Canadian court rules parents do not need to lie about Easter Bunny

[muriel_volestrangler]

A Canadian couple should not have had their foster children taken away after they refused to lie and say that the Easter Bunny was real, a judge ruled.

Frances and Derek Baars, a religious Christian couple, said they would host an Easter egg hunt, but that was not enough to satisfy their case worker.

The agency removed the children, aged three and five, closed their foster home, and barred future adoptions.
...
Justice Andrew Goodman wrote in a scathing decision released on Tuesday: "There is ample evidence to support the fact that the children were removed because the Baars refused to either tell or imply that the Easter Bunny was delivering chocolate to the Baars' home.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43336409

While this was ruled as "interfering with their religious beliefs", it should have been the same result if they were just people who said "no, we're not going to pretend something exists that doesn't". It wasn't as if they weren't going to give the kids the fun of searching for chocolate eggs and then eating them.

[madaboutharry]

1. This world is fucked up.

[Jake Stern]

2. My question to the couple:

What the F**k ever happened to letting a kid be a kid?

It harms nobody when a child believes in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny except grown ups who are hyper religious or whose intellect is bigger than their sense of decency.

Sweet Baby Buddha, today's children are already living in a technology driven world that's growing them up faster than ever so we need to shoot their imagination down too?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I managed to grow up in a mainstream western family with no stories about the Easter Bunny

I seem to remember the "tooth fairy" was presented with such an obvious wink and a nod to me that my parents were making it obvious it was just a fun story. And Father Christmas got that way pretty soon too.

No, really, society is better if we are not all ordered to use exactly the same myths as everyone else. This is a victory for diversity and freedom of thought. Oh, and reality.

The Easter Bunny is not "the children's imagination". It was someone else's, centuries ago. You don't have to repeat every tale that someone told you. You are allowed to think for yourself.

[trotsky]

7. "It harms nobody"

That's a matter of personal opinion.

Convincing children to believe in imaginary critters conditions them to ignore evidence in favor of belief. That's generally not a good thing. There is no evidence that marriage equality has harmed this country at all, yet people like Kim Davis and Mike Pence still believe it does.

[MineralMan]

8. The question about the harm caused by belief in imaginary character

has not really been answered, I think. My memories begin at about age 4. My very first life memory is of an older woman who lived in the apartment next door. I visited her often. Once, near Christmas, I noticed some tiny gift-wrapped boxes on a table. I asked her what was in them. She said, "Nothing, dear. They're just for decoration."

That is the first memory from my life that I can recall. Why? Because it was my first experience of something disguised as something else. The revelation that things were not necessarily what they appeared to be triggered a life-long memory, and helped me to be skeptical of appearances. I remember it because it was a powerful lesson.

I don't think you can say that no harm comes from presenting falsehoods as truth. It sets up a poor example, and at an early, impressionable age.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Study: Religious children are less able to distinguish fantasy from reality

According to new research from Boston University, young children with a religious background are less able to distinguish between fantasy and reality compared with their secular counterparts.
...
Although this might be unsurprising, secular and religious children also differed in their interpretation of fantasy narratives where there was a supernatural or magical storyline.

"Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional," wrote the researchers.

"The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-28537149

[MineralMan]

12. That's very interesting, I think.

I didn't know such a study had been done.

[SCantiGOP]

5. Wait!

The Easter Bunny’s not real?

[MineralMan]

6. I actually had a pet bunny when I was little.

I learned right away that bunnies don't lay eggs. So, the Easter Bunny was a lie. I understood that, having cleaned out thousands of what bunnies do lay from its cage.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Vert der furk?

There HAS to be more to this story.

To rip kids out of a home over the easter bunny?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. That does seem to have been at the heart of this

They were foster parents, so the expectation was the children would leave at some time. From an article when they launched the suit:

After a diligent screening and training process, the Baars were approved and in December 2015, they were asked to welcome two sisters, aged 4 and 3, to their rural home. The children were to be there temporarily until they could return to their parents.
...
He later learned the biological parents were upset there was no photo of the girls with Santa. But the foster dad insists they were never asked to do so in the communication book they exchanged about the children.
...
In January, their new placement support worker was increasingly angry about their failure to vouch for the hopping Easter mascot. According to their filed claim, the Baars were allegedly told it was “part of their duty as foster parents to teach the girls about the Easter Bunny because it is ostensibly part of Canadian culture.”

http://torontosun.com/2017/04/12/easter-bunny-at-heart-of-fired-foster-parents-legal-action/wcm/cb27f971-7aad-4bb3-8d13-dd0632fa4526

And a longer CBC article from now: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/easter-bunny-charter-rights-1.4566680