And A Little Child Shall . . . Obtain An Injunction

In the continuing search for solutions without apparent problems, the lovely and talented Gretchen Whitmer has done it again. Our erstwhile attorney-general-wannabe has taken laptop in hand, not to play solitaire, but to craft legislation that will permit 12-year-olds to get personal protection orders without telling anyone!

Here's the background -- when children have legal rights to pursue in court (if injured in an accident, for example), they sue through a device known as a "next friend." A next friend is a person who acts on behalf of someone who lacks the legal capacity to act on his or her own behalf. When a child brings a lawsuit, typically a parent or close relative will act as next friend. In many courts, the term "guardian ad litem" (meaning guardian for the litigation) is used.

Personal protection orders are authorized by Michigan law when a court determines there is reasonable cause to believe that the person to be restrained (the "respondent") may commit or threaten to commit an act of violence against the person seeking the order (the "petitioner").

PPOs are available to restrain a spouse, a former spouse, an individual with whom the petitioner has a child in common, a person with whom the petitioner has had a dating relationship, or an individual residing in the same household as the petitioner.

If a child needs a PPO, then the child -- who lacks the legal capacity to sue -- needs an adult to serve as his or her "next friend." Makes sense, right?

Cue Gretchen Whitmer.

On August 18, in the midst of a recession and an impending budget crisis, Whitmer zeroed in on a problem apparently more pressing -- all those 12-year-olds who want personal protection orders -- and introduced SB 734, which would amend the law to say:

If the petitioner for a personal protection order . . . is a minor 12 years of age or older, the petitioner may proceed under this section without a next friend.

So, your 12-year-old can go to court for a personal protection order without you -- or any other adult -- knowing anything about it. Is there any reason for this?

You might say, " Hey, Wiz -- what about a case where a 12-year-old is being abused by a parent? Shouldn't the child be able to go to court without the abusive parent being notified?"

There are a couple of problems with that argument. First, PPOs are ordinarily forbidden where the putative respondent is the petitioner's parent. Second, if the parent cannot be the next friend, there are other adults -- relatives, neighbors, teachers, social workers -- who can be. Third, there are other, more effective alternatives for children in that situation, and fourth, the parent will be notified in the event the PPO is issued, effectively mooting any advantage to a lack of notice.

Ah, but you come back with, "Look, Wiz, isn't the child better off if he or she at least has the option of a PPO?" Maybe, but maybe not. What happens when the child, upset that he can't go to a party, swings by the courthouse to falsely accuse his mother of abuse and to ask for a PPO? Do you think his parents might be just a tad upset when they find out what he tried to do?

"Tsk, tsk," you say. "Most children don't know where the courthouse is, let alone have the wherewithal to get there or to ask for a PPO." Exactly. So why propose to let them do it?

Parents are responsible for their children's protection. If the parents cause harm, they are liable. But these problems are few and far between, and they cannot be remedied by PPOs.

Permitting children to act without their parents' knowledge and participation erodes the family. We would never think of letting children have surgery without parental consent (unless, of course, it's abortion, which the left reveres above all). Why would we consider letting children start lawsuits without their parents' knowledge or approval, or at least the knowledge and participation of an adult?

There is an ongoing legislative effort in this country to circumvent parents and the family, to empower children to a degree for which they are unprepared, and in the process to further degrade the institution of the family. The Great Society programs have destroyed the poor family in America, a development directly related to poverty, crime, and unemployment.

Perhaps this PPO legislation will have no effect at all on the family. Given Whitmer's track record, it will never even see a Senate vote. But we need to stand firm wherever the family is challenged, starting right here at home.

Going Home

Preparing for a trial the last few weeks, one thing I made the decision not to give up is watching my son play baseball. He pitches on his high school's freshman team, and one of the teams they faced plays its home games on the field of my old elementary school. I took advantage of the game there to take a look at the school and drive by the house where I grew up.

I went to Immaculate Heart of Mary elementary school in Detroit, graduating from the 8th grade in 1971. A Catholic school, attached to a Catholic church. There is still a mass there -- one mass-- on Sundays, but the school now appears to be a public school academy, also known as a charter school, for grades 3-5.

Looking around, I was amazed at how small the school seemed, particularly since there were eight grades when I went there, two classrooms for each grade.

The statue of the Virgin Mary has been moved from near the school to a spot near the church, about as far from its previous location as it can get. Have to separate church and state, you know.

When I attended IHM, all of the students came from the immediate area around the school. Most kids walked to and from school, some rode their bikes, and a very tiny percentage were driven by their parents. Now, I saw very few students walking after school, almost all of them leaving on several school buses. And there are no bike racks.

Driving by my old house (which we left in 1977), I was struck by how many of the homes have iron bars on the doors and windows, in a neighborhood where we used to leave the doors unlocked. I also noticed that a fair number of the trees are dead, perhaps victims of the emerald ash borer, but dead nonetheless, and the neighborhood's appearance, which couldn't take it, suffered further.

Some things were the same -- the trees by our house were still there, including the one I tried to chop down with a 7-iron when I was quite young. We lived on a corner lot, with a detached garage and a fence running about three quarters of the lot along the side. Much of the fence was gone, and the garage looked unusable. The garage windows were boarded up, I couldn't tell if the garage door was functioning, and the entry door was just gone.

One improvement that, in my mind, diminished the lot, was the side street, which had been paved. Growing up, that was a dirt road, and the opportunities for imaginative play were unlimited. When we played baseball, we drew the bases in the dirt, and the area behind my garage was the bullpen (which, unlike a major league bullpen, you had to jump the fence to get out of). We burnt leaves there, after piling them as high as we could for jumping-into purposes. We played football, marking the line of scrimmage and first down lines in the dirt, and we even had our own version of Olympics, consisting of races, high jumps (into piles of leaves), and long jumps, the results of which were also marked in the dirt.

In all, looking at my school and my home, I experienced a great sense of loss. Things that had been constants as a young boy -- my home, my church, my school -- have changed irrevocably, and not for the better. A sizable number of the homes in my old neighborhood are boarded up or burnt out, including the homes where some of my friends lived.

Is this the natural course of things? The house my dad grew up in isn't even there anymore, and my old house is on its way. Will my son and daughter see the same thing happen to the house we live in now? What can we do to stop this cycle?

Our old neighborhood in Detroit deteriorated because of crime and declining property values. People who cared deeply about our neighborhood and our neighbors moved out, replaced by people who didn't care as much. Our Catholic parish, a focal point of community life, declined in importance as the community changed. The school closed, and masses declined from 5 or 6 a weekend to one. The school now seems like just a building to be rented, and Mary's statue has been removed to a distant location.

God, family, neighborhood. These are the things that bound us together, made us strong, and made life in our corner of Detroit a wonderful thing. I knew everyone for blocks around. We rode our bikes and played baseball from breakfast to dark in the summer, all without a parental escort, cell phones, or play dates. Now, I am ashamed to say that I don't know that many of my neighbors, and my kids leave our sight under tight restrictions and always with their cell phone tethers.

I certainly don't have answers for the problems of today's neighborhoods or our impersonal, isolated existences. Mostly, I just wanted to get these thoughts down. But it occurs to me we have lost the common, unifying themes of American life -- God, family, neighborhood. In the name of diversity and tolerance, we celebrate our differences, but downplay our similarities. We trumpet our divisions, but silence that which unites -- or united -- us.

It's too bad we can't simply ignore race, creed, or national origin. These things are almost always irrelevant to any decision that needs to be made, and they are irrelevant to any consideration of the worth and value of a human being. The more we focus on them, the farther we drift from our American ideal, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

God, family, neighborhood. Let's get back to basics and save ourselves.