In the past two posts, guest contributor Rachel Lazerus has examined Michael Farris’ recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In that testimony, and elsewhere across the web, Farris has argued against the U.S. ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In a sort of mission drift, Farris has been using his position as arguably the most prominent homeschool activist—he founded the powerful Home School Legal Defense Association—to expand into a range of issues beyond just homeschooling. This is but one example. [Read more...]

Out of my desire to understand his reasoning, I looked up Farris’s citations and read them in their original context. What I found was stunning: the simple reality is that Farris took both Henkin’s and Van Bueren’s statements out of context and misapplied them to his own twisted legal theory. By citing each quote out of context, Farris was able to, as Senator Menendez said, take “a noncontroversial statement and twist it into something that’s rather sinister.” The very basis of Farris’s protestations against the CRPD, then, is a lie. [Read more...]