Step Forward and Call for Change

I can't believe that I finally got a guest post done for Homeschoolers Anonymous, I was beginning to think that it couldn't happen. I got so bogged down, and I had a great deal of writers block. It's an odd conundrum  being a former fundamentalist blogger, everyone wants your story, but it's hard to bring back all those memories, and it's hard to find a way to keep from repeating yourself over and over.

Anyway, I decided instead of doing a more biographical post like I have done in the past for blogs like Leaving Fundamentalism and The Wartburg Watch, I decided to go more with a topic instead. The guest post has to do with the issue of socialization in homeschooling. Here's an excerpt from the guest post,

I spent about a year at a well known Southern Baptist university, and some of the people there were homeschool alumni. They use to make jokes about the “awkward homeschool kid” stereotype, and many of them were even members of a Facebook group that was built around such jokes. 

HSLDA: We Would Rather Stand Behind Abusers Than Their Victims

If you are not familiar with what HSLDA (the Homeschool Legal Defense Association) is, you need to know who they are, and how they stand in the way of child abuse investigations, and condone abuse.

Libby Anne of the Patheos blog Love Joy Feminism recently had a great post series on the disgusting tactics that this group uses, supposedly in order to protect homeschooling families (read all her posts related to them here).

Here is some of the more disturbing ways of how they end up supporting child abusers in the process, in their campaign to supposedly protect the homeschooling rights of member families:

If HSLDA had their way, anonymous tips to social services agencies would become history:

In a report to Congress, HSLDA lawyer Christopher Klicka stated that he wanted federal law to be amended to prohibit anonymous tips to state social services agencies:

Anonymous Tips: As a condition of receiving federal funds, CAPTA should be amended to mandate states to require all reporters of child abuse to give their names, addresses and phone numbers. This will curtail false reporting and end harassment using anonymous tips. CAPTA should be amended by adding subsection 42 U.S.C. 5106a(b)(2)(A)(xiv): provisions and procedures to assure that no reports shall be investigated unless the person making such a report provides such person’s name, address and telephone number and that the information is independently verified.

This would all but end reporting of abuse cases to social services. Think about it, if you knew that a neighbor was beating their children, how likely would you be to report it if not only did you have to state name, address, and your phone number to the social services worker, but that the neighbor's lawyer could insist that this information be provided to them (and therefore their client as well). Wouldn't you likely be afraid for your life in a situation like this?

HSLDA opposes mandatory reporting laws:

HSLDA believes that laws requiring adults to report evidence of abuse to social services, local police or prosecutors will create a 'police state", here's what they had to say about a proposed federal law that would have made state mandatory reporting laws a nationwide norm:

S. 1879 will require every single person to be a mandatory reporter of suspected child abuse. States will lose certain federal funds if they do not create mandatory reporter laws that encompass every single person in the state. This will create a massive “police state” system that forces people to report on family members and neighbors even if they only suspect child abuse, or they will face a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail.