I must have gone through ten religious phases as a teenager, trying to figure out what I believe and as an adult my beliefs are still evolving. What irks the hell out of me about this whole issue is just where is the patience from the parents? All kids go through stuff like this.

Getting back to the quote I listed. please tell me that everyone here understands just how harsh literalist/fundamentalist Christianity is on the unbeliever? Please tell me that you understand that “thou shalt not suffer a witch” is every bit as damning as announcing you are an atheist?

I grew up in a literalist household and yes, it could be every bit as angry sounding as this video.

Think about it man.

Please forgive my overreaction. I can put myself in this families shoes. I wonder what this video will mean for this family and for Michael?

Not a problem. Scenes like these upset us. They push our buttons. The atheism issue can be beside the point. We jump on our personal pain soap boxes and start arguing past each other, maybe because we’re actually arguing with somebody from our past. For folks like myself who grew up in alcoholic families, the buttons are huge and the pain is severe. Some of that scene was dreadfully familiar. It’s one of the reasons I became a family counselor. It’s also one of the reasons years later I finally quit.

Speculating on what the aftermath of the video will mean for them is risky because we just don’t know them well enough, but what would not surprise me would be large doses of a sense of betrayal for everyone. The mother might feel betrayed by her son’s decision and doubly betrayed by being candidly filmed and exposed. The son might feel betrayed by her angry reaction, her forbidding of Christmas presents, and later by the negative reaction from his religious schoolmates. The father faces possible accusations of betrayal for not coming to the side of either of them, and he in turn might feel betrayed for being punished for just trying to survive in an angry family. If the camera was operated by a younger sibling he or she is gonna get it, and could feel betrayed by the older brother for starting it all, as well as by the family system that is so full of anger. The possibilities are endless and not very pretty. Betrayal is one of he most destructive things in a family. In the unlikely event that the video starts them on a path that eventually leads them to a better set of relationships, it will be only after a long and very bad setback first. I wouldn’t bet money on a racehorse that starts by running the wrong way.

Going only by the few seconds of what we saw in the tape, I would not determine that it constituted reportable child abuse. Yelling can rise to the illegal level of abuse, but as I also mentioned before, this tiny snippet exists in a much larger context of the family’s history of behavior. We know nothing of what transpired before or after. A single in-your-face yell could be the culmination of an afternoon filled with tension about a completely different matter. If the yelling went on and on, if there was no relief or escape, if it became more threatening or deeply hurtful, then it could in my opinion move into the realm of reportable emotional verbal abuse. But we will never know. For all we know right after the camera was shut off the mother could have switched from anger to sadness or regret about the shouting or about her disappointment in her son’s decision. In either of those cases there would be more room for softening their antagonism.

Our society is in transition on the issue of what is unacceptable in the home. As Daryl noted, not long ago severe beatings of spouses and children were ignored. Now there are serious debates in states across the nation about whether a single swat on a child’s bottom is physical abuse. A similar controversy is continuing about verbal expressions of emotion. Opinions span the full spectrum.

This lack of context is the problem of passing judgments of any kind on this family based solely on this brief moment. Whether we’re talking about the issue of Michael announcing that he’s an atheist, or the issue of what is child abuse, it is absurd to jump to hard conclusions and make harsh value statements about the people involved. It’s like taking a single photo out the side window on a long train trip and trying to use that to characterize the entire journey.

The rest of your diatribe does not merit a response. You’re getting overheated. Perhaps we should quit on this subject.

Okay.

Please forgive my overreaction. I can put myself in this families shoes. I wonder what this video will mean for this family and for Michael?

You asked these questions:

How are you any better than the mother in the video? What do you have to offer that is so much more rational?

I gave these answers:

in my home my kids are free to believe whatever they choose. They know my views, but I respect them enough to afford them the dignity that was afforded me.

If you didn’t want my views, why did you ask. Oh, I get it–that was rhetoric! My, but you are clever!

The rest of your diatribe does not merit a response. You’re getting overheated. Perhaps we should quit on this subject.