Using children on a protest/demonstration..

[*_ash_*]

Is it fair to take children along to a protest march or demonstartion, get their faces painted up and get them holding placards, when, only being children, they may not be fully aware of all the issues involved and have not been able to make an informed decision, in fact they're only there because they've been taken there, not by their own accord.

I think in some cases, how influential it might be, perhaps depends on their age. Such as this ...

Agreed - westboro baptist "church" are the worst for this, taking children to soldiers funerals with signs to the effect that they were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan because of the USA "liberal" attitude towards homosexuality.

If that's the one that Louis Theoroux (sp) highlighted on a TV doc. Then that most certainly made me squirm. That was really odd.

 

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I think it's a good question, and hard to answer as there are multiple different circumstances. I think it's inevitable that a child will absorb their parent/guardians beliefs at some point because of time spent with them (though they might disagree when old enough to understand).

[perplexed]

Funny you should post this thread as I saw something yesterday that made me absolutely furious.

 

On the way home from taking my sister to the airport yesterday morning, we passed the church up the street and the sidewalks were lined on both sides of the road with anti abortion protesters from the church, complete with their children and posters of aborted fetuses. My 4 year old was asking me "Mommie, what are those pictures?". I told her not to look at them because they weren't nice. My 10 year old was a bit easier to deal with on this.

 

Some of the children holding these posters were quite young....some around the age of my youngest, 4 years old.

 

I always hear "What would Jesus do?". Well, if he were real, I don't think he would advocate "his people" showing pictures of aborted fetuses to little children, for a start.

 

Similarly, a few years ago I saw a small anti-abortion demonstration taking place. Amongst the people were some children, maybe 7 or 8 years old, waving placards protraying messages along the lines of "stop the baby murderers" and similar sentiments. And chanting words to the same effect.

 

Whatever your views on abortion, children of this age have no concept of the rights or wrongs of the issue, and no understanding of the emotional and physical effects of abortion and subsequent trauma involved.

 

They have no idea in the slightest about whats going on behind the womans decision to terminate, be it for medical reasons, rape, it could be anything. I do not want to see children on this type of protest, they have no business being there at all.

[Mister M]

Is it fair to take children along to a protest march or demonstartion, get their faces painted up and get them holding placards, when, only being children, they may not be fully aware of all the issues involved and have not been able to make an informed decision, in fact they're only there because they've been taken there, not by their own accord.

 

 

I like the idea of children going on protest marches with their parents. It makes it much more difficult for the yellow press to dismiss the demonstrators as the 'usual suspects', and as a previous poster says it sets a good example to youngsters that they shouldn't accept any old crap without organising and making their feelings known

 

On the other hand, if it is not alright for parents to take their kids to demonstrations then it is surely not right for Government ministers like that odious little squitjob John Selwyn Gummer at the height of the BSE crisis to forcefeed Cordelia (his daughter) a beefburger in full glare of the cameras.