If you are

like me, you are tired of hearing about Elian Gonzalez.

This case

does, however, provide a disturbing picture of who we are

as a culture as well as an important lesson.

The

photograph of the heavily armed federal agent in full

riot gear as he approached the petrified child while he

hid in a closet moved me deeply. This tiny 6-year-old,

the victim of an international dispute, was roused from

his sleep at 5 in the morning to the noise of government

officials with machine guns busting down the door of his

home. I wonder how many times that happened to him in

Cuba?

The

pictures that followed on Saturday, April 22, showed

Elian smiling while being held by his father. Some

interpreted this as an indication that he was happy to be

reunited with his father. I would suggest that after such

a traumatic episode, any familiar face would have caused

him to smile.

Several

times over the past ten years, the front pages of our

newspapershave presented stories of children who have

been forced to leave a residence that they have known as

home. Most of these cases were adoptions that became

complicated when the biological mother reconsidered the

adoption. After perhaps years in the home of the adoptive

parents, the child was forced to leave the only home he

or she had ever known.

The court

system, representing our government and our people, has

demonstrated through these cases that biological parents

will have rights regardless of what is in the child's

best interest. Even though the case of Elian is somewhat

different, the government's intervention was

frighteningly similar.

I find it

disturbing that the federal government would consider

child custody an issue under its jurisdiction. Even

though the United States has agreements with other

countries to return abducted children, the State

Department rarely intervenes when U.S. children have been

illegally carried overseas. This selective attention to

such cases causes me to speculate that our current

administration had something to gain by intervening

- intervention not because of what was best for the

child, but because of what was expedient for a political

party.

That is

unconscionable.

As was true

with the other high profile custody cases that I

mentioned, little was said in this case concerning what

was best for this 6-year-old. Elian would not necessarily

benefit from being with his father. His parents were

separated, he had seen his mother drown, and evidence

suggests that the father was consenting to the defection.

Not to mention the fact that Elian appears to have found

a loving mother figure and home with his cousin, a

connection necessary to overcome the trauma of being lost

at sea and witnessing his mother's death.

Yet in

spite of this, government authorities argued for the

"rights of the father."

In

principle, I believe that a child is usually better off

with a biological parent, but cases such as the Gonzalez

case are extenuating. I argue that a parent's rights

should not supercede the best interest of a

child. In fact, painful as

it may be, a loving parent would forego his or her rights

when it was in the best interest of the child.

I am neither a lawyer nor

am I an expert on international law, but what this case

shows me is that our government, again, seeks its own at

the expense of a child. Because our government represents

us, this is a sad commentary on who we are as a people.