This is not a serious post.
It is.
Should children be beholden to their parents views on all matters? Particularly if it's through coercion.
Absolutely not, and it's about more than just religious belief.
You are thinking about this too abstractly. It is already illegal to neglect or beat your kids for being an atheist or not wanting to go to church. What other legal protections ought to be in place?
If insisting on a religious upbringing for children is "coercion" then how is it not similarly coercive to discipline your kids when they lie, cheat, steal, are bullies, sneak out of the house at night, etc.? Religious teaching is a fundamental aspect of a child's moral education
Rearing children in a chosen religious tradition is part of parents' right to free exercise. Your idea that this basic and inescapable aspect of parenting (i.e., moral education) be potentially criminalized is unserious, dangerous and illiberal.
Religious freedom is a right enshrined in the Constitution. Moral freedom isn't.
huh? moral freedom? what's that?
Being able to freely raise your children in a religious tradition is religious freedom, plain and simple.
Children are individuals and are entitled to freedom of religion, just as anyone else.
The First Amendment is that Congress makes no law prohibiting religious freedom, not that people be shielded from exposure to religious teaching from their parents or other private individuals.
Children lack the necessary level of discernment or maturity to always know what's in their best interest. The development of their conscience is shaped through a combination of moral teaching and lived experience. Parents are correct to direct and influence this process, which is all that a religious upbringing amounts to.
There is no shortage of people raised in strict religious households who then come to revaluate, redefine or reject that faith later in life. I would even count myself among them. That this happens so frequently suggests you and the typical anti-theist lot here are just pushing a (very bad) solution in search of a problem.
But I assume this only applies to Christians? If someone doesn't want to be Muslim I assume they are just being patriots?
