under constant attack on the grounds that they symbolize a “racist” past.

Back in December, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a measure that prevented the sale of confederate flags and other “hate symbols” on state property. In addition, the law places strict limits on the flag’s display unless it serves an educational or historical purpose.

Michael Stutman, an attorney whose specialty is matrimonial law and is the current chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Matrimonial Law Committee, told The Post he thinks the judges made “a very dangerous statement.”

“I think that it is a rather astonishing extension of wokeness in now that the door seems to be opening that someone’s political viewpoint reflects on their fitness as a parent,” Stutman stated.

“It is one of the clearest infringements on someone’s free speech by the state to have a court threaten to restrict a parents’ rights to their child based upon … the propriety of a person’s political beliefs.I don’t think that such a decision would ever stand constitutional challenge,” he declared.

Bottom line: Wokism is getting out of control. From the courtroom to corporate boards, woke hall monitors are trying to police every form of human interaction and browbeat those who deviate from the woke orthodoxy into submission.

Sane state governments should purge all their agencies of woke purveyors and punish businesses that engage in this insane behavior.

Contributed by Big League Politics.