Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Floor Speech: Senator Coons addresses the issues of homeschooling in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
As Delivered on December 4, 2012
Thank you so much, Senator Kerry, for your chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee and your very real leadership on this important issue — and to Senator Lugar — the two of you, in combination, I think, have led very strongly on this important issue.
Let me just briefly add two points to the chorus on this floor today. First, to the senators who've spoken pointedly about their fears — their concerns — about homeschooling. I listened while presiding, Mr. President, while Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma spoke passionately about his youngest daughter who homeschools her kids, and about their fears that somehow this Convention would hand the power to an unelected group of international bureaucrats to direct the schooling of children in Oklahoma.
I heard Senator Lee of Utah add to that negative chorus a question. He said: I have justifiable doubts that a U.N. committee in Geneva can judge the best interests of children in Utah. I agree. And this Convention does nothing to empower an international convention of bureaucrats to direct the schooling of children in Delaware, in West Virginia, in Indiana, or in Massachusetts.
And I am frankly upset, Mr. President, that they have succeeded in scaring the parents who homeschool their children all over this country. My own office has gotten dozens of calls and letters demanding that I vote against this Convention as a matter of international law, and, as a matter of U.S. law, this Convention does nothing — does nothing — to change the homeschooling of children in America.
Rather, it does something positive. The Americans with Disabilities Act, led so brilliantly in its ratification by Senator Tom Harkin, who will speak shortly, and where Senator Robert Dole was a central architect of its passage in this chamber, stands as one of the greatest accomplishments in this country in our steady progress towards freedom and inclusion.
This Convention, ratified by this Senate, would allow our voice to be heard internationally for all over the world. A billion citizens of this world live with disabilities every day. And, Mr. President, our voice deserves to be heard when we open the Senate every day, we say the Pledge of Allegiance. And at the end of it, we hold up to our world our standard — liberty and justice for all.
In this country, the Americans with Disabilities Act says we have accomplished real progress towards liberty for the disabled and justice for all. By ratifying this Convention, our voice would be heard on these vital issues all over the world. It is a voice that deserves to be heard. I urge my colleagues to ratify the Convention.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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