Today on Capitol Hill, Rick and Karen Santorum joined with Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association to bring attention to the danger to parental rights, and to disabled children, inherent in the proposed United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Only one op-ed on this appears at The Washington Post and it is by Dana Milbank who offers this ridiculous claim in his headline – Santorum’s new cause: opposing the disabled.

Lying headlines and shabby op-eds are a good way to destroy the reputations of Christians, right, Mr. Milbank? Grown-up reasoning would be the hard way to make your case. Milbank would have us believe that Rick Santorum, the father of a disabled child who opposes this legislation precisely because it is an issue dear to his heart, is a man who just wants to do whatever he can to make sure the disabled among us are treated indecently. I do not think Milbank is so ignorant as to believe his own lies. Rather, I think this is an intentional lie to convince people who don’t really know Rick Santorum to believe that he is a scum-bag.

Like its predecessor, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the CRPD is opposed by pro-family conservatives due to its usurpation of parental rights and the negative impact of such on disabled children. The Associated Press story, reprinted at The Washington Post, is more clear than Milbank’s hit piece about what the proposal involves.

Santorum, accompanied by his wife Karen and three of his seven children, including a disabled daughter, focused on a provision that says the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration for children with disabilities. Home schooling groups and others have said this could lead to the state, and not the parents, making decisions on what is in the best interest of a child, including whether home schooling is appropriate. That provision, he said, is “a direct assault on us and our family.”

That doesn’t sound at all to me like someone interested in “opposing the disabled.” But again, it’s just easier for people like Milbank to use lies to smear Rick Santorum’s reputation than it is to argue his case like a grown-up.

Rick and Karen Santorum’s grassroots organization, Patriot Voices, has a petition you can sign to stand with them in opposition to this treaty. As a grown-up, as a parent, and as a disabled person, I’ve signed it and I hope you will, too.