…but this is no joke and there is no punchline.
Parental rights and Scientology are there for a meeting—
—a meeting to unite behind American evangelical homeschoolers’ vision of parental rights.
The vision belongs to the Parental Rights Foundation—the right-wing organization founded and run by Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) staff like Michael Farris and Will Estrada. First established in 2007 as ParentalRights.org and evolving into the Parental Rights Foundation in 2014, the Foundation advocates for a federal constitutional amendment to enshrine parental rights as fundamental rights—specifically so that international treaties like the Convention on the Rights of the Child become powerless. The Foundation is also virulently anti-queer, playing “a key organizing role in passing ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’ laws in Florida (2021) and Georgia (2022), which impose heavy administrative burdens on teachers, make it easier for individual parents to challenge curricular materials for all students in a school district, and target LGBTQ+ affirming practices.”
While the vision of parental rights that is advocated by white evangelical homeschoolers in the United States is highly selective, discriminatory, and regressive, that vision has caught on in communities beyond evangelicalism and homeschooling. Due to the history of racism in our country, American child protective services have sometimes—many times—served as cudgels against marginalized communities, intentionally and systematically breaking apart families of color so that children of color become assimilated—”civilized” or “Christianized”—into white families and culture. Understandably so, then, marginalized families often see child protective services as an apartheid system, not a system of child advocacy and children’s rights. But instead of seeing those attacks as attacks against children’s rights and well-being, many marginalized families are taught by white parental rights advocates to see them as attacks against parental rights—against their so-called property or ownership claims over their children.
White parental rights advocates, in other words, are preying on the fears and grief of marginalized parents and caretakers to advance their own agenda. This is pretty low, but it is also entirely on brand for such advocates and the white evangelical homeschooling communities that prop them up. Over the last decade, white parental rights advocates have fully latched onto and commandeered the originally-Black-led movement against the “family policing system,” the term that Black Americans use for racist child protective services in the United States. Even though white evangelicals mocked and ridiculed the “abolish the police” movement, white parental rights advocates have no problem using and manipulating the Black-led “abolish family policing systems” movement. It fits perfectly with their decades-old campaign to abolish all child protective services in the United States and promote patriarchal families.
A prime point of contact between the white parental rights movement and Black parental rights advocacy is Parental Rights Foundation board member Allison Folmar. Folmar is an attorney based in Detroit, Michigan who specializes in parental rights (though she also defends pastors accused by their wives of domestic violence). Folmar gained international recognition in 2011 when she served as the lawyer for fellow Michigan mother Maryanne Godboldo. Godboldo’s daughter Ariana was born with a defective leg that required amputation. In part due to this disability, Godboldo chose to homeschool Ariana. But when Ariana turned 11 in 2009, she wanted to attend public school—which requires vaccinations. Despite not trusting the medical profession, Godboldo agreed. Unfortunately, Ariana exhibited severe behavioral changes allegedly after being vaccinated.
Seeking help for Ariana’s new behavioral changes, Godboldo went to the New Oakland Center, a Michigan mental health care provider, in 2010. The Center’s psychiatrist determined vaccines were not the cause of Ariana’s behavior and prescribed the child Risperdal, a medication widely used to treat children with extreme behavior problems like aggressiveness or violent outbursts. Ariana took Risperdal for several months but unfortunately her condition worsened. Without informing the Center, Godboldo sought advice from a different, “holistic” medical provider, who encouraged her to wean Ariana off Risperdal and use “God’s medication” instead. Part of the weaning process involved putting Ariana through chelation therapy, a medical procedure intended to treat heavy metal poisoning but that alternative medicine apologists think can cure everything from heart disease to autism. The procedure has killed children.
Finally, in November 2010, it came to light that Ariana was actually suffering from encephalitis (swelling of the brain), which Godboldo again blamed on the vaccines. Encephalitis, which is very rarely caused by vaccines, can cause anything from mild, flu-like symptoms to extreme hallucinations, personality changes, and impaired judgment. Survivors of encephalitis are at a high risk for psychiatric symptoms and are often misdiagnosed as mentally ill.
When the Center discovered that Godboldo had taken Ariana off Risperdal without informing them, they—as well as three other sources—reported Godboldo to social services for medical neglect. Around March 10, 2011, social services demanded Godboldo continue Ariana’s Risperdal treatment. Godboldo refused (and was within her rights to do so, as she had signed an informed consent form giving her the right to stop treatment “at anytime”). Nonetheless, two weeks later on March 24, social services and the Detroit Police forcibly entered Godboldo’s home to remove Ariana, citing Godboldo’s refusal to give Ariana her Risperdal. This led to a 10-hour standoff with police and ended with Godboldo arrested and charged with assaulting police as she allegedly fired a gun at officers. Ariana was removed from Godboldo’s custody, placed in a state-run juvenile psychiatric facility, and put back on Risperdal. She stayed in the psychiatric facility for two months until Godboldo’s lawyer, Allison Folmar, intervened.
Folmar is a self-styled expert in “medical kidnappings” of children: instances where children are removed from their parents’ custody because the parents do not give their children prescribed medication. Folmar serves on the board of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an anti-psychiatry advocacy organization that is a “front group” for the Church of Scientology. Scientologists are notorious for their opposition to the field of psychiatry and psychiatric medication. The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, once described psychiatrists as “terrorist groups” who “kidnap, torture, and murder.” CCHR blames psychiatry for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, ominously warning that “bin Laden’s chief mentor is a former psychiatrist.”
Folmar’s relationship with Scientology is warm and celebratory. In addition to serving on CCHR’s board and being the recipient of a CCHR Human Rights Award, she has a profile written about her on the official Scientology website and she is featured on a Scientology TV program. She shares Scientology’s fears of psychiatry, once suggesting in an article published in an official Scientology magazine that society should move towards “legally extinguishing psychiatry altogether.”
Folmar has other concerning associations beyond CCHR and Scientology. In 2016, she presented at an Autism One conference. Autism One is an autistic hate organization that holds conferences promoting pseudoscientific cures for autism. They believe autism is a disease, a “preventable/treatable biomedical condition” that is “the result of environmental triggers.” Their website claims that, “Children with autism suffer from gut bugs, allergies, heavy metal toxicity, mitochondrial disorders, antioxidant deficiencies, nutritional deficiencies and autoimmune diseases – all of which are treatable.” They promote making autistic children drink bleach as well as putting autistic children through chelation therapy.
Despite these extreme and dangerous beliefs and her involvement with Scientology, Folmar has served on the Parental Rights board for years—and remains on the board today. The organization features Folmar and her advocacy work on their podcast and she represents the organization at parental rights advocacy events like the 2021 Conference on Parental Rights held at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
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Author note: this is an excerpt from an upcoming longer article, currently titled “To End Child Protection, Leftists Join Evangelical Homeschoolers.”