Posted by Nick Stone on May 16, 2101 at 18:26:38:

I have a question for you all. Marriage in the Baha'i Faith is conditional upon parental consent. I have a Baha'i friend from Sri Lanka who was adopted at birth by Baha'i parents. According to Baha'i law, she would have to search for her actual biological parents, who may well have been a prostitute and her client... thus making such a search more or less impossible. My friend wrote to the UHJ and asked them whether she needed to search for these parents, and they replied (as far as I remember) to the effect that due to the fact that her parents had shown no care for her whatsoever, she did not require their consent.

However, my friend does not now require the consent of her adoptive parents either. Now, I believed that the purpose of parental consent being necessary was to ensure family unity. If a biological parent has disappeared at birth or early on in a child's life, and has shown no regard for that child's welfare, or indeed, has no part in their life and does not even know them, how can it serve the purpose of promoting family unity for marriage to be conditional upon the consent of that parent? On the other hand, if a child grows up in an adoptive family for example, their adoptive parents will know them from birth, the child will feel the same ties to the family and relations of their adoptive parents as they would have done had they been brought up by their biological parents, yet in this circumstance, parental consent from the adoptive parents is not required.

Why is this so, when clearly there is the same possibility of the child choosing a partner which may lead to division in the family. The adoptive Baha'i parents may still strongly object to the choice the child makes, but have no power to prevent the marriage from going ahead and thus disunity can still occur.

Any thoughts anyone???

Nick

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