This story is back in the news again.  I took a short quote from the Minister’s testimony and bolded the most interesting part:

Hodge tells court of being handcuffed by Fathers4Justice | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited
The minister said it was “awful” for a 60-year-old woman to be attacked in such a way. “If we are to protect and maintain … democracy, people who are elected representatives must feel able to go about their business without fear of being physically assaulted. I was upset and I was very disturbed by that incident.”

If this Minister were performing a public duty that wasn’t so intrusive and destructive to so many lives, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen, would it?  That is a problem in our modern governments.  They so often do things as a matter of law or duty, which they morally should not do.  (more…)

Large Problems Facing the Men’s Rights Movement in America

By Sam Sears (sam@billsarena.com) ( http://www.billsarena.com )

Aka: Bill’s Dad

While there are many egos, attorney’s, women’s groups, etc. that make the fight very difficult for Men to get fair treatment in Family Court, I suggest that the biggest problem is with Men themselves.

Most of us that have been involved in the movement through feelings of being backed into a corner by the Family Court System.  Most couldn’t even name State Court Judges that they had voted for prior to going through the Family Court System.  We ALL felt that the system would equalize things and had succumbed to the propaganda of the “Deadbeat Dad”; we felt that NO rational human being, especially a Trusted Judge would ever leave us without the ability to have the minimum requirements to survive and be productive and a part of our children’s lives.  We were naïve. (more…)

Glenn Sacks has made an excellent point here about the Marriage Movement and Non-custodial fathers. Once you are branded an ncp, you really aren’t considered a parent in the same way that the custodial parent is, and the child support and custody laws reflect this.  Your primary role becomes financial, and to support the custodial parent in their role. 

MND: News and Commentary Since 2001 » The Marriage Movement Is ‘Very Dismissive of Non-Custodial Fathers’

September 26, 2007 at 11:30 am · Filed under Vox Populi

I’m quoted on the marriage movement and federal marriage programs in Mary Meehan’s recent article Marriage as social medicine (Lexington Herald-Leader, 9/25/07). According to the article:

“[Sacks] said the pro-marriage movement has become ‘kind of a mania’ and is ‘very dismissive of non-custodial fathers.’ It makes the assumption, he said, ‘that no man will take responsibility unless the government coerces them to do it’ and puts responsible fathers on the defensive.”

One of my criticisms of the marriage movement and its influential thinkers–including David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, and Elizabeth Marquardt (pictured), author of Between Two Worlds–is its view of divorced fathers.

It has always amazed me how the writers cited by Sacks, in addition to many more opinion makers, seem to be blind to what most people on the street seem to know: it’s not the fathers who are abandoning their children.  (more…)

 Some parents in Michigan have made the news with their protest in the Capitol:

WLNS TV 6 Lansing Jackson Michigan News and Weather – WLNS.COM | Parents Rally at Capitol for Rights
Wet weather couldn’t stop thirty protestors from fighting for parents’ rights at the State Capitol. The protestors gathered on the front lawn. Many of them told stories of losing their visitation rights after child support struggles. Some parents feel they deserve equal access.

Ronald Smith, fathers’ rights advocate: “Who figured that if we jail a non-custodial parent for falling behind on child support, that it makes it easier to collect?”

Another point that really must be faced by the child support and divorce industry is that jailing a parent for being broke irreparably damages the tenuous connection between father and child.  It’s stunning to me, to think that in this modern age, it’s the 21st Century, after all, we treat people so callously.  (more…)

This is an interesting article out of Britain concerning an incident that took place some months ago involving former children’s minister, Margaret Hodge, and two Fathers’ Rights protesters who are members of Fathers4Justice.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Manchester | Ex-minister ‘shocked’ at protest

Margaret Hodge was left in the handcuffs for 40 minutes

Former children’s minister Margaret Hodge has told a jury she was “shocked and distressed” after being handcuffed by two fathers’ rights protesters.

Ms Hodge told Manchester Crown Court she was “completely taken aback” after the ambush at a Law Society conference at The Lowry Hotel in Salford 2004.

Jason Hatch, 35, of Cheltenham, and Jonathan Stanesby, 41, of Ivybridge, Devon, deny false imprisonment.

Both were members of the group Fathers 4 Justice.

Ms. Hodge got a taste of what it is like for many fathers after emerging from divorce court.  (more…)

Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen are back in the news again, and folks, this is really bad.  The case shows exactly how it goes in these custody cases, although most of the time it is not reported.   What really fries me in this little snippet below, is the obvious idiocy of the writer.  Notice how Sheen is said to spewing “venom”, when all he is doing is expressing controlled and patient frustration with a mother (Denise) who is obviously insane

The Denver Post – People: McConaughey steps in for Owen Wilson
It just keeps getting uglier in the Sheen-Richards custody tussle, and Wednesday the actress asked a judge to “protect her children” from Charlie, TMZ.com reports.

Denise Richards’ lawyer tells People that Denise “believes that Charlie Sheen has significant personal issues … which require her to take action,” and she wants to stop Sheen’s overnight visits with the kids, Sam, 3, and Lola, 2. The lawyer didn’t specify what those “issues” were.

As usual, Sheen had plenty of venom in return, saying that Richards “behaves as though she owns our children. She does not.  A day of legal reckoning for her is fast approaching.”

An earlier story I saw recently quoted Richards as saying the children were returning from their “visits” with their father “upset”. Tell me, a 3 year-old, and a 2 year-old “upset” with their father?  This should be a prima facie case of mother parental alienation in the works.  Why is it that mothers like this are simply presumed to be acting to protect their children, when in fact she is simply pursuing a case of alienation against the father as a means of revenge and punishment?

How is it possible that it is so easy to argue that a child would be “irreparably damaged” by being reunited with her father?

The Associated Press: Fight Over Cuban Girl Reaches Fla. Court
A judge hearing arguments in a custody case over a 4-year-old Cuban girl criticized state officials Monday for saying she would be irreparably damaged simply by being taken from her foster family and returned to her father in her communist home country.

Cuban farmer Rafael Izquierdo is fighting his daughter’s wealthy foster parents for custody. He allowed the girl’s mother to take her to the U.S., but the woman later attempted suicide and allowed the state to take custody of the child.

The point that needs to be driven home, time after time, is that unless you want to eliminate natural families, children are presumed to be best off with their natural parents.  What we are seeing is, I believe, an accelerated push toward some kind of system in which children do not live with their natural families, and are put into state run facilities where they are raised (socialized) by “the village”.  The only argument against this being the logical direction of development is that it would eliminate the great societal cash cow, child support.

 Recently yet another example of the tragedies caused by our Family Courts.

Daily Herald | Custody battle leads to likely murder-suicide
A Crystal Lake mother embroiled in a custody dispute over her 7-year-old daughter likely suffocated the girl Tuesday afternoon soon before stepping in front of a train to take her own life, officials said Wednesday afternoon.

The deaths of Magdalene Kamysz, 28, and daughter Sydney Kamysz seem to have been a murder-suicide perhaps driven by the heated legal fight with the girl’s father, McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren said.

There is a way to stop this kind of thing from occurring with the alarming frequency that continues to shock communities.  (more…)