On the Disability Treaty Debacle and the Republican Education Agenda
Every so often the paranoid rhetoric of the "parental rights" movement surfaces in the Congressional Republican caucus. That's what happened yesterday when 38 senators blocked the United States from adopting the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a treaty largely based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. That celebrated piece of legislation was signed into law by George H.W. Bush in 1990. Both former Bush presidents, Bob Dole, and John McCain all back the treaty, which seeks to prevent discrimination on the basis of disability, and which would do nothing to change any exisiting U.S. law or to prevent homeschooling. Yet anti-internationalist conservative interest groups have organized strong opposition to this treaty and others among homeschooling parents and Tea Party activists, telling them it could prevent parents from educating disabled children at home or using corporal punishment. From the Senate floor, Utah's Mike Lee articulated this position:
I and many of my constituents, including those who homeschool their children or send their children to private or religious schools, have justifiable doubts that a foreign UN body, a committee operating out of
