"Where Is Barack Obama?/The most popular American, whose legacy is the primary target of Donald Trump, has, for now, virtually disappeared from public life."

Gabriel Debenedetti (in New York Magazine) asks the question that perhaps you, like me, have been wondering about.

How did the most ubiquitous man in America for eight years virtually disappear?... He has mostly opted out of liberal America’s collective Trump-outrage cycle. Though he reads the Times and other newspapers, he doesn’t follow daily Trump developments on Twitter or watch television news. He is upset by the administration’s actions, and he’s confided to friends that what worries him most is the international order, the standing of the office of the presidency, the erosion of democratic norms, and the struggles of people who are suddenly unsure of their immigration status or the future of their health-care coverage. Still, in conversations with political allies, Obama insists that today’s domestic mess is a blip on the long arc of history and argues that his own work must be focused on progress over time — specifically on empowering a new generation of leaders. He says his legacy is not what concerns him. (“Michelle and I are fine,” he tells those who ask about it.) And while he often says he misses the day-to-day work of fixing people’s problems, he has even less patience for day-to-day politics than he did as president.

In fact, in private conversations, Obama rarely mentions Trump at all.... One of Obama’s friends repeatedly described the former president as newly “Zen-like,” a striking descriptor given that Obama’s impossible calm has been a hallmark of his entire time on the national stage. To those who’ve known him longest, his confidence in the decision not to wade back into the political muck is the product of the same hyper-self-aware posture he’s had since childhood, growing up straddling worlds and then writing a book about himself in his 30s....

He's aloof. That was always the case. That's kind of what we liked about him, those of us who liked the man who — in my observation — is considered the most likable person to become famous in our lifetime. We're just experiencing the full dimension of coolness. It's not always to your liking, even if you were one of those people who really liked it.



But I think Obama should be allowed to eat his waffle, go to restaurants and be left in peace, write his books, experience down time, and stay out of the fray. He may seem political useful, but that's because he's avoiding being used, and that's exactly what he should do.

ADDED: That waffle video won't work in the embedded form. You can click through and see it at YouTube, but for a workable embed, here's Obama eating noodles in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain:

"Strzok isn’t just any rank-and-file guy spouting off in one ill-advised email. His fingerprints were on every FBI investigation..."

"... that stood to impact Clinton’s presidential candidacy or to hurt Trump before and after the 2016 election. He was chief of the FBI’s Counterespionage Section and number two in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. He led the team of investigators in the Clinton classified email probe and led the FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the election. He was involved in the controversial anti-Trump 'Steele dossier' used, in part, to obtain multiple secret wiretaps. He was the one who interviewed Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI only to later learn that agents reportedly didn’t think he’d lied. And Strzok was the 'top' FBI agent appointed to work on the team of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate alleged Trump-Russia collusion. The earth-shattering finding on Strzok by the inspector general (IG) confirms a citizenry’s worst fears: A high-ranking government intel official allegedly conspired to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election...."

Read "What did Peter Strzok do?" by Sharyl Attkisson.

Pharmacist, citing moral objections, declines to fill a prescription for a woman who needed a drug to end a pregnancy that she'd wanted but knew was going to end in a miscarriage.

The NYT tells the story, based on the woman's Facebook post, in "Walgreens Pharmacist Denies a Woman Medication to End Her Unviable Pregnancy":

“I stood at the mercy of this pharmacist explaining my situation in front of my 7-year-old, and five customers standing behind only to be denied because of his ethical beliefs,” she wrote, adding, “I left Walgreens in tears, ashamed and feeling humiliated by a man who knows nothing of my struggles but feels it is his right to deny medication prescribed to me by my doctor.”

Walgreens said on Saturday that it had contacted Ms. Arteaga “and apologized for how the situation was handled,” but suggested that the employee had not run afoul of company policy by refusing to fill the prescription.

“To respect the sincerely held beliefs of our pharmacists while at the same time meeting the needs of our patients, our policy allows pharmacists to step away from filling a prescription for which they have a moral objection,” the company said in a statement....

Ms. Arteaga’s account evoked strong reactions on social media, where some called on Walgreens to fire the pharmacist and others threatened to boycott the company.

“I was shocked,” Ms. Arteaga, 35, said on Sunday. “I couldn’t believe that he would tell me that I wasn’t going to be able to get my prescription.”

She tried to explain her situation but he remained unmoved. “What I have inside of me is an undeveloped baby,” she recalled telling the pharmacist. “I need this to help get it out.” 

I'm using the tag "abortion" here to connect this issue with other abortion issues, not to express the idea that the use of the drug in this case would be an abortion (though the article calls it a "medical abortion"). If I understand this correctly, the "undeveloped baby" was already dead and, for her health, needed to be removed from the uterus, not left until her body expelled it. I don't know if the pharmacist understood that, but I do think there should be accommodation for pharmacists to decline to participate in abortions and that empathy for this woman does not support an effort to drive conscientious-objector pharmacists out of work.

Katie Arrington — who beat Mark Sanford in the South Carolina congressional primary — got seriously injured in a car crash Friday night.

Politico reports:

On Sunday, according to the statement [from her campaign], Arrington underwent two major surgeries. The first was an operation that complemented the initial surgery she underwent Friday night on her abdomen. The second surgery was for a spinal fracture, which went "very well and with no complications."

Almost two weeks ago, the Republican state representative defeated Rep. Mark Sanford in the primary for the GOP nomination in the state's 1st District. She received the last minute support of President Donald Trump in the race, who joined a number of well wishers in tweeting their prayers for her over the weekend....

Tweeting their prayers... God is on Twitter? Actually, Trump tweeted about the fact that he was praying: "My thoughts and prayers are with Representative Katie Arrington of South Carolina." Probably a lie though, don't you think? Or do you think the tweet "My prayers are with X" is itself the prayer?

Sorry to go all theological on you! I'm glad Arrington seems to be doing well. The driver of the other car — which was driving the wrong way — died.

On Saturday, [Arrington] was described as being seriously injured, sustaining broken ribs and a fracture in her back, among other injuries. "As we all know, Katie Arrington is an extremely strong woman and has tremendous faith and an incredibly supportive family," her Twitter account said Saturday.

Beyond dehumanizing Trump officials and on to dehumanizing Trump opponents who merely caution against the dehumanization of Trump officials.

Yesterday, we looked at Jennifer Rubin's creepy approval of disrupting the restaurant meals of Trump officials such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I say "creepy," because Rubin assures us that she's above such uncouth behavior, but she certainly understands the new trend in political expression and subtly nods permission: "[I]t is both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun...".

Less than a day after Rubin's column went up in The Washington Post, the newspaper published an editorial, "Let the Trump team eat in peace." The editors made clear that they think the "terrible violations of human rights at the border" — "demonizing immigrants" — is "no ordinary policy dispute," but...

We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and [Kirstjen] Nielsen and [Stephen] Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?

Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.

That is, they might not mind if the interference with restaurant life could be limited to political officials who do things that WaPo editors think are truly hateful, but if ordinary people assume the authority to decide what counts as "no ordinary policy dispute" and to act out in restaurants, then eating in restaurants will lose its charm, and Washington will fill up with those awful characters who only want to get work done and will forgo the pleasures of fine dining.

Imagine the zealots who will take over! You need the kind of people who care about going out to restaurants, people like WaPo editors, who certainly don't want anyone screaming "Baby murderer!" in their face.

But let's look at the comments on that editorial. I'm sure the editors thought they'd expressed firm opposition to Trump alongside their carefully reasonable plea for peace in restaurants. Here's the highest-rated comment:

Oh shut up with the groveling, Fred Hiatt [WaPo's editorial page editor] or whoever wrote this drivel.

These Trump collaborators are the "Good Germans" of the day and they deserve every bit of public shaming and shunning they get. They're lucky they don't get spit on when they slither out in public.

Another commenter responds:

Drivel indeed ... they deserve no peace.

There is no rest for the wicked.

And another:

Well... This admin certainly has given us NO peace or rest since day 1 of the orange "American carnage". But they certainly have been busy amassing the "piece" for themselve and their filthy rich donors. Each new day is full of new absurdities, lawlessness and outrageous lies and ignorant tweets. And now thousands of faceless, defenseless kids lost in the Trump Baby Prisons...

So... We let them eat in peace until when? When they start delivering children MADE orphans to work farms? When they start dumping the undocumented children in the middle of nowhere in C America in the dark of the night? When they start carting them to the ovens? When would it be okay? When?

Another highly-rated comment is: "Give them hell and spit in their food.. They are not welcome in polite society," which is followed up by "like 'the help'" (a reference to a movie where shit is baked into chocolate pie).

ADDED: On reread, I'm seeing that I wrote "if ordinary people assume the authority to decide what counts as 'no ordinary policy dispute.'" My ordinary writing policy is not to let a word repeat like that unless there's a good reason, but one "ordinary" is in quotes and I can't think of a good synonym for the "ordinary" in "ordinary people" — even with the assistance of Meade's singing "Everyday People" — so I'm racking my brain for a justification for the repetition.



And different strokes for different folks/And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee/Ooh, sha sha/We got to live together...

Scraping the bottom of the outrage barrel.

"Under President Trump, once stately medallions have gotten glitzier, and at least one featured a Trump property. Ethics watchdogs are worried," the NYT wants us to know.

Since Bill Clinton occupied the White House, the commemorative medallions known as challenge coins have been stately symbols of the presidency coveted by the military, law enforcement personnel and a small circle of collectors.

Then came Donald J. Trump.

His presidency has yielded more — and more elaborate — coins that are shinier, flashier and even bigger, setting off a boom for coin manufacturers, counterfeiters and collectors, with one official Trump challenge coin recently fetching $1,000 on eBay.

Well, hell. I blame Bill Clinton. Why does this junk exist at all?! If it exists, what difference does it make what the design is? Aren't coins generally shiny? Who would make a deliberately dull coin? The NYT consulted John Wertman, "a former Clinton White House aide who is a leading expert on challenge coins":

His collection includes the official presidential challenge coins of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, muted bronze affairs that have the presidential seal on one side and the White House and the president’s signature on the other.

Muted bronze affairs!

Wertman seems okay with Trump's choice — "If you look at what he did with the design of the White House drapes and his general inclination toward gold, that’s his personal preference" — and that sounds right to me. It's a Trump coin. It should be shiny gold-colored even if Clinton and Obama chose to show off with muffled dignity. These guys are all manufacturing coins celebrating themselves. I'm not going to accept any special antagonism toward Trump because his coins are shinier.

Stupidest Trump outrage yet.

"Trump Calls for Depriving Immigrants Who Illegally Cross Border of Due Process Rights."

That's how the NYT puts it, looking at this tweet:

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018

You call that "LIVING"? Or: Let's pose him so his head looks like a pineapple.

This is just so delightfully absurd...



... at The NY Post. I love everything about it — the name Randall Bellows III, the way the shirt pattern matches and clashes with the sofa, the long-fingered hand gesture, the plant on the top of the shelf that (just by chance?) makes Bellows's head look like a pineapple, the fact that I have no idea what Venmo is, the goofy smile that seems not to be anxiety but actually could be a very particular kind of anxiety that I have not yet encountered, the kind of anxiety known as "Venmo anxiety." Personally, I feel no anxiety at all. I'm just amused and bemused by Randall Bellows III and the quirky ailment-of-the-moment he seems to be experiencing — without ostensible pain — in Brooklyn, where — apparently — one dispels anxiety with a roll of the eyes and an insouciant hand flourish.

Okay. Now I'll read the article:

Whenever Caroline Keane opens the Venmo app, she always intends to just go in and out. But, inevitably, she gets sucked into the mobile money-transfer service — specifically, its social feed, where she can see friends and co-workers requesting cash from one another for drinks, dinners and Ubers. Scrolling through the app gives the 23-year-old PR professional a particular sense of anxiety: Is everyone hanging out without her?...

The solution is: Put down the phone and get back to writing Nancy Drew mysteries.



ADDED: I read the headline to Meade and he said, "Ben Wa?" I repeated the word more clearly, Venmo. He said: "I know what Ben Wa balls are."

Facebook reality.

Just looked at Facebook and saw this message: "9 years ago today, you and your sister, Dell, became friends on Facebook. We made you this video to celebrate your friendship!"

I guess the real world doesn't matter on Facebook. It's when things begin on Facebook that matters to Facebook. And if you are "friends" within the meaning of Facebook, you have "friendship" in the only sense that matters to Facebook.

The battering Trump is taking in the press is not hurting him.

From Real Clear Politics (which averages the polls):



I invite you to offer your own explanations, but I'm reading "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper" (NYT)...

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?”...

Republican voters repeatedly described an instinctive, protective response to the president, and their support has grown in recent months.... Mr. Trump has also retained support across a range of demographics other than the working-class voters who are most identified with him....

[A]s another immigration crisis of his own making smoldered this past week, critics inside and outside Mr. Trump’s party predicted another devastating, irremediable low point in his presidency. Yet many Trump voters said that they no longer had the patience or interest to listen to what they see as another hysterical outburst by Democrats, Republican “Never Trumpers” and the media....

For many Republicans, the audio of children sobbing at a migrant detention center barely registered, because these voters don’t pay attention to the left-leaning and mainstream media that have covered the family separation crisis far more than their preferred channel, Fox News....

Others said they saw a ploy by the president’s enemies to obscure news that was more favorable to him, like the internal Justice Department investigation that recently uncovered evidence of F.B.I. officials speaking disparagingly of Mr. Trump....

Then there's "Trump Loses His Superpower/The president’s tweets have been powerless against images of migrant children in the news media," by Jack Shafer (Politico) — which I feel like calling As Trump Supporters Resist the Assailing of Trump, His Antagonists Dig In Deeper:

The border story couldn’t have arrived at a worse time for Trump. After the inspector general’s report on FBI handling of the Clinton email investigation came out on June 14, Trump seized on it with his demagogic tentacles and started to score points with his misguided supporters about how the deep state had attempted to block his election....

But... the border story nullified Trump’s howling about the IG report and the evil James Comey. Nobody wanted to hear about the IG anymore; they wanted to hear Trump justify the border policy. Trump was now facing a story that couldn’t be diluted or contaminated with Twitter truculence....

For three years now we’ve been told that nothing bad sticks to Trump, that his mind games and double-talk make him invulnerable to the protestations of the righteous. That no matter how tight his detractors tie the knot, he’ll always slip out of it. This week we learned differently. Trump can reliably win the battle if it’s fought with words. But against images and descriptions of distraught and traumatized children and parents, Trump’s superpowers fail. If you want to beat Trump, hit him in the heart because he doesn’t seem to have one. He’s a man with zero emotional intelligence.

So... hit him in the thing that he doesn't have. Is that a Zen koan? I don't know. Jack Shafer just sounds... truculent. It's inspiring my instinctive, protective response. Shafer ought to see how battering Trump stimulates that feeling... but it would take some... emotional intelligence.

"The original writer of the Village Voice story that inspired 'Boys Don’t Cry' looks back on her reporting — and the huge error she still regrets."

Here's how the original story looked in 1993:



See the problem? (From the perspective of today.)

Donna Minkowitz writes:

For years, I have wanted to apologize for what I now understand, with some shame, was the article’s implicit anti-trans framing. Without spelling it out, the article cast Brandon as a lesbian who hated “her” body because of prior experiences of childhood sexual abuse and rape. (One of Brandon’s acquaintances had told me he’d said he was “disgusted by lesbians,” and several friends said Brandon had said, “I can’t be with a woman as a woman. That’s gross.”) I saw this youngster’s decision to lead a life as a straight man as incredibly bold — but also assumed it was a choice made in fear, motivated by internalized homophobia.

At the time, I was extremely ignorant about trans people. Like many other cis queer people at the time, I didn’t know that there were gay trans men, trans lesbians, bisexual trans folks, that being trans had nothing to do with whether you were straight or gay, and that trans activism was not, as some of us feared, an effort to stave off queerness and lead “easier,” more conventional heterosexual lives.

Even in New York City, someone like me, a journalist who considered myself very involved in queer radical politics, could be massively ignorant about what it meant to be transgender. In particular, I conjectured that Brandon’s long-term sexual abuse by an uncle and a rape in high school had led him to abjure his “female” genitals and breasts. It’s the aspect of my article that makes me cringe the most today....

Ever wonder about what aspects of the article you're writing today that you will cringe at in 25 years? No, no, today is today's today. Yesterday was yesterday's today. The insights of today are good enough for today. Tomorrow belongs to somebody else, possibly you, but Alien You — Alien You who will look upon the You of Today as benighted and despicable.

About Roseanneless "Roseanne" and persons "of colors."

I'm trying to read "How ABC changed ‘Roseanne’ into ‘The Conners’ and kept the status quo/The frustrating reality of the entertainment industry" by Monica Castillo at The Lily (which is a woman-oriented offshoot of The Washington Post).

Castillo objects to the new version of the show — "Roseanne" without Roseanne — because the actors and writers employed on the old show could have been used to produce a completely new show. Castillo then gives us this paragraph (as if it supports the proposition that a completely new show should be devised to keep the the old show's people employed):

Yesterday, the Directors Guild of America published their diversity figures for movie directors, revealing a shocking. but not entirely surprising statistic: There were fewer directors of colors helming movies last year than in 2013....

Directors of colors? Is that how we talk now? Is there some idea that because "directors" is plural that you should also pluralize "color"? That's not the grammar rule I was taught in high school by an English teacher who justified the rule by maintaining that it is manifestly ridiculous to say to a group of people "use your heads" (because it creates the image of individuals with more than one head).

Maybe the plural seemed to express Castillo's interest in colors other than black (and "directors of color" seemed to signify only black directors). But maybe it's just a typo. Later in the column, I do see "directors of color."

Anyway — beyond that strange phrase — I don't see what the interest in employing more nonwhite directors has to do with whether John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, et al., do a completely new show or play the familiar roles of Dan and Darlene Conner.

That question has to do with what will draw an audience. I wonder how the new show will be promoted. The message will be:

Hey, don't you want to watch "Roseanne" without Roseanne? You loved "Roseanne" so much that you'll love it without Roseanne, who had to go because... well, you know, for that reason we don't what to talk about anymore, and we hope that you remember so you'll know why this is "Roseanne" without Roseanne, but you won't want to reopen the question why she had to be made a total outcast from all polite society.

Putting that in writing, I'm thinking I'd be interested in a new show, starring Roseanne Barr, about the greatest woman in the history of television, who Ambien-tweeted a stupid joke that everyone took to be racist and who got kicked out of her own TV home and who is now ranting and raving — watching "Roseanne" without Roseanne on the TV in her home on a nutty macadamia farm in Hawaii.

Is shunning a "lost art"? That is, had we stopped doing it, and is it the sort of thing — an "art" — that we should want to revive?

I'm reading "Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the lost art of shunning" by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post, which riffs on something that happened on Friday: The owner of a restaurant (Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia), asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who'd already been seated and served) to leave. That came on top of 2 other restaurant shunnings last week: Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left a restaurant when she "was heckled" (it was a Mexican restaurant, news reports stress, as if the type of food served creates a topic that conflicts with the border-control policy Nielsen defends and enforces). And, at another Mexican restaurant, somebody yelled at Stephen Miller ("Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?").

Rubin asks whether these are "reassuring and appropriate acts of social ostracism" or "a sign of our descent into incivility." Her answer is: "It depends on how you view the child-separation policy." So... incivility is okay as long as you feel strongly about the policy that's motivating you to engage in shunning?!

This is why I have the tag "civility bullshit." It stand for my hypothesis that people only push the civility issue against their antagonists and that they will put other values above civility when the time comes for anyone to demand that their side practice civility.

If the immigration policy is perceived as "a human rights crime, an inhumane policy for which the public was primed by efforts to dehumanize a group of people," then, Rubin reasons, "it is both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners of such a policy."

Natural!? How did that get in there with "appropriate"? Is it appropriate because it is natural? Xenophobia and racism are natural. I thought the moral challenge was to overcome natural urges like that. And Rubin is also saying that it's enough that one views the policy as inhumane or "a human rights crime." You don't have to have listened carefully to the evidence and the arguments, you can just close your eyes and intuit, and if your heart says that person is evil, then lean into your natural urges and shun.

Oh, but wait: "This exception to the rule of polite social action should be used sparingly (if for no other reason than we will never get through a restaurant meal without someone hollering at someone else)."

What kind of reason is that? Why should getting through restaurant meals get be placed on a higher level than the practice of the "lost art of shunning"? There's no effort at coherent moral reasoning here. I imagine Rubin eats in restaurants a lot and really did have to stop and think about whether her elite lifestyle is threatened.

She ends by ludicrously quibbling with herself:

Each to his own method of expressing disdain and fury, I suppose. 

You suppose?!

Nevertheless, it is not altogether a bad thing to show those who think they’re exempt from personal responsibility that their actions bring scorn, exclusion and rejection.

Not altogether a bad thing? What a weaselly ending!

I am tricked by a headline one more time. To call something "a lost art" is to say that it is "something usually requiring some skill that not many people do any more." Was shunning something — like letter writing — that through widespread practice, people knew how to do well? Rubin has little to say on the subject other than she understands the outrage Trump-haters feel called to express in public, but please don't let that ruin her nice dinners out. Could the Trump people really just know they are hated and eat at home?

ADDED: This has me thinking about how Meade and I were treated in Madison in 2011:

Get out, and stay out. Far out. Meade - You ain't no man for this city. We're out on the streets every day, all day. The 77 square is not for y'all. You say we're from out of state? Bullshit. You're from fucking out of state. We'll show you just how fucking Madison we are. Althouse, we will ruin your goddamn career, your comfort, your pocketbook, your sense of safety and wellbeing, and your life....

YOU CAN'T BAN MADISON FROM LIVING IN MADISON, BUT WE CAN SURE AS SHIT BAN YOU. WHO ARE YOU GONNA CALL? COPS FOR LABOR? THE CHICKENSHIT TEA ASSWIPES WHO ARE SCARED SHITLESS OF THE TEAMSTERS TRUCKS? THE NATIONAL GUARD? SCOTT WALKER? NO ONE IS GOING TO COME AND CRACK DOWN ON US FOR YOU. THERE IS NO CAVALRY. ITS US VS YOU ON THE STREETS OF THE CITY GOING AS FAR AS IT HAS TO GO UNTIL A) WE WIN OR B) DOOMSDAY.

For background, read "Exclusive Interview With... the Man Behind the Ann Althouse Threat" (Breitbart).

At the Sidewalk Café...

... don't trample the flowers.

(And please remember the Althouse Portal to Amazon when you've got some shopping to do.)

"Is water racist?"

This is so on the money it hurts.#woke#microaggression pic.twitter.com/OMzBjKbfjA

— Tim Johns (@timoncheese) June 22, 2018

Baptizing babies violates fundamental human rights, says the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese.

"You can’t impose, really, obligations on people who are only two weeks old and you can’t say to them at seven or eight or 14 or 19 'here is what you contracted, here is what you signed up to' because the truth is they didn’t," The Irish Times reports. McAleese said that for centuries "people didn’t understand that they had the right to say no, the right to walk away... But you and I know, we live now in times where we have the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion and freedom to change religion. The Catholic Church yet has to fully embrace that thinking."

I thought it was the parents, the godparents, and the congregation who were making vows about how to bring up the child and the child was only receiving a benefit — or what the adults present believed would be a benefit. Adults must make decisions about what is good for a new human being at least up to some point when it's in a position to think for itself. The idea that adults should refrain from making decisions for a child isn't even coherent. To hold back from imposing any values is itself a decision. You might think it is best for a child to maintain a religion-free environment, but you could be wrong about that and why not go hysterical and call that too a violation of fundamental human rights?