I’ll paraphrase: Mr. Reyes and his estranged wife are engaged in bitter divorce proceedings. The soon-to-be-former-Mrs. Reyes is Jewish. Mr. Reyes converted to Judaism during the course of the couple’s relationship, a conversion he now claims was not “voluntary”.
And then Mr. Reyes, in either an O’Reilly-esque move to paint himself (and his religion) as the victim OR in a move destined to leave him typing /facepalm on his mental keyboard forevermore, defied the court order by taking the girl to church again, this time alerting the media that he was doing so.
Lawyer for the soon-to-be-ex says
And lastly, Mr. Reyes testifying in his own defense:
My $.02: Joseph Reyes is a spineless asshole. He couldn’t stand up to his wife or to her parents, and now he’s using right-wing talking points and his own daughter in an attempt to both inflate his own ego and finally feel like he’s winning something. I might have given the guy the benefit of the doubt, but alerting the media before he took her to church, after having her baptised without her mother’s consent (or knowledge), seals it for me. This guy isn’t a brave man defending a principle; he’s a schmuck who is (metaphorically) calling his dad to help him because he can’t get it done by himself. He’s invoked the court of public opinion because he was losing in the court of law.
It’s not sad that the country has come to this, Mr. Reyes; it’s sad that you have come to this.
And the worst part of it is that he is using his daughter like a tool to bludgeon his estranged wife. Yeah, I’m sure that’s something that your “Jesus” would do, Mr. Reyes. :rolleyes:
The guy is an idiot. Actually, they both are. Bottom line is that he violated a court order, so now he has to play the price. The real shame here is that both parents feel religious indoctrination for a 3-year old is ok.
The custodial parent gets to decide things like religious upbringing. And baptism is a sacrament, not a weapon to be used against your soon-to-be-ex-wife. If I had to guess, I’d say Reyes’ embrace of Catholicism is self-serving and completely bogus, but even if it’s genuine and heartfelt, he has no right to force his non-custodial daughter to participate in his religious tradition.
Really, the whole religious angle is just so much petty noise in a standard divorce dispute.
So many times when a couple split, one or the other or both act up against their former soulmate. Judges try to keep them in line but some people JUST CAN"T HELP THEMSELVES. They turn into obstreperous infants and become destructive. It’s a real shame when there are kids involved because they frequently become collateral damage. This looks like a classic case.
The fact that this moron is trying to conflate the whole thing into a religious battle for the ages is just sad. Yes, he’s roped the media into airing his dirty laundry, which is a shame. But it’s really just him acting out. I prescribe extra strength chill pills, two a day for the next month, at least.
This story would be far more interesting if one of the combatants was Muslim. Then it would be front page, top of the fold on Fox ‘News’ and we’d get the real story about which one was truly evil.
Don’t agree, on the facts as stated. Seems a straight-up case of the non-custodial parent messing with the custodial parent, for shits and giggles. How does that make the custodial parent an idiot?
Both the idea that collar-length hair counts as “long” for men and the idea that long hair on men is an ideological marker for leftists seem rather old-fashioned to me. Right-wing fundamentalist Christians may still oppose boys and men having long hair, but are conservatives in general still upset by it?
Here’s some food for thought: The child might not actually be baptized. In the eyes of the Catholic church, one of the requisite elements of baptism is that the one doing the baptizing have a sincere intent to perform a baptism. It sounds, though, like this fellow just had a sincere intent to piss off the kid’s mother.
Meanwhile, if Christianity is just a kind of Judaism, then how can he claim that he involuntarily converted to Judaism? By the standard he’s trying to apply, he was a Jew all along.
Apparently this is the law, but I don’t think it should be. The religious upbringing should be based on the upbringing that the kid had during the marriage, unless both parents agree to the change.
That sounds nice in theory but in practise given how many marriages break up over religious differences as part of the deal it just wouldnt be workable.
You’d end up with stealth churchgoing, and court cases galore as well as court cases being brought because the child wasnt being taken often enough or the like.
Someone has to lose and the most obvious person to lose is the non custodial parent.