Here is some commentary on the Thomas Ball case.

If you don’t know the story by now, Thomas Ball is the New Hampshire man who set himself on fire on the courthouse steps and left a 15-page note outlining the abusive family court system and his reasons for killing himself. Many of you have emailed or commented about this case (thanks very much) here and I think his story is an important one in understanding the psychological and physical damage that the law is inflicting on men in this country. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Ball’s statement that I think makes some very salient points:

I am due in court the end of the month. The ex-wife lawyer wants me jailed for back child support. The amount ranges from $2,200. to $3,000. depending on who you ask. Not big money after being separated over ten years and unemployed for the last two. But I do owe it. If I show up for court without the money and the lawyer say jail, then the judge will have the bailiff take me into custody. There really are no surprises on how the system works once you know how it actually works. And it does not work anything like they taught you in high school history or civics class.

I could have made a phone call or two and borrowed the money. But I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.

I saw over at Antifeminist tech blog that some are trying to cover up this story, while others, such as man-hater Amanda Marcotte said that Bell’s goal was to use his fiery death to “make his ex-wife’s life a living hell.” This twisted “analysis” is hardly worthy of a response, but I will say that if Ball wanted to make his ex’s life a living hell, killing himself was not the answer. The ex may not have even given a damn.

To read the entire article:

via My take on the Thomas Ball case | Dr. Helen Smith.

Stephen Baskerville has been at the forefront of the father’s rights movement for many years.  His take on the Assange story is right on the money.  It has always seemed to me that one way to address such situations is to require a polygraph test of anyone making a sexual or abuse allegation.  If they can pass the lie detector test, then the enforcement process can proceed in the courts.  If they can’t then they would be punished by the law in similar fashion to one who was actually guilty of the crime they are alleged to have committed.  This approach would eliminate many inequities.

By Stephen Baskerville

The impending extradition of Julian Assange on obviously trumped-up sex charges brings the new politics of sex into vivid relief. As with the tribulations of Silvio Berlusconi, there is more here than meets the media’s eye.

The Swedes call such ordeals sexfalla, or “honeytraps,” where women use sexual charms as a weapon against men who wrong them. The men who succumb to such wiles may deserve what they get, but when such a sexual drama becomes ensnared with law and politics, the rest of us have an interest in the matter. Assange, in his public and private life, may be far from admirable. But conservatives eager to cast the first stone might consider how Assange’s experience is becoming the experience of us all.

Assange’s biography reads like a textbook of the sexual revolution. Even sketchy accounts of Assange’s life illustrate how extensively his ordeal has been shaped throughout by the new sexual order.

First, Assange’s freewheeling and sexually liberated mother, through divorce, deprived him of a father and a stable home, thus ensuring him his share of the problems now well known to accompany such upbringings. In Assange’s case, this seems to have set him on the course of a kind of global nomad, lacking firm attachment to family, home, community, country, or God. His own marriage likewise turned out to be another honeytrap, as marriage has become for millions of men, with the government confiscation of his own son and a prolonged legal battle with the Western democracies’ most corrupt and authoritarian machinery—one designed to neuter, eliminate, and criminalize “male chauvinist” fathers. By several accounts, this was the defining moment in his adult life, leaving him (like many other men) intensely embittered against all government. His experience with the feminist divorce apparat also seems to have diverted his leftist upbringing into a more libertarian distrust of all authority.

via The American Conservative » Julian Assange’s Political Honeytrap.

“The Secret Life of The American Teenager” is poised to press another hot button issue — fathers rights. Expect friction to escalate over unwed teen father Ricky’s visitation with his baby son on the ABC Family Channel’s very hot teen serial, which just launched its second season. [...Kagasoff offers up a teaser for what lies ahead, saying that Ricky, who’s been stepping up in an uncharacteristically admirable way to be responsible for his infant offspring, “is getting into more of a debate over who gets to babysit the kid” — and may even take legal action in the matter. However, Ricky “doesn’t want the court to find out” about certain things in his shadowy past.]

ANCPR Says:

This could be a good thing. My experience indicates that many young people are sympathetic to how raw a deal fathers get in family courts.

via ‘Secret Life’ Takes on Fathers Rights | The Jacksonville Observer .