Stephen Baskerville Pages
http://www.gndzerosrv.com/Web%20Pages/basker_pages.htm
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D, Howard University
sbaskerville@cox.net, http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/
[00] 11-07-02 Speech at November 7th Fathers' Rally in Washington D.C.
[78] 06-17-06 Innocence
Is No Excuse
[77] 05-11-06 The Next Conservatism #40: Why Sex is Better than Gender
[76] 04-24-06 Which Party Will Win the Parents' Vote?
[75] 04-13-06 How the Government Creates Child Abuse
[74] 04-01-06 Banned Near Boston
[73] 10-24-05 The Fathers War
[72] 10-21-05 Wedded to the State
[71] 10-08-05 Violence against the Constitution
[70] 08-29-05 Violence against Families
[69] 04-23-05 Fathers
into Felons
[68] 03-01-05 The
No-Blame Game
[67] 02-02-05 The
Federal Propaganda Machine
[66] 12-27-04 The
Doofus Department
[65] 09-03-04 The
Failure of Fatherhood Policy
[64] 08-24-04 Child
Support Feds Hold Meeting, Announce New 'Strategic Plan'
[63] 08-13-04 A
Primer Against Gay Marriage
[62] 07-01-04 Could
your kids be given to 'gay' parents?
[61] 06-08-04 Report
from Washington
[60] 06-01-04 Strengthening
Marriage Through Divorce and Custody Reform
[59] 04-16-04 Violence
Against Women Panel Commits Violence Against Democracy
[58] 04-13-04 Massachusetts'
Family 'Justice'
[57] 03-02-04 Is
There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?
[56] 03-02-04 Will
Fathers Lead the New Conservative Revival?
[55] 02-12-04 Conservative
Spotlight: Dr. Stephen Baskerville
[54] 02-12-04 Reason:
Perpetuating Assumptions?
[53] 02-01-04 The
Father: A Family’s Weakest Link
[52] 01-07-04 Message
from Stephen Baskerville
[51] 12-23-03 The
Anti-Father Police State
[50] 12-18-03 Dismantling
Justice
[49] 11-07-03 Government
vs. Marriage
[48] 10-28-03 Domestic
Violence Awareness Meets Marriage Protection
[47] 10-01-03 The
Politics of Child Support
[46] 09-25-03 Absurdistan
in America
[45] 09-08-03 Judge
Moore: Moses or Taskmaster?
[44] 07-12-03 Canadian
Gov't Calls Fathers Advocacy Organizations "Hate" Groups
[43] 07-01-03 The
Federal Bureau of Marriage?
[42] 06-21-03 Divorce
as Revolution
[41] 06-13-03 Re-Founding
Fathers
[40] 06-13-03 Allan
Carlson Calls for Rolling Back No-Fault Divorce at US Senate
[39] 06-04-03 HHS
Wants Your Pastor to Become an Informer
[38] 06-01-03 Film
Stereotypes Males as Spousal Brutes
[37] 05-06-03 Government
as Family Therapist
[36] 04-09-03 Child
Abuse Industry Obscures True Causes of Child Abuse
[35] 04-04-03 Soldiers
Risking Their Lives in Iraq Might Face Prison
[34] 03-10-03 What
God Has Joined Together
[33] 03-07-03 Boy
Victim of Statutory Rape Forced to Pay Child Support to Adult Woman Rapist
[32] 02-12-03 Deadbeat
government in Virginia
[31] 02-07-03 Family
Courts Are Corrupt
[30] 12-01-02 The
Silence of the Good People
[29] 12-01-02 The
Politics of Fatherhood
[28] 11-15-02 Another
Nut with a Gun?
[27] 11-12-02 The
Politics of Family Destruction
[26] 11-05-02 Gov.
Davis & the Exploitation of Children
[25] 10-11-02 Another
Violent Mother
[24] 09-23-02 No
Restraint On Restraining Orders
[23] 09-13-02 Tommy
Thompson's Reign Of Terror
[22] 08-15-02 A
Father Acts
[21] 07-01-02 NOW:
Family Courts Not Corrupt Enough
[20] 05-18-02 Father's
Rights And Political Action
[19] 05-14-02 Deadbeat
Dads
[18] 04-29-02 The
Truth About Child Abuse
[17] 04-08-02 The Real
Responsibility of Men
[16] 03-11-02 Are
family courts prejudiced against fathers?
[15] 02-27-02 The
Politics of Family Breakdown
[14] 09-06-01 Letter
to Rossiter
[13] 08-04-01 Letter
to Editor
[12] 08-04-01 Professor ousted from child-support panel
[11] 08-03-01 Parents Protest Censorship in Virginia
[10] 07-23-01 Secretary of Virginia
[09] 07-04-01 Are
Mothers Getting A Bad Deal?
[08] 06-17-01 Appetite
for Family Destruction
[07] 05-24-01 Dad
'feels like dirt'
[06] 04-22-01 The
Nightmare of Family Court
[05] 04-22-01 Book Calls For Judicial Reform
[04] 04-22-01 More than 200 write to man fined and put in
prison for saying "hello" to his own children
[03] 04-22-01 Around 60 stage protest outside home of judge
[02] 04-01-01 Restoring
Marriage
[01] 08-01-00 The Criminalization
of Fatherhood
Speech at November 7th Fathers' Rally in Washington D.C.
http://www.fa-ir.org/alabama/baskerville_speech.htm
Stephen Baskerville,
11-07-02
We are met here today in
this city of government, where so many have assembled before, because once
again our Constitution has been betrayed by the government over which it was
intended to reign.
As we stand on this historic spot on this fine autumn day, I see in the
distance a copper dome that sits atop one of the great buildings of this
majestic city. That building is the Library of Congress, where for a quarter
century my father labored in this country's federal service to provide for his
family. That building is a monument both to the achievement of human knowledge
and to the achievement of strong government with dedicated public servants like
my father.
But we are not here because of strong government. We are here because of
intrusive government. We are here because of invasive government. Because of
government that is out-of-control. Government that comes in the night and takes
away the children.
We are here today to announce to the world that the stealing of children has no
place in a free and decent society. It has no place whether it is perpetrated
by a stranger, by a parent, or by a court of law.
We are here because the tears of children, and the blood of their fathers, cry
out to all of us against one of the most shameful episodes in our country's
history: a time when officials of our government, their lips cynically dripping
with the words "best interest of the child," ruthlessly use and abuse
children to increase their own, already dangerous power: They cry out, against
crooked judges, who earn their daily bread by ripping as many children as they
can from the loving embrace of their parents.
· They cry out, against profiteering lawyers, who line their pockets with the patrimony of our children.
· They cry out against fraudulent psychotherapists, who pervert their trade into a system of institutionalized child abuse.
· And they cry out, against the plainclothes secret police agents of the Office of Child Support Enforcement.
But that is not all:
· They cry out as well against cowardly politicians who have sworn to protect and defend our Constitution, but instead protect and defend a national system of kangaroo courts, presided over by gangsters in judicial robes.
· And they cry out against pressure groups that profess feminism and practice Stalinism.
· Finally, they cry out against all of us, who for too long have tolerated the invasion of our families and the violation of our children by petty tyrants who are supposed to be the servants of our democracy.
From these crimes in our land, none of us is without guilt. The fathers of this country have indeed abdicated our responsibility. But we will not expunge our guilt with money, for that is not where we have failed. What we have abdicated is our duty to protect our children from a dangerous and destructive machine that is using children as pawns and weapons for the power and profit of grown-ups.
A great responsibility
rests upon all of us here, a responsibility to our own children, yes, but also
to all children and all their parents who have lived and will live under our
Constitution: to those who have come before and those who will follow to the
children who have baptized us with their tears and to the parents who have
hallowed our cause, in some cases, with their blood.
So as you join us here today and enlist yourselves in our cause, never forget
that it is you: You who have had your beloved children torn from your arms.
· You who are missing precious years watching your children grow tall and strong.
· You who may have no hope of ever again seeing your children in this world.
· You who have been reviled with the names of "batterer" and "deadbeat," who have seen the hearts of your children turned against you, and their young minds poisoned with hate and bitterness.
· You who have endured reproach, and plunder, and jail for the love of your children. Remember that you are the heroes of our time, and I promise you now that, God willing some day, somehow your children will know of your sacrifice and your heroism. And when they do, they will say: That man, who spoke out against injustice was my father.
· That man, who was not afraid of tyrants and bullies was my father.
· That man, who loved me so much that he sacrificed everything for me, and children like me, that man was my father.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/baskerville/baskerville10.html
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC
President, 05-11-06
The totalitarian mentality of the feminist domestic violence
industry was on display recently at the New York Times, where two
lawyers outline plans for suspending the Bill of Rights. The Times
normally postures as a champion of civil liberties, but when the malefactors
belong to politically unfashionable groups then innocence is no excuse. Only
the guilty need constitutional protections, and we may as well just string them
up.
"When
Words Bear Witness" is a more appropriate headline than Michael Rips
and Amy Lester may realize, since their own words reveal the brave new world
the feminists and bar associations are creating around the trumped-up issue of
"domestic violence."
"Domestic violence accounts for up to 34% of all
reported violent crimes," they state. Given that government authorities
define domestic "violence" as "name-calling and constant
criticizing, insulting, and belittling," it would appear that many
"reported violent crimes" are not very violent.
"Reported" crimes are also not proven crimes, and
strong incentives exist to report violence where none has taken place.
Fabricating abuse accusations ensures custody of children and marital property
during divorce. The custody battles are lucrative for lawyers, whose bar
associations control judicial appointments and promotions, which is why
patently false accusations are treated as fact.
This perversion of the justice system is now common
knowledge among legal practitioners. Thomas Kasper recently described in the Illinois
Bar Journal how false accusations readily "become part of the
gamesmanship of divorce." Bar associations and even courts themselves
sponsor divorce seminars counseling mothers on how to fabricate abuse
accusations. "The number of women attending the seminars who smugly –
indeed boastfully – announced that they had already sworn out false or grossly
exaggerated domestic violence complaints against their hapless husbands, and
that the device worked!" astonished Thomas Kiernan, writing in the New
Jersey Law Journal. "To add amazement to my astonishment, the
lawyer-lecturers invariably congratulated the self-confessed miscreants."
The UMKC Law Review reports a survey of judges and attorneys found
complaints of disregard for due process and allegations of domestic violence
used as a "litigation strategy."
Since most reports involve no crime, it is hardly surprising
that domestic violence, as Rips and Lester claim, "is notoriously
difficult to prosecute, because [alleged?] victims frequently drop charges or
refuse to testify when their [alleged?] abusers [allegedly?] threaten them with
further violence." What is this "further violence"? "One
study found that many such witnesses received threats that their children would
be kidnapped if they testified," says Joan Meier of George Washington
University. Their children kidnapped! These wife-beaters are so sophisticated
they have organized child kidnapping operations to intimidate witnesses.
Translation: The accusations are concocted to separate the children from their
fathers, and the fathers understandably want their children back. Each lie
necessitates another.
Rips and Lester continue: "In the 1980's and 1990's,
the refusal of [alleged?] victims to cooperate in the prosecution of their
[alleged?] batterers may have resulted in the dismissal of as many as 70% of
all domestic violence cases." The refusal of Rips and Lester to observe
the presumption of innocence in their writing is not only standard in feminist
literature; it pervades state and federal statutes, including the notorious
Violence Against Women Act, for which Congress is now considering
appropriations. VAWA grants encourage governments to "mandate and
encourage police officers to arrest [alleged?] abusers." It is more likely
that the cases were dismissed because there was no evidence, because there was
no violence and no crime, and because the objective of obtaining custody was
accomplished.
But now we can secure convictions even when there is no
evidence, no victim, and no crime: "Prosecutors, police officers, and
advocates for domestic violence victims have developed techniques, together
known as ‘evidence-based prosecution,’ that focus on the use of reliable
evidence, like 911 tapes, to build cases that do not depend on the cooperation
of the [alleged?] victim." As with the Ministry of Truth,
"evidence-based prosecution" is designed to convict those against
whom you have no evidence. And since the defendant – excuse me, the
"batterer" – can be convicted using hearsay, with no right to face
his accuser, it is not really necessary that there even be an accuser, or for
that matter a crime.
It is not difficult to see where this is going. In Britain,
"special domestic violence courts" allow third parties such as civil
servants and pressure groups to use "relaxed rules of evidence and the lower
burden of proof" to bring actions against those they identify as
batterers, even if no alleged "victim" comes forward (or even
exists). "Victim support groups," who say women "should be
spared having to take legal action," can now act in the name of an anonymous
or purported plaintiff to seize the children, homes, and other property of men
who have not been convicted of any crime. Similar "domestic violence
courts" are being created in the United States and Canada, where
"conviction rates have risen" and "guilty pleas are way
up," Mother Jones magazine enthuses. In other words, rigged trials
and the certainty of conviction allow prosecutors to extort guilty pleas.
Sending men to jail is apparently now a virtue in itself. In
San Diego, Rips and Lester report with glee, suspending due process protections
"obtains convictions in about 88% of its cases." Convicting people of
crimes – thousands of people of whose guilt or innocence we can have no
first-hand knowledge – is now something to be celebrated for its own sake.
Guilt used to be determined by juries weighing evidence in
specific cases. But Rips and Lester apparently know that these
"batterers" are guilty en masse, and all that remains is
removing constitutional impediments to convicting them. Trials, juries,
evidence, and the entire apparatus of due process are superfluous because guilt
is not defined by whether an individual committed a specific deed. Guilt is a
foregone conclusion because the defendant belongs to a class that is guilty by
political definition. The New Jersey family court invokes feminist jargon to
argue that allowing due process protections to abuse defendants
"perpetuates the cycle of power and control whereby the [alleged?]
perpetrator remains the one with the power and the [alleged?] victim remains
powerless."
My niggling interpolations are no doubt annoying for
prosecutors whose careers depend on their conviction rates. They have
effectively institutionalized the archetypal loaded question, "When did
you stop beating your wife?"
The Next Conservatism #40: Why Sex is Better than Gender
http://www.freecongress.org/commentaries/2006/060511.asp
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC President, 05-11-06
A problematic question for the next conservatism is the
politics of "gender" (formerly known as sex). It is also urgent.
A critical change in the Left over the last few decades has
been the shift from the economic to the social and increasingly the sexual.
What was once a semi-socialistic attack on property and enterprise has become a
social and sexual attack on the family, marriage and masculinity.
The consequences are incalculable. No ideology in human
history has been potentially so invasive of the private sphere of life as
Feminism. Communists had little respect for privacy. Feminists have made it
their main target.
Like other radical movements, only more so, Feminism’s
danger comes not so much from the assault on freedom (which traditional
tyrannies also threaten) but specifically from the attack on private life,
especially family life (which traditional dictatorships usually leave alone).
"Radical Feminism is totalitarian because it denies the individual a
private space; every private thought and action is public and, therefore,
political," writes Former Judge and Solicitor General Robert H. Bork.
"The party or the movement claims the right to control every aspect of
life."
The Left’s brilliant move has been to clothe its attack on
the family as a defense of "women and children." Marian Wright
Edelman openly acknowledges she founded the Children’s Defense Fund to push a
Leftist agenda: "I got the idea that children might be a very effective
way to broaden the base for change." This climaxed in the Clinton
Administration, in which radical policy innovations were invariably justified
as "for the children." Using children to leverage an expansion of
state power by eliminating family privacy is succinctly conveyed in Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s aphorism, "There is no such thing as other
people’s children."
This nationalization of the family under the guise of
protecting it leaves pro-family politicians in a difficult position. One way
out is to join in the demonization of those who literally embody the Feminists’
hated "patriarchy" - fathers. Relabeled "deadbeat dads,"
"batterers" and "pedophiles," fathers are now railroaded
into jail through methods one recent scholar, writing in the RUTGERS LAW
REVIEW, calls a "due process fiasco" and Bryce Christensen says is
leading to a "police state."
Knee-jerk calls to "get tough" on criminals have
unintended consequences when the penal apparatus has been commandeered by
ideologues who redefine criminality to include an assortment of gender offenses
that bear little relation to what most Americans understand as crime.
The evolution of the Justice Department’s Office of Victims
of Crime illustrates the deception. Proceeding from President Ronald Reagan’s
1982 Task Force on Victims of Crime, this agency has since been hijacked by
Feminists, and most of the "crimes" have been redefined in Feminist
terms. By definition, the "victims" are all women, the
"perpetrators" are all men and the "crimes" are mostly
political: sexual harassment, date "rape" (which is seldom rape),
domestic "violence" (that is not violent), child abuse (that may be
ordinary parental discipline), "stalking" (fathers trying to see
their children), and so forth.
Far from softening the hard edges of male-dominated power
politics, Feminism has inserted calculations of power into the most private
corners of life and subjected family life to bureaucratic control. This is what
makes the dream of a more "caring" public sphere through Feminism not
only naïve but dangerously utopian. For as Feminists correctly pointed out, the
feminine functions were traditionally private; politicizing the feminine has
therefore meant politicizing private life. This is why the
"totalitarian" potential which Bork senses is already being realized.
"All politics is on one level sexual politics,"
writes George Gilder. At least sexual politics is the logical culmination of
all radical politics, which is the politics that has defined modern history.
More than any other threat, Feminism demands that the next conservatism examine
conservatives’ own reflexes and habits in a world in which radical assumptions
have permeated well beyond the ranks of Leftist ideologues. It demands that a
new conservative agenda challenges not just this doctrine or that, but the very
concept of a politics defined by ideologies, activists, organizations,
opinion-mongers, and a professional political class for whom politics is
all-consuming (even when we agree with them). The next conservatism must try to
recover a civic life of citizens, householders, parents, churches and
synagogues, local communities, and values that transcend political calculation.
Czech - dissident and later President Vaclav Havel called this "apolitical
politics”: a world where, contrary to Feminists and Communists and all ideologues,
the personal is not political.
Stephen Baskerville is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. The views expressed are his own.
Which
Party Will Win the Parents' Vote?
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14244
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC
President, 04-24-06
With Republicans facing the “too long in power” syndrome
and the Democrats licking their chops each time their opponents shoot
themselves in the foot, the GOP has an opportunity to regain the moral and
electoral high ground and to do so in a way that demonstrates both a commitment
to traditional conservatism and an ability to adapt.
The Republican renewal in the last election was occasioned by the assault on
marriage. Marriage and the family have become issues of electoral
salience for Americans, and beyond habitual Republican voters.
Gay marriage did not emerge from nowhere. It grew directly out of changes
in family law over decades, whose consequences are only now becoming
apparent. The most serious fallout is the decline of fatherhood, about
which we have heard so much but whose full implications we have yet to
understand.
While the devastating social effects of fatherless children are now well known,
we are only beginning to see the political impact of childless fathers.
For what the policy wonks have told us is fathers abandoning their children is
in reality a tyranny of courts and government bureaucracies confiscating vast
numbers of children from their fathers. What officials call “deadbeat
dads” are more likely plundered pops: solvent and responsible citizens who are
being looted by extortionate child support, coerced attorneys’ fees, and other
government expropriations that -- despite claims of it all being “for the
children” --
border on thievery. Now the fathers are fighting back.
With some 20 million “non-custodial” parents (to adopt an oxymoron) having lost
their children to divorce and separation, this crisis touches virtually every
family in America. Many are African-Americans and other minorities who
generally vote either Democratic or not at all.
These votes are available to candidates who address this destructive injustice
and a natural constituency for any party claiming to champion the family.
They logically belong to the party that opposes “judicial activism,” because
family law literally brings home for Americans the realities of judicial
tyranny, which is no longer a remote abstraction when it involves judges
confiscating their children. Phyllis Schlafly draws this connection in
the forthcoming revision of her book, “The Supremacists.”
Yet until now Republicans have not only failed to court these parents; they
have seemed to go out of their way to alienate them. Republican
politicians pander to feminist votes they can never win with demagoguery
against “deadbeat dads,” “domestic violence,” and other questionable evils on
which the public has never demanded any government intervention or
expenditure. The beneficiaries are Democratic loyalists: lawyers, judges,
social workers, psychotherapists, single mothers.
The ultimate boondoggle was the Violence Against Women Act, where congressional
Republicans handed a $4 billion pork pie to feminist groups, ostensibly to
combat “domestic violence.” In actuality, the measure creates a massive
political war chest for leftist causes. Something is seriously amiss when
Republicans are subsidizing their opponents with taxpayers’ money.
Republican politicians fear being labeled as defenders of deadbeat dads,
wife-beaters, and pedophiles - the standard smears feminists throw at divorced
fathers, both in court and in the political arena. This has silenced
opposition and given feminists a free ride.
At the same time, no political party can forever ignore a voting bloc this
massive. The roughly 20 million childless parents (about 10% are mothers)
roughly doubles if one adds second wives, whose families are devastated by the
shake-down of their husbands, and grandparents, who are cut off from their
grandchildren and often forced to take in penurious sons. These family
members are often more outspoken than the fathers.
Will millions really decide their votes on issues of child custody? These
are parents who face ordeals of truly Orwellian proportions: Their
children have been taken away without necessarily any show of wrongdoing, and
they are suddenly told they can be arrested for trying to see their own children
without government authorization. Many have been forcibly removed from
their own homes, which are then confiscated and sold, again without any legal
infraction. They face a panoply of other expropriations, including the
attachment of their earnings for years to come with crushing child support
burdens that reduce them to penury and even homelessness. They are forced
to pay fees of attorneys, court psychotherapists, and others whom they have not
hired and whose services they do not want.
These are law-abiding citizens who suddenly face indefinite prison sentences,
without trial, if they cannot pay government-imposed “debts” and “obligations”
they did nothing to incur. And they have been ignored by both
parties. How would you respond to a candidate that offered relief?
The best indication of the electoral potential came in liberal Massachusetts in
2004, where a whopping 85% of voters defied the strident opposition of
feminists and lawyers to approve a non-binding referendum providing for shared
parenting in custody cases.
Every recent election has seen the specter of a new and supposedly decisive
voting bloc (soccer moms, NASCAR dads). This is more than an emerging
demographic, however; it is a political pressure cooker that has been building
over decades by an extremist ideology that has used fear, hysteria, and
emotional blackmail to build a bureaucratic machinery of Soviet proportions to
oppress millions and intimidate opposition. The courage to challenge this
machine will bring a windfall for Republicans that could influence elections
for years to come.
How the Government Creates Child Abuse
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=13996
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC President, 04-13-06
Just in time for "Child Abuse Prevention
Month," the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publishes its
annual contribution to obfuscating the causes of child abuse.
Operatives of the child abuse industry often wax righteous about the
"scandal" of child abuse. "We cannot tolerate the abuse of even
one child," says an HHS press release. But the real scandal is the armies
of officials who have been allowed to acquire -- using taxpayers' dollars -- a
vested interest in abused children.
Devising child abuse programs makes us all feel good, but there is no evidence
they make the slightest difference. In fact, they probably make the problem
worse. Child abuse is largely a product of the feminist-dominated family law
and social work industries. It is a textbook example of the government creating
a problem for itself to solve.
Child abuse is entirely preventable. A few decades ago, there was no child
abuse epidemic; it grew up with the welfare system and the divorce revolution.
It continues because of entrenched interests who are employed pretending to
combat it.
A few undisputed facts will establish this -- facts that are passed over and
even distorted year after year by HHS and others whose budgets depend on abused
children.
Almost all child abuse takes places in single parent homes. A British study
found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused when a live-in
boyfriend or stepfather is present than in an intact family. HHS has its own
figures demonstrating that children in single-parent households are at much
higher risk for physical violence and sexual molestation than those living in
two-parent homes. Yet this basic fact is consistently omitted from its annual
report.
Shorn of euphemism, what this means is that the principal impediment to child
abuse is a father. "The presence of the father … placed the child at
lesser risk for child sexual abuse," conclude scholars in the journal
Adolescent and Family Health. "The protective effect from the father's
presence in most households was sufficiently strong to offset the risk incurred
by the few paternal perpetrators."
In fact, the risk of "paternal perpetrators" is miniscule. Contrary
to the innuendo of child abuse "advocates," it is not married fathers
but single mothers who are by far the most likely to injure and kill their
children. "Contrary to public perception," write Patrick Fagan and
Dorothy Hanks of the Heritage Foundation, "research shows that the most
likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child's mother, not a male
in the household." Mothers accounted for 55% of child murders, according
to a Justice Department report (1,100 out of 2,000, with fathers committing
130). Here again, HHS itself has figures that women aged 20 to 49 are almost
twice as likely as men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment: "almost
two-thirds were females." Given that "male" perpetrators are not
usually fathers but much more likely to be boyfriends and stepfathers, fathers
emerge as by far the least likely child abusers.
While men are thought more likely to commit sexual as opposed to physical
abuse, sexual abuse is much less common than severe physical abuse and much
more likely to be perpetrated by boyfriends and stepfathers. "Children are
seven times more likely to be badly beaten by their parents than they are to be
sexually abused by them," according to the National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The NSPCC found that father-daughter incest
is "rare, occurring in less than 4 in 1,000 children," and that
three-fourths of incest perpetrators are brothers and stepbrothers rather than
fathers. HHS's own figures show that reported sexual abuse is a tiny minority
of reported child abuse, and of this little is committed by real fathers. The
Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology reports that a preschooler not living
with both biological parents is forty times more likely to be sexually abused.
Yet feminists would have us believe that father-daughter incest is rampant, and
conservatives credulously swallow their propaganda. A recent PBS documentary,
"Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories," asserts without evidence
and contrary to known scientific data that "Children are most often in
danger from the father."
Feminist child protection agents implement this propaganda as policy. "One
scholarly study concluded that "An anti-male attitude is often found in
documents, statements, and in the writings of those claiming to be experts in
cases of child sexual abuse." Social service agencies systematically teach
children to hate their fathers and inculcate in the children a message that the
father has sexually molested them. "The professionals use techniques that
teach children a negative and critical view of men in general and fathers in
particular," the authors write. "The child is repeatedly reinforced
for fantasizing throwing Daddy in jail and is trained to hate and fear
him." A San Diego grand jury investigative report found that false
accusations during divorce were positively encouraged by government officials.
"The system appears to reward a parent who initiates such a
complaint," it states. "Some of these involve allegations which are
so incredible that authorities should have been deeply concerned for the
protection of the child." Such behavior by officials is driven by federal
financial incentives. "The social workers and therapists played pivotal
roles in condoning this," charged the grand jury. "They were helped
by judges and referees."
Seldom does public policy stand in such direct defiance of undisputed truths,
to the point where the cause of the problem -- separating children from their
fathers -- is presented as the solution, and the solution -- allowing children
to grow up with their fathers -- is depicted as the problem. If you want to
encourage child abuse, remove the fathers.
That is precisely what officials do -- not only social workers but also family
court judges. It is difficult to believe that judges are not aware that the
most dangerous environment for children is precisely the single-parent homes
they themselves create when they remove fathers in custody proceedings. Yet
they have no hesitation in removing them, secure in the knowledge that they
will never be held accountable for any harm that comes to the children. On the
contrary, if they do not they may be punished by the bar associations, feminist
groups, and social work bureaucracies whose earnings and funding depend on a
constant supply of abused children. It is a commonplace of political science
that bureaucracies relentlessly expand, often by creating the problem they
exist to address. Appalling as it sounds, the conclusion is inescapable that we
have created a huge army of officials with a vested interest in child abuse.
Banned
Near Boston
More chicanery from the underworld of family law
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/baskerville9.html
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC
President, 04-01-06
Nearly ninety years ago, when divorce liberalization was
being advocated by feminists, G.K. Chesterton warned in The
Superstition of Divorce that undermining the family would imperil civic
freedom.
His warning was vindicated recently when Massachusetts
family court judge Mary Manzi outlawed a book that criticizes government
officials. Manzi herself is sharply criticized in the book but obviously did
not recuse herself from the proceeding.
On March 24, Kevin Thompson received an order prohibiting
distribution of his book, Exposing
the Corruption in the Massachusetts Family Courts. The court also
impounded the records of Thompson’s custody case, reinforcing the secrecy in
which family courts like to operate.
The standard justification for secret courts is the one
Judge Manzi now extends to censorship: "privacy interests of the parties'
minor child." Thompson’s son has already been forcibly separated from his
father, and his life is now under the total control of state officials.
What "privacy" does this child have left? Thompson
understands that the true reason for the secrecy and censorship is not to
protect privacy but to invade it with impunity: "The only interests that
are protected are the interests of the racketeers and hypocrites who invade
‘family privacy’ by removing loving fathers from the lives of their children
against their will and without just cause to fill their pockets."
Many people have trouble believing the harrowing tales of
human rights abuses now taking place in American family courts and wonder why, if
they are true, we do not hear more about it. Perhaps because in many
jurisdictions it is a crime to criticize family court judges or otherwise
discuss family law cases publicly. In other words, censorship works.
Thompson’s case is not isolated. Under the pretext of
"family privacy," parents are gagged and arrested for criticizing the
courts:
Outright censorship is only the start, since judges usually
prefer more subtle methods for stopping the mouths of their critics. Thompson
is also being forced to pay the attorneys who advocated the book ban. This
practice has the marvelous double effect of providing booty for the judge’s
cronies and justifying incarceration of critics who cannot pay the instant
"debt." Following his criticism of the family courts in testimony to
Congress, Jim Wagner of the Georgia Council for Children’s Rights was stripped
of custody of his two children and ordered to pay $6,000 in fees of attorneys
he had not hired. He was soon after arrested for nonpayment.
Censorship of speech and press is only the tip of the
iceberg and serves to cloak even more serious constitutional and human rights
violations. Writing in the Rutgers Law Review, David Heleniak recently
revealed the "due process fiasco" of family law. Calling family
courts "an area of law mired in intellectual dishonesty and
injustice," Heleniak identifies six major denials of due process by which
courts seize children and railroad innocent parents into jail: denial of trial
by jury, denial of poor defendants to free counsel, denial of right to take
depositions, lack of evidentiary hearings, lack of notice, and improper
standard of proof. In family law, "the burden of proof may be shifted to
the defendant," according to a handbook for local officials published by
the National Conference of State Legislatures. Dean Roscoe Pound writes that
"the powers of the Star Chamber were a trifle in comparison with those of
our juvenile court and courts of domestic relations."
In fact, even this only scratches the surface. One can run
point-by-point down the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections,
and there is hardly a clause that is not routinely ignored or violated in
family law, where practices include mass incarcerations without trial, summary
expropriations, presumption of guilt, coerced confessions, ex post facto
provisions, bills of attainder, and more. Family courts and their hangers-on
are by far the greatest violators of constitutional rights in America today.
Journalists of both the left and right studiously ignore
these violations, as do "human rights" groups, even when shown
undeniable evidence. It will be interesting to see if they can ignore
censorship that touches their own profession.
For his part, Thompson says he intends to ignore the
censorship. "Everything that I am doing right now is for my son," he
declares. "I will not be shut up."
They serve
their country and lose their children.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/article2.html
Stephen Baskerville, The American
Conservative, 10-24-05
While our country focuses on the war abroad, many of
our soldiers fight personal battles here at home—or more accurately, can’t
fight. They are losing their families and getting little help from an
administration that claims to “support the troops” while doing nothing to
protect the parental rights of the fathers it sent into combat.
All the services are facing a severe drop in recruitment,
and additional recruiters, stepped-up advertising, and bigger
bonuses have not reversed the trend. The media points to the war itself, but
the shortfall also coincides with a dramatic rise in military divorces, which
the Army reports have nearly doubled since 2001. “We’ve seen nothing like this
before,” says Col. Glen Bloomstrom, a chaplain who oversees family-support
programs. “It indicates the amount of stress on couples, on families, as the
Army conducts the global war on terrorism.”
It indicates much more than stress. “There most
certainly is a relationship between current recruiting problems and an increase
in military divorces,” says Capt. Gene Thomas Gomulka, a retired Navy chaplain
and writer on military marriage.
Muffled by feminist orthodoxy, the Army and media are
not disclosing the facts behind these divorces or publicizing the threat they
pose to preparedness. The important points are these: the divorces are almost
all initiated by wives, the servicemen usually lose their children—which for
many is their main incentive for serving their country—and finally, they often
become liable to criminal prosecution for child support that is impossible for
them to pay.
Laws protecting active-duty servicemen against legal
actions are ignored by family courts. Deployed servicemen have virtually no
protection against unilaterally initiated divorce proceedings that permanently
separate them from their children without any show of wrongdoing. Child kidnapping
laws likewise do not protect them from having their children relocated, even to
foreign countries, while they cannot be present to defend their parental
rights. When they return, they have no necessary right to see their
children—and can be arrested for trying to do so—who often join the ranks of
the permanently fatherless.
The Lansing State Journal recently reported on
Joe McNeilly, a National Guardsman who “would still have his son if he hadn’t
been deployed,” according to Maj. Dawn Dancer, public-affairs officer for the
Michigan National Guard. Invoking the correct legal buzzwords, the mother and
her lawyer claimed he lost custody not because of his deployment but because of
his “parenting skills.” Yet his parenting skills were clearly defined in terms
of his deployment. The court attested that it stripped him of custody because
his wife was the “day-to-day caretaker and decision maker in the child’s life”
while McNeilly was deployed. His alleged parental deficiencies also proceeded
apparently from his duties as a soldier. “My client is making sure to turn off
the TV when the news reports deaths in Iraq,” the mother’s lawyer said, “and
(McNeilly) was engaging in behaviors that brought fear.” In other words, he was
fighting a war.
Even more astounding, vicariously divorced servicemen
can be criminally prosecuted for child-support arrearages that are almost
impossible not to accrue while they are on duty. Reservists are hit
particularly hard because their child-support burdens are based on their civilian
pay and do not decrease when their income decreases. Because reservists are
often mobilized with little notice, few get modifications before they leave,
and modifications are almost never granted anyway. They cannot get relief when
they return because federal law prohibits retroactive reductions for any
reason. Once arrearages reach $5,000, the soldier becomes a felon and subject
to imprisonment.
Further, states assess interest and penalties on
arrearages, which may accrue because of human or computer errors. These too
cannot be forgiven, so parents who fall behind for reasons beyond their control
can never have these debts erased. Because state agencies are federally
subsidized based on how much they collect, they have a powerful incentive not to
reduce burdens, to extract every penny they can find, and to make “errors.”
Deployed soldiers are also targeted by women who
falsely designate them as the fathers of their newborns. “The military provides
a steady, easily garnished income as well as medical care,” says Carnell Smith
of Citizens Against Paternity Fraud. It is difficult to contest paternity while
fighting a war thousands of miles away.
Spouses have other financial incentives to divorce
military personnel. A serviceman must complete 20 years of active service to
qualify for retirement pay. A woman married to the man for one day may claim a
portion of the pension for life, without regard to fault or need, simply by
filing for divorce. As David Usher points out in Men’s News Daily, there
is no limit on how many times a woman can do this. (Men have done it too.)
None of this is hypothetical. Many veterans face such
hardships now:
• “Gary,” an 18-year veteran with an unblemished
military and civilian record, was stripped of his child by a California court
while deployed in Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, according to Fox News. Columnist
Glenn Sacks reports that he is now being bankrupted by child support and legal
fees.
• Bobby Sherrill, a father of two from Parkton, North
Carolina, was held hostage in Iraq for nearly five months. The night he
returned from the Persian Gulf he was arrested for failing to pay $1,425 in
child support while captive.
• While serving in Iraq, Taron James was ordered to
pay support for a child he knew could not be his, and DNA tests confirmed his
claim. The district attorney and Los Angeles County Child Support Services
nevertheless seized his tax refund annually, blocked him from renewing his
notary-public license—which caused him to lose his job—ruined his credit, blocked
him from obtaining a passport, and forced him to drop out of college.
These are not aberrations. They proceed from the
ideologically and bureaucratically driven logic of the custody-support
industry, which depends for its justification on removing children and
criminalizing the fathers.
The Army’s response has been to spend millions on
therapeutic gimmicks in a futile effort to reduce the divorces: counseling
services, support groups, romantic getaways, even advice to single soldiers on how
to pick partners wisely.
“Our hope is to change the culture,” says Bloomstrom,
who also adopts civilian-sector jargon. “Initially there’s a stigma about any
program to do with relationships. We need to teach that there’s nothing wrong
with preventive maintenance for marriage.”
The Army is burying its head in the sand. We can only
hope that communications workshops and cultural understanding are not the
approach they take to opponents in the field. They do so in this case because
the threat is not Islamic radicals but feminist radicals.
Those affected see through the obfuscation. “This is
outrageous,” said Kathy Moakler, deputy director of government relations of the
National Military Family Association. “It’s a scary precedent to set, charging
the parent with abandonment because he was deployed.”
Obviously these men have not abandoned their
children. Yet what justifies criminal penalties, if it is not to catch those
who have? If these fathers are being stripped of their children and
criminalized through no fault of their own, why should we assume that others
are being treated any less unjustly? This points to the larger issue, since the
obvious injustices to soldiers, sailors, and airmen are simply the logical next
step from what has been inflicted on others for years. The dysfunctional
effects on military efficiency are also paralleled elsewhere in society.
The flight of men from the military strikingly
parallels the flight of men from marriage, with its attendant drop in birth
rates, that has come to preoccupy policymakers up to the level of president.
Men are staying away from both institutions for the same reasons: for many they
have become a ticket to jail.
The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University
reports a continued drop in the marriage rate. They too ignore the criminal
penalties that men can incur when they marry, instead urging therapy and
formulaically excoriating men for their lack of “commitment.” Citing the
Rutgers study, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade Horn
promotes federal marriage programs inculcating “conflict-resolution skills.”
Men do not risk their lives, fight, and die for a
country that is an abstraction. They fight and die for their families and homes
and freedom, all of which are being taken away by the courts. “Sometimes I
wonder what I risked my life for [in Afghanistan],” “Gary” tells Sacks. “I went
to fight for freedom but what freedom and what rights mean anything if a man
doesn’t have the right to be a father to his own child?”
Gordon Dollar was a reservist for 16 years in the
National Guard and Naval Reserves. “I have friends that are very motivated and
dedicated people, Frogmen/SEALS, Green Berets, and Rangers, and they were
getting out too,” he tells Usher. “I think people who served this country are
feeling betrayed by it, and see no point in serving it.”
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has just signed
legislation protecting military personnel in custody and child-support cases.
Missouri is the only other state to protect reservists on active duty by
requiring automatic adjustments in their child support. More states need to
act.
Federally, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which
protects deployed military persons from other civil suits, should be amended to
include specifically the actions of divorce courts and child-support
bureaucracies. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act,
designed to prevent parental kidnappings, could also be modified to protect
service personnel whose children are snatched away. Finally, Congress should
repeal the infamous Bradley Amendment, so that judges can exercise reasonable
discretion to modify child-support debts downward as well as upward in cases in
patent injustice.
It is ironic that, as we defend a questionable military
policy with patriotic appeals to support the troops who must execute it, we
allow the breakdown of traditional morality and the erosion of ancient legal
protections for the family to ruin those same troops once they return home.
This undermines not only the military, of course, but also the patriotic
appeals. But even more, in the long run it also undermines our national
defense. It would be difficult to find a single policy that so simultaneously
weakens the nation within and without.
What we are seeing here is only one vindication of
now forgotten prophecies from critics like G.K. Chesterton that easy divorce
would destroy not only the family but civilization itself. Yet as the
prediction is fulfilled before our eyes, our leaders obfuscate it with clichés
and psychobabble.
The much-belabored parallel with Rome is irresistible.
External threats are successfully withstood until the internal moral decay that
accompanies the breakdown of republican freedom and virtue. For Islamists who
regard the West as a morally and sexually decadent culture, the prospect must
be encouraging.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/baskerville8.html
Stephen Baskerville, 10-21-05
Writing recently in National Review Online, Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), describes the huge social costs of family breakdown and the benefits to children and society of marriage. He also points out that his agency spends $46 billion each year on programs "the need for [which] is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." He rightly argues that we need to address this costly "family breakdown" problem.
In fact, one could look beyond his Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and even HHS and make a similar point about virtually all programs for law enforcement, substance abuse, and school performance.
Indeed, his argument demonstrates more than that the runaway growth in domestic government spending is attributable to family breakdown. It is also an acknowledgement that the federal government and its hangers-on have a clear self-interest in broken families. ACF and the half-trillion dollar HHS generally constitute a massive in-house lobby of social workers, psychotherapists, lawyers and others who are not so candid as Dr. Horn about how they depend upon a steady supply of fatherless and troubled children to justify their huge consumption of tax dollars – dollars that in turn subsidize and increase the number of such children.
The fact that Dr. Horn has a tiger by the tail may explain why, as remedy, he can offer only palliatives in the form of yet another government program, this time state-sponsored psychotherapy: "Through marriage education, healthy conflict-resolution skills can be taught." In what Christina Sommers and Sally Satel have called in their book title, One Nation Under Therapy, does anyone really believe that our multi-billion dollar family crisis is due to a lack of communication workshops and anger-management classes? And do we really want the federal government defining (and potentially re-defining) the terms of marriage?
The smorgasbord of programs Dr. Horn lists is more than a response to broken families; it is a major cause of broken families. Before we initiate new federal programs, we ought to remember the first rule of public policy intervention, which is to first examine the effect of existing programs to see if adjusting them may correct the problem. Could our current public programs and policies be contributing to the family breakdown problem, and, if so, how can we alter them to yield better results?
Dr. Horn provides a good example of how a federal program can be altered to become much more socially productive. Our welfare system used to be a major direct cause of family breakdown or non-formation. We used to pay poor mothers not to marry or work. With welfare reform, we changed that system to allow them to marry and no longer pay them not to work. As he notes, this change in the system has been a huge success. Our welfare rolls have decreased, and child poverty has declined.
Similar political courage will be needed to address the other known public programs and policies that are undermining marriage. These include:
(1) The states have failed, since the 1960's, to treat marriage as a real contract.
Currently anyone who wants out of a marriage can unilaterally end it without penalty. This is not what was intended when marriage laws were changed in the 1970's. "No fault" divorce was to be allowed only when both parties agreed to it. This would have made marriage more like a real contract, with less interference by the state in the matter of its ending. Instead, marriage has become a non-contract, with no protection for those who invest in it.
(2) Paternalistic "family" courts and new laws have seriously undermined fatherhood.
There has long been a huge bias in divorce courts to grant custody of children to mothers. As this bias threatened to diminish, feminists pushed through the Violence Against Women Act, which makes it easy for any mother considering divorce to toss the father out of his own home and claim the family assets, including the children, simply by accusing him of domestic violence. No evidence or formal charge is required, and domestic "violence" need not even be violent. Shared parenting provisions would end this winner-take-all lottery.
(3) Federally funded state child support systems set excessive awards and penalize non-payment harshly, even when the circumstances for non-payment are clearly outside the control of the payer.
Child support awards are so high that the children have become a profit center for middle class divorcing moms – an additional financial incentive for them to divorce. As Kimberly Folse and Hugo Varela-Alvarez write in the Journal of Socio-Economics, "Strong enforcement…may… lead to the unintended consequence of increasing the likelihood of divorce." Yet in a striking slight-of-hand, disbursements under the "healthy marriage" mantra have actually gone less to counseling than to child support enforcement.
Is it any surprise that divorce in families with children is almost entirely instituted by the moms? But young men have gotten the message and are increasingly avoiding marriage and avoiding having children inside or outside of marriage. These men are scolded for their lack of "commitment" by the National Marriage Project, whose interpretation Dr. Horn is using to formulate policy. But no man in his right mind would start a family today if he understood how the federal government subsidizes the stealing of his children and his own incarceration for an assortment of newfangled gender "crimes" they make it impossible for him not to commit.
Exhorting people to marry is pointless so long as marriage
is a bate-and-switch carrying financial rewards for those who break it. People
will simply not invest in a worthless investment, no matter how much you preach
at them. If marriage was a worthwhile investment, we would see more of it.
Violence against the Constitution
http://www.newswithviews.com/Baskerville/stephen4.htm
Professor Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., NewsWithViews.com, 10-08-05
Tyrants and totalitarians never lack excuses for new forms of tyranny, and they are usually good ones: "necessity," "public safety," "the poor" – these have been standard throughout history. With the rise of feminism, the rationale has become, "It’s for the children" – or sometimes, "women and children."
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), currently up for renewal, is possibly the most totalitarian measure ever passed by the Congress. Every jurisdiction has criminal statutes punishing violent assault. So why do we need a law punishing assaults specifically "against women"? Why must it be a federal law, for which no constitutional authority exists? And why is $4 billion in taxpayers’ money required to outlaw something that is already against the law? The answer, as usual, is power – power for those who promise to protect us against yet another new danger.
It is politically hazardous for politicians to question any measure marketed for women and children. But no evidence indicates any problem of violence specifically against women. A virtually unanimous body of research has demonstrated that domestic violence is perpetrated by both sexes in roughly equal measures. So what is the real agenda behind this bill?
First, it politicizes criminal justice and redefines crime according to feminist ideology. Similar to "hate crimes" laws, criminals are designated not by their deeds but by their gender. As the act’s title makes clear, only women qualify as victims. Violence against men is permissible. Both genders are equal, but one is more equal than the other.
Supporters like Senator Joseph Biden hem and haw that, despite the name, VAWA applies to both sexes. Yet they adamantly oppose explicitly gender-inclusive language. This is self-refuting, like the joke about the bad restaurant where the food is inedible and the portions are too small.
The "crimes" too are defined not by their statutory illegality but by ideology. VAWA allows men to be arrested and prosecuted for "violence" that is not violent: "name-calling and constant criticizing, insulting, and belittling the victim," "blaming the victim for everything," "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim's needs."
VAWA also funds political advocacy. It creates programs to "educate" (the old Maoist euphemism for indoctrinate) police, prosecutors, judges, and other officials in feminist ideology, so they will administer not equal justice but feminist justice.
VAWA circumvents the Bill of Rights. Criminal assault charges require due process of law, but labeling something "domestic violence" allows officials to ignore constitutional protections: the presumption of innocence is cast aside; hearsay evidence is admissible; no jury trial is required; the accused cannot face their accusers; even forced confessions are permissible. These are the methods being used in the burgeoning system of feminist "domestic violence courts" that are created for no reason other than to bypass civil liberties protections and railroad men into jail.
Further, VAWA mandates "restraining orders" that do not punish criminals for illegal acts but prohibit law-abiding citizens from otherwise legal ones. Judges can simply legislate new crimes on the spot. But they are only crimes for some people, who can then be arrested for doing what no law prohibits and what others may do.
Finally, VAWA destroys families and leaves children fatherless by providing weapons for divorce and custody battles. It is common knowledge among legal practitioners that trumped-up accusations are rampant and even encouraged in divorce courts. "The number of women attending seminars [on divorce by bar associations] who smugly – indeed boastfully – announced that they had already sworn out false or grossly exaggerated domestic violence complaints against their hapless husbands, and that the device worked!" astonished author Thomas Kiernan, writing in the New Jersey Law Journal. "To add amazement to my astonishment, the lawyer-lecturers invariably congratulated the self-confessed miscreants." The feminists' own literature reveals the true agenda. A special issue of Mother Jones magazine ostensibly on domestic violence is devoted, from the first paragraph, largely to securing child custody.
A chorus of opposition to VAWA has arisen. Heads of major pro-family organizations have written Congress warning of the dangers and urging changes. Yet the juggernaut rolls on, promoted from the inside by judges and civil servants who are supposed to be apolitical but whose lobbying is financed by VAWA itself.
VAWA represents the dangerous acceptance of extremist ideology by the mainstream. As recently as 1999, Mother Jones published a reasonably balanced report on the gender breakdown of domestic violence. By contrast, the recent issue is a screed, a vicious hate campaign by an extremist sect that abandons all pretence of objectivity and accuracy – and which, astoundingly, is being implemented by the US Congress.
Stephen Baskerville holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and teaches
political science at Howard University in Washington, DC. In January 2004 he
became President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. He has
appeared on national radio and television programs, including The O’Reilly
Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Court TV with Fred Graham and Katherine
Crier, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, Endangered Liberties with Paul Weyrich,
Legal Notebook with Tom Jipping, the Armstrong Williams Show, Take Action
America, and others. He is a regular radio commentator for the Free Congress
Foundation.
Violence Against Families
Fathers fall victim to domestic-abuse laws
The American Conservative, vol. 4, no 16 (August 29, 2005), pp. 23-25
http://www.acfc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Baskerville_American_Conservative_Article&JServSessionIdr006=gzg1xc22s1.app6a
Stephen Baskerville, The American Conservative, 08-29-05
Feminists are playing the victim card with a vengeance, mostly because it is the only card left, with sympathy for feminism's strident campaigns at a low point. Yet beneath the media radar, victimhood has helped feminism advance virtually unopposed to aggrandize power in realms few perceive.
Victim politics requires exploiting traditional gender roles. This does not mean feminism has moderated; simply that it has exchanged ideological purity for power. Much as Stalinism inherited the habits of czarist absolutism and nationalism, feminism now exploits the stereotype of helpless damsels in distress and the public's good intentions.
Today's foremost case in point is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), currently up for reauthorization in Congress. VAWA appeals to mom-and-apple-pie sentiments: what legislator can oppose protecting women? The bill commands bipartisan sponsorship, and its renewal in 2000 was mostly unopposed.
Yet VAWA illustrates a serious problem with political conservatism and demonstrates how the Left advances despite its unpopularity. More than a failure of nerve, VAWA exemplifies a trend not so much to discard traditional values as to politicize them. Politicians can posture as champions of motherhood and family while turning them over to the safekeeping of the state. Thus domestic-violence legislation is pitched as an appeal to male chivalry, and Republicans are quick to volunteer. In contrast to traditional chivalry, however, today's political version does not proceed from personal duty and requires no risk or heroism. The gallantry feminists demand is bureaucratic, exercised by functionaries who wield state power that they expand as a result.
"Domestic violence" is now a vast and growing government industry. Yet the term has never been clearly defined. Given that criminal statutes against violent assault already exist, precisely what purpose is served by laws creating special categories of crime of which only some people can be victims? Domestic violence designates criminals politically, in terms of their membership in a group rather than acts they have actually committed. It also creates crimes based on relationships rather than deeds. Conflict that is not criminal between strangers becomes a crime between "intimate partners."
Whereas criminal assault charges require due process of law, designating a matter "domestic violence" circumvents constitutional protections. Law-abiding citizens are issued "restraining orders" that do not punish them for illegal actions but prohibit them from otherwise legal ones. Because violent assault is already punishable, the only people effectively restrained are peaceful ones.
Men's groups complain that VAWA excludes male victims and point to research showing that men are equally likely to be victims of domestic assault. Yet something more than "gender bias" is at work. Though advertised to protect women, VAWA's provisions are better seen as weapons in divorce and custody battles. As Thomas Kasper writes in the Illinois Bar Journal, measures funded by VAWA readily "become part of the gamesmanship of divorce." Groups like the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence lobby strenuously on custody laws, using unverifiable assertions like "80% of fathers who desire shared custody of their children fit the profile of a batterer."
Restraining orders are routinely issued without any evidence of wrongdoing to criminalize fathers' contact with their own children. "Restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply," and "the facts have become irrelevant," writes Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women's Bar Association. "In virtually all cases, no notice, meaningful hearing, or impartial weighing of evidence is to be had."
Even feminists backhandedly acknowledge what the social-science literature clearly establishes: that domestic violence and child abuse are overwhelmingly phenomena not of intact families but of separated and separating families and that the safest environment for women and children is a two-parent home. By encouraging marital breakup, VAWA exacerbates the problem it ostensibly exists to solve.
VAWA also blurs the distinction between violent crime and ordinary disagreement. Federally funded groups like the National Victim Assistance Academy (NVAA) and the Justice Department itself use vague and subjective terms to define "violence" where none took place: "extreme jealousy and possessiveness," "name-calling and constant criticizing, insulting, and belittling the victim," "blaming the victim for everything," "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim's needs."
If domestic violence were a major problem, one would expect limited resources to be reserved for serious cases and those concerned about true violence to resist this cheapening of the language whereby the stuff of lovers' quarrels becomes grounds for arrest. Instead, activists use vague terms to imply criminal violence where none has taken place. In The Battered Woman, psychologist Lenore Walker excuses a women who violently attacked her husband because he "had been battering her by ignoring her and by working late."
Though part of VAWA was declared unconstitutional on federalist grounds, the judiciary refuses to pass constitutional review. On the contrary, it is implemented by the very judiciary that is normally expected to protect constitutional rights. Strikingly, judges openly acknowledge the unconstitutionality and their own indifference to it. "Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order," New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell told fellow judges at a government-run training seminar in 1994. "Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, 'See ya around.'"
VAWA also funds special courts to administer not equal justice but feminist justice: ideological justice reminiscent of the French Revolution's political tribunals or Hitler's dreaded "people's courts." Some 300 "integrated domestic violence courts" now operate nationwide. In New York, Chief Judge Judith Kaye declares that the courts are created not to dispense impartial justice but to facilitate punishment: "to make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions."
These courts bear little relation to most Americans' understanding of due process. There is no presumption of innocence, hearsay evidence is admissible, and defendants have no right to confront their accusers. Even forced confessions are extracted. Warren County, Pennsylvania, requires fathers like Robert Pessia, on pain of incarceration, to sign prefabricated confessions stating, "I have physically and emotionally battered my partner." The father must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. The formulaic documents state, "I am responsible for the violence I used. My behavior was not provoked."
VAWA also subsidizes ideological advocacy of feminist organizations. Though Republicans in particular are feeding a mouth that bites them, the larger principle is whether taxpayers should ever sponsor political ideology. "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation," wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."
Especially questionable is federal funding of lobbying by judges, who are professionally obligated to be apolitical. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) consisting of judges who sit on actual cases and are required to be impartial receives federal support to attack fathers' groups and fathers themselves for being "at odds with the safety needs of the rest of the family." Can fathers summoned before these judges expect equal justice? NCJFCJ advocates administrative termination of paternal rights, termination of fathers' rights to their see their children with no evidence of violence, ignoring officials who question abuse allegations, ignoring visitation orders, re-education of judges, and labeling law-abiding American citizens who criticize the government as "dangerous."
They even seem to endorse the fabrication of evidence and a presumption of guilt. NVAA's Jacobin-style agenda is likewise endorsed and disseminated by the Justice Department: "establish a Family Violence Coordinating Council," "implement a massive community education program," "specialized domestic violence courts, and vertical prosecution," "fast track domestic violence prosecutions through priority docketing," "electronic monitoring," and "warrantless searches of their persons or homes."
The complaint that VAWA excludes the large percentage of male victims is not petty. Men are much more likely to experience violence that is premeditated or contracted and which may be excluded from categorization as domestic violence: shootings in the back, hired killers, midnight castrations, attacks with cars. Not only does this violence seldom elicit public sympathy; it is not foremost among the terrors of men themselves. "The most common theme among abused men is their tales not of physical anguish but of dispossession," writes Patricia Pearson in When She Was Bad, " losing custody of children due to accusations of physical and sexual abuse." "They may never see their children again," says Philip Cook, author of Abused Men. "They don't feel that they will get a fair shake in the courts regarding custody no matter what happens or what she does. And it's actually true. There are many cases…in which a woman who was actually arrested for domestic violence still receive[d] custody of the children." Losing custody is not the only danger: "A battered man knows that if his wife has been abusing him, she has often been abusing the children," writes Warren Farrell. "Leaving her means leaving his children unprotected from her abuse."
Here we arrive at the most insidious consequence of the moral grandstanding by VAWA's champions. Though advocates rhetorically intermingle child abuse with domestic violence, natural fathers commit a small fraction of child abuse; the overwhelming bulk is committed in single-parent homes. "Contrary to public perception," write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks of the Heritage Foundation, "the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child's mother, not a male in the household." Fathers commit 6.5 percent of child murders, according to a Justice Department study. The Department of Health and Human Services found that "women (the majority of whom are natural mothers) murder children 31.6 times more often than do natural fathers." A study by the Family Education Trust found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused in a home without a father.
This is precisely the home environment VAWA subsidizes. Judges claim they remove fathers, even without evidence of abuse, to "err on the side of caution." In fact, they are erring on the side of danger, and it is difficult to believe they do not realize it. Recalling Dickens's observation that "the one great principle of the…law is to make business for itself," the domestic-violence industry appears to be making business for itself by creating the environment conducive to child abuse.
Appalling as this sounds, this proceeds from the logic inherent in all bureaucracies: to perpetuate the problem they ostensibly exist to address. It gains plausibility from the verbal smoke-and-mirrors domestic-violence activists employ. "Adult domestic violence and child maltreatment often occur together," says Meredith Hofford of the NCJFCJ, "with the same assailant responsible for both." Hofford provides no documentation, but to the extent it is true, the "assailant" is likely to be not the father but the single mother. Hofford herself wants more money to "support" what she describes as "battered women who maltreat their children." This spiral of more funding to address the "needs" created by the previous funding illustrates how the domestic-violence juggernaut, and with it the crisis of family dissolution and fatherless children, will continue to expand indefinitely until we learn to ignore hysterical people whom the government pays to cry wolf.
Fathers Into Felons
No-fault divorce has turned a bastion of private life into a colony of the
state.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_05_23/print/articleprint.html
Stephen Baskerville, The American Conservative, 04-23-05
By all indications, we are gearing up for a major cultural and political war over the family. Opposition to same-sex marriage has tapped a vein of grassroots outrage that may run deeper than most observers imagine, with implications extending to the welfare state, the judiciary, and the most fundamental questions about the role of government. Conservatives who warn that family breakdown will lead to civilizational collapse sometimes seem incapable of recognizing the fulfillment of their prophecies.
The family crisis is generally attributed to deteriorating moral norms stemming from the sexual revolution. Yet the warfare over marriage is as much political as cultural, though basic political questions are conspicuously avoided: what precisely is the legal status of marriage, and what is the appropriate role of the state in private families and households? What are the relations of church and state insofar as each claims authority over marriage?
Family scholar Bryce Christensen likens the family crisis to the Civil War, with constitutional implications that could prove equally profound. G.K. Chesterton once suggested that the family serves as the principal check on government power and predicted that someday the two would directly confront one another. Same-sex marriage is just one indication that that day has arrived.
Another is the administration’s plan to redirect welfare funds for marriage education. Adapting Clinton-era fatherhood initiatives, the program is justified on the principle that marriage is a public institution conferring public benefits. “The time has come to recognize that marriage is a public social good,” writes Alliance for Marriage President Matt Daniels. “The health of American families-built upon marriage-affects us all.”
Yet the public nature of marriage is a truism that requires some qualification. The common-law tradition has long treated the family as a preserve of privacy that is largely off-limits to government-what Justice Byron White called a “realm of family life which the state cannot enter.”
Family inviolability was never absolute, but the basic principle has been established for centuries and most emphatically in connection with what traditionalists point out is the unique and foremost purpose of marriage: raising children. The private family creates a legal bond between parent and child that allows parents (within reasonable limits) to raise their children free from government interference. “Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage acknowledges and secures the relation between a child and a particular set of parents,” Susan Shell writes in The Public Interest. “The right to one’s own children … is perhaps the most basic individual right-so basic we hardly think of it.”
Federal courts have long recognized parenthood as a “sacred” and “inherent, natural right,” “far more precious than property rights,” and “for the protection of which, just as much as for the protection of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our government is formed.” Shell summarizes assumptions that, until recently, have been virtually universal among free societies: “No known government, however brutal or tyrannical, has ever denied, in fact or principle, the fundamental claim of parents to their children. …A government that distributed children randomly … could not be other than tyrannical. Even if it had the best interest of society in mind … a government that paid no regard to the claims of biological parenthood would be unacceptable to all but the most fanatical of egalitarian or communitarian zealots.”
As a statement of society’s moral consensus Shell’s point is unexceptionable. Yet it also illustrates the ignorance pervading current debates. For current marriage law has both validated her point and negated her fact: “No known government” ever crossed this line until about 30 years ago, well before same-sex marriage, when most of the Western democracies did so. It is having precisely the consequences she postulates.
Shell’s principle also highlights an anomaly glossed over in official efforts to reverse family decline. Invoking the public benefits of marriage to justify state intervention in citizens’ private lives and even to define-and potentially redefine-marriage would appear self-defeating. “No one would argue that crime and child poverty in America are not the business of government,” writes Daniels. “And no one wants to see the government turn a blind eye to the social trends that are doing the most damage to American children.” Daniels makes a powerful case, but he never distinguishes the public’s interest from the state’s. Government is not a neutral player.
Governments have always claimed control over marriage, whether solemnized religiously or civilly. Some libertarians now propose privatizing marriage as a strictly civil contract. Yet whatever the state’s precise role in marriage formation, politically it is far less important than another question. The institutional strength of marriage-and its connection with larger issues of public policy-is determined not by the words through which a marriage is formed but by the deeds through which a marriage is dissolved.
Here the critical players, as both sides recognize, are not homosexuals but heterosexuals. “The problem today is not gay couples wanting to get married,” writes Jonathan Rauch. “The threat to marriage is straight couples not wanting to get married or … not staying married.” The demand to recognize same-sex marriage is clearly a symptom of how weakened marriage has already become.
It is futile to try to assess the strength of marriage as an institution or understand its civic role without confronting its nemesis: divorce. Though traditionalists decry efforts to redefine marriage, the fundamental redefinition has already been effected by the little-understood system of “no-fault” divorce.
Some three decades ago, the Western world embarked on one of the boldest experiments in its history. With no public discussion of the implications, laws were enacted in virtually every jurisdiction that effectively ended marriage as a legal contract. Regardless of the terms by which a marriage is entered, government officials can now, at the request of one spouse, simply dissolve it over the objection of the other and with no penalty to the moving party. Maggie Gallagher titled her 1996 book The Abolition of Marriage. It is difficult to see how same-sex marriage can weaken an institution that has been abolished, nor how a constitutional amendment can protect a contract that is already unenforceable.
Divorce and unmarried childbearing have political consequences we are only beginning to understand since they serve as major engines for the overall expansion of government. Daniels is undeniably correct that family dissolution breeds social ills for governments to solve: violent crime, drug abuse, and truancy are directly attributable to family breakdown and fatherless homes. The obvious political implications are studiously avoided. “If we want less government, we must have stronger families,” President Jimmy Carter once remarked, “for government steps in by necessity when families have failed.”
Carter may have perceived the cause and effect backward, for it follows that government has a stake in failed families and a motive to step in and declare failure when given the opportunity. As Gallagher points out, this is precisely what divorce courts do: “No-fault divorce gave judges, at the request of one-half of the couple, the right to decide when a marriage had irretrievably broken down.”
If marriage is not wholly private, involuntary divorce by its nature requires constant supervision over private life by state officials. Marriage creates a private household, which may or may not necessitate signing some legal documents. Divorce dissolves not only a marriage but the private household formed by it, usually over the objections of one spouse. It inevitably involves state functionaries-police and prisons-to enforce the post-marriage order. Otherwise, one spouse might continue to claim the protections and prerogatives of private life: the right to live in the common home, to possess common property, or to parent the common children. In the roughly 80 percent of divorces that are unilateral, state agents are empowered, without further explanation, to remove innocent people from their homes, confiscate their property, and take away their children. Unilateral divorce dissolves not only marriage but private life.
Politically, no-fault divorce did much more than allow families to self-destruct. It permitted the state to assume jurisdiction over the private lives of citizens who were minding their own business and turn otherwise lawful private behavior into crimes. This obviously carried consequences far beyond family policy. Previously, a citizen could only be incarcerated following conviction by a jury for violating a specific statute, passed with citizen input and after deliberation by elected legislators, that applied equally to all. Suddenly, a citizen could be arrested and jailed without trial for failing to live in conformity with an order, formulated in a matter of minutes from limited information by an unelected judge, that applied to no one but himself and whose provisions might well be beyond his ability to obey. A divorce decree amounted to a personalized criminal code legislated ad hoc around each former spouse, subjecting him to arrest for doing what anyone else might lawfully do.
Unilateral divorce thus placed the family in a legal-political status precisely the opposite of the original purpose of marriage. Far from preserving a private sphere of life immune from state intervention, involuntary divorce opened private lives to unprecedented state control.
The logic reaches its conclusion in directives recently published by the American Law Institute (ALI). This influential legal practitioners’ group announced on its own authority that family law jurisdiction would henceforth encompass non-marital private arrangements such as cohabiting couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, and indeed all private homes.
Marriage defenders expressed outrage, but they misunderstood the implications. As they now argue with respect to same-sex marriage, traditionalists charged that ALI was undermining marriage by blurring the distinction between legitimate marriage and cohabitation. But ALI was doing much more than this. Family-law practitioners were using the toehold they had established in married households through divorce law to extend government jurisdiction into every household entailing an “intimate relationship,” married or not. With breathtaking irony, an “intimate relationship”-which officials reserved for themselves to define-became not a status off-limits to government scrutiny but the exact opposite, one that gives government an entrée to exert virtually unlimited supervision over personal life. The abolition of marriage led directly to the abolition of private life.
Compounding the irony, the factor that now invariably justifies state intervention into the private sphere is the very one that had previously required keeping the state out-children. As with same-sex marriage, by ignoring children a plausible case can be made that divorce harms no one beyond the couple. Introducing children changes the dynamic.
Prior to the divorce revolution, authority over children had long been recognized to reside with their parents, absent some infraction. “For centuries it has been a canon of law that parents speak for their minor children,” wrote Justice Potter Stewart. “So deeply embedded in our traditions is this principle … that the Constitution itself may compel a state to respect it.” This too has been not only abrogated but directly inverted by divorce law, which proceeds on the opposite principle. As one analysis observes, “The child’s best interest is perceived as being independent of the parents, and a court review is held to be necessary to protect the child’s interests.” Divorce allows one parent to surrender both parents’ decision-making rights to the state.
As many have observed of
marriage itself, the introduction of children into marital politics brings
pressures for gender differentiation. Traditionally, as Allan Carlson points
out, governments set the terms of marriage less to provide rights than to
impose burdens, and the ones Carlson enumerates all pertain to divorce:
“alimony, child custody, and the division of property.” Significantly, these
burdens were not symmetrical; they all involved removing something from the
man. But they were accepted because in return the man derived one vital
protection from marriage: the right to have children recognized as his. This
too has become a fiction.
Margaret Mead once observed
that reinforcing the parent-child bond has always been more necessary for
fathers than for mothers. Some modern conservatives insist that marriage serves
foremost to control male promiscuity. If so, it does so as a product of its
larger function: to protect the father-child bond and with it the intact
family. This is evident today, as the weakening of marriage produces
fatherless, not usually motherless, homes. This point is overlooked by today’s
traditionalists, who argue that marriage undergirds civilization, for it is the
father’s presence that signifies both the intact family and, by the same
measure, the civil institution. Thomas Hobbes attributed to married fatherhood
a central role in the shift from the state of nature to civil society. In
nature, Hobbes argued, “the dominion is in the mother”: “For in the condition
of mere nature, where there are no matrimonial laws, it cannot be known who is
the father, unless it be declared by the mother. And therefore the right of
dominion over the child dependeth on her will and is consequently hers.”
Only in civil society-where “matrimonial laws” do operate-is custody over children shared with the father. Today, the different but interchangeable labels used for similar family-promotion schemes in the last two administrations implicitly recognize that fatherhood (Clinton) and marriage (Bush) are inseparable.
Traditionally, it has been marriage, not sperm, that determines the father. This was the purpose behind Lord Mansfield’s law stipulating that a child born within wedlock is presumed to be that of the husband. It enabled a marriage to survive the wife’s adultery. Here too, no-fault divorce has inverted the effect. By supporting what is now known as paternity fraud, Lord Mansfield’s law has been transformed into an incentive to dissolve rather than preserve families. By filing for divorce, the adulterous wife, perhaps in collusion with the biological father, can now collect child support from the cuckolded husband for the children produced by the adultery.
Overwhelmingly, therefore, when children are involved, the spouse on whom government power will be brought to bear and who will experience the divorce regime’s growing capacity to criminalize the involuntarily divorced is the father. Some believe this is logical, and it would be appropriate if, as popularly believed, the father is the one dissolving the family. In fact, the divorcing parent today is almost invariably the mother.
The failure of policymakers to confront this has further criminalized private life through a panoply of repressive measures against primarily (though not exclusively) fathers. “The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support,” writes Christensen, “have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state.” Devised as part of the welfare system to compel payments by unmarried fathers, penal measures pertaining to child support, domestic violence, and child abuse have now spread to the middle class through divorce. Justified to protect and provide for women and children once the father is gone, they have mushroomed into an elaborate machinery that serves to remove fathers and subsidize fatherless homes.
Contrary to two decades of judicial and feminist propaganda, no scientific data indicate that fathers are, en masse, abandoning their families, beating their wives, and molesting their children. On the contrary, the evidence unambiguously establishes that a married household is the least likely setting for these problems.
The family crisis widely accepted on the Right as well as the Left is an optical illusion. What is advertised as an epidemic of dissolute fathers increasingly reveals itself as a power grab by a new class of political operatives who created no-fault divorce and who share an interest in displacing fathers and politicizing children. What makes it diabolically successful is a capacity to silence opposition and co-opt critics by claiming concern for children and distributing largesse ostensibly for their benefit. Thus camouflaged, the champions of other people’s children make an end-run around more visible clashes over homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and schooling. But the bottom line remains: never before have governments created a bureaucratic apparatus whose primary purpose is to separate children from their parents.
The family crisis
represents a microcosm of the larger crisis of modern politics, for it is
driven by a class of political professionals whose livelihoods depend on
politicizing everything, including now the most intimate corners of our lives.
The government-occupied family is only the beginning of the brave new world we
have created.
______________________________________________________
Stephen Baskerville is a professor at Howard University
The No-Blame Game:
Why no-fault
divorce is our most dangerous social experiment
Crisis, vol. 23, no. 3 (March 2005), pp. 14-20
www.crisismagazine.com
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC President, 03-01-05
The nation is in revolt over marriage. Some 17 states have now passed amendments to protect the definition of marriage, and more will follow. The issue is plausibly credited with creating President Bush's margin of victory in the 2004 election and that of some congressional candidates. Same-sex marriage has also shaken the decades-long loyalty of African-Americans to the Democratic Party. Only a short time ago, few would have predicted such a public uprising in defense of marriage and the family.
And this may be only the beginning. Bill Cosby's celebrated remarks last year on family morality -- and the largely positive response -- has placed a once-taboo subject at the top of the African American agenda. And another ballot result has not received the attention it deserves: In liberal Massachusetts, a whopping 85 percent of voters defied the strident opposition of feminists and lawyers to approve a non-binding referendum giving fathers equality in custody decisions.
All this suggests that not only gay marriage but larger questions of family integrity and parenthood are set to convulse our politics. Those who cast their ballots last November on the basis of "moral values" may have had more in mind than just same-sex marriage, which is neither the only threat to marriage nor even the most serious. To truly reverse the decline of the family, the momentum must be carried forward to confront the others. And eventually we must grasp a painful nettle: The most direct threat to the family is divorce on demand. Sooner or later, if civilization is to endure, it must be brought under control.
The most forthright marriage advocates recognize that, as Michael McManus of Marriage Savers writes, "Divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays." Predictably, this fact has been seized upon by advocates of same-sex marriage. "The weakening of marriage has been heterosexuals' doing, not gays', for it is their infidelity, divorce rates, and single-parent families that have wrought social damage," opines the Economist.
This distinction ignores the fact that the two problems are closely connected. Gay marriage would probably not be an issue in the first place if marriage had not already been weakened by divorce. "Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage," writes Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University. "It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it."
Likewise, though gay activists cite the very desire to marry as evidence that their lifestyle is not inherently promiscuous, Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that that desire arises only because of the promiscuity permitted in modern marriage. "The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates preceded gay marriage," he points out in the New Republic. "All homosexuals are saying…is that, under the current definition, there's no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is…a denial of basic civil equality" (emphasis added). Gays to do not want marriage in the traditional mold, only the watered-down version that exists today.
Blaming the Victim
While lamenting the high divorce rate is conventional piety among family advocates, most have refused to challenge the divorce laws. The standard rationalization is that to control divorce we must first change the culture. But no one suggests that changing the culture is a prerequisite for preventing, say, abortion. While cultural forces certainly contribute, the divorce epidemic has proceeded directly from a legal system which permits and even encourages it.
No-fault divorce laws were introduced in the United States and other industrialized countries during the 1970s and are being expanded into other regions of the world today. "No-fault" is a misnomer (taken from car insurance), for the new laws did not stop at removing the requirement that grounds be cited for a divorce. But they did create unilateral and involuntary divorce, so that one spouse may end a marriage without any agreement or fault by the other. Moreover, the spouse who divorces or otherwise abrogates the marriage contract incurs no liability for the costs or consequences, creating a unique and unprecedented legal anomaly. "In all other areas of contract law those who break a contract are expected to compensate their partner," writes Robert Whelan of London's Institute of Economic Affairs, "but under a system of ‘no fault’ divorce, this essential element of contract law is abrogated."
In fact, the legal implications go further, since the courts actively assist the violator. Attorney Steven Varnis points out that "the law generally supports the spouse seeking the divorce, even if that spouse was the wrongdoer." "No-fault" did not really remove fault, therefore; it simply allowed judges to redefine it however they pleased. It introduced the novel concept that one could be deemed guilty of violating an agreement that one had, in fact, not violated. "According to therapeutic precepts, the fault for marital breakup must be shared, even when one spouse unilaterally seeks a divorce," observes Barbara Whitehead in The Divorce Culture. "Many husbands and wives who did not seek or want divorce were stunned to learn…that they were equally ‘at fault’ in the dissolution of their marriages."
The "fault" that was ostensibly thrown out the front door of divorce proceedings re-entered through the back, but now with no precise definition. The judiciary was expanded from its traditional role of punishing crime or tort to punishing personal imperfections and private differences: One could now be summoned to court without having committed any infraction; the verdict was pre-determined; and one could be found "guilty" of things that were not illegal. Lawmakers created an "automatic outcome," writes Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows. "A defendant is automatically found 'guilty' of irreconcilable differences and is not allowed a defense."
Though marriage ostensibly falls under civil law, the logic quickly extended into the criminal. The "automatic outcome" expanded into what effectively became a presumption of guilt against the involuntarily divorced spouse (the defendant). Yet the due process protections of formal criminal proceedings did not apply, so involuntary divorcees could become criminals without any action on their part and in ways they were powerless to avoid. In some jurisdictions, a divorce defendant is the only party in the courtroom without legal immunity.
Contrary to the assumptions of "change the culture" thinking, these laws were not enacted in response to public demand: No popular clamor to dispense with divorce restrictions preceded their passage; no public outrage at any perceived injustice provided the impetus; no public debate was ever held in the media. Legislators "were not responding to widespread public pressure but rather acceding to the well-orchestrated lobbying of a few activists," writes Christensen. "Eclipsed in the media…by other issues -- such as civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, and abortion" -- the new laws rapidly swept the nation "with little publicity and no mass support."
In retrospect, these laws can be seen as one of the boldest social experiments in history. The result effectively abolished marriage as a legal contract. As a result, it's no longer possible to form a binding agreement to create a family.
Quiet Legal Maneuvers
Though the changes were passed largely by and for the legal business, the ideological engine that has never been properly appreciated was organized feminism. Not generally perceived as a gender battle -- and never one they wished to advertise -- divorce became the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of feminism, because it creates millions of gender battles on the most personal level. Germaine Greer openly celebrates divorce as the foremost indicator of feminist triumph: "Exactly the thing that people tear their hair out about is exactly the thing I am very proud of," she tells the Australian newspaper.
This is hardly new. As early as the American Revolution and throughout the 19th century, "divorce became an increasingly important measure of women’s political freedom as well as an _expression of feminine initiative and independence," writes Whitehead. "The association of divorce with women’s freedom and prerogatives…remained an enduring and important feature of American divorce."
Well before the 1970s, it was the symbiosis of law and women's rights that created the divorce revolution. The National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) claims credit for no-fault divorce, which it describes as "the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken." As early as 1947, the NAWL convention approved a no-fault bill. Working through the American Bar Association, NAWL convinced the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) to produce the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act. "By 1977, the divorce portions had been adopted by nine states," NAWL proudly notes, and "the ideal of no-fault divorce became the guiding principle for reform of divorce laws in the majority of states." By 1985, every state had no-fault divorce.
Today, feminist operatives employ similar strategies to encourage divorce worldwide, often inserting it unnoticed and unopposed into programs for "human rights," and unilateral divorce is now one of the first measures implemented by leftist governments. When Spain's socialists came to power last year, their three domestic priorities were legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and liberalized divorce. Iranian feminist Emadeddin Baghi writes in the Washington Post that "a 20 percent increase in the divorce rate is…a sign that traditional marriage is changing as women gain equality." And Turkey was required to withdraw a proposal to penalize adultery to gain acceptance in the European Union, while divorce liberalization counted in their favor.
The High Cost of Divorce
The damage done by family breakdown -- especially to children -- is now so well known that it hardly needs laboring. Children of divorced parents suffer far more emotional and behavioral problems than do children from intact families. They are more likely to attempt suicide and to suffer poor health. They perform more poorly in school and are more inclined to become involved with drugs, alcohol, gangs, and crime. These problems continue into adulthood, when children of divorce have more trouble forming and keeping stable relationships of their own. Through divorce, they in turn pass these traits to their own children. All this entails social costs for the rest of us, giving the public an interest in family preservation.
It might be one thing if parents were colluding to inflict this on their own children, as divorce defenders like to pretend. Even given the social consequences, a case might still be made that divorce is each couple's "private decision," as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm recently claimed when she vetoed a mild reform bill. But in the vast majority of cases, only one of the parents imposes divorce on the children and the other parent. Astoundingly, the parent who inflicts the divorce on the children is also the one most likely to retain custody of them. In such cases, divorce isn't remotely; it amounts to a public seizure of the innocent spouse's children and invasion of his or her parental rights, perpetrated by our governments and using our tax dollars.
Indeed, civil freedom is perhaps the least appreciated casualty of unilateral divorce. G.K. Chesterton once warned that the family is the most enduring check on government power and that divorce and democracy were ultimately incompatible. The repressive measures being enacted against divorced fathers -- most of whom never agree to a divorce and are legally faultless -- now include incarcerations without trial or charge, coerced confessions, and the creation of special courts and forced labor facilities.
Recognizing the Problem
No one should have any illusions that reversing these trends will be easy. The political interests that abolished marriage in the first place have only grown more wealthy and powerful off the system they created. Thirty-five years of unrestrained divorce have created a multibillion-dollar industry and given vast numbers of people a vested interest in it. Divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary and directly employ a host of federal, state, and local officials, plus private hangers-on. More largely, the societal ills left by broken families create further employment and power for even larger armies of officials. So entrenched has divorce become within our political economy, and so diabolical is its ability to insinuate itself throughout our political culture, that even critics seem to have developed a stake in having something to bemoan. Hardly anyone has an incentive to bring it under control.
In contrast with gay marriage, abortion, and pornography, politicians studiously avoid divorce laws. "Opposing gay marriage or gays in the military is for Republicans an easy, juicy, risk-free issue," Maggie Gallagher writes. "The message [is] that at all costs we should keep divorce off the political agenda." No American politician of national stature has ever challenged involuntary divorce. "Democrats did not want to anger their large constituency among women who saw easy divorce as a hard-won freedom and prerogative," observes Whitehead. "Republicans did not want to alienate their upscale constituents or their libertarian wing, both of whom tended to favor easy divorce, nor did they want to call attention to the divorces among their own leadership." In his famous denunciation of single parenthood, Vice President Dan Quayle was careful to make clear, "I am not talking about a situation where there is a divorce." The exception proves the rule. When Pope John Paul II spoke out against divorce in January 2002, he was roundly attacked from the Right as well as the Left.
Yet politicians can no longer ignore the issue. For one thing, the logic of the same-sex marriage controversy may force us to confront divorce, since the silence is becoming conspicuous and threatens to undermine the credibility of marriage proponents. "People who won't censure divorce carry no special weight as defenders of marriage," writes columnist Froma Harrop. "Moral authority doesn't come cheap."
There is also evidence that the public is becoming not only aware of, but increasingly impatient with, fallout from broken families. A 1999 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 78 percent of Americans see the high divorce rate as a serious problem, and a Time/CNN poll found that 61 percent believe it should be harder for couples with young children to divorce. David Schramm of Utah State University estimates that divorce costs Americans $33.3 billion annually. "Taxpayers who have preserved their own marriages through personal integrity and sacrifice," Christensen suggests, "may find it puzzling and offensive that state officials appear so willing to dissolve marriages and to collectivize the costs."
Fighting Back
Thus far, most proposals aimed at addressing the divorce issue have been limited to the least costly -- and least effective. Requirements that divorcing couples undergo waiting periods and counseling have passed in some states (and form the substance of most "covenant marriage" laws). But at best, such provisions merely delay the outcome. At worst, they place psychotherapists on the government payroll or force involuntary litigants to hire them. Either way, the therapists develop a stake in more divorce.
On the other hand, while simply banning groundless divorce shows more determination, it's unlikely to be very effective, since it isn't practical to force people to live together. An Arizona bill introduced in 2003, for example, stipulated that a court "shall not decree a dissolution of the marriage on grounds of incompatibility if: a) the wife is pregnant; or b) the couple has ever had a child." Such measures may discourage break-ups among observant Christians and could provide some legal redress against desertion. But as Chesterton observed, a ban on divorce is mostly, in practice, a ban on re-marriage. Under such a provision a spouse could simply separate (with the children) and live in permanent adultery with a new paramour.
Such schemes lend plausibility to some of the irrelevant arguments of divorce promoters: "No good can come from forcing people to remain in loveless marriages, even in the misguided belief that somehow it is better for the children," runs an editorial in the Daily Herald of Provo, Utah, opposing a mild reform bill recently introduced. "Is it really good for children to be raised in a home by two parents who don't love each other and who fight all the time but who are forced to stay because of the law?"
These questions are red herrings. Divorce today does not necessarily indicate marital conflict and is less likely to be the last resort for a troubled marriage than a sudden power grab. Most divorces are initiated with little warning and often involve child snatchings. In 25 percent of marriage breakdowns, writes Margaret Brinig of Iowa State University, the man has "no clue" there is a problem until the woman says she wants out. A University of Exeter study found that in over half the cases there was no recollection of major conflict before the separation. "The assumption that parental conflict will cease at divorce is not only invalid," writes Patricia Morgan; "divorce itself instigates conflict which continues into the post-divorce period."
Further, as Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee found, few children are pleased with divorce, even when severe conflict exists. "Children…can be quite content even when their parents' marriage is profoundly unhappy for one or both partners," they write. "Only one in ten children in our study experienced relief when their parents divorced. These were mostly older children in families where there had been open violence." Divorce and separation almost always have a more detrimental effect on children than even high-conflict marriages. "The misery their parents may feel in an unhappy marriage is usually less significant than the changes [the children] have to go through after a divorce," says Neil Kalter, a University of Michigan psychologist. Surveys of children by Ann Mitchell and J.T. Landis found that most recalled a happy family life before the breakup.
How the Law Can Be Reformed
In any case, limiting no-fault divorce will never force people to live together -- though done properly, it will provide strong incentives to work at their marriages rather than dissolve them. Reforming divorce laws, first of all, means re-introducing fault for violating the marital contract. It will, in effect, restore justice to the legal proceedings. "The alternative to liberal or ‘no-fault’ divorce is not no divorce," writes Whelan, "but divorce which is granted only…after due legal process to establish fault." The obvious counter-argument, that failed marriages often entail imperfections on both sides, does not justify abandoning all standards of justice. "There is fault on both sides in every human relationship," Fred Hanson acknowledged when the laws were enacted. "The faults, however, are far from equal. No secular society can be operated on the theory that all faults are equal." Hanson was the dissenting member of NCCUSL, which designed no-fault laws. "To do justice between parties without regard to fault is an impossibility," he warned. "I wonder what’s to become of the maxim that no man shall profit by his own wrong – or woman either, for that matter."
Tragically, we now have the answer in today's perversion of the criminal justice system by divorce-related accusations of domestic "abuse." Patently fabricated charges are now rampant in divorce courts, mostly to secure child custody and remove fathers, and the cry of "trapping women in abusive marriages" has become the principal argument against fault-based divorce. The irony is telling, since physical violence obviously is and always has been grounds for divorce. The argument also reveals the totalitarian nature of today's feminism. What feminists object to is being held to the same standards of evidence as everyone else by having to prove their accusations. Fault divorce would entail the "burden of proving that abuse had occurred," argues the Daily Herald. "It's not easy to accumulate medical records detailing injuries, eyewitnesses, and a police record of domestic violence calls to the house." It isn't? But that's precisely what the rest of us must do when we accuse others of vicious crimes. What feminists want -- and already have -- is the power to trample the presumption of innocence and due process of law in order to evict fathers on accusations of ill-defined "abuse" that cannot be proven because, in many cases, it did not take place at all.
This is the inevitable consequence of abolishing objective standards and allowing judges to create infractions out of whatever subjective grievance or "abuse" a tearful spouse invokes. To operate effectively, fault must entail objective, enumerated, and proven grounds that are understood at the time of marriage. These grounds may vary somewhat among jurisdictions, but spouses must have a reasonably predictable expectation of the consequences of specific misbehaviors and violations of the marital contract. This basic principle of justice is required of all other laws in a free society.
Further, to effectively deter divorce, fault must entail substantial consequences. Or stated more positively, innocence must carry substantial protections. While property considerations are not trivial, most important is that marriage must protect an innocent spouse's right to be left in peace with his or her children. Feminists complain that this punishes women for leaving a bad marriage. But strictly speaking (and aside from the question of whose behavior made it a bad marriage), it need entail no punishment at all. It simply allows an innocent spouse to invoke the protections for which he or she originally married.
This is the essential insight provided by the fathers in Massachusetts. Though not all of them question no-fault divorce, their plight illustrates why divorce reform will never succeed unless fault is tied to child custody. Because most divorces are filed by mothers, the fathers' demands could sharply reduce divorce and the stranglehold of the divorce industry.
Yet even this alone will prove insufficient. Divorce and custody are connected with larger problems of judicial activism and corruption, and judges can readily concoct justifications to rule in the best interests of themselves and their cronies. The Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision has unwittingly created common cause between family advocates and judicial reformers. This alliance must be expanded, since divorce reform and judicial reform are inseparable. As Gallagher writes, "People don't trust the legal system to determine who committed a murder, let alone whose conduct destroyed a marriage."
Today's family crisis is being attacked piecemeal by groups that hardly talk to one another, each hacking at branches that proceed from a common root: pro-family groups trying to forestall same-sex marriage, marriage promoters trying to discourage divorce, fathers demanding equal rights, African-American leaders encouraging family responsibility, and judicial reformers pushing for improvement. Alone, none of these will reverse the decline of the family. But taken together, they wield sufficient political strength to challenge the formidable judicial-divorce machinery.
Something like this coalition is emerging in Virginia, where disparate groups have teamed up to propose a "Family Bill of Rights." In addition to a marriage amendment, legislators have introduced an amendment protecting "the God-given rights of parents" to determine the upbringing of their children. Stronger still, Catholic state senator Ken Cuccinelli proposes tying child custody to marital fault, giving children the security of knowing they cannot be torn from a parent unless that parent has already acted to destroy their home. Together, these measures will give Virginia the strongest family protection provisions in the Western world.
The Religious Dimension
But politicians and interest groups can only achieve so much; a central role remains for churches. Family integrity will be secure only when families are depoliticized and when the church, not the state, is both the first recourse at the advent of conflict and the family's principal guarantor against state encroachment. Our present predicament results partly because churches (with only the partial exception of the Catholic Church) abdicated these roles. Failure to intervene in the marriages it consecrated and to exert moral pressure on misbehaving spouses left a vacuum that has been filled by the state judiciary.
Reforming the family judiciary will therefore will create an immediate demand for the services of morally vigorous pastoral communities, even among those who previously viewed the church's role in their marriages as largely ceremonial. No greater challenge confronts the churches today -- nor any greater opportunity to stem the exodus from them, than to reinvigorate and defend their own sacrament and the families created by it.
Stephen Baskerville is political scientist at Howard University and author of Not Peace but a Sword: The Political Theology of the English Revolution (Routledge Press 1993). This essay was made possible by a fellowship from the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society.
The Federal Propaganda Machine
http://www.wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42657
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC President, 02-02-05
More than journalistic ethics is involved in revelations that the Department of Health and Human Services paid columnists to assist with its $1.5 billion marriage scheme.
Attempts to discredit columnist Maggie Gallagher on partisan and ideological grounds are already receiving the bulk of media attention. But this spin must not be allowed to eclipse more important questions.
Gallagher is less the issue than the HHS officials who hired her, including Assistant Secretary Wade Horn. What we are seeing here is the tip of a massive government propaganda machine that reaches out to co-opt potential critics. Within its staggering half-trillion dollar budget, HHS commands over $200 billion in pork-and-patronage grants, more than all other federal agencies combined. Purchasing cronies is not an aberration at HHS – it is the basic modus operandi.
As with all untruths, one failure to be forthright led to another. Gallagher failed to inform her readers that she was on the government payroll. Horn deceived readers and editors with a ghost-written article. But the seminal dishonesty necessitating these others was the underlying policies they were promoting.
HHS claims to be strengthening marriage. But never are we told precisely how federal bureaucrats can save anyone's marriage. HHS is simply devising another formula for infinite government growth.
Horn's marriage initiative is not the product of any popular demand. No family or citizens' groups have seriously advocated it. The initiative has come entirely from government officials and the government-dependent psychotherapy industry, whose members feed from the federal trough. In fact, the program is more likely to undermine marriage than strengthen it. "Relationship skills," "conflict resolution," "anger management," and "child behavior management" are among HHS' favored tools of family engineering. How far the government should be dabbling in psychotherapy has never been debated, but the program confers upon HHS and its psycho-buddies the power to define – and potentially redefine – marriage.
Equally deceptive and even more counterproductive, disbursements ostensibly for marriage enhancement thus far have gone mostly to fund child-support enforcement agencies. Child support is a subsidy on divorce and single-parent homes. HHS has never confronted the likelihood that, in the words of scholars Kimberly Folse and Hugo Varela-Alvarez, "Strong enforcement ... may, in fact ... lead to the unintended consequence of increasing the likelihood of divorce."
Despite pieties to the contrary, no government has a self-interest in reversing the growth of single-parent homes. "I oversee 65 different social programs at a cost of nearly $47 billion dollars each year," writes Dr. Horn. "Go down the list of these programs – child welfare, child support enforcement, programs for runaway youth, anti-poverty programs – the need for each of these programs is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." The unstated corollary is that the administrators of these programs have a stake in those breakups. They also command billions to break them up.
Ironically, no writer has been more critical of political hypocrisy on family issues than Maggie Gallagher. In "The Abolition of Marriage" (1996), she forcefully castigated the "political cowardice" of leaders who refuse to confront the true causes of marriage dissolution, such as unilateral divorce. But the federally funded Maggie Gallagher now belittles attempts to change divorce laws.
Gallagher defends the payments because she is less a journalist than an "expert," and experts take government money all the time. "Nor is it considered unethical or shady," she observes. "If anything, government-funded work is considered a mark of an expert's respectability." Precisely the problem. The integrity of scholarship on family policy has been seriously compromised by government money, but this hardly justifies extending that corruption to journalism. That a huge proportion of research on the family is federally funded is precisely why topics HHS does not want raised are not raised.
Consider the impenetrable titles from Princeton's federally funded Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing:
These studies are devoted to influencing how government should administer families rather than whether or why it should at all.
One searches in vain for research that asks the basic questions: Why precisely do so many children live in single-parent homes without their fathers? How may government programs and policies undermine families? Government-funded scholars seldom bite the hand that feeds them.
By co-opting scholars and now journalists, HHS has been orchestrating all sides of the family and fatherhood debate. The Department Of Justice has similarly manipulated the debate (or lack of debate) on domestic violence, another gravy train for therapists and social workers.
The two come together in another document Gallagher was paid to compose: "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?" a collaboration of Horn's National Fatherhood Initiative, Gallagher's Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and David Blankenhorn's Institute for American Values. DOJ funded the publication, and not surprisingly the answer was a resounding "yes" (though it turns out the main thing government can do is provide more therapy). Also not surprisingly, DOJ does not fund studies with titles like "Is Government Destroying Marriage?" And why is DOJ (essentially federal prosecutors and police) involved in marriage at all? Perhaps because DOJ is itself busy undermining marriage by funding dishonest programs to combat domestic "violence" that in most cases is not violent.
This nation is indebted to Dr. Horn. He has done more than anyone to raise awareness about the crisis of fatherless children. But as a public official Dr. Horn has not been fully forthright on the causes of this crisis and on the measures he is asking us to endorse. Before this leads to more deceptions, he must demonstrate the leadership necessary to confront the family crisis honestly, even at a cost to his own agency, or make room for someone who can.
For the Bush administration and incoming HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, this likewise presents a critical opportunity. They can announce cosmetic reforms, dig in their heels, and concede this scandal to their critics. This will harm true conservatives who must eventually deal with this mess. Alternatively, they can seize the moral high ground, turn the tables on their critics, and demonstrate the statesmanship necessary to bring the HHS behemoth to book. A rogue federal agency is their issue to lose.
The Doofus Department
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/baskerville6.html
Stephen Baskerville, 12-27-04
Those madcap child support officials are at it again. Ever vigilant in their pursuit of the elusive deadbeat, these Wile E. Coyotes of family policy are devising ever-more outlandish schemes to snare their quarry. It is ironic that a prominent theme in today's media culture is so-called doofus dads, bumbling fools invariably defeated by the superior wisdom of their wives and children. For despite ever greater outlays of taxpayers' money for ever more intrusive incursions into civil liberties, it is not so much the fathers as their pursuers who are shooting themselves in the foot.
Their latest escapade concerns Viola Trevino, who discovered she could obtain a child support order against a man without the inconvenience of actually having a child. Steve Barreras was forced to pay $20,000 for a child that, it turns out, never existed. Barreras protested for years and produced documentation that no child could possibly exist, but he was ignored by New Mexico's Child Support Enforcement Division. "The child support system in this state is horrible," an Albuquerque woman tells a reporter. "A woman can walk into their office with a birth certificate and a ‘sob’ story and the man on that birth certificate is hunted down and forced to pay child support." Yet the agency – which ironically claims to be keeping an eye on other people's parental "responsibilities" – claims they were not responsible for the shakedown of Barreras, because they were "merely enforcing child support already ordered by a judge." No automatic provision requires the return of the fraudulently ordered payments, so to recover his money Barreras must hire more attorneys and sue.
Though officials try to dismiss such shenanigans as aberrations, they proceed logically from the child support system, which was created by lawyers and feminists not to provide for children but to plunder fathers and transfer their earnings to other grown-ups. In an increasingly typical decision, a Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in November that a mother could collect full child support from two men for the same child.
But mothers are not the only ones using children to make a fast buck. Such apparently inane rulings are explicable only by the fact that child support is a moneymaker for lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, and government coffers, plus private hangers-on – all at the expense of fathers and federal taxpayers.
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox recently hailed the passage of six (!) new laws that he says will help collect child support. But Cox already has egg on his face from his ill-fated scheme to recruit the state's children as government propagandists. Cox offered free Domino's pizzas to children who designed billboards vilifying their own fathers as deadbeats. He even invited mothers to express their feelings about their former husbands through their children's artwork. But far from shaming the supposed scoundrels, it was Cox who was forced to retreat with his tail between his legs. He cancelled the campaign when first the public and then Domino's directed more anger against him than against the fathers. One political cartoonist showed Cox telling a young child that she could not see her father but she could have a pepperoni pizza.
Michigan's enforcement methods have been the subject of federal legal challenges. Attorney Michael Tindall relates in Michigan Lawyers Weekly how he was arrested without warning when his payments were current. Wayne County enforcement agents admitted under oath that they frequently increase accounts without valid court orders. A federal court ruled that Michigan violated Tindall's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet the agency defied the court and even initiated another round of enforcement using the same illegal procedures to collect the same arrearage they had admitted was erroneous. Cox's campaign came as Michigan was set to lose $208 million in federal funds if it did not meet federal guidelines for organizing its collection system. To comply, the state promised to accelerate the very measures that the federal court had ruled were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In just the last few months, repeated exposés of mismanagement and fraud throughout the child support system have poured forth from journalists, scholars, and even some officials themselves. These include charges of illegal and unconstitutional practices that violate basic civil liberties.
In Society, Bryce Christensen writes, "The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support…have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state and have violated the rights of innocent and often impoverished fathers." In The Law and Economics of Child Support Payments, William Comanor and a team of scholars have documented horrific abuses. Ronald Henry's essay calls the system and its rationalization "an obvious sham," a "disaster," and "the most onerous form of debt collection practiced in the United States." The fraudulent and predatory nature of the child support system has been documented in peer-reviewed publications by the Independent Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the American Political Science Association, and repeatedly in Society.
In 2002, a Georgia superior court ruled that the state's guidelines "bear no relationship to the constitutional standards for child support" and create "a windfall to the obligee." Characterizing the guidelines as "contrary both to public policy and common sense," the court noted that they bear no connection to any understanding of the cost of raising children. "The custodial parent does not contribute to child costs at the same rate as the non-custodial parent and, often, not at all," the court notes. "The presumptive award leaves the non-custodial parent in poverty while the custodial parent enjoys a notably higher standard of living." The court anticipated the findings of Comanor and his team: "The guidelines are so excessive as to force non-custodial parents to frequently work extra jobs for basic needs…. Obligors are frequently forced to work in a cash economy to survive."
A Wisconsin court likewise found that state’s guidelines "result in a figure so far beyond the child’s needs as to be irrational." When a court struck down Tennessee's guidelines on similar grounds, the state Department of Human Services (which jails fathers for violating court orders), announced they would not abide by the ruling.
One may disagree with these assessments. Yet despite admitting that the system it oversees is "way out of balance," the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has never even acknowledged these scathing allegations or made any effort to correct them.
Last summer, HHS's Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) held an invitation-only meeting for local officials and a few organizations and announced (in a perhaps unfortunate wording) a new "five-year plan" called the National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan.
OCSE Director Sherri Heller promised to develop fairer procedures. Yet nothing in the Plan addresses the violations of constitutional rights and civil liberties. In a peculiar example of Orwellian newspeak, the Plan promises to build a "culture of compliance," in which parents support their children "voluntarily" but also says that "severe enforcement remedies" will be used against parents who fail to volunteer.
The Plan includes nothing about the desirability of observing due process of law or respecting constitutional rights. No concern is expressed that guidelines be just and appropriate. Nowhere is the charge addressed that child support may be subsidizing family breakups, nor is the possibility raised of using federal subsidies to encourage shared parenting, which would relieve the overall enforcement load. No concrete measures or incentives are advanced for requiring or encouraging the involvement of non-custodial parents in the decision-making or raising of their children.
None of the scholars who have criticized the system's ethics and methods was invited to speak at this or any other meeting sponsored by OCSE. Instead house academic Elaine Sorensen was trotted out to reinforce the official line. Sorensen dismissed the Georgia Superior Court decision as "only one judge's opinion."
If any public official (plus millions of citizens) is alleging that federal police operations are sending innocent people to prison, one would think this at least a matter for discussion, if not investigation – especially in an agency that acknowledges its operations are "way out of balance." But OCSE have their fingers in their ears. One official acknowledged that in preparing the Plan no solicitation of public comments was ever issued and no systematic citizen input was collected.
The appointment of a new HHS secretary offers the Bush administration the opportunity to honestly confront the sprawling welfare machine in its destructive entirety. Though Mike Leavitt seems to have little experience in these matters, he may also arrive free of the ideological baggage that made his predecessor Tommy Thompson one of the most authoritarian and disliked figures in the administration.
The Associated Press reports that Indiana is losing more than $57 million a year in state and federal tax dollars to collect child support payments averaging about $54 a week. Yet in a bold leap of logic, the AP blames the boondoggle not on the legislators who are wasting taxpayers' money but on unnamed malefactors who are about as real as Viola Trevino's baby.
The Failure of Fatherhood Policy
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/baskerville5.html
Stephen Baskerville, 09-03-04
David Blankenhorn is considered by many to be the leading intellectual authority on the crisis of fatherless children. His book Fatherless America is justly acknowledged as an authoritative statement of "the most harmful demographic trend of this generation." Its influence on government policy has been immeasurable through the "responsible fatherhood" programs of the Clinton administration and many state and local governments during the 1990's. It continues to influence the marriage promotion schemes now being advocated by the Bush administration.
So it is worth listening when Mr. Blankenhorn laments that "everywhere one looks today for political and social commentary, seriousness is on the wane, intemperance is the favored style, and the barking dogs have taken over the conversation." Yet Mr. Blankenhorn himself may not be immune from his own strictures concerning civil public debate.
In his web log, Blankenhorn launches an attack, not on the substance of any published facts or arguments but on an organization that supports scholarly research with which he disagrees, the respected Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. Blankenhorn seems to believe the Howard Center is answerable to him for the scholars they support (in this case the scholar is me) and calls them on the carpet accordingly. While I hesitate to be drawn into discussions of other people's motives, I believe I know the reason for this behavior.
At the outset of his otherwise admirable book, Blankenhorn makes a vitally important but unsubstantiated assertion that lies at the heart of his claim to be an authority on the fatherhood crisis. "Never before in this country have so many children been voluntarily abandoned by their fathers," he writes (p. 1). "Today, the principal cause of fatherlessness is paternal choice...the rising rate of paternal abandonment" (pp. 22-23).
Blankenhorn cites no source and evinces no evidence for these assertions. Aside from the question of how he can be privy to the volition of other people, this statement represents an odd abdication of the scholar's critical function. He seems to take it at face value that because children do not live with their fathers, therefore their fathers have abandoned them. Yet this does not necessarily follow.
In fact, Blankenhorn's statements have been called into serious question by in-depth investigations on precisely this subject. Research published in refereed journals by respected scholars like Sanford Braver, Margaret Brinig, Douglas Allen, Ilene Wolcott, Jody Hughes, Judith Wallerstein, and Sandra Blakeslee, and corroborated by the professional experience of authors as ideologically diverse as Constance Ahrons, Shere Hite, David Chambers, Robert Seidenberg, and Rosalind Miles, indicates that paternal abandonment cannot account for widespread fatherlessness.
After years of defamation, the very parents Mr. Blankenhorn excoriates for abandoning their children are protesting that they have done no such thing. Their protestations are now being heard in reputable current affairs publications and even peer-reviewed academic journals. The last issue of the refereed Independent Review, asks "Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?" To my knowledge, Mr. Blankenhorn has not responded.
The stakes here are not trivial. Blankenhorn's error goes to the core of our understanding of the fatherlessness phenomenon and by extension of the larger family crisis whose manifestations now appear on the front pages. It is difficult to exaggerate the impact of this misconception in justifying a host of ineffective and counterproductive policies during the last two presidential administrations and by numerous local governments. His undocumented allegation has misled the uninformed and armed the unscrupulous with a weapon to garner political capital by whipping up hysteria against innocent parents, in the process exacerbating the plight of fatherless children.
The untruth that widespread fatherlessness is caused primarily by paternal abandonment disguises the uncontested truth that millions of innocent children are kept in forced separation from legally unimpeachable fathers by court orders that their fathers may breach only on pain of incarceration. The misconception has also has been used to justify ever-more repressive police measures and violations of constitutional rights against ever-greater numbers of law-abiding citizens under the guise of collecting child support. Worse, these measures actually contribute to fatherless homes by serving as a subsidy on divorce and by incarcerating parents for circumstances that are beyond their control.
If Blankenhorn is correct about paternal abandonment, then we indeed have a law enforcement problem of massive proportions, against which we must commit vastly more resources for police, courts, prosecutors, and prisons, since the huge expansion of the penal apparatus already implemented over the last decade in response to alleged paternal abandonment has made almost no dent in the problem. On the other hand, if the scholars cited above are correct, then such an expansion of police power will achieve nothing but to increase still further the number of fatherless children. For it is precisely this expansion of government power which is largely responsible for the problem in the first place.
It is no exaggeration to say that this question could determine the future of family policy in America. Indeed, it may not be far-fetched to suggest that this question carries implications far beyond family policy, since - and it is Blankenhorn's own achievement to have established this - fatherlessness is at the root of most larger social pathologies, including poverty, violent crime, substance abuse, and truancy.
The societal ills Blankenhorn links to fatherlessness have driven the government-growth policies of both the left and the right. They have justified the exponential expansion of both the welfare state and the penal apparatus.
If these problems stem from a spontaneous social phenomenon - fathers abandoning their children - then it is difficult to challenge the need for programs to combat them. If, by contrast, the option becomes available that we might control most of our social problems by curtailing the power of government to separate children from their fathers, then most programs expanding government power become superfluous. Anti-poverty programs, expanding law-enforcement powers, the war on drugs, federal education programs - all are rationalized by "crises" whose roots lay in broken homes and exiled fathers.
It hardly need be added that armies of scholars who dedicate their careers and justify their funding by studying ever-more arcane aspects of these phenomena also become largely unnecessary.
After more than a decade of government programs predicated on this fallacy, the fatherhood crisis continues to grow progressively worse. Rather than continuing to heap blame for our public policy failures on the backs of scapegoats, it may be time to re-evaluate the central misconception upon which they are based.
I challenge Mr. Blankenhorn to confront and refute the facts published by any writer who has questioned his assertion rather than trying to silence others by undercutting the platform from which they speak. If he can show us where we are wrong, then perhaps we can begin to work together to confront the problem, and he will have earned a place as a leader in this vexing problem.
On the other hand, if Mr. Blankenhorn cannot make good his assertion, then it is time for him to acknowledge his error and retract it.
Child Support Feds Hold Meeting,
Announce New "Strategic Plan"
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville082404.htm
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, 08-24-04
The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) held the first part of a two-day, "invitation only" meeting today called the African-American Forum. Invitees included child support enforcement officials, small community groups, and a small number of national organizations, including the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.
OCSE Director Sherri Heller, opening the meeting, announced a new National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan, 2005-2009. Dr. Heller acknowledged that the current enforcement system is "way out of balance" and promised to develop procedures that "treat both parents fairly." She began the meeting by saying it would be a "two-way conversation" and said, "We want to listen," though immediately following her remarks she left the meeting.
Dr. Heller said she was excited by the new Strategic Plan, though the document seems to contain little that is substantially new. She promised to prevent the build-up of unpaid arrearages through "early intervention" but did not say precisely what that intervention would be. She also pledged that more payments would go directly to "families" and less to the government. The Strategic Plan says its aim is to build a "culture of compliance," in which parents support their children "voluntarily" but also says that "severe enforcement remedies" would be applied to those who fail to volunteer.
Paige Biava of OCSE claimed that child support enforcement officials and some community groups had been consulted in preparing the document but acknowledged that no solicitation of public comments was ever issued and no systematic citizen input was collected. She said the basic principle of the plan is that "Families come first." She said OCSE defines a "family" as the custodial parent and children but in response to a suggestion accepted that it might be appropriate to include the non-custodial parent as well. The Strategic Plan lists "our customers, partners, and stakeholders" as including children, custodians, child support enforcement agencies, courts, law enforcement agencies, employers, financial institutions, hospitals, departments of corrections, attorneys, prosecutors, interest groups, churches, and legislatures. The list does not include non-custodial parents.
In response to another question, OCSE official Melvin Sutton said his office and local child support offices can provide no assistance with visitation interference and that no federal guidelines govern or encourage visitation.
Perhaps most revealing was what both the Strategic Plan and the agenda of the two-day meeting did not contain. In recent years severe criticism of the child support system has issued forth from journalists, scholars, and even some judges, as well as non-custodial parents. These include charges of illegal and unconstitutional practices that violate constitutional rights. Yet no acknowledgement was made of such allegations nor was any effort made to address them.
In Society magazine, Bryce Christensen writes, "The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support…have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state and have violated the rights of innocent and often impoverished fathers." Liberty magazine has called the child support problem a "myth." Sanford Braver has meticulously debunked it with documentation. A new book, "The Law and Economics of Child Support Payments, edited by William Comanor, contains many essays critical of the child support system. Ronald Henry's contribution to that volume calls the system and its justification "an obvious sham," a "disaster," and "the most onerous form of debt collection practiced in the United States." A Georgia Superior Court judge declared guidelines unconstitutional on "numerous" grounds in 2002. Last December, the ACLU demanded the release of 100 prisoners in a single Pennsylvania county on grounds that they had been incarcerated without due process of law.
One may disagree with these assessments. Yet nowhere in the Strategic Plan, which will govern the operation of the child support system for the next four years, is there any recognition that such serious criticisms have even been raised. Apparently none of the above mentioned scholars who have questioned the ethics and methods of child support enforcement was invited to speak at this or any other meeting sponsored by OCSE. Instead Elaine Sorensen, who has spoken at many such meetings, presented research that was very similar to research she has presented many times before.
The Strategic Plan makes no mention of the desirability of observing due process of law or the constitutional rights of parents and children. No concern is expressed that guidelines be just and appropriate. Nowhere is the possibility raised of using federal guidelines to discourage divorce or encourage shared parenting, both of which would relieve the overall enforcement load. No concrete measures or incentives are advanced for requiring or encouraging the involvement of non-custodial parents in the decision-making or raising of their children.
Finally, the tone of the meeting was highly significant. Speakers and officials were frequently interrupted with questions, which were often direct and even hostile. This was in sharp contrast to the deference display at similar meetings only a few years ago. Bearing in mind that many participants were involved with groups that receive federal money, the critical response was marked.
The meeting continues Tuesday. The contact official for information is:
Ja-Na Bordes, (202) 401-5713, JBordes@acf.hhs.gov
A Primer Against Gay Marriage
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville081304.htm
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, 08-13-04
Peter Sprigg begins his new book on same-sex marriage, Outrage, with a paradox: Most Americans oppose it, "yet in terms of political action, the pro-family, pro-marriage majority has been strangely muted." Sprigg attributes this to a lack of intellectual ammunition and aims to remedy that deficiency with this book.
He is certainly qualified to do so. Director of the Center for Marriage and Family Studies at the Family Research Council (FRC), Sprigg has also co-authored a more scholarly book published by FRC that assembles the scientific research on homosexuality. Some highlights of that research provide the factual foundation for the present book. So while this is avowedly a polemical work, it is based on solid evidence. The result is a concise, clear, and readable book that provides an excellent introduction to where we now stand on perhaps the most emotional issue on the national agenda.
Sprigg briefly but effectively surveys the major arguments in the controversy. He counters what he regards as his opponents' strongest argument: that gay marriage is a "civil right," a suggestion he says is positively insulting to those who have experienced the brutal denial of true civil rights. He shows that the African-American community, where acute family deterioration precludes the luxury of indulging in fashionable social experiments, opposes same-sex marriage by a larger margin than whites.
Sprigg also confronts the false comparison with anti-miscegenation laws, the allegedly unfair denial of financial benefits to gay partners, and the disingenuous federalist argument. On the other hand, he invokes research showing the impact on children of being raised in homosexual households, the unanswered "slippery slope" argument that same-sex marriage must open the door to further redefinitions of marriage (such as polygamy), and the disturbing extent of promiscuity and even pedophilia within gay culture.
His appeal to libertarians is especially valuable. A superficial libertarianism relegates marriage to private life. But the issue is what marriages the state recognizes. More largely, the erosion of family cohesion may be the single most important factor driving the expansion of government power over private life.
Likewise, his brief note on how official recognition of homosexuality, combined with "hate crime" laws, is already curtailing freedom of worship and speech is of interest not only to Christians and might have been worth expanding.
The larger question concerns the assumption on which he predicates the book: Is opposition to same-sex marriage not only widespread but determined enough to be mobilized by providing the right arguments?
Some evidence suggests it is. Citizens recently shut down the congressional voice mail system with calls opposing homosexual marriage. This campaign has certainly had the merit of placing family policy on the front pages and in the election campaign.
But the potential to actually mobilize sustained opposition may be limited. Indeed, some who agree with Sprigg's position oppose his proffered solution, the Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, which Congress recently rejected.
There are various reasons for weak public mobilization, but the most significant may relate to the one argument Sprigg does not refute: that "Heterosexuals severing the link between marriage and sexual activity, and marriage and childrearing, has done the most damage to the institution of marriage."
This is the central conundrum that activists on both sides of the issue repeatedly point out: that divorce and out-of-wedlock births pose a more serious threat to marriage than do gay unions. Sprigg does not avoid this argument; he embraces it. Moreover, the book seems to recognize that, sooner or later, it must be confronted squarely. The introduction by FRC President Tony Perkins, sponsor of the nation's first covenant marriage law in Louisiana, begins disarmingly by likening same-sex marriage to no-fault divorce and describes the damage no-fault laws have done to families and children.
Indeed, evidence indicates that the real "redefinition" of marriage took place 30 years ago and today's controversy is merely the logical culmination. As scholar Bryce Christensen argues, gay marriage would probably not be an issue were it not for the weakening of marriage through no-fault divorce laws.
This is a huge can of worms, and it is hardly fair to fault Sprigg for not wishing to open it in a short book with a limited purpose. Just tipping the lid as he and Perkins do sends a bold message.
But if family advocates are to take and keep the moral high ground, and maintain the momentum they have developed over gay marriage, they will eventually have to move beyond these arguments to a more comprehensive defense of the family by challenging the larger policy failures that have eviscerated it. This is a nettle to be grasped, not avoided, and the same-sex marriage controversy could be the critical turning point, presenting an opportunity that may not come again.
Sprigg does mention efforts to roll back no-fault divorce, but these have not been pursued with remotely the same determination as opposition to same-sex marriage or abortion. The divorce laws have smoldered too long on the back burner, awaiting changes in the "culture." But no one ignores same-sex marriage or abortion by waiting for cultural change; they are confronted as public policy issues.
This might activate the forces Sprigg finds perplexingly passive. He argues that gay parenting erodes the status of both mothers and fathers. Yet the status of parents has already been seriously eroded. Ask homeschoolers, victims of spurious child-abuse accusations, or non-custodial parents. (The only error I detected throughout the book was an aside on how "deadbeat dads abandon their kids"--not only an unnecessary concession that has been roundly refuted by recent research but one that extracts the marriage controversy from its larger context: government policy weakening parent-child bonds.) Is it likely that a citizens' revolt against the erosion of parental authority will be motivated by a desire to defend motherhood or fatherhood in the abstract or from parents who need to defend their own motherhood and fatherhood in the concrete?
Sprigg points out that it is the proponents, not the opponents, of redefining marriage who are the public policy innovators. He and his allies are simply responding in defense of traditional marriage. True enough. But having disposed of these issues, Sprigg might consider writing another book, one that widens the debate and takes a morally proactive, rather than reactive, stance.
One might easily be lulled into the illusion that such a fine book puts an end to the conversation. In fact, it is only the beginning.
Originally published in Human Events Online.
Could your kids be given to 'gay'
parents?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39222
Stephen Baskerville, WorldNetDaily.com, 07-01-04
In the debate over gay marriage, strikingly little attention has been paid to the impact on children. Some question the wisdom of having children raised by two homosexuals, but the best they can seem to argue is that serious flaws vitiate the literature defending it.
Almost no attention has been devoted to what may be the more serious political question of who will supply the children of gay "parents," since obviously they cannot produce children themselves. A few will come from sperm donors and surrogate mothers, but very few. The vast majority will come, because they already do come, from pre-existing heterosexual families. In Massachusetts, "Forty percent of the children adopted have gone to gay and lesbian families," according to Democratic state Sen. Therese Murphy.
Sen. Murphy seems totally oblivious to the implications. "Will you deny them their rights?" she asks. With some 3 percent of the population, gay couples already seem to enjoy a marked advantage over straight ones in the allocation of supposedly superfluous children.
But whose rights are being denied depends on how deeply we probe and what questions we ask. Granting gay couples the "right" to have children by definition means giving them the right to have someone else's children, and the question arises whether the original parent or parents ever agreed to part with them.
Not necessarily. Governments that kind-heartedly bestow other people's children on homosexual couples also have both the power and the motivation to confiscate those children from their original parents, even when the parents have done nothing to warrant losing them.
Sen. Murphy formulaically asks us to take pity on "children who have been neglected, abandoned, abused by their own families." But this is far from the whole picture.
Ever since the federal government became involved in the child-abuse business some 30 years ago, governments nationwide have had the means and the incentive to seize children from their parents with no due process finding that the parents have actually abused their children. The 1974 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA, also known as the Mondale Act) provides generous financial incentives to states to remove people's children under the guise of protecting them. In the aftermath of CAPTA, the foster-care rolls exploded, as children were torn from their parents and federal funds poured into state coffers and foster-care providers. According to the Child Welfare League of America, "There were many instances then, as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from families." Many foster homes were far more abusive than the families from which the children had been removed.
But the federal government, ever ready to create a new program to address the problems created by its existing programs, had a solution. The 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act provided more federal money to transfer children from foster care into adoption, enlarging the client base of stakeholders with a vested financial interest in available children. Gay marriage expands this client base still further.
Among the states that have taken fullest advantage of this gravy train is Massachusetts. A typical case is that of Neil and Heidi Howard, whose children were seized by the state's Department of Social Services (DSS) with no charge of abuse against either parent and no evidentiary hearing. DSS tried to put the children up for adoption and were prevented only by lengthy court proceedings and extensive publicity in the Massachusetts News. Other families are not so fortunate.
This traffic in children has been in full flow since well before gay marriage. Belchertown attorney Gregory Hession alleges a "child protection racket" rife with "baby stealing and baby selling." Hession describes courts where the hallways are clogged with parents and children being adopted. "You could hardly walk. You had never seen such mass adoptions before." Reporter Nev Moore of the News describes the auction blocks for children operated by DSS:
If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS's quaint "Adoption Fairs," where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, "Sorry. Just looking."
This is the bureaucratic milieu - largely hidden from all but those who must endure it - into which gay marriage advocates want to inject millions of new couples in search of children to adopt.
The number of truly abused children cannot begin to fill this demand without government help. We know that statistically child abuse in intact two-parent families is rare, and two-thirds of reports are never substantiated. Yet even in those instances of confirmed abuse, a little digging reveals the pernicious hand of the government generating business (and children) for itself.
Child abuse is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of single-parent homes. Government and feminist propaganda suggest that single-parent homes result from paternal abandonment. In fact, they are usually created by family court judges, who have close ties to the social service agencies that need children. By forcibly removing fathers from the home through unilateral or "no-fault" divorce, family courts create the environment most conducive to child abuse and initiate the process that leads to removal of the children from the mother, foster care, and adoption. Gay adoption is simply the logical culmination in the process of turning children into political instruments for government officials.
What this demonstrates is that same-sex marriage cannot be effectively challenged in isolation. Opponents must bite the bullet and confront the two evils that pose a far more serious and direct threat to the family than gay marriage: the child protection gestapo and the even more formidable "no-fault" divorce machine.
Failure to grasp this nettle will leave social conservatives exposed to ever more contempt from a public that is crying out for leadership to rescue the family but which has been led to view social conservatives, however unjustly, as puritanical bigots who want to deny equal rights to homosexuals - rights that entail powers of totalitarian dimensions, undreamed of before the sexual revolution.
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., is Charlotte and Walter Kohler Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society and president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. The views expressed are his own.
Report from Washington
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville060804.htm
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, ACFC, 06-08-04
WASHINGTON, DC - As parents around the globe become increasingly outspoken in their opposition to the anti-family, anti-father policies of the world's governments, we in Washington have not been idle. Here is a quick note to let you know what we have been up to.
Last weekend I spoke in Atlanta before the Libertarian Party National Convention. The theme was the government's attack on fathers and families and why the Libertarian Party could benefit by adopting a platform on the family that recognizes and opposes this onslaught, which is being ignored and even abetted by the two major parties. I called for shared parenting, consideration of several different proposals for making marriage an enforceable contract, and federal legislation to protect the constitutional rights of parents against arbitrary government action against them and their children. The invitation to speak at the conference was arranged largely by William Wagener, who also videotaped it. We hope that tape will be available on the internet soon.
ACFC Executive Director Mike McCormick and I have also been working with groups in Washington to create a coalition to initiate new action on behalf of families. Among efforts is the development of federal legislation to preserve the rights of parents against arbitrary action by the government at all levels. We are working on revising the Parents' Rights and Responsibilities Act (PRRA) of 1995 to make it a law that will preserve the constitutional rights of all parents not to have their children interfered with or taken away, even when there is a divorce or separation. I will explain more about this bill, our proposed revisions, and its implications in a later missive. For now I will just say that among its merits is that it would protect the parent-child bond from the federal level, without actually involving the federal government in family law. It would also serve as a lightening rod to mobilize a broad-based pro-family coalition with non-custodial parents working side-by-side with mainstream political groups whose aim is to preserve the family, reform the judiciary, and roll-back the power of government generally. More soon.
Iowa's shared parenting legislation, recently signed by Gov. Thomas Vilsack, may have national implications. Aside from setting a good example for other states, Iowa is important in national family politics. The bill passed the Iowa Senate unanimously, whereas the Democrats had previous had a party line against it. The bill was signed by Democratic Governor Thomas Vilsack, who had previously vetoed it and who is being tipped as a possible running mate for John Kerry. Further, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley is reputed by many to be the most pro-family member of the US Senate. He was the original lead sponsor of the PRRA (see above), and getting him to sponsor a modified version could be highly advantageous in getting it passed.
Finally, our ability to continue this work depends on the time and resources we can devote to it. I am still a part-time president but we hope this will change as the membership of ACFC grows. If you have not done so already, please join ACFC and get your friends, associates, and others to do so. Also please affiliate your group to ACFC or start a group if you have not done so already. Mike McCormick will soon be sending out information on how to do so.
Stephen Baskerville
President
American Coalition for Fathers & Children
Washington, DC
Strengthening Marriage Through Divorce
and Custody Reform
"The Family in America", volume: 18, number: 05
http://www.profam.org/pub/fia/fia_1805.htm
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.*, 06-01-04
As the battle over same-sex marriage heats up, we may wish to consider other ways to defend and strengthen marriage as an institution. Any comprehensive strategy for restoring marriage must address its nemesis: divorce. Of all the threats to marriage and the family today, divorce is clearly the most direct. Yet it is also the least understood and most neglected.
Confronting divorce can strengthen the campaign for marriage by restoring a more constructive and proactive balance to issues where traditional marriage advocates are made to appear "intolerant." Michael McManus writes that "divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays."[1] The present failure of family advocates to address divorce is becoming conspicuous and threatens to undermine their moral authority elsewhere. "People who won't censure divorce carry no special weight as defenders of marriage," writes columnist Froma Harrop.[2]
This failure stems in part from the view that divorce is a private matter in the lives of individuals, not something of political significance or connected with public policy. The divorce epidemic is usually depicted as a cultural spin-off of the 1960's sexual revolution, where loosening moral standards led to the breakdown of the family and unleashed a plethora of social ills connected with fatherless children. Consequently, the remedy is seen as marriage therapy, and the role of public policy is limited to funding the therapy. The most prominent response today, the Bush administration's $1.5 billion plan to promote marriage through counseling, ignores divorce and the laws which facilitate it.
In fact, the divorce revolution has always been driven by politics. Without addressing the political dynamic, measures to bring divorce under control - and by extension, efforts to strengthen marriage generally - are likely to have limited efficacy.
"No-fault" divorce laws were introduced in the United States and other industrialized countries during the 1970s and are being expanded today into other regions of the world. The campaign was based on misleading information from the start. Laws advertised as allowing couples to divorce without legal grounds by mutual consent actually created involuntary or unilateral divorce, permitting one spouse to dissolve a marriage for any reason or no reason without incurring any liability for the consequences. "In all other areas of contract law, those who break a contract are expected to compensate their partner or partners," writes Robert Whelan, "but under a system of 'no- fault' divorce, this essential element of contract law is abrogated. Divorce comes to be regarded as one of those things that just happens."[3]
In fact, the legal implications go further, since the courts do not remain neutral, but invariably side with the violator of the agreement to punish the faithful spouse. Attorney Steven Varnis points out that "the law generally supports the spouse seeking the divorce, even if that spouse was the wrongdoer, by granting divorces with little regard for a spouse who may not desire it."[4]
Most people clearly did not realize what had happened. "I never knew what no-fault divorce really meant," says a woman quoted by Judy Perejko. "Never, in my wildest dreams, did I imagine that one person could force another person into a divorce."[5] Indeed, only now are even well-informed people fully comprehending the implications. Not until 1996 did Maggie Gallagher publish a book whose title accurately describes what happened: The Abolition of Marriage. Yet those who did understand availed themselves of the opportunity. Not only do some estimates now predict that two-thirds of marriages will end in divorce,[6] some 80% of the approximately 1.5 million annual divorces are unilateral and over the objection of one spouse.[7]
Yet even today, it is likely that we still are not seeing the full picture and that the consequences of abolishing one of the most universal institutions of human civilization reach far beyond what even most educated people imagine.
Three decades of unrestrained divorce have created extensive interests, including many public officials, with a stake in encouraging it. Critics like Parejko point to a lucrative "divorce industry," the legal and psychotherapeutic interests who thrive on divorce. But even more than an industry, divorce has become a regime-a vast bureaucratic empire spanning all three branches of federal, state, and local government. Comprising some 35% of civil litigation,[8] divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary and bring earnings to a host of executive and legislative officials as well, plus semi-public hangers-on. Divorce is now both big business and big government, often with no clear delineation between the two.
While its ideological origins may lie in the sexual revolution, the institutional foundations of the divorce apparatus were laid in the welfare state. Government-enforced divorce extended the principles of welfare to create single-parent homes among the affluent as welfare did among the poor. The major governmental institutions of divorce were all created as part of welfare: juvenile/family courts, child support enforcement, child protection services.
Like welfare, the creation of single-parent homes through divorce is closely tied to the feminist revolution. Barbara Whitehead has described how, throughout the twentieth century, "divorce became an increasingly important measure of women's political freedom, as well as an expression of feminine initiative and independence."[9]
The effect has been to weaken the family through its most vulnerable point: the father. The ideologically palatable way to present this in public policy debates was likewise borrowed from welfare experience and attributed the problem to fathers abandoning their children. "Husbands abandon wives and children with no looking back," writes one scholar. "Today, the principal cause of fatherlessness is paternal choice … the rising rate of paternal abandonment."[10]
No evidence is provided by these scholars that this is true. In the largest federally funded study on the subject, Sanford Braver has shown that at least two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women, whether measured by official filings or surveys of couples. Few of these divorces involve grounds such as desertion, adultery, or violence; the reasons usually given are "growing apart" or "not feeling loved or appreciated."[11] Another study found similar results, adding that "who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce."[12]
These are scholarly estimates; others put the proportion much higher. Shere Hite reports that "ninety-one percent of women who have divorced say they made the decision to divorce, not their husbands." David Chambers, a divorce attorney, insists that "the wife is the moving party in divorce actions seven times out of eight."[13]
This single fact changes the political dynamic fundamentally. Clearly more is at work here than couples deciding to part ways. Under no-fault laws, divorce became a means not simply of ending a marriage, but of seizing monopoly control over property and above all children, who become political instruments conferring leverage backed by penal sanctions. Further, by extending the reach of the state over the children and the involuntarily divorced parent, unilateral divorce has turned children into weapons of not only parental but governmental power. Family breakup is less a spontaneous social phenomenon than a conscious and planned power grab. Contrary to what governments tell us, fathers are not abandoning their children: The government's divorce machinery is separating children from their fathers.
The nexus of government's divorce machinery lies in the judiciary: the little-understood political underworld of family law. Unlike other tribunals, family law courts usually exclude the public, leave no record of their proceedings, and keep no statistics on their decisions, so information is scant.
There is even a sense in which they are not really courts, but closer to administrative agencies; one judge describes them as a "social service delivery system." Uniquely, their mandate is not even to administer justice as such, but to determine "the best interest of the child." Because this requires no wrongdoing by litigants, family courts would appear to be the only courts that can summon and order law-abiding citizens who are simply minding their own business.
Family courts handle matters such as divorce, custody, child support, child protection, domestic violence, truancy, and juvenile crime. Their workload therefore is determined almost entirely by the existence of broken homes. Recalling Charles Dickens' observation that "the one great principle of the law is to make business for itself," it may not be overly cynical to suggest that family court personnel have a vested interest in encouraging divorce. While family courts, like all courts, complain of being "overburdened," it is clearly in their interest to be overburdened, since judicial powers and salaries, like any other, are determined by demand. "Judges and staff work on matters that are emotionally and physically draining due to the quantity and quality of the disputes presented," Judge Robert Page explains. "They should be given every consideration for salary and the other 'perks' or other emoluments of their high office." Judge Page suggests his colleagues' aim should be to increase their volume of work by ensuring that divorce settlements are attractive for divorcing parents: "With improved services more persons will come before the court seeking their availability.... As the court does a better job, more persons will be attracted to it as a method of dispute resolution.... The better the family court system functions, the higher...the volume of the persons served."[14]
Family court judges are usually appointed and promoted by commissions dominated by lawyers and other professionals.[15] They are political positions, in other words, answerable to the bar associations who control their appointments or finance their election campaigns and who also have an interest in maximizing the volume of litigation.[16] Judges, therefore, sit atop a large political machinery in which they wield substantial powers of patronage.
Among the clients of court patronage, along with attorneys, are experts who help determine custody and "the best interest of the child." To understand this, it is necessary to remember that under no-fault divorce a parent's role in ending a marriage has no bearing on custody, even when it is clear who ended it; neither does the other parent's willingness to hold the marriage together. A parent who abrogates or violates a marital contract he or she freely entered incurs no suggestion thereby of being less fit or deserving of monopoly custody. Neither is there any recognition of the centuries-old principle that a non-divorcing, legally unimpeachable parent has a simple right to be left alone with his or her children. Instead we witness the peculiar spectacle of a judge taking it upon himself to determine "the best interest of the child" on whom he is forcibly inflicting a divorce and whose family he is using the power of his public office to dissolve.
This apparently unexceptionable phrase is in fact highly problematic. Not only is it vague; it provides no explanation for how it is in the interest of children to separate them from one of their parents six days out of seven, and perhaps altogether, at the simple request of the other. The best interest standard "is powerless to pre-empt divorce in the first place, which would be in the child's best interest in the majority of cases."[17]
Yet there is a more telling case against the "best interest." It transfers from parents to government officials the power to determine what is best for other people's children, over the objections of parents who have done nothing to forfeit the right to decide for themselves what is best for their children. "Such a criterion is dangerous, because it renders the claims of all parents to their natural children tenuous," writes Robyn Blumner, of the Florida American Civil Liberties Union. "Children could be given over to any set of new parents who offer a more advantaged upbringing." With respect to adoptions, the Illinois Supreme Court has held:
If the best interests of the child are to be the determining factor, persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job, or whatever, and the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers.[18]
"The law, thankfully, is otherwise," the court concludes. Not in the case of divorce. The court has succinctly described precisely the custody principles of divorce court.
Many accept this practice on the assumption that judges must decide what is best for children when parents "cannot agree." But allowing one parent to surrender both parents' decision-making rights over the children to government officials because of "disagreement" - without any infraction by the other (who may disagree only with the loss of his or her children) - invites collusion between the divorcing parent and state officials. Judges and civil servants are not necessarily disinterested parties, as Judge Page has acknowledged. "I don't love your children," he tells an interviewer. "I don't even know them. It is a legal fiction that the law's best interest is your children."[19]
The best interest standard also provides a lucrative formula for legal practitioners. "It provides what might be called hair-trigger litigability," writes Walter Olson, author of The Litigation Explosion. "Everything comes to be relevant and nothing, as the lawyers say, dispositive. Does your ex swear? Smoke? Gamble?... Roam the beach gathering driftwood?... Perhaps none of these peccadillos significantly endangers a child, but all can have some effect and you never know what will tip the balance. So it can't hurt to bring them all up."[20]
The best interest also justifies patronage in appointing expert consultants armed with an array of quasi-scientific child development theories. "As...the presentation of cases involves greater use of social sciences," writes Judge Page, "family courts utilize experts in many fields...to advise on issues requiring specialized knowledge."[21] Principles of justice and constitutional protections are excised from proceedings in favor of social science theory, sometimes colored by political ideology. "Family lawyers... maintain that justice has no place in their courts where their decisions are driven instead by questions of 'need,'" writes Melanie Phillips. "Family court judges thus preside with equanimity over injustice, having turned themselves into a division of the therapy and social work industries."[22] These experts too may not be wholly objective, since the more children that are brought before the courts by divorcing parents expecting favorable verdicts from the experts, the more employment is created for the experts.
Psychotherapists maintain a ubiquitous presence in family court proceedings. Braver, himself a psychologist, calls such expert advice "little more than guesswork." "There is absolutely no credible evidence that these [methods] are valid predictors of which spouse will make the best primary parent," he writes. "In fact, there is no evidence that there is a scientifically valid way for a custody evaluator to choose the best primary parent." Some argue the "best primary parent" is the parent who remains loyal to the marriage agreement and the family. Braver attributes the one-sidedness of evaluators' recommendations to "gender bias," but pecuniary interest may be a sounder explanation. He quotes a custody evaluator to the effect that "almost all" his business would be lost without custody battles driven by pursuit of the "best interest."[23] "What a bonanza those courts are for my ilk," writes Harvard child psychiatrist Robert Coles. "We are the ones who get the patients."[24] These experts rarely testify in open court, so they are not subject to cross-examination, and they may be covered by judicial immunity, so they are not accountable for their testimony.
Journalistic investigations have uncovered practices consistent with Braver's experience. David Brown of the Ottawa Citizen has described "how the psychology field generates business for itself" in family court by launching investigations of parents who are under no suspicion of unfitness or wrongdoing. "Assessors are not required by law to have any specialized training, pass any exams, or follow any particular rules," reports Donna Laframboise of Canada's National Post. "No one evaluates them independently to ensure that they are competent and unbiased, or keeps track of how well families whose lives have been rearranged according to their dictates have fared afterward." The New York Daily News likewise found that "there are no standards... for how much time the experts should spend with family members, how their meetings should be conducted, or what tests should be applied."[25]
While a variety of pecuniary interests are involved, the main financial fuel of the divorce machinery is child support. This too grew out of the welfare apparatus.
Most people view child support as a measure requiring a relatively small number of men to take responsibility for offspring they have sired and then abandoned. No-fault divorce transformed it into a regime whereby "a father is forced to finance the filching of his own children."[26] Coerced child support has thus weakened marriage by making it, almost literally, a man's ball-and-chain. "By allowing a faithless wife to keep her children and a sizable portion of her former spouse's income," writes Bryce Christensen, "current child-support laws have combined with no-fault jurisprudence to convert wedlock into snare for many guiltless men."[27]
This system of forcing parents to subsidize divorces they oppose is itself subsidized by federal taxpayers. Child support enforcement was originally federalized less to provide for abandoned children than to recover welfare costs, since no constitutional provision mandates federal involvement. Yet shortly after its creation in 1975, the machinery was dramatically expanded, with no explanation, to all child support cases, including the vast majority not on welfare. Today welfare cases, consisting mostly of unmarried parents, account for just 17% of all child-support cases, and the proportion is shrinking. The remaining 83% are non-welfare cases consisting largely of involuntarily divorced middle-class fathers with pockets to mine. These non-welfare cases currently account for 92% of the monies collected.[28] Promoted to help poor children whose mostly young and unmarried fathers had allegedly abandoned them, the program became a means to plunder previously married middle-aged and middle-class fathers whose children were taken from them through no fault or agreement of their own.
Advertised as a program to reduce government spending, child support enforcement has incurred a steadily mounting deficit. Taxpayers lost $2.7 billion in 2002.[29] Though it provided little help for impoverished children, this funding created a financial windfall for middle-class divorcing mothers. A program advertised as helping the children of broken homes has become an engine for creating more of them. Christensen describes "the linkage between aggressive child-support policies and the erosion of wedlock": "Politicians who have framed such [child support] policies...have - however unintentionally - actually reduced the likelihood that a growing number of children will enjoy the tremendous economic, social, and psychological benefits which the realization of that ideal [a two-parent family] can bring."[30]
The social devastation wrought by divorce and the horrors of the divorce litigation itself have recently produced a crescendo of voices calling for reform. Yet by ignoring the politics, most remedies have proven ineffective, and some risk becoming part of the problem. Most responses have involved some combination of psychotherapy mixed with law enforcement.
Some jurisdictions now require divorcing couples to adopt "mediation" as an alternative to litigation. This sounds benign, but it is unlikely to reduce divorce, since mediation aims less to prevent divorce than to facilitate it. "Conciliation, understood as attempted reconciliation of spouses, appears to be less and less a feature of divorce proceedings," writes Helen Alvare, who notes that it is "being replaced today by the use of mediation not to save a marriage, but to make the terms of its dissolution more amicable."[31] Mediator Judy Parejko is harsher. "Mediation was pitched to the public as a service that would reduce the costs of litigation," she writes. "But such well-intentioned messages served to cover up that no-fault was inherently forced divorce." Indeed, given that "the ranks of mediators are filled with lawyers, mental health professionals, and social workers," mediation can be imposed on parents who never agreed to divorce in order to satisfy patronage clients of the judge. Parejko reports that her court-affiliated mediation was terminated by a judge, and she was locked out of her office for trying to repair marriages. She writes of her colleagues: "They were in the business of mediation, charging a hefty fee for their settlement work, and without a steady flow of customers, their business would dry up."[32] Some suggest that mediation further undermines due process of law, since it "takes place without rules of evidence, without recording, and without any judicial oversight," often to the disadvantage of the non-divorcing parent. "Parties may be required to attend mediation before going to court."[33] The emphasized words do not likely mean the court will deny a divorce to the belligerent, divorcing parent until that parent mediates; more likely, they mean the court will hold the children of the resisting, non-divorcing parent until that parent capitulates.
Some jurisdictions now require waiting periods and parent education for divorcing couples, ostensibly to impress upon them the harm done to the children. A Colorado proposal that parents with minor children wait one year is opposed by the Colorado Bar Association, the Colorado Domestic Violence Coalition, and the Colorado chapter of the Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.[34]
Parent "education" classes are sweeping the nation, which some view as evidence of serious determination by governments to control divorce. From 1994 to 1998, "the number of US counties with this kind of curriculum tripled from 541 to 1516."[35]
Yet on close inspection, the message of this curriculum is usually not that divorce is harmful, but that failing to cooperate with divorce is harmful. "This basically says: Divorce isn't the death of a family," according to attorney Andrew Shepard. "It's the reorganization of a family."[36] The effect can therefore be to shift blame onto the parent who opposes the reorganization. "The fact that one parent didn't want the divorce-or that one of them had broken the promises they'd made when they were married-these were issues I was supposed to ignore," writes Parejko.[37] Conducted by divorce practitioners, these programs add recipients to the patronage and further transfer control of children to government officials. The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) "urges the federal government to require parents to take mandatory parental education before they are permitted to pursue court proceedings involving their children." As with mediation, it appears that the government is requiring the classes before it will permit the divorce; a closer look at the careful wording reveals precisely the opposite. Officials can still seize children at the initiation of divorce proceedings, and parents who want them returned must first submit to "education" by government instructors. "We want to pull away from the idea that parents have rights in relation to their children," says Jennifer Cooper, chairwoman of the CBA's family law section, which represents 2,200 divorce lawyers.[38]
A similar measure in Virginia is likewise described awkwardly in the Washington Post, which reports that parent re-education is "mandatory for anyone, married or not, who goes to court over custody, visitation, or child support." Again, the fine print reveals how the measure, far from checking divorce, can be used to intimidate parents who resist it. "Even lawyers are rooting for the classes."[39]
The principle that citizens can be coercively "educated" into accepting government action they regard as morally wrong (while the government holds their children) has an Orwellian quality. Parejko reports that such education "stayed away from presenting any of the dismal facts about how divorce increased certain risks for children.... No one ever addressed the simple fact that-in most cases-having both parents stay living together was what most every child would want."[40] No one pretends that parents who disagree with divorce in principle and refuse to attend such classes or object to the curriculum are thereby denied a divorce and left in peace with their children while the divorcing parent departs alone. Instead, resisting parents become open to charges of being "uncooperative," "angry," or "in denial," whereupon they may be ordered into more education, such as anger management classes, until they acquiesce. They will also likely be refused access to their children until their education is complete. "Divorce is a great destroyer that is eating the heart out of society as well as savaging children's lives," writes Patricia Morgan. "Its depredations will not be reversed given ever so many mediators or conciliators."[41]
Another avenue for reform is investigations of the courts, which bring government practices into public view. Yet no official inquiries appear to have been conducted in the United States, and the few held in other countries, dominated largely by legal practitioners, have asked limited questions. Some proffered solutions may serve to increase divorce.
Investigations do highlight the incontestable fact that family courts generate by far the highest volume of complaints against the judiciary. Yet most investigations have ascribed shortcomings to operations that are "inefficient." Formulated thus, such a finding can be interpreted to mean that the courts are "overburdened" or "understaffed" and that the solution may be found in increased funding. An investigation by the Australian Law Reform Commission found that "procedures are so riddled with inefficiencies, and its cases so poorly handled, that people are being denied justice." Though harsh, the wording is consistent with divorce practitioners' own view that justice will come with more funding, more courts, and higher salaries. The Commission's report recommends, "more judges are needed in the Family Court."[42] In Britain, a report to the Lord Chancellor written largely by divorce professionals details how children are separated from innocent parents on an enormous scale and for extended periods as a result of divorce court proceedings. It then recommends a large increase in the budget and powers of the divorce court apparatus. The head of the social workers' union describes that apparatus as "a complete shambles," but likewise proposes to increase the size of the shambles with "more resources."[43]
The question not being asked here is why it should be assumed that more funding, more judges, and more courts will produce any result other than more divorces and more fatherless children.
These dynamics help illuminate the failure of therapeutic measures adopted to address the family crisis by both Democratic and Republican administrations over the last decade.
The first major policy response was the fatherhood programs of the Clinton administration. President Bill Clinton ordered a "Presidential Fatherhood Initiative" called "Strengthening the Role of Fathers in Families," and Vice President Al Gore chaired a Federal Staff Conference on Fatherhood, which issued a report entitled Nurturing Fatherhood. Though marked by extensive use of therapeutic language about enhancing "relationships" and "encouraging good fathering," in practice these programs were devoted almost entirely to expanding federal child support enforcement. A campaign launched by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1999, "challenging fathers to remain connected to their children even if they do not live with them," made clear that the relationships HHS most hoped to enhance were between fathers and federal officials:
Activities funded...include Fatherhood Development Workshops on effective practices for working with young unemployed and underemployed fathers; the development of a manual for workers to use in helping low-income fathers learn to interact more effectively with the child support enforcement system; and a peer learning college for child support enforcement experts to identify systemic barriers these young fathers face in becoming responsible fathers.[44]
Under the Bush administration, fatherhood programs were relabeled as marriage promotions. Yet the substance was a strikingly similar amalgam of therapy and law enforcement, with emphasis on the latter. In January 2003, HHS announced $2.2 million in grants to faith-based groups to "promote fatherhood and healthy marriage." Yet only 25% of the funds were earmarked for marriage; the rest deputized private groups to collect child support. In May, HHS announced more grants "to support healthy marriage and parental relationships with the goals of improving the well-being of children." Here again, supporting relationships seems to mean collecting child support. Michigan's enforcement agency received $1 million.[45]
While perhaps valuable in calling attention to marriage dissolution, these programs do not address the underlying dynamic driving involuntary divorce. By placing divorce practitioners on the federal payroll and further expanding child support programs that subsidize divorce, these measures could arguably exacerbate the problem. Ironically, the Bush proposals seem to realize former First Lady Hillary Clinton's vision that "it takes a village" to raise a child, the village in this case directed by federal officials. "The policy is designed to mobilize the entire community - including clerical, political, medical, business, and judicial leaders - to support children by strengthening marriage," says Michigan's child support agency.[46]
More substantial reforms gaining support include changes in divorce and custody law. Two proposals under consideration in many state and national legislatures involve modification of no-fault laws and a presumption of joint custody following divorce. Both contain promise, though they also have limitations.
Rolling back no-fault divorce faces political opposition from those who object that forcing people to remain married violates their civil liberties. No prominent voice seems to be advocating control over anyone's personal associations. (G.K. Chesterton once pointed out that even a complete prohibition on divorce was never in practice more than a prohibition on remarriage.)[47] "The alternative to liberal or 'no-fault' divorce is not no divorce," writes Robert Whelan, "but divorce which is granted only...after due legal process to establish fault."[48]
The obvious counter-argument, that failed marriages often entail imperfections on both sides, does not necessarily justify abandoning all standards of justice. "There is fault on both sides in every human relationship," Fred Hanson acknowledged when the new laws were being drafted. "The faults, however, are far from equal. No secular society can be operated on the theory that all faults are equal." Hanson was the dissenting member of the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws, which designed state no-fault laws. "To do justice between parties without regard to fault is an impossibility," he warned. "I wonder what's to become of the maxim that no man shall profit by his own wrong-or woman either, for that matter."[49] Today we have the answer to that question.
Concerning custody law, some fathers' groups advocate a presumption of joint custody or "shared parenting" on divorce. Some family advocates see this as making divorce less painful, rather than preventing it. This criticism is not entirely fair. Considerable evidence indicates that children thrive better when they have continued contact with both parents following divorce. More to the point, by removing children as weapons or spoils, joint custody laws have been shown to reduce the incidence of divorce in the first place.[50]
One obstacle to reforming divorce and custody laws is the volume of legislation that would be required, which, judging from past experience, could simply be ignored by the judiciary or bring unintended consequences. Family law is reserved to states in the US, and many across the political spectrum oppose federal involvement in families. Changes would, therefore, have to be effected state by state with possibly uneven results.
An alternative approach that may achieve the desired effect of strengthening family integrity and the marriage contract while avoiding government regulation of family life is simply to enforce the already-existing right of parents and their children not to be separated without cause. An extensive body of state and federal case law, reflecting centuries of Common Law tradition, already recognizes the right to parent one's children free from government interference.[51] Yet this body of law is simply ignored in divorce. Enforcing it could offer a more effective and less invasive method of preserving family bonds than extensive "social engineering" through changes in marriage and custody laws or government-sponsored family therapy.
As a rule governing when children may be removed from their parents, this would entail replacing the "best interest of the child" standard with a more precise policy explicitly and categorically stipulating what constitutional case law already provides: that no child should be forcibly separated from a parent without legally recognized grounds of wrongdoing or without agreement by that parent to a divorce or separation. Thus "custody" would not so much be actively awarded as simply passively left to remain with the parent of whichever gender who remains true to the marriage. Given the role of child custody in determining who files for divorce, this would provide a powerful disincentive with virtually no government interference in private life.
This option seems consistent with most lay people's understanding of basic justice and the proper scope of government power. "There's really not much we can do about people-male or female-who will selfishly turn their spouse and children's lives upside down by ripping apart a family without even offering a coherent reason," observes Tim O'Brien. Yet we could reduce the consequences, "by simply amending our no-fault divorce law to give the (rebuttable) presumption of custody of any minor children to the defendant [who does not divorce], regardless of gender." O'Brien elaborates on what must seem unexceptionable to the uninitiated:
It is reasonable to presume that "the best interests of the child" will be better served by remaining with the parent who does not abandon commitments for frivolous reasons and wants to maintain the family. The spouse/parent who still wishes to leave may, of course, do so-with his or her clothes and any other personal belongings. The more dedicated, responsible party should keep the children, home, property and claim on future child support.
This policy would both reduce divorce and render redundant most of the government's family machinery. "The immediate effect...would undoubtedly be a plummeting divorce rate, reducing the necessity for child support," O'Brien adds. "The only parents who would incur such obligations are those who have voluntarily taken them on in exchange for being released from the marriage contract."[52]
Theoretically, additional legislation is not necessary to protect these rights; enforcement of existing constitutional rights should be sufficient to protect the rights of citizens to their children, their property, and their freedom. It would carry few financial costs and could reduce the need for expensive and invasive federal programs that thrive on family destruction by addressing its symptoms rather than its cause. Even the federal judiciary, whose increasing involvement in child support and domestic violence cases contributes to what some see as "activism," might regain its place as constitutional defender were it required to confront the constitutional implications of removing children from legally unimpeachable parents.
Yet recognizing that the willingness of the federal judiciary to review practices of family courts is unlikely, the legislative and executive branches at both the state and federal levels could also play a leadership role.
Several years ago, Congress considered legislation to do something like this. The Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act declared that parents' rights to direct the upbringing of their children are fundamental rights which the government can curtail only under conditions of "compelling interest." It specifically stipulated that "No federal, state, or local government, or any official of such a government acting under color of law, shall interfere with or usurp the right of a parent to direct the upbringing of the child of the parent."[53] The measure was defeated due to intensive special interest lobbying. Yet the bill's most significant weakness may have been that it exempted parents who lose their children through involuntary divorce. In other words, the proposed law stipulated that the government could not interfere with or separate children from a parent unless the other parent requested it by filing for divorce, in which case the government could intervene with no further explanation. Indeed, by specifically exempting divorce, the proposed law could even have been interpreted as endorsing government-enforced separation of children from parents. A substantial constituency that could have been mobilized to support this bill was thus specifically excluded from its protections. Similar legislation, this time including divorced parents, could rally the coalition that failed to emerge in the 1990s.
Finally, given the judicial proclivity to interpret statutory language differently from legislative intent, further measures might be considered. Officials that knowingly remove children from their parents without cause are violating well-established constitutional rights. Congress and state legislatures or federal and state inspectors general could demonstrate their commitment to preserving family and marital bonds by investigating federal, state, and local agencies with a view to identifying and curtailing violations of civil rights of American parents now being carried out under color of law.
Endnotes
1 Michael McManus, "Is
Gay Marriage Next?" (syndicated column), 12 July 2003
(http://www.marriagesavers.org/Columns/C1141.htm).
2 Froma Harrop, "What God Has Joined, Let No Man...," Providence
Journal, 26 November 2003.
3 Robert Whelan (ed.), Just a Piece of Paper? Divorce Reform and the
Undermining of Marriage (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1995),
introduction, 3.
4 Steven Varnis, "Broken Vows, Therapeutic Sentiments, Legal
Sanctions," Society, vol. 35, no. 1 (November-December 1997), 35.
5 Judy Parejko, Stolen Vows: The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of
the American Divorce Industry (Collierville, Tennessee: InstantPublisher,
2002), 98.
6 Teresa Casto Martin and Larry Bumpass, "Recent Trends in Marital
Disruption," Demography, vol. 26, no. 1 (February 1989), 37-51.
7 Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, Divided Families: What Happens to
Children When Parents Part (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991),
22.
8 Helen Alvare, "Types and Styles of Family Proceedings," Report of
the United States to the XII World Congress, International Association of
Procedural Law, 2003, 1.
9 Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture (New York: Vintage, 1998), 26.
10 Cynthia Daniels (ed.), Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in
America (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), 2; David Blankenhorn, Fatherless
America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (New York: Basic Books,
1995), 22-23.
11 Sanford Braver, Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths (New York:
Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), chap. 7.
12 Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen, "These Boots Are Made for Walking:
Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women," American Economics and Law Review,
vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 126-127, 129, 158.
13 Shere Hite, Women and Love (New York: Knopf, 1987), 459; David Chambers,
Making Fathers Pay: The Enforcement of Child Support (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979), 29.
14 Robert Page, "'Family Courts': An Effective Judicial Approach to the
Resolution of Family Disputes," Juvenile and Family Court Journal, vol.
44, no. 1 (1993), 11, 9, 19, 20.
15 Herbert Jacob, "The Effects of Institutional Differences in the
Recruitment Process: The Case of State Judges," Journal of Public Law 13
(1964); G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial Policymaking (Belmont,
California: West/Wadsworth, 1999), 61, 67, 69-70.
16 Jerome Corsi, Judicial Politics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1984), 107-114; Richard Watson and Rondal Downing, The Politics
of the Bench and the Bar (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969), 98, 336; Harry
Stumpf and John Culver, The Politics of State Courts (New York: Longman, 1992),
49.
17 Varnis, "Broken Vows," 37.
18 Robyn Blumner, "Making It Easy to Steal a Man's Child," St.
Petersburg Times, 11 April 1999; Jeffery Leving, Fathers' Rights (New York:
Basic Books, 1997), 196.
19 Stephen Barr, "Refereeing the Ugliest Game in Town," New Jersey
Monthly, May 1998, 52-55, 71-74.
20 Walter Olson, "Suing Ourselves to Death: America's Litigation Boom Is
Bad for Law and Society," Washington Post, 28 April 1991.
21 Page, "Family Courts," 21.
22 Melanie Phillips, "Goodbye Lords, Hello the Dictatorship of the
Judges," Sunday Times, 14 November 1999.
23 Braver, Divorced Dads, 221-222 (original emphasis).
24 Robert Coles, "On Divorce," New Oxford Review 61 (July-August
1994), 24.
25 David Brown, "Psychologists Make a Bundle While Family Courts
Fiddle," Ottawa Citizen, 21 September 2001; Donna Laframboise,
"Custody Assessors Decide Children's Fates, But Who Has Control Over
Them?" National Post, 30 January 1999; Richard Pienciak and Linda
Yglesias, "Who Gets the Kids?" New York Daily News, 25 September
1998.
26 Jed Abraham, From Courtship to Courtroom: What Divorce Law Is Doing to
Marriage (New York: Bloch, 1999), 151.
27 Bryce Christensen, "The Strange Politics of Child Support,"
Society, vol. 39, no. 1 (November-December 2001), 65.
28 Office of Child Support Enforcement, FY 2002 Preliminary Data Report, 29
April 2003
(http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2003/reports/prelim_datareport/),
figures 1 and 2.
29 U.S. House of Representatives, Ways and Means Committee, 2003 Green Book,
WMCP: 108-6, section 8, p. 8-69 and table 8-5 (http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/greenbook2003/Section8.pdf).
30 Christensen, "Strange Politics of Child Support," 67, 63.
31 Alvare, "Types and Styles of Family Proceedings," 14.
32 Parejko, Stolen Vows, 122, 10.
33 Alvare, "Types and Styles of Family Proceedings," 19, 22, 21
(emphasis added).
34 Art Moore, "The High Cost of Divorce," WorldNetDaily, 15 March
2002.
35 Alvare, "Types and Styles of Family Proceedings," 12.
36 Jeff Baron, "Learning to Quell Custody Quarrels," Washington Post,
30 July 2001, B01.
37 Parejko, Stolen Vows, 11.
38 Cristin Schmitz, "Force Divorcing Parents to Take Courses:
Lawyers," National Post, 9 July 2001 (emphasis added).
39 Baron, "Learning to Quell" (emphasis added).
40 Parejko, Stolen Vows, 19.
41 Patricia Morgan, "Conflict and Divorce: Like a Horse and
Carriage?" in Whelan, Just a Piece of Paper?, 32.
42 Australian Law Reform Commission, Managing Justice: A Review of the Federal
Civil Justice System, Report No. 89 (2000), chap. 8
(http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/alrc/publications/reports/89/).
43 Advisory Board on Family Law, Making Contact Work, "Letter to the Lord
Chancellor," paragraph 1.16, and recommendation 16 (February 2002;
http://www.lcd.gov.uk/family/ abfla/mcwrep.htm); Frances Gibb, "Head of
Children's Courts Is Suspended," The Times, 17 November 2001.
44 HHS press release, 18 June 1999.
45 HHS press releases, 2 January and 9 May 2003.
46 Online: http://www.michigan.gov/minewswire/
0,1607,7-136-3452_3478-67634-M_2003_5,00.html.
47 G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce (1920), chap. 7.
48 Whelan, Just a Piece of Paper?, 3.
49 Quoted in Parejko, Stolen Vows, 52.
50 Richard Kuhn and John Guidubaldi, "Child Custody Policies and Divorce
Rates in the US," paper presented at the 11th Annual Conference of the
Children's Rights Council, Washington, DC, 23-26 October 1997
(http://www.vix.com/crc/sp/spcrc97.htm); David Levy (ed.), The Best Parent Is
Both Parents: A Guide to Shared Parenting in the 21st Century (Norfolk,
Virginia: Hampton Roads Publishing, 1993), chap. 2.
51 See Donald Hubin, "Parental Rights and Due Process," Journal of
Law and Family Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (1999).
52 Tim O'Brien, "Help Child Support By Altering Divorce Law," Detroit
News, 22 May 2001.
53 Patrick Fagan and Wade Horn, "How Congress Can Protect the Rights of
Parents to Raise Their Children," Issue Bulletin, no. 227 (Washington, DC:
Heritage Foundation, 23 July 1996), 1-2.
*Stephen Baskerville holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Violence Against Women Panel Commits
Violence Against Democracy
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville041604.htm
Dr. Stephen Baskerville, ACFC, 04-16-04
WASHINGTON, DC - American citizens were treated to rigged public policy formulation today, as the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women began its 2-day meeting in Washington. The federal panel is charged with advising the government under the Violence Against Women Act.
The meeting was scheduled to last a total of 13 hours. Of that time, the panel reserved 30 minutes for the public to express its concerns, which was scheduled from 11:30 am to 12:00 noon. In fact, the public comments began at 11:40, in part because panel member Judge Abbi Silver spent part of the public comment time announcing her pregnancy and birthday, to vigorous applause from other panel members. After this the moderator announced with evident regret that the panel was required to allow citizens some input into the process.
Members of the public were then told they would be given 3-4 minutes each to voice their concerns. The first speaker, Karen Baker, Director of National Sexual Violence Resource Center, spoke without interruption for 5-1/2 minutes. I spoke next and was cut off promptly at 4 minutes. Other speakers (in order) were Stanley Green of Stop Abuse for Everyone (SAFE), Jan Brown of the Domestic Violence Helpline for Men, David Burroughs, Chair of the Forum for Equity and Fairness in Family Issues, Lee Newman, Executive Director of Violence Intervention Program (New Hampshire chapter of SAFE). All speakers except Ms. Baker had their presentations punctuated with warnings of the time limit from the moderator ("50 seconds…, 30 seconds…") and held to 4 minutes or less. When one scheduled citizen failed to show up, Mr. Burroughs volunteered to submit additional testimony. Though the session was still well below the scheduled 30 minutes in length, his request was denied, and the panel adjourned for lunch.
Following past meetings, the Committee has made available a transcript of public comments after about 6-8 months.
The NAC is already a rigged process, comprised of a membership heavily weighted with domestic violence professionals.
The NAC is officially co-chaired by Attorney General John Ashcroft and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. Citizens wishing to express their views on this travesty of the democratic process and contempt for the views of American citizens can write to these officials or their member of Congress:
Office of the Attorney
General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
202-353-1555
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
Telephone: 202-619-0257
Toll Free: 1-877-696-6775
tommy.thompson@nih.hhs.gov
Testimony of Stephen
Baskerville, President
American Coalition for Fathers and Children to the National Advisory
Committee on Violence Against Women
April 15, 2004
The American Coalition for Fathers and Children is America's premier shared-parenting organization. We represent about 45,000 members through our affiliate organizations. Indirectly, our constituency consists of some 15 million non-custodial parents and their families.
Our concern is to ensure that children receive the benefits of a stable, two-parent home and when this is not possible to see that they have the advantages of being raised by both a mother and a father.
Research shows that domestic violence and child abuse are overwhelmingly phenomena not of married, intact families but of separated and separating families, and that the safest place for women and children is an intact, two-parent home. [Callie Marie Rennison and Sarah Welchans, Intimate Partner Violence (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2000, NCJ 178247), p. 5; Jean Bethke Elshtain, "The Lost Children," in Cynthia R. Daniels (ed.), Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), p. 129; Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, "Issues and Dilemmas in Family Violence," Issue #4 (Washington, DC: n.d.]
In those relatively rare instances when domestic violence and child abuse occur within two-parent families, we recognize that extreme case will warrant the separation from an abusive parent. But again, we know that this is seldom the case.
What is more common, and what most concerns us, is where fabricated allegations of domestic violence and child abuse are used to break up families, to separate children from loving, innocent parents, and to bring the penal system to bear on those parents without due process of law. Abundant documentary evidence suggests that knowingly false accusations are routine in child custody cases and that they are seldom, if ever, punished. We also have documentary evidence that restraining orders are routinely issued not to punish criminal wrongdoing (which they cannot do) but for the express purpose of separating children from their parents to gain an advantage in custody disputes.
It is widely recognized that manipulating access to children and needlessly separating children from fit loving parents is itself a form of violence. False allegations are also recognized in most areas of the law as a criminal act. This is especially the case, and significantly endangers the safety of children, where false accusations are used to remove, not an abusive parent, but a protective parent.
You will no doubt hear statistics demonstrating that men and women perpetrate domestic violence in roughly equal numbers. But further, some facts of which you may be unaware:
The overwhelming majority of restraining orders are issued against fathers.
Yet fathers commit a tiny minority of child abuse and about half the domestic violence.
The vast majority of child physical and sexual abuse is committed in single-parent homes, home usually where the father is not present. "Contrary to public perception, research shows that the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child's mother, not a male in the household." [Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks, The Child Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and the American Community (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation "Backgrounder," 3 June 1997), p. 16.]
The father is the parent
most likely to be the protector of children. "The presence of the father .
. . placed the child at lesser risk for child sexual abuse," according to
David L. Rowland, Laurie S. Zabin, and Mark Emerson, in a study of low-income
families. "The protective effect from the father's presence in most
households was sufficiently strong to offset the risk incurred by the few
paternal perpetrators." ["Household Risk and Child Sexual Abuse in a
Low Income, Urban Sample of Women," Adolescent and Family Health, vol. 1,
no. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 29-39.]
A British study found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused when
a live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present than in an intact family. [Robert
Whelan, Broken Homes and Battered Children: A Study of the Relationship between
Child Abuse and Family Type (London: Family Education Trust, 1993), p. 29.]
At a time when the Bush administration is proposing to spend $1.5 billion over 5 years to promote fatherhood and marriage for the benefit of children, other government agencies should not be promoting policies that are exacerbating the crisis if fatherless children.
We are especially concerned that domestic violence policy dangerously blurs the ancient distinction between sin and crime. We urge therefore that all forms of violent assault be treated with formal criminal charges and that those accused be given full due process protections.
Stephen Baskerville
Howard University
Washington, DC
Dr. Baskerville is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. He teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the London School of Economics. Visit his MND archive here. Visit his website here. Visit ACFC.org
Massachusetts' Family 'Justice'
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3578
Stephen Baskerville, 04-13-04
For all the furor sparked by the Massachusetts ruling on homosexual marriage, the full picture has yet to emerge. Strange to say, even opponents of same-sex marriage have seriously underestimated what is being done by Margaret Marshall and the Massachusetts courts.
The ruling on gay marriage is only the tip of an iceberg. For all their professed concern about "privacy" and "rights," Marshall and her colleagues are staging nothing less than a political coup that dramatically extends judicial and all governmental power into private life. Mandating homosexual marriages is minor endeavor compared with the more serious business of destroying heterosexual ones.
Family destruction is not some unfortunate by-product of a well-intentioned quest for ever-expanding definitions of equality. It results from a deliberate attack on families by judicial ideologues who practice not justice but gender justice: an extremist ideology which demands that heterosexual men be separated from their wives and children and punished for their alleged crimes against women, children, and gays.
To glimpse this we must look behind the headline cases to the hidden underworld of family law. Advocates on both sides of the gay marriage debate have pointed out, in the words of Mike McManus, that "divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's challenge by gays." They are right in ways they may not realize. In divorce court, the forcible destruction of the family is not some theoretical prognostication; it is already the daily reality for millions of citizens.
Marshall presides over a judiciary where families are forcibly separated by government agents, where children are torn from their parents with no justification given, and where parents are railroaded into jail with no semblance of due process of law. In Marshall's court system, litigants find their hearing tapes doctored, their case files falsified, and themselves framed -- all with the full knowledge of judges. Mothers are ordered to divorce their husbands or lose their children. Fathers are forced to confess to crimes they have not committed. Attorneys who speak out are disbarred. Citizens who are minding their own business are summoned to court and ordered to pay the inflated fees of attorneys they have not hired and jailed when they are unable.
This is not all the work of Marshall alone, but her ruling is the culmination of not simply judicial "activism" but a combination of ideological extremism and judicial corruption that has transformed the Massachusetts judiciary into a Soviet-like system of kangaroo courts. In McLarnon v. Jokisch, Marshall invoked environmental law (and applied it to divorce!) to grant immunity to government officials and witnesses who use perjury, false allegations, and falsified documents to remove children from their parents and criminalize the parents. In a divorce case, the "defendant" - a parent who is being involuntarily divorced - is now the only party in the courtroom without immunity.
The defendant in that case, Edward McLarnon, is a forensic audio-visual investigator whose independently corroborated evidence of doctored hearing tapes was published in December 2000 by the Massachusetts News. His attorney Gregory Hession says the court removed documents from his file, falsified the docket, and withheld the case file for months. When McLarnon complained, he was assessed $3,500 in attorneys' fees and jailed by the same judges whose tapes were allegedly edited. Hession says he could find no interest in the tampering from the Middlesex Probate Court and Probate Court Register's office, the Middlesex District Attorney, the Massachusetts Attorney General and Inspector General, the Judicial Conduct Commission, or Marshall's Supreme Judicial Court. In fact, Marshall herself later assessed McLarnon an additional $16,400 in attorneys' fees (attorneys he had not hired), for which the state moved to seize his house and car.
The Massachusetts News also broke the story of Heidi Howard, who was told by the state Department of Social Services (DSS) to take out a restraining order against her husband and divorce him. When she refused, DSS seized her children and threatened to put them up for adoption, for which the state receives federal funds. Neither parent was ever charged with any wrongdoing. News reporter Nev Moore says similar cases abound.
There is reason to believe her. Financial incentives and quotas created by the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, championed by the Clinton administration, have resulted in a "child protection racket" rife with "baby stealing and baby selling," according to Hession. "I am appalled by how many times this pattern is repeated." In family court recently the hallway was clogged with parents and children being adopted. "You could hardly walk. You had never seen such mass adoptions before." Forty percent of Massachusetts children adopted have gone to gay and lesbian couples, according to Democratic state Senator Therese Murray, who supports gay marriage. It is not difficult to see who will supply the children of gay "parents."
Harry Stewart is another victim of Massachusetts family justice, a lay preacher who was jailed for six months for refusing to confess to domestic violence. Stewart was never accused of any violence and may have been a victim himself. Forced confessions and self-denunciation are a standard requirement of "batterers'" programs.
These cases typify "the new Orwellian [judicial] system, which has no protection for certain categories of unfavored perpetrators of 'crimes' against the state, such as parents," says Hession. "It is a system skewed by political agendas, not truth...where government [is] intruding into family autonomy, paternal authority, child raising, and even minor family conflicts." Hession is risking his livelihood. Barbara Johnson, an attorney and whistleblower who ran for governor on a platform of court reform, is now being disbarred.
Such experiences "are depressingly common in Massachusetts," says attorney David Grossack. "There seem to be networks of feminists tied in with every courthouse in Massachusetts who can create a media storm if a decision is unfavorable to them. Inexplicable decisions, nonsensical restraining orders, and gender bias in the extreme are the rule, not the exception."
Marshall claimed in her gay marriage ruling that the state constitution "forbids the creation of second-class citizens." Yet that is precisely what she has created in married heterosexual parents, especially fathers. "The hue and cry about civil rights for lesbians and gays is particularly galling for Massachusetts' fathers," reads a letter just published in several Massachusetts newspapers. "Our civil and human rights have been ruthlessly violated by these same judges for decades.... Margaret Marshall is always found on the same side of the issue: ...against fathers and their inalienable right to the custody, care, and protection of their children."
If opponents of same-sex unions truly wish to save marriage -- and liberty -- they must wake up soon to the fact that homosexual marriage will not destroy the institution of heterosexual marriage. It is already rising from the ashes.
Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?
The Independent Review, v.
VIII, n. 4, Spring 2004, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2004, pp. 485–508.
http://www.independent.org/tii/media/pdf/tir_08_4_baskerville.pdf
Stephen Baskerville, ACFC President, 03-01-04
During the past decade, family issues such as marriage and fatherhood have rocketed to the top of the domestic-policy agenda. The past two presidential administrations, along with numerous local governments, have responded to the continuing crisis of the family by devising measures to involve governmental machinery directly in the management of what had previously been considered private family life. The Bush administration has proposed $300 million annually to "promote responsible fatherhood" and for federal promotion of "healthy marriages." Earlier, President Bill Clinton created a "Presidential Fatherhood Initiative," and Vice President Al Gore chaired a federal staff conference on "nurturing fatherhood." Congress has established bipartisan task forces on fatherhood promotion and issued a resolution affirming the importance of fathers. Almost 80 percent of the respondents to a 1996 Gallup poll saw fatherhood as the most serious social problem today (NCF 1996).
A generation of fatherhood advocates has emerged who insist that fatherlessness is the most critical social issue of our time. In Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn calls the crisis of fatherless children "the most destructive trend of our generation" (1995, 1). Their case is powerful. Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherless children: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological disorders—all correlating more strongly with fatherlessness than with any other single factor, surpassing even race and poverty. The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists come from fatherless homes (Daniels 1998, passim). Children from affluent but broken families are much more likely to get into trouble than children from poor but intact ones, and white children from separated families are at higher risk than black children in intact families (McLanahan 1998, 88). The connection between single-parent households and crime is so strong that controlling for this factor erases the relationship between race and crime as well as between low income and crime (Kamarck and Galston 1990, 14).
Given these seemingly irrefutable findings, a case might be made that both liberals and conservatives should rethink their priorities. Rather than spending more on antipoverty programs, as the left advocates, or on ever harsher law enforcement, beloved of the right, both sides should get together and help restore fatherhood as a solution to social ills. On its surface, the government’s fatherhood campaign seems to make good sense. As currently conceived, however, it may be having precisely the opposite effect of that advertised.
The policymakers’ discovery of fatherhood has a disturbing side. In August 2002, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Tommy Thompson announced mass arrests of parents he says have disobeyed government orders, calling them the "most wanted deadbeat parents." The roundups were carried out under a program started by the Clinton administration called Project Save Our Children. The Clinton years saw repeated and increasingly harsh measures against "deadbeat dads." The 1998 Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act was accompanied by a "child support crackdown . . . to identify, analyze, and investigate [parents] for criminal prosecution." HHS secretary Donna Shalala announced the Federal Case Registry to monitor almost 20 million parents, whether or not they had child-support arrearages, and the Directory of New Hires database, which records the name of every newly hired individual in the country (HHS 1998b).
Amid all this attention, little informed discussion has occurred about the appropriate role of public policy with respect to fatherhood and families. Marshalling federal agencies to "promote" something as private and personal as a parent’s relationship with his own children raises questions. The assumption that the government has a legitimate role in ameliorating the problem of fatherlessness also glides quickly over the more fundamental question of whether the government has had a role in creating the problem. What we see in the "fatherhood crisis" may be an optical illusion. What many are led to believe is a social problem may in reality be an exercise of power by the state.
The conventional wisdom—enunciated by political leaders, media commentators, and scholars—assumes that the problem stems from paternal abandonment. Clinton claimed that the fathers pursued by his administration "have chosen to abandon their children" (1992). Blankenhorn writes, "Today, the principal cause of fatherlessness is paternal choice . . . the rising rate of paternal abandonment" (1995, 22–23). David Popenoe, author of the essay "Life Without Father," writes that fathers "choose to relinquish" the responsibilities of fatherhood (1998, 34). Yet none of these policymakers or writers cites any evidence for this claim; in fact, no government or academic study has ever shown that large numbers of fathers are abandoning their children. Moreover, studies that answer the question directly have arrived at a different conclusion.
In the largest federally funded study ever undertaken on the subject, Arizona State University psychologist Sanford Braver demonstrated that few married fathers voluntarily leave their children. Braver found that overwhelmingly it is mothers, not fathers, who are walking away from marriages. Moreover, most of these women do so not with legal grounds such as abuse or adultery but for reasons such as "not feeling loved or appreciated." The forcibly divorced fathers were also found to pay virtually all child support when they are employed and when they are permitted to see the children they have allegedly abandoned (1998, chap. 7).
Other studies have reached similar conclusions. Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen found that women file for divorce in some 70 percent of cases. "Not only do they file more often, but . . . they are more likely to instigate separation." Most significantly, the principal incentive is not grounds such as desertion, adultery, or violence, but control of the children. "We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce" (2000, 126–27, 129, 158, emphasis in original). One might interpret this statistic to mean that what we call divorce has become in effect a kind of legalized parental kidnapping.
Moreover, the vast machinery devoted to divorce and custody litigation now has the power not only to seize children whose parents have done nothing legally wrong, but also to turn forcibly divorced parents into outlaws without any wrong action on their part and in ways they are powerless to avoid. What we are seeing today is nothing less than the criminalization of parents, most often the fathers. A father who is legally unimpeachable can be turned into a criminal by the regime of involuntary divorce.
Partly responsible is "no-fault" divorce, or what marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher terms "unilateral" divorce, which allows one spouse to abrogate the marriage contract without incurring any liability for the consequences (1996, 143–52). "In all other areas of contract law those who break a contract are expected to compensate their partner or partners," writes researcher Robert Whelan, "but under a system of ‘no fault’ divorce, this essential element of contract law is abrogated" (1995, 3). When children are involved, their separation from one parent is then enforced by the state, with criminal penalties against that parent for literally "no fault" of his own.
We do not know precisely how many are affected. Approximately 1.5 million divorces are granted annually in the United States. Some studies predict 65 percent of marriages will end in divorce. Some 80 percent of divorces are unilateral, and the figure may be higher when children are involved in approximately three-fifths of divorces. All told, more than a million children become victims of divorce each year (Furstenberg and Cherlin 1991, 22; Gallagher 1996, 5, 9, 22, 84–86; Martin and Bumpass 1989). These figures imply that at least 700,000 parents are involuntarily divorced each year, and control of their children is taken over by the government. For all we can be certain, all 12–20 million parents now being pursued as quasi-criminals by the federal government have been separated involuntarily from their children through no legal fault of their own (HHS 1998b; OCSEA 2001
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this point, which contradicts the assumptions of policymakers who call for repeated crackdowns on allegedly dissolute fathers. "Children should not have to suffer twice for the decisions of their parents to divorce," Senator Mike DeWine declared in June 1998, "once when they decide to divorce, and again when one of the parents evades the financial responsibility to care for them" (Congressional Record, June 5, 1998, S5734). Yet most fathers and noncustodial mothers make no such decision.
Punitive measures imposed on noncustodial parents might be justifiable if, as is popularly believed (and as government statements strongly imply), those parents were deserting their families, giving legitimate grounds for divorce or even agreeing to it. Parents who dissolve marriages arguably give the state an interest in ensuring the well-being of their children. It is not clear, however, what compelling public interest justifies removing children from parents who do not act to dissolve their marriages.
Some reply that even fathers whose children are taken from them through no fault or agreement of their own are still obliged to support them financially and to obey other court orders. That all parents have a legal and moral responsibility to care and provide for their children is not at issue. The question not being asked, however, is why parents charged with no civil or criminal wrongdoing must surrender to the government the right to rear their own children. Requiring an unimpeachable parent "to finance the filching of his own children," as attorney Jed Abraham puts it (1999, 151), encourages government officials to seize control of the children, property, and persons of as many citizens as they can, thereby increasing their jurisdiction and the demand for their services.
Government’s Family Machinery
For all the recent concern about both family breakdown and judicial power, it is surprising that so little attention is focused on family courts. They are certainly the arm of government that routinely reaches deepest into individuals and families’ private lives. "The family court is the most powerful branch of the judiciary," according to Judge Robert Page of the New Jersey Family Court. "The power of family court judges," by their own assessment, "is almost unlimited" (1993, 9, 11). Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas once characterized them as "kangaroo court[s]" (In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 27–28 [1967]).
Very little information is available on these courts. They usually operate behind closed doors and leave no records. Statistics are virtually nonexistent because judges and bar associations lobby to prevent the compilation of figures (Levy, Gang, and Thompson 1997).
Most strikingly, they claim exemption from due process of law and even from the Constitution itself. As one father reports being told by the chief judicial investigator in New Jersey, "The provisions of the U.S. Constitution do not apply in domestic relations cases since they are determined in a Court of Equity rather than [in a] Court of Law." \1 A connected rule known as the "domestic relations exception" is said to justify the federal courts’ refusal to scrutinize family-law cases for constitutional rights violations (60 U.S.L.W. 4532 [June 15, 1992]). A substantial body of federal case law recognizes parenting as an "essential" constitutional right "far more precious than property rights" that "undeniably warrants deference, and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection." This "fundamental liberty interest," federal courts have held, "cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions" (Hubin 1999, 124). Yet divorce courts virtually never apply such apparently unequivocal constitutional principles, and the federal courts resist becoming involved.
A father brought before these courts is likely to have only a few hours’ notice of a hearing that may last thirty minutes or less, during which he will lose all decisionmaking authority over his children, be told when and where he is authorized to see them, and ordered to begin paying child support. His name will be entered on a federal registry, his wages will immediately be garnished, and the government will have access to all his financial information.
No allegations of wrongdoing, either civil or criminal, are required. And no agreement to a divorce or separation is necessary. Yet from this point, if he tries to see his children outside the authorized times or fails to pay the child support (or courtordered attorneys’ fees), he will be subject to arrest.
A parent pulled into divorce court against his will also must submit to questioning about his private life, questioning that Abraham has characterized as an "interrogation." He can be forced to surrender personal diaries, correspondence, financial records, and other documents normally protected by the Fourth Amendment. His personal habits, movements, conversations, writings, and purchases are subject to inquiry by the court. His home can be entered by government agents. His visits with his children can be monitored and restricted to a "supervised visitation center." Anything he says to his spouse or children as well as to family counselors and personal therapists can be used against him in court, and his children can be used to inform on his compliance. Fathers are asked intimate questions about how they "feel" about their children, what they do with them, where they take them, how they kiss them, how they feed and bathe them, what they buy for them, and what they discuss with them. According to Abraham, fathers against whom no evidence of wrongdoing is presented are ordered to submit to "plethysmographs," a physical-response test in which an electronic sheath is placed over the penis while the father is forced to watch pornographic films of children (1999, 148, 58). A parent who refuses to cooperate can be summarily incarcerated or ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
The parent from whom custody is removed no longer has any say in where the children reside, attend school, or worship. He has no necessary access to their school or medical records or any control over medications or drugs. He can be enjoined from taking his children to the doctor or dentist. He can be told what religious services he may (or must) attend with his children and what subjects he may discuss with them in private.
In family court, it is not unusual for a father earning $35,000 a year to amass $150,000 in attorney’s fees, according to Washington attorney William Dawes. Unlike any other debt, these fees may be collected by incarceration. In fact, unlike the inmates in a medieval debtors’ prison, he is punished even though he did not incur the debt voluntarily. One of the most astonishing practices of family courts is ordering fathers to pay the fees of attorneys, psychotherapists, and other officials they have not hired and summarily jailing them for not complying.
Family law is now criminalizing constitutionally protected activities as basic as free speech, freedom of the press, and even private conversations. In some jurisdictions, it is a crime to criticize family-court judges or otherwise to discuss family-law cases publicly, and fathers have been arrested for doing so. Fathers who speak out against family courts report that their children are used as weapons to silence their dissent, and attorneys regularly advise their clients not to join fathers’ rights groups, speak to the press, or otherwise criticize judges. Following his congressional testimony critical of the family courts, Jim Wagner of the Georgia Children’s Rights Council (CRC) was stripped of custody of his two children and ordered to pay $6,000 in legal fees. When he could not pay within fifteen days, the court jailed him. "We believe . . . the court is attempting to punish Wagner for exposing the court’s gender bias and misconduct to a congressional committee," said Sonny Burmeister, president of the council (CRC 1992, 9). Though precluded by law from endorsing political ideologies, the U.S. Department of Justice publishes a paper by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, an association of ostensibly impartial judges who sit on actual cases, that attacks fathers’ groups for their "patriarchal values" and for advocating "the rights of fathers instead of their responsibilities." The ostensibly apolitical judges ask, "How can we learn to counter the sound bites of fathers’ rights groups?" (qtd. in McHardy and Hofford 1999).
Like other state court judges, family-court judges are either elected or appointed and are promoted by commissions dominated by lawyers and other professionals (Tarr 1999, 61, 67, 69–70). These judges, in other words, occupy political positions and are answerable to the bar associations that naturally have an interest in maximizing the volume of litigation (Corsi 1984, 107–14; Watson and Downing 1969, 98, 336). They also wield extensive powers of patronage that enable them to force litigants to pay attorneys and expert witnesses. These powers are not limited to family courts; judges’ patronage powers have long been recognized (Jacob 1984, 112). Yet in no other courts has patronage so thoroughly eclipsed justice. Although family courts, like most courts, claim to be overburdened, it is clearly in their interest to be overburdened because judicial powers and earnings are determined by demand. As Judge Page explains, "Judges and staff work on matters that are emotionally and physically draining due to the quantity and quality of the disputes presented; they should be given every consideration for salary and the other ‘perks’ or other emoluments of their high office. . . . With the improved status of judges and family-court systems comes their proper position in judicial budgets as worthy of appropriate funding" (1993, 19). Though caseloads are large, the aim in improving the court’s status is apparently to increase that load still further. If the judiciary is viewed in part as a business, then the more satisfied the customers—in this case, the bar associations and divorcing parents who expect custody—the more customers will be attracted. Again, in Judge Page’s words, "With improved services more persons will come before the court seeking their availability. . . . As the court does a better job more persons will be attracted to it as a method of dispute resolution. . . . The better the family-court system functions the higher . . . the volume of the persons served" (1993, 20). In this view, the more attractive the courts make divorce settlements for custodial parents, the more prospective custodial parents will file for divorce and the more children will be removed from, in most instances, their fathers.
Batterers or Protectors?
A punitive quality seems to pervade the treatment of fathers in general throughout divorce court, but the presumption of guilt becomes explicit with accusations of spousal or child abuse. Fathers accused of abuse during divorce are seldom formally charged, tried, or convicted because there is usually no evidence against them; hence, they never receive due process of law or the opportunity to clear their names, let alone recover their children. Yet the accusation alone prohibits a father’s contact with his children and causes his name to be entered into a national database of sex offenders (Parke and Brott 1999, 49–50).
Although initial accusations do not necessarily result in the father’s arrest, they do confirm his status as a quasi-criminal whose movements are controlled by the court. This control takes the form of an ex parte restraining order, whose violation results in imprisonment. Orders separating fathers from their children for months, years, and even life are issued without the presentation of any evidence of wrongdoing. They are often issued at a hearing at which the father is not present and about which he may not even know, or they may be issued over the telephone or by fax with no hearing at all. A father receiving an order must vacate his residence immediately and make no further contact with his children.
Boston attorney Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association, has written that "allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage" in custody cases and that restraining orders are doled out "like candy." "Restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply," and "the facts have become irrelevant," she writes. "In virtually all cases, no notice, meaningful hearing, or impartial weighing of evidence is to be had." Massachusetts judges alone issue some sixty thousand orders each year (1993, 1).
Arresting fathers for attending public events such as their children’s musical recitals or sports activities—events any stranger may attend—is common. In 1997, National Public Radio reported on a father arrested in church for attending his daughter’s first communion. During the segment, an eight-year-old girl wails and begs to know when her father will be able to see or call her. The answer, because of a lifetime restraining order, is never. Even accidental contact in public places is punished with arrest. New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell captured the rationale in a 1994 judges’ training seminar: "Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you’re violating as you grant a restraining order. Throw [the man] out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, see ya around. . . . They have declared domestic violence to be an evil in our society. So we don’t have to worry about the rights" (qtd. in Bleemer 1995, 1).
Some argue that judges must "balance" the rights of accused men with the genuine need of women for protection, yet we do not normally restrain citizens from their basic constitutional rights, including the right of free movement and free association (especially with their own children) merely because someone asks us to do so. We assume that all citizens are innocent until proven guilty, that they have a right to due process of law, that they should enjoy basic freedom until evidence of an infraction is presented against them, and that knowingly false accusations will be punished.
Some suggest that protective orders are issued on the principle of "better safe than sorry," yet this suggestion begs the most telling question of how protective orders can prevent violence, inasmuch as violence is already illegal. A father whose wife obtained a restraining order against him was, according to the St. Petersburg Times, "enjoined and restrained from committing any domestic violence upon her" (Schroeder and Sharp 1992, 2). Was he, along with the rest of us, not so restrained to begin with? The orders seem designed not so much to prevent wrongdoing as to eliminate and criminalize fathers. Forcing a father to stay away from his children even though he has done no wrong may provoke precisely the kind of violent response it ostensibly intends to prevent. "Few lives, if any, have been saved, but much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has come from the issuance of restraining orders and the arrests and conflicts ensuing therefrom," retired judge Milton Raphaelson of the Dudley, Massachusetts, District Court writes. "This is not only my opinion; it is the opinion of many who remain quiet due to the political climate. Innocent men and their children are deprived of each other" (2001, 4).
Connected here is the rapidly growing system of government-funded visitation centers for which fathers not necessarily convicted of any crime must pay as much as $80 an hour to see their own children under the gaze of social workers. "People yell at you in front of the children. They try to degrade the father in the child’s eyes," the Massachusetts News quotes father Jim O’Brien in August 1999. "I wish I’d never come here. . . . They belittle you." When O’Brien asked his daughter if she’d made her first communion in the six years since he had seen her, the social worker jumped in and said, "You’re not allowed to ask that!" (Maguire 2000).
The practice of supervised visits is promoted by the Supervised Visitation Network (SVN), a group whose membership has mushroomed since its founding in 1992. The "standards and guidelines" on SVN’s Internet site make clear that supervised visitation is not limited to cases of violence or potential violence by the noncustodial parent against the children, which it clearly regards as exceptional, but is appropriate in any circumstances of "conflict" between parents. SVN defines family violence to include matters that are not physical or illegal or, indeed, violent: "Family violence is any form of physical, sexual, or other abuse inflicted on any person in a household by a family or household member" (SVN 2001, emphasis added).
Domestic violence is now a major industry funded through interlocking government programs at the federal, state, and local levels and by private foundations and international organizations. The premise on which this industry is largely based—that domestic violence is a political crime perpetrated exclusively by men against women— has already been refuted by many studies that show that men and women commit domestic violence at roughly equally rates, so it requires no further treatment here (Fiebert 1997; Straus forthcoming). In a legal sense, of course, it does not matter what percentage of domestic violence is committed by which sex because the important issue is due process of law for every individual. Yet the very recognition of a special category of "domestic violence," separate from other forms of assault—a category defined by the private relationship between the parties rather than by the nature of their actions—blurs the distinction between crime and noncriminal personal conflict.
The power to criminalize nonviolent private behavior, personal imperfections, and routine family disagreements is conveyed concisely in the term abuse, which is ambiguous and elastic enough to be stretched beyond what is usually considered physical and criminal. "You do not have to be hit to be abused" is now a standard line in the abuse literature. Abuse can be defined as "criticizing you for small things" and "making you feel bad about yourself." Criminal justice agencies now accept these definitions in official publications. The National Victim Assistance Academy, a project funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and published on its Internet site, includes such items as "extreme jealousy and possessiveness," "name calling and constant criticizing," and "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim’s needs" in its chapter on domestic violence (Coleman et al. 2000). By these criteria, violence becomes whatever the alleged victim says it is. In her influential book The Battered Woman, psychologist Lenore Walker excuses a woman who violently attacked her husband because he "had been battering her by ignoring her and by working late" (1979, xv).
What matters here is to what degree this domestic violence hysteria is aimed specifically at removing children from their fathers. There is reason to believe that this objective is the main thrust behind it. Feminists point out that most domestic violence occurs during "custody battles" and that the vast preponderance of domestic violence takes place among divorced and separated couples (Rennison and Welchans 2000, 4–5). Susan Sarnoff of Ohio State University points out that the Violence Against Women Act II, passed by Congress in 2000, not only legitimizes the making of know- ingly false accusations, "but . . . offers abundant rewards for doing so—including the ‘rights’ to refuse custody and even visitation to accused fathers—with virtually no requirements of proof." Moreover, "the bill’s definition of domestic violence . . . is so broad that it does not even require that the violence be physical" (1998, 1, 12).
The most serious effect of forcibly removing fathers after quasi-criminal accusations is the abuse of children it induces. Contrary to popular belief, it is not fathers, but mothers—especially single mothers—who are most likely to abuse children. An HHS study found that women ages twenty to forty-nine are almost twice as likely as men to be perpetrators of child maltreatment: "It is estimated that . . . almost twothirds [of child abusers] were females" (HHS 1998a, xi–xii). Given that male perpetrators are not necessarily fathers but more likely to be boyfriends and stepfathers, fathers emerge as the least likely child abusers. Researcher Robert Whelan found that children are as much as thirty-three times more likely to be abused when a live-in boyfriend or stepfather is present (1993, 29). And "[c]ontrary to public perception," write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks of the Heritage Foundation, "the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child’s mother, not a male in the household" (1997, 16). Mothers accounted for 55 percent of child murders, according to a 1994 Justice Department report, whereas fathers were responsible for only a relatively tiny percentage (BJS 1994). From the father’s perspective, it appears that the real abusers have removed him from the family so they can abuse his children with impunity. Fatherhood advocate Adrienne Burgess writes that "fathers have often played the protector role inside families" (Burgess 1997, 54). This claim is confirmed by academic research, however diffident scholars may be about saying so. "The presence of the father . . . placed the child at lesser risk for child sexual abuse," concludes a study of low-income families. "The protective effect from the father’s presence in most households was sufficiently strong to offset the risk incurred by the few paternal perpetrators" (Rowland, Zabin, and Emerson 2000).
Not only has this protective role become ideologically incorrect, but it may also criminalize the father. Such violence by men as does occur may be more often the result than the cause of fathers’ losing their children; common sense suggests that fathers with no previous proclivity to violence might well erupt when their children are taken from them. "A significant percentage of domestic violence occurs during litigated divorces in families who never had a history of it," according to Douglas Schoenberg, a New Jersey divorce attorney and mediator (qtd. in Braver 1998, 240). Anne McMurray of Australia’s Griffith University found that domestic violence usually arose "during the process of marital separation and divorce, particularly in relation to disputes over child custody, support, and access." McMurray’s subjects describe how violence "had not been a feature of the marriage but had been triggered by the separation" (1997, 543, 547).
Violent attacks against judges and lawyers are also usually connected with custody litigation. "Judges and lawyers nationwide agree . . . that family law is the most dangerous area in which to practice," reports the California Law Week (McKee 1999). The year 1992 was "one of the bloodiest in divorce court history—a time when angry and bitter divorce litigants declared an open season on judges, lawyers, and the spouses who brought them to court" (Cheever 1992, 29). Dakota County, Minnesota, district attorney James Backstrom says family court produces far more violence than criminal court does: "We’re most concerned about the people in family court—the child support and divorce cases" (qtd. in Worden 2000). The Boston Globe reports that some judges now carry guns under their robes to protect themselves not from criminals but from fathers (McGrory 1994, 33). In December 1998, the ABC television magazine 20/20 also reported on this phenomenon. No father was quoted, but fathers generally were portrayed as little better than dangerous animals. One of the many lawyers interviewed comments, "You really don’t know what monsters lurk behind regular people." It ought hardly to surprise anyone that interfering with their children is one way to find out.
Deadbeat Dads or Plundered Pops?
As noted earlier, noncustodial parents can be arrested for unauthorized contact with their children, but the criminalization of most fathers takes place through the childsupport system. A parent who loses custody must pay child support to the parent who wins custody. This assignment has the tendency to turn children into cash prizes. In fact, it exerts a similar effect on the government, for the money passes through the state treasury, where it is used to earn federally funded bonuses for the state. According to the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act, if for any reason the parent falls more than $5,000 behind, he becomes a felon. Theoretically, he can become an instant felon as soon as he loses his children. If the ordered payments are high enough and backdated to exceed the $5,000 threshold, he will be subject to immediate arrest, even before he has had an opportunity to pay.
A father charged with "civil contempt" connected with child support may be exempted from due process of law and legally presumed guilty until proven innocent. "The burden of proof may be shifted to the defendant," according to a legal analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), an organization that encourages aggressive prosecutions. The father can also be charged with criminal contempt, for which in theory he must be duly tried, but in fact sometimes is not. "The lines between civil and criminal contempt are often blurred in failure to pay child support cases," the NCSL continues. "Not all child support contempt proceedings classified as criminal are entitled to a jury trial." Further, "even indigent obligors are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer." Thus, a father who has lost his children through literally no fault of his own can be arrested and required to prove his innocence without a formal charge, without counsel, and without a jury of his peers (Myers n.d.).
As noted earlier, fathers who allegedly fail to pay child support—"deadbeat dads"—are now the subjects of a national demonology, officially designated villains whose condign punishment is applauded by politicians, press, and public alike. Yet the reality is somewhat different. Scholars have already challenged the deadbeat dad stereotype, so it requires only brief treatment here. Braver found that government claims of nonpayment are produced not from any compiled data (which do not exist), but simply from surveys of custodial parents. Like others, he concluded that "the single most important factor relating to nonpayment" is unemployment (1998, 21–22 and chap. 2).
Revolving doors and other channels connect family courts with executive branch enforcement bureaucracies. David Ross, head of federal child-support enforcement in the Clinton administration, began his career as a family-court judge before moving on to higher courts and a stint in a state legislature. The 2001 web page of the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) said he was honored as "Judge of the Year of America" by the National Reciprocal Family Support Enforcement Association in 1983 and as "Family Court Judge of the Nation" by the National Child Support Enforcement Association [NCSEA] in 1989." The fact that enforcement agents are bestowing honors on supposedly impartial and apolitical judges indicates the agents’ interest in family-court decisions, primarily the decisions to remove children from their fathers and then to award the punitive child support that necessitates their services. That a government Internet page would boast about awards given to its officials by pressure groups indicates how little ethical scrutiny these connections receive. The NCSEA web page describes its members as "state and local agencies, judges, court masters, hearing officers, district attorneys, government and private attorneys, social workers, caseworkers, advocates, and other child support professionals," as well as "corporations that partner with government to enforce child support" (NCSEA 2001). In other words, it includes officials from at least two branches of government and members of the private sector who have a financial interest in separating children from their fathers.
Setting child-support levels is a political process conducted by pressure groups involved in divorce but from which parents who pay the support are largely excluded. Approximately half the states use guidelines devised not by the legislature but by courts and enforcement agencies, and in all states these officials have a dominant role (Morgan 1998, table 1-2). Under the separation of powers, we normally do not permit police and courts to make the laws they enforce and interpret because doing so would create an obvious conflict of interest for those with a stake in having criminals to prosecute. At the same time, legislative enactment is no guarantee of impartiality because legislators can divert enforcement contracts to their own firms. An extreme example led to federal racketeering convictions of Arkansas state legislators in 2000.
Provisions for citizen input appear perfunctory for the most part. Virginia requires legislative enactment, but its review of its child-support guidelines in 1999 was conducted by a commission that included one part-time representative of parents paying child support and ten employed full-time by agencies and organizations that benefit directly from divorce (Koplen 1999, 4). "The commissions appointed to review the guidelines have been composed, in large part, of individuals who are unqualified to assess the economic validity of the guidelines, or who arguably have an interest in maintaining the status quo, or both," writes Georgia district attorney William Akins. "In 1998 . . . of the 11 members of that Commission, two were members of the judiciary, two represented custodial parent advocacy groups, four were either present or former child support enforcement personnel and two were state legislators" (2000, 12). In a case involving a noncustodial mother, a Georgia superior court agreed with this assessment, declaring the state’s guidelines unconstitutional on "numerous" grounds. "The guidelines bear no relationship to the constitutional standards for child support of requiring each parent to have an equal duty in supporting the child" and create "a windfall to the obligee." Characterizing the guidelines as "contrary both to public policy and common sense," the court noted that they bear no connection to the cost of rearing children. "The custodial parent does not contribute to child costs at the same rate as the non-custodial parent and, often, not at all," the court noted. "The presumptive award leaves the non-custodial parent in poverty while the custodial parent enjoys a notably higher standard of living" (Georgia DHR v. Sweat, Georgia Supreme Court, no. SO3A0179 [April 29, 2003]). A Tennessee court likewise struck down that state’s child-support guidelines as violating the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The Tennessee Department of Human Services, which regularly jails fathers for minor violations of court orders, announced it would ignore the court’s ruling (Gallaher v. Elam, Tennessee Appeals Court, no. E2000-02719-COA-R3-CV [January 29, 2002]).
The conflicts of interest appear even more clearly in the private sector. Childsupport enforcement is now a $5 billion national industry in terms of the money expended; in terms of the money it aims to collect, it is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. Privatization has created a class of government-subsidized bounty hunters with a financial interest in creating "delinquents." In 1998, Florida taxpayers paid $4.5 million to Lockheed Martin IMS and Maximus, Inc., to collect $162,000 from fathers (Parker 1999). Supportkids of Austin, Texas, describes itself as "the privatesector leader" in what it calls the "child support industry." The company is confident of rich investment opportunities in coming years, optimistic that delinquencies will only increase. "The market served totals $57 billion and is growing at an annual rate of $6 billion to $8 billion per year," reports a company press release on March 13, 2000. "There is a huge market for the private sector to serve" (Supportkids 2000). The size of this "market" is determined not by demand from sovereign consumers but by how many parents can be forcibly separated from their children and criminalized by forced debts that are "contrary to common sense," as the Georgia superior court judge put it.
The debts have been set indirectly by the very companies that collect them. From 1983 to 1990, Dr. Robert Williams, later president of Policy Studies Inc. (PSI), was a paid consultant with HHS, where he helped to establish uniform state guidelines in the federal Child Support Guidelines Project under a grant from the National Center for State Courts. He also consults directly with many states. During this time, "a federally-driven approach . . . significantly increased child support obligations," according to James Johnston, a member of the Kansas Child Support Guidelines Advisory Committee. Congress also passed the Family Support Act of 1988, requiring states to implement presumptive guidelines and giving them only a few months of legislative time to do so (Rogers and Bieniewicz 2000, 2, 5). Virtually all states met the deadline, many by quickly adopting Williams’s model. "The guidelines were enacted in 1989 to insure [sic] Georgia’s receipt of an estimated $25 million in federal funds," writes Akins (2000).
One year after joining HHS and the same year the mandatory federal guidelines were implemented, Williams started PSI. "With his inside knowledge [Williams] has developed a consulting business and collection agency targeting privatization opportunities with those he has consulted," Johnston explains. "In 1996, his company had the greatest number of child support enforcement contracts . . . of any of the private companies that held state contracts" (1999). The Denver Business Journal reports that PSI grew "by leaps and bounds because of the national crackdown on ‘deadbeat dads.’" From three employees in 1984, it expanded rapidly to more than five hundred in 1996, before welfare reform legislation took effect, by which the company "stands to profit even more" (Mook 1997).
Yet more serious than the profiteering is the level of obligation. A collection agency profits only if there are arrearages. Not only does Williams have an interest in making the child-support levels as high as possible to increase his share overall, but he also must make them high enough to create hardship, arrearages, and "delinquents."
Williams’s model has been widely and severely criticized for its methodology (Rogers 1999). He himself has acknowledged that "there is no consensus among economists on the most valid theoretical model to use in deriving estimates of child-rearing expenditures" and that "use of alternative models yields widely divergent estimates." Donald Bieniewicz, member of an advisory panel to the OCSE, comments, "This [statement] is a shocking vote of ‘no confidence’ in the . . . guideline by its author" (1999, 2). Yet on the basis of Williams’s guideline, parents are being jailed, usually without trial.
Governments, too, can reap substantial profits from child support. "Most states make a profit on their child support program," according to the House Ways and Means Committee, which notes that "states are free to spend this profit in any manner the state sees fit." States profit largely through federal incentive payments, as well as by receiving two-thirds of operating costs and 90 percent of computer costs (U.S. House of Representatives 1998).
To collect these funds, states must channel payments through their criminal enforcement machinery, further criminalizing the fathers and allowing the government to claim that its enforcement measures are increasing collections despite the consistent operating loss in the federal program. In January 2000, Secretary Shalala announced that "the federal and state child support enforcement program broke new records in nationwide collections in fiscal year 1999, reaching $15.5 billion, nearly doubling the amount collected in 1992" (HHS 2000). Yet the method of arriving at these figures is questionable.
When we hear of collections through enforcement agencies, we assume they involve arrearages or that they target those who do not otherwise pay and whose compliance must be "enforced." In 1992, most child support was still being paid voluntarily and directly, without coercion or accounting by the state. Increasingly over the past decade, all payments (including current ones) have been routed through enforcement agencies by automatic wage garnishing and other coercive measures that presume criminality. Moreover, OCSE figures show that whereas the number of welfare-related cases (where collection is difficult) has remained steady since 1994, the number of nonwelfare cases (where compliance is high) has steadily increased (OCSE 1999, 4). The "increase" in collections was achieved not by collecting the alleged arrearages built up by poor fathers already in the criminal collection system, but rather by bringing in more employed middle-class fathers who pay faithfully. The payments and the accounting mechanism also provide additional incentives to squeeze as many dollars out of as many fathers as possible and have the added effect of further institutionalizing their status as semicriminals.
The Ends Justify the Means
Advocates of unilateral divorce portray it as a "citizen’s right" and a "civil liberty," yet in practice the regime of involuntary divorce has led to authoritarian measures against forcibly divorced parents and others. Some sixty thousand government agents, some of them armed, now enforce child support, approximately thirteen times the worldwide number of Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
These plainclothes police now command sweeping powers to seize property and persons involved involuntarily in divorce proceedings, including the power to issue arrest warrants. They also have powers to gather information on private citizens unknown to other officials. Hunting alleged deadbeats even rationalizes the monitoring of citizens who have no connection with child support. In addition to automatic wage garnishing of all obligors even before they become delinquent, the New Hires Directory now compels employers to furnish the names of all new employees to the federal government. "Never before have federal officials had the legal authority and technological ability to locate so many Americans found to be delinquent parents—or such potential to keep tabs on Americans accused of nothing," reported the Washington Post (O’Harrow 1999, A1). "Just like in totalitarian societies, government bureaucrats will soon have the power to deny you a job, and the ability to monitor your income, assets, and debts," said Libertarian Party chairman Steve Dasbach in a 1998 press release. "This law turns the presumption of innocence on its head and forces every American to prove their innocence to politicians, bureaucrats, and computers" (Dasbach 1998). At least one state government has dissented. "Under the guise of cracking down on so-called deadbeat dads, the Congress has required the states to carry out a massive and intrusive federal regulatory scheme by which personal data on all state citizens" is collected, the Kansas attorney general’s office charged in a federal suit challenging the mandate’s constitutionality (qtd. in Boczkiewicz 2000). Echoing a term used by fathers’ groups, one Kansas legislator called the federal directives extortion, and colleagues in Nebraska described them as "a form of blackmail" (Christensen 2001, 69).
The line between the guilty and the innocent becomes unclear because officials track not only parents with arrearages, but also those whose payments are current and those who are not under any order at all. (At one point, former attorney general Janet Reno referred to even noncustodial parents who do pay as "deadbeats" [DOJ 1994].) One agent expressed the presumption of guilt, boasting to the Washington Post, "We don’t give them an opportunity to become deadbeats" (O’Harrow 1999, A1). The NCSL points to the presumptions not only that all parents under child-support orders are already quasi-criminals, but also that all citizens are potential criminals against whom preemptive enforcement measures must be initiated now in anticipation of their future criminality. "Some people have argued that the state should only collect the names of child support obligors, not the general population," they suggest. But "this argument ignores the primary reason" for collecting the names: "At one point or another, many people will either be obligated to pay or eligible to receive child support" (Top 5 Questions).
Between the incentive payments, the patronage, and the bureaucratic conflicts of interest, aggressive collection methods now seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Perhaps most disturbing is the case of Brian Armstrong of Milford, New Hampshire, who some claim received a summary "death sentence" for losing his job. Armstrong was jailed without trial in January 2000 for missing a hearing about which his family claims he was never notified. One week later he was dead, apparently from a beating by correctional officials.\2
Fatal beatings of fathers are probably not widespread in North American jails, but other fatalities exemplify a more common form of "death penalty" routinely meted out to fathers who are neither charged with nor tried for any crime. In March 2000, Darrin White of Prince George, British Columbia, was denied all contact with his three children, evicted from his home, and ordered to pay more than twice his income as well as court costs in a divorce for which he gave neither grounds nor agreement. White hanged himself from a tree.\3
In contrast to Armstrong’s fate, White’s seems to be common. "There is nothing unusual about this judgment," said former British Columbia Supreme Court judge Lloyd McKenzie, who pointed out that the judge in White’s case applied standardized child-support guidelines (Lee 2000). The suicide rate of divorced fathers has skyrocketed, according to Augustine Kposowa of the University of California. Kposowa (2000) attributes his finding directly to judgments from family courts.
Throughout the United States and abroad, child-support machinery has been beset with allegations of mismanagement and corruption (Baskerville 2003). In Colorado, "the results of a new audit showed that the state’s child support enforcement system is in disarray" (Franke-Folstad 1999), according to those involved in the process. "It’s not like it’s gone from good news to bad news. It’s just worse news," says Richard Hoffman of the organization Child Support Enforcement (qtd. in Franke- Folstad 1999). According the Weekly Wire, "Tennessee, like many states around the country, has recently begun pursuing deadbeat parents with a new level of determined vengeance." Yet the state collection agency’s own Child Support Fact Sheet indicates that Tennessee actually "collected less in child support per dollar of state expenditure in fiscal year 1997 than it has in any of the preceding four years during which this indicator has steadily trended negatively" (Granju 1998; see also Loggins 2001). The Aurora Beacon News in Illinois reported on October 16, 1999, that "a new state child support processing system . . . has delayed payments to thousands of parents," and mothers are refusing to let children see their fathers "under the belief that the parents responsible for child support haven’t made their payments" (Olsen 1999).
In Britain, the London Times editorialized in 1999 that the nation’s Child Support Agency had become "a monstrous bureaucracy, chasing responsible parents and wrecking the families it was meant to support." As elsewhere, the directors promise a "thorough overhaul," yet with uncertain logic place the blame not on the government but on the "responsible parents" whose families it is wrecking: "In future, absent fathers will have to prove they are not the father of a child," reported the Times, apparently oblivious to the contradiction (Father Figures 1999). In Australia, a 2000 parliamentary inquiry into the Child Support Agency (CSA) found "systemic corruption by public servants." Robert Kelso of Central Queensland University reports "evidence the CSA is . . . creating false debt by exaggerating incomes of fathers." Commission chairman Roger Price said no one should have any illusions that the CSA was set up to benefit children: "It is not about the best interests of children and never has been" (Kelso and Price qtd. in Stapleton 2000, 26).
Current enforcement practice overturns centuries of common law precedent that a father could not be forced to pay for the stealing of his own children. "The duty of a father (now spouse) to support his children is based largely upon his right to their custody and control," runs one court ruling typical of the age-old legal consensus. "A father has the right at Common Law to maintain his children in his own home, and he cannot be compelled against his will to do so elsewhere, unless he has refused or failed to provide for them where he lives" (Butler v. Commonwealth, 132.Va.609, 110 S.E. 868 [1922]). As recently as 1965, the Oregon Supreme Court held that "a husband whose wife left him without cause was not required to support his children living with her" and that "parents generally may decide, free from government supervision, at what level and by what means they will support their children" (qtd. in Harris, Waldrop, and Waldrop 1990, 711, 689).
Today, these precedents are ignored, so much so that a father becomes a "deadbeat" if he fails or refuses to surrender control of his children to the government hegemony. "Child support is ‘paid’ only when it’s paid in a bureaucratically acceptable form," writes Bruce Walker of the District Attorney’s Council in Oklahoma City, who claims to have jailed hundreds of fathers. "Men who provide nonmonetary support are deadbeat dads according to the child-support system," says Walker. "Even men who are raising in their homes the very children for whom child support is sought are deadbeat dads. If the mother gives the father the children because she cannot control them or has other problems, then he is still liable for child support" (1996, 18).
Fathers who lose their jobs are seldom able to hire lawyers to have their childsupport payment lowered, and judges rarely lower it anyway. Yet government lawyers will prosecute a father free of charge, regardless of his or the mothers’ income. It is also now a federal crime for a father who is behind in child support, for whatever reason, to leave his state, even if doing so is his only way to find work. This law has even been used to prosecute a father whose former wife moved to another state with his children (Parke and Brott, 64–65).
Why so many divorced fathers seem to be unemployed or penurious may be accounted for by the strains that legal proceedings place on their emotions and work schedules. Many fathers are summoned to court so often that they lose their jobs, whereupon they can be jailed for being unemployed. Many divorced fathers are either ordered out of their homes or must move out for financial reasons, so they are immediately homeless. They may also lose their cars, which may be their only transportation to their jobs and children. Those who fall behind in child support, regardless of the reason, have their cars booted and their driver’s licenses and professional licenses revoked, which in turn prevents them from getting and keeping employment. An odd myopia is demonstrated in a controversy over whether to give child support priority over other debts during bankruptcy, when no one seems willing to ask the obvious question of why large numbers of allegedly well-heeled deadbeats are going through bankruptcy in the first place (U.S. House of Representatives 1998). A Rutgers and University of Texas study found that "many of the absent fathers who[m] state leaders want to track down and force to pay child support are so destitute that their lives focus on finding the next job, next meal or next night’s shelter" (Edin, Lein, and Nelson 1998). In what some have termed a policy of "starvation," a proposed federal regulation will render these impecunious playboys ineligible for food stamps (Federal Register, 64 FR 70919, December 17, 1999).
Though ostensibly limited by guidelines, a judge may order virtually any amount in child support. If a judge decides that a father could be earning more than he does, the judge can "impute" potential income to the father and assess child support and legal fees based on that imputed income. The result is that child-support payments can exceed what the father actually earns. If a father at any point works extra hours (perhaps to pay attorneys’ fees) or receives other temporary income, he is then locked into that income and those hours and into the child-support level based on them. If a relative or benefactor pays the child support on his behalf, that payment is considered a "gift" and does not offset the obligation that the father still owes. If the payment is made to the father, it becomes "income," which is then used to increase his monthly obligation.
It is hardly surprising that some fathers who have been through this ordeal eventually do disappear. Anyone who has been plundered, vilified, and incarcerated—all on the claim of supporting children who have been taken away from him through no fault of his own—will eventually reach the limits of his endurance. Some may be tempted to conclude that this outcome is precisely what the enforcement system is designed to encourage, for certainly it does no harm to the enforcers’ business.
Promoting Marriage or Divorce?
The relentless (il)logic of the child-support system extends up to the level of federal policy, to the point where the tail seems to wag the dog. Although new federal programs claim to "promote fatherhood" and "enhance relationships," no explanation is forthcoming from HHS of how precisely the government can achieve these objectives. What requires no explanation is that the government can arrest and incarcerate people, which seems to be what it is doing to those whose marriages it is unable to save.
In May 2003, HHS announced grants to "faith-based groups." In Idaho, Healthy Families Nampa (whose name seems tailored to the federal program) will use $544,400 for "counseling and other supportive services to parents who are interested in marrying each other," Assistant Secretary Wade Horn told the Associated Press. Horn said the grants are "targeted at preventing divorce among those who are married and at improving parenting skills of both married and non-married couples" (qtd. in Meckler 2003). HHS documents make clear, however, that in fact the grants are for collecting child support. Michigan’s enforcement agency will receive almost a million dollars above its regular federal subsidies. Horn claimed the aim is to "enhance the overall goals and effectiveness of the child support enforcement program by integrating the promotion of healthy marriage into existing child support services" (HHS 2003). He did not explain how law enforcement agents can enhance anyone’s marriage.
Evidence suggests that these agents are having precisely the opposite effect. Bryce Christensen of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society points to "evidence of the linkage between aggressive child-support policies and the erosion of wedlock" because child-support enforcement subsidizes divorce. The latest moves by HHS seem to validate Christensen’s conclusion. "Politicians who have framed such [child-support] policies . . . have—however unintentionally—actually reduced the likelihood that a growing number of children will enjoy the tremendous economic, social, and psychological benefits which the realization of that ideal [of a two-parent family] can bring" (2001, 67, 63).
Here we have the ingredients of a government perpetual-growth machine, one that extends well beyond family policy. Identifying fathers rather than governments as the culprits behind family dissolution not only justifies harsh law enforcement measures, but also rationalizes policies that contribute further to the absence of fathers, which they ostensibly are meant to prevent. Further—given the undeniable correlation that the fatherhood advocates have established between fatherlessness and today’s larger social pathologies, such as poverty, crime, and substance abuse—it allows officials to ignore the simplest and safest solution to these ills, which is to stop eliminating fathers. Instead, governments devise elaborate schemes, invariably extending their reach and power, to deal with the problems that their removal of the fathers has created: not only fatherhood promotion and marriage therapy, but larger antipoverty programs beloved of the left and law enforcement measures dear to the right. By concocting a fatherhood crisis where none previously existed, government across the spectrum has neutered the principal rival to its power and created an unlimited supply of problems for itself to solve.
Stephen Baskerville is a professor of political science at Howard University.
Notes
\1. Standard legal
authorities insist this distinction no longer exists. "With the procedural
merger of law and equity in the federal and most state courts, equity courts
have been abolished" (Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th ed., s.v. "Equity,
courts of").
\2. West 2000, and accompanying accounts by and interviews with Armstrong’s
family. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Concord, New Hampshire, has refused to
discuss the case.
\3. Account compiled from interviews with White’s daughter and with Todd Eckert
of the Parent and Child Advocacy Coalition, who was assisting White before his
death, and from reports by Donna Laframboise in the National Post, March 23,
25, and 27, 2000, in the Vancouver Sun, March 24, 2000, and in the Ottawa
Citizen, March 24 and 27, 2000. Attacks on White in the Toronto Sun (April 9,
2000) and in other newspapers did not contest the essential facts.
References
Abraham, Jed. 1999. From
Courtship to Courtroom: What Divorce Law Is Doing to Marriage. New York: Bloch.
Akins, William. 2000. Why Georgia’s Child Support Guidelines Are
Unconstitutional. Georgia Bar Journal 6, no. 2: 8–14, 54–57. Also available at:
http://www.economic-indicators.com /GABarJourAkins.htm.
Baskerville, Stephen. 2003. The Politics of Child Support. PS: Political
Science and Politics 36, no. 4: 719–20.
Bieniewicz, Donald. 1999. Improving State Child Support Guidelines. Testimony
to the Virginia Child Support Quadrennial Review Panel. Available at:
http://www.guidelineeconomics. com/files/VA_Bieniewicz1999.pdf.
Blankenhorn, David. 1995. Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent
Social Problem. New York: Basic.
Bleemer, Russ. 1995. N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs. New
Jersey Law Journal 140 (April 24): 1–14.
Boczkiewicz, Robert. 2000. State Fighting Feds in Appeals Court. Topeka
Capital-Journal, January 22. Available at: http://www.cjonline.com/stories/012200/kan_appealscrt.shtml.
Braver, Sanford. 1998. Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths. New York:
Tarcher/Putnam.
Brinig, Margaret, and Douglas W. Allen. 2000. These Boots Are Made for Walking:
Why Most Divorce Filers are Women. American Economics and Law Review 2, no. 1:
126–69.
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). 1994. Murder in Families. BJS catalog no.
NCJ 143498. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Burgess, Adrienne. 1997. Fatherhood Reclaimed: The Making of the Modern Father.
London: Vermilion.
Cheever, Joan M. 1992. The Year of Litigating Dangerously. National Law Journal
(October 12): 29.
Children’s Rights Council (CRC). 1992. Children Taken from Father After He
Testifies Before Congress. Speak Out for Children 7, no. 4: 9.
Christensen, Bryce. 2001. The Strange Politics of Child Support. Society 39,
no. 1: 63–70.
Clinton, Bill. 1992. Nomination Acceptance Speech at the Democratic National
Convention, New York, July 16.
Coleman, Grace, Mario Gaboury, Morna Murray, and Anne Seymour, eds. 2000. 1999
National Victim Assistance Academy. Available at:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/assist /nvaa99/chap8.htm, "updated on Sunday,
January 16, 2000."
Corsi, Jerome. 1984. Judicial Politics. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Daniels, Cynthia, ed. 1998. Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in
America. New York: St. Martin’s.
Dasbach, Steve. 1998. Libertarian Party press release, February 11.
Department of Justice (DOJ). 1994. Press release, December 22.
Edin, Kathryn, Laura Lein, and Timothy Nelson. 1998. Low-Income,
Non-residential Fathers: Off-Balance in a Competitive Economy, in Initial
Analysis. Available at: http://fatherhood .hhs.gov/ELN/eln98.htm.
Epstein, Elaine. 1993. Speaking the Unspeakable. Massachusetts Bar Association
Newsletter 33, no. 7: 1.
Fagan, Patrick, and Dorothy Hanks. 1997. The Child Abuse Crisis: The
Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and the American Community. Washington,
D.C.: Heritage Foundation.
Father Figures. 1999. Darling Seeks a More Effective Child Support Agency. The
Times, July 2. Available at: http://fact.on.ca/newpaper/ti99070d.htm.
Fiebert, Martin. 1997. References Examining Assaults by Women on Their
Spouses/Partners. Sexuality and Culture 1: 273–86.
Franke-Folstad, Kim. 1999. Going after Deadbeat Parents. Scripps Howard News
Service, August 1. Reprinted at:
http://www.csecouncil.org/news/rockymountain.htm, accessed October 14, 2003.
Furstenberg, Frank, and Andrew Cherlin. 1991. Divided Families: What Happens to
Children When Parents Part. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Gallagher, Maggie. 1996. The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting
Love. Washington, D.C.: Regnery.
Granju, Katie Allison. 1998. Deadbeat Nation. Weekly Wire 3 (March 30).
Available at: http://weeklywire.com/ww/03-30-98/knox_feat.html.
Harris, Leslie, D. Waldrop, and L. R. Waldrop. 1990. Making and Breaking
Connections Between Parents’ Duty to Support and Right to Control Their
Children. Oregon Law Review 69: 689–721.
Health and Human Services Department (HHS). 1998a. Child Maltreatment 1996:
Reports from the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
———. 1998b. HHS press releases, September 28 and December 31.
———. 2000. HHS press release, September 27.
———. 2003. HHS press release, May 9.
Hubin, Donald. 1999. Parental Rights and Due Process. Journal of Law and Family
Studies 1, no. 2: 123–50.
Jacob, Herbert. 1984. Justice in America: Courts, Lawyers, and the Judicial
Process. 4th ed. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown.
Johnston, James. 1999. The Father of Today’s Child Support Public Policy.
Fathering Magazine (August). Available at: http://www.fathermag.com.
Kamarck, Elaine Ciulla, and William Galston. 1990. Putting Children First: A
Progressive Family Policy for the 1990s. Washington, D.C.: Progressive Policy
Institute.
Koplen, Barry. 1999. Minority Report: Virginia’s Quadrennial Child Support
Guideline Review Commission. Richmond, Va.: Division of Child Support
Enforcement.
Kposowa, Augustine. 2000. Marital Status and Suicide in the National
Longitudinal Mortality Study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 54:
254–61.
Lee, Jeff. 2000. Family Blames Justice System for Pushing Man to Suicide.
Vancouver Sun, March 23, 1.
Levy, Rachael, Bill Gang, and Sandy Thompson. 1997. Court Statistics on Gender
Not Compiled. Las Vegas Sun, January 19. Available at:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/misc/family court/dayonestatistics.html,
accessed October 14, 2003.
Loggins, Kirk. 2001. Child Support Collection System Sparks Complaints.
Tennessean, June 18. Available at:
http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/01/04/05899347.shtml.
Maguire, John. 2000. Twenty Dollars an Hour to Visit Your Child. Massachusetts
News, August 2. Available at:
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/8_Aug/20anhour.htm.
Martin, Teresa Casto, and Larry Bumpass. 1989. Recent Trends in Marital
Disruption. Demography 26: 37–51.
McGrory, Brian. 1994. Fear Invades the Courts. Boston Globe, October 16, 33.
McHardy, Louis, and Meredith Hofford. 1999. Final Report of the Child Custody
and Visitation Focus Group, March 1–3, 1999. Available at:
http://www.vaw.umn.edu/FinalDocuments/ custodyfin.htm, "File Last Modified
on: 12/21/99."
McKee, Mike. 1999. The Deadly Side of Family Law. California Law Week/Cal/Law.
October 12. Available at: http://fact.on.ca/newpaper/lw990622.htm.
McLanahan, Sara. 1998. Growing Up Without a Father. In Lost Fathers: The
Politics of Fatherlessness in America, edited by Cynthia Daniels, 85–108. New
York: St. Martin’s.
McMurray, Anne. 1997. Violence Against Ex-Wives: Anger and Advocacy. Health
Care for Women International 18, no. 6: 543–56.
Meckler, Laura. 2003. Government Handing Money to States to Promote Marriage.
Seattle Times, May 10. Available at:
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi /web/vor
tex/display?slug_marry10&date_20030510&query_promote_marriage, accessed
October 10.
Mook, Bob. 1997. Reforms Might Benefit Child-Support Company. Denver Business
Journal 48, no. 42. Available at:
http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/1997/06/30 /smallb3.html.
Morgan, Laura W. 1998. Child Support Guidelines: Interpretation and
Application. New York: Aspen Law and Business.
Myers, Teresa A. n.d. Case in Brief: Courts Uphold Criminal Penalties for the
Failure to Pay Child Support. Available at:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs.cyf/Criminalnon.htm, accessed August 28, 2001.
National Center for Fathering (NCF). 1996. Gallup Poll on Fathering,
"Fathers in America." Available at:
http://www.fathers.com/research/gallup.html, accessed December 20, 2003.
National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA). 2001. Who We Are/What
We Do. Available at: http://www.ncsea.org/about/, accessed September 28.
Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE). 1999. FY 1998 Preliminary Data
Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
———. 2000. Report available at: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2000/
datareport/ch03.html#N91CD, accessed October 1, 2001.
———. 2001. Report available at:
http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/davidros.htm, accessed October 15, 2001.
O’Harrow, Robert. 1999. Uncle Sam Has All Your Numbers. Washington Post, June
27, A1.
Olsen, Dean. 1999. State Working on Child-Support Delays. Aurora Beacon News,
October
16. Available at:
http://www.CopleyNewspapers.com/beaconnews/top/a16support.htm, accessed October
17, 1999.
Page, Robert. 1993. "Family Courts": An Effective Judicial Approach
to the Resolution of Family Disputes. Juvenile and Family Court Journal 44, no.
1: 1–56.
Parke, Ross, and Armin Brott. 1999. Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That
Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Parker, Kathleen. 1999. Deadbeat Dads More Myth Than Reality. Orlando Sentinel,
January 24. Available at: http://fact.on.ca/newpaper/os990124.htm, accessed
October 11, 2003.
Popenoe, David. 1998. Life Without Father. In Lost Fathers: The Politics of
Fatherlessness in America, edited by Cynthia Daniels, 33–49. New York: St.
Martin’s.
Raphaelson, Milton. 2001. Time to Revisit Abuse Statute. Western Massachusetts
Law Tribune 2, no. 16 (April 18–24): 4.
Rennison, Callie Marie, and Sarah Welchans. 2000. Intimate Partner Violence.
Bureau of Justice Statistics catalog no. NCJ 178247. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice.
Rogers, R. Mark. 1999. Wisconsin-Style and Income Shares Child Support
Guidelines: Excessive Burdens and Flawed Economic Foundation. Family Law
Quarterly 33, no. 1: 135–56.
Rogers, R. Mark, and Donald Bieniewicz. 2000. Child Cost Economics and
Litigation Issues. Paper presented at the Southern Economic Association Annual
Meeting, Alexandria, Virginia, November 12.
Rowland, David, Laurie Zabin, and Mark Emerson. 2000. Household Risk and Child
Sexual Abuse in a Low Income, Urban Sample of Women. Adolescent and Family
Health 1, no. 1: 29–39. Also available at:
http://www.afhjournal.org/docs/010110.asp, accessed November 7, 2001.
Sarnoff, Susan. 1998. The Institutionalization of Misinformation: VAWA II. Women’s
Freedom Network Newsletter 5, nos. 3–4: 1, 12–13.
Schroeder, Stephen, and David Sharp. 1992. Fathers Also Deserve Legal
Protection Against Abuse. St. Petersburg Times, March 2, 2.
Stapleton, John. 2000. "Problem" Parents Doing Time. The Australian, April
8–9, 26. Straus, Murray. Forthcoming. The Controversy over Domestic Violence by
Women: A Methodological, Theoretical, and Sociology of Science Analysis. In
Violence in Intimate Relationships, edited by X. B. Arriaga and S. Oskamp.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.
Supervised Visitation Network (SVN). 2001. Web site available at:
http://www.svnetwork .net/301Guidelines.html, accessed October 3.
Tarr, G. Alan. 1999. Judicial Process and Judicial Policymaking. Belmont,
Calif.: West/ Wadsworth. Top 5 Questions Regarding Social Security Number
Collection for Child Support Enforcement. n.d. National Conference of State
Legislatures (NCSL). Available at: http://www.ncsl
.org/programs/cyf/ssnumb.htm, accessed December 20, 2003.
U.S. House of Representatives. Ways and Means Committee. 1998. Green Book.
Section 8: Child Support Enforcement Program. Print WMCP:105-7, DOCID:
f:wm007_08.105. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available
on-line via Government Printing Office access at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/useftp.cgi?IPaddress
_162.140.64.21&filename_wm007_08.105&directory_/disk2/wais/data/105_green_book.
Walker, Bruce. 1996. Deadbeat Dads? Look Closer. Christian Science Monitor,
August 16, 18.
Walker, Lenore. 1979. The Battered Woman. New York: Harper and Row.
Watson, Richard, and Rondal Downing. 1969. The Politics of the Bench and the
Bar. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
West, Nancy. 2000. Inmate Says Man Who Died Was Beaten at Jail. New Hampshire
Sunday News, March 5, 16A.
Whelan, Robert. 1993. Broken Homes and Battered Children: A Study of the
Relationship Between Child Abuse and Family Type. London: Family Education
Trust.
———. 1995. Just a Piece of Paper? Divorce Reform and the Undermining of
Marriage. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.
Worden, Amy. 2000. Killing of a Prosecutor Chills Brethren. Yahoo News, June
12. Available at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ao/20000612/cr/killing_of_a_prosecutor_chills_brethren
_1.html, accessed June 21, 2000.
Will Fathers Lead the New Conservative
Revival?
NASCAR Dads, Soccer Moms, and Latchkey Kids
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3190
Stephen Baskerville, 03-02-04
The latest wisdom holds that the group to watch in this election is "NASCAR dads." Feminist pundit Ellen Goodman sensibly urges Democrats not to neglect men as a voting bloc. But her men are identified, strangely, by their private pastimes, not their public concerns. Feminists used to oppose stereotyping. "Soccer moms" seldom objected to the appellative; perhaps the attention was enough to soothe any ruffled dignity.
The Democrats' discovery of men is valid, but the spin is not only condescending; it is self-defeating. Howard Dean's pitch to the common man was not in itself misplaced. It was the terms he used to identify his desired supporters that were insulting. Whatever "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," "NASCAR dads," or "Joe six-pack" may have in common as political figures, few are likely to endorse a candidate who identifies them with their recreations. I may enjoy stock car racing or a beer now and then, or for that matter the opera and twelve-year-old whisky, but either way I am unlikely to allow these enjoyments to determine my voting decisions and will suspect any politician who suggests I should.
In fairness, Goodman and the Democrats do try to engage issues. Regrettably, their political stereotypes are almost as shallow as their cultural ones. "Democrats want the fathers of the kids without health insurance to desert the guy who gave tax cuts to the rich," Goodman observes.
This is an appealing theory. Possibly it is not happening because the NASCAR dads have their heads so befuddled with beer and racing that they cannot think and vote as the enlightened classes believe they should.
I suspect the more serious impediment is that the "kids without health insurance" are also likely to be kids without fathers. Given the choice, most fathers will prefer that their children have fathers, whereupon they will worry about the health insurance themselves. If the government provides the health insurance, there is less need for the fathers. They may also find it easier to provide that health insurance if the government was not taxing them (along with "the rich") to provide them (along with "the poor") with health insurance.
Goodman provides us here with only one instance of how our major political issues are becoming, as the feminists say, "gendered," why our elections are producing a widening "gender gap," and why the Democrats are rapidly becoming a party largely for unmarried women.
She also indicates why the salience of family issues (same-sex marriage, welfare reform, proposals to promote "healthy marriages") is likely to elevate into prominence not the swelling ranks of single women, as the conventional wisdom suggests, but fathers. Not NASCAR fathers; just fathers.
Natural Conservatives
The fact is that for decades the Democratic Party--and left-wing parties throughout the welfare-state democracies--have been instituting policies that make fathers redundant. Not "feel" redundant: redundant.
Yes, we heard a lot about the importance of fathers during the Clinton years ("deadbeat dads," "batterers," "pedophiles"). But what we are hearing now is less about fathers and more from fathers.
What perspective do fathers bring to the current political agenda? Mostly a conservative one. As those on the receiving end of feminist and media vilification, extortionate judicial activism, avaricious lawyers, and the anti-family tendencies of the welfare and divorce machinery, fathers and their loved ones have become natural conservatives. They also provide a pool of millions of voters, many of whom are ethnic minorities who have not traditionally identified with conservatism and who could decisively tip the political balance.
But ideology may be less important than moral authority. In fact, fathers may challenge conservatives to recall their own principles and take the moral high ground in preference to stop-gap solutions and short-term political advantage.
Some conservatives do perceive a "whiney," mildly hedonistic quality to men's grievances. "The last thing we need in America is yet another victim group, this one made up of seriously aggrieved males," writes columnist John Leo (who nevertheless feels concerned enough to warn of the dangers of male-bashing). Complaints about unfair divorce settlements (while often justified) often do not sit well among social conservatives who dislike divorce in the first place.
But fathers are different than men generally, a difference stemming from the demands and the perspective of parenthood.
For example, some conservatives are tempted to alleviate the welfare conundrum by tapping fathers for more child support. While this may bring short-term gains (but in fact seldom does), it will result in long-term increases in fatherless children, since child support subsidizes single-parent homes. Welfare should not be a machine for creating fatherless children, even when their material needs are met.
Likewise, the administration's plan to address this problem with a $1.5-billion program of marriage therapy has been criticized from the left (dishonestly) for encouraging "abusive" marriages.
The more telling case against it is that it creates a government-approved marriage curriculum allowing psychotherapists to define (and redefine) marriage with a government imprimatur. Rather than grasp the nettle--which is easy divorce laws that encourage and even reward single motherhood--welfare officials are trying to create the appearance of action by spending money on unproven and possibly counterproductive programs. Thus far, the recipients of most marriage money have been child support agencies, again subsidizing divorce and fatherless children.
The return of masculinity has been a favorite theme of conservative writers of late. But masculinity is not enough. Fathers bring something more to the table than courage, audacity, and physical strength. They offer the hope of returning to a politics constructed, from the "grassroots," on civic responsibility rather than political ideology.
Unlike political professionals, fathers are not activists but citizens: political amateurs--literally, those who "love." Activists may profess a love of humanity, but this love is proven only by devotion to an abstract and all-encompassing "cause" which inevitably subordinates actual human affections to an ideological solidarity, to which only the zealous few may devote their lives.
Citizens are moved to public service by traditional allegiances whose strength is tested and renewed in the daily trials of life, endured by all of us: love for family, cooperation with neighbors, loyalty to country, and faith in God.
It is an ideal that, in a very short space of time, has been all but lost in modern politics. And it is very likely that no one can restore it, except possibly the fathers.
Dr. Baskerville teaches political science at Howard University.
Conservative Spotlight: Dr. Stephen
Baskerville
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=3012
Joseph A. D'Agostino, 02-12-04
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12). Those who believe in Holy Scripture, and those who just believe that the family must be the basis of any good society, have reason to fear the onslaught of revolutionary forces that have torn apart American families through easy divorce, social acceptance of promiscuity and illegitimate birth, a feminist ideology that sows discord between man and woman, and a popular culture that instructs children to despise and disobey their elders. Dr. Stephen Baskerville, a political science professor at Howard University and the new president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children (ACFC), believes that the usual targets of conservatives' ire--the '60s cultural revolution, the liberal media, the depraved marketers of corrupt entertainment to youth--are not inclusive enough.
Baskerville, whose articles have frequently appeared in HUMAN EVENTS, specializes in research on and activism in how public policy affects fathers and families. He believes that the government began the disintegration of the American family. "The family crisis is caused by a government assault on the family," he said. "The position of the father has been weakened. The two big things that have weakened fathers have come from the government. One is the welfare state, which replaces the father's income....The other, which grew out of that, is the change in divorce laws--no-fault divorce since about 1970." He noted that divorce law is the province of state governments, not the federal government. "If you go back and look at it, it's amazing how much culture follows law," he said.
Other trends have developed out of these, said Baskerville: "Abortion. Day care, which becomes the way of further increasing institutional and government control over children. Perhaps also the massive growth of fast-food restaurants and even the obesity epidemic."
Social thinkers throughout history, including the most influential thinker of the 20th Century, Sigmund Freud, have affirmed that the patriarchal family, with the father at its head, is the basis for civilization. It is now the exception, not the rule, for children to spend all their growing years in an intact, two-parent family. "I don't think anti-male bias is the main problem," said Baskerville. "I see the growth of government power as the main problem. After they take away the fathers, they'll take away the mothers next." In George Orwell's 1984, the Fascist-Communist party in power wishes to abolish the family in order to increase its control over each individual person.
"I do think there are well-intentioned liberals out there, but I am also surprised at how many leftists are honest about their desire to destroy the family," said Baskerville.
Baskerville's group, ACFC, advocates granting equity to fathers in divorces. Currently, divorce courts favor mothers in granting child custody and often grant child support payments that cripple the divorced man's finances. Feminists use false statistics on domestic violence and child abuse to demonize fathers. A few examples of corrective statistics: "Single mothers are the most likely physical abusers of children," said Baskerville. "Of child murders, 55% are done by the children's own mother, only 6% by the children's father. Most child sexual abuse in the home is by boyfriends and stepfathers." Thus, he said, "divorce greatly increases the risk to children." And who wants all these divorces? The stereotype of the man leaving his faded middle-aged wife for a younger woman is false, at least when children are around. "At least two-thirds of divorces when the couple has minor children are desired by the woman and not the man, and things like violence, adultery, or abandonment are rarely the reason for these divorces," said Baskerville--who added that women have more incentive to divorce because they know social workers and courts will grant them custody and child support.
"Some of these professionals chide us because (they say) we are looking out for our own interests, our own families," said Baskerville in a statement when he became president of ACFC last month. "They seem to claim moral superiority because they concern themselves with other people's children. It is true that we have a personal interest in preserving families. Because we--and we alone--are defending our families."
In article for www.lewrockwell.com, Baskerville wrote: "G.K. Chesterton argued that the most enduring check on government tyranny is the family. Ideological correctness notwithstanding, little imagination is required to comprehend that the household member most likely to defend the family against the state is the father."
Baskerville may be reached at ACFC, 1718 M St. N.W. #187, Washington, D.C. 20036 (800-978-3237; e-mail: info@acfc.org; website: www.acfc.org).
Joseph D'Agostino is Associate Editor of HUMAN EVENTS.
Reason: Perpetuating Assumptions?
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville021204.htm
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D, 02-12-04
Reason magazine has published the letter below in its March issue. This letter is in response to Cathy Young's article in the December issue. They also published, in the February issue, an article on paternity fraud, "Injustice by Default: How the effort to catch 'deadbeat dads' ruins innocent men's lives," by Matt Welch. This article does not question the claim that there is a serious problem of "real" deadbeat dads.
Reason seems to realize something is wrong, and they are willing to investigate its more egregious and obvious manifestations. But they are unwilling to question the fundamental assumptions and claims of the government or to engage in a deeper inquiry into what is really going on here or the long-term causes. This is unfortunate, because other libertarian publications, such as Liberty and Lew Rockwell.com, are leaving them behind.
Stephen Baskerville
------------
Reason magazine, March 2004, p. 6.
Letters
Divorcees and Social Engineers
Cathy Young bends over backward to be fair in "Divorcees and Social Engineers" (December), and as usual she mostly succeeds. But we may be missing an opportunity to probe deeper into a perversion of government power without precedent in our history.
Young characterizes some of my views as "extreme." But my argument that government's ever-expanding family machinery has developed a vested interest in removing children from their fathers was recently documented in Political Science and Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association not known for airing extremist opinions. The argument is in fact a commonplace of political science: Bureaucracies often perpetuate the problem they are created to address.
My charges are corroborated by a feminist insider. In the October issue of the same journal, St. Olaf College political science professor Jo Michelle Beld confirms that the livelihoods of child support officials depend on broken homes, that these same enforcement officials set the child support levels they collect, and that "high child support orders, in combination with other child support enforcement policies, have a negative effect on contact between non-custodial parents and their children."
Perhaps it is not my rhetoric but what the government is doing to its citizens that is extreme. We are talking here about the forced removal of millions of children from parents who have done nothing wrong; mass incarcerations of those parents without trial; forced confessions; government seizure of the private papers, property, and homes of citizens accused of nothing; children used as government informers against their parents; doctored court records; involuntary litigants shaken down on pain of incarceration for the fees of lawyers and psychotherapists they have not hired; and much more.
Oddly, nobody has written more eloquently on many of these abuses than Cathy Young. But now she asks blithely, "Is there any way to avoid that?" and expresses a truly astonishing pathos for "people forced to choose between losing their children and remaining in an emotionally intolerable marriage."
No one today is "forced" to contract a marriage agreement, which is designed to provide an emotionally tolerable environment for children. To avoid this intolerable choice for parents who lack grounds to break their contract, parents who remain faithful currently must lose their children without being given any "choice" in the matter. They may then be expropriated for not only everything they have but most of what they will ever earn, coerced into signing a confession, criminalized in ways they are powerless to avoid, and jailed indefinitely without trial.
By the way, I have never advocated that a parent should have no access to his or her children. What I advocate is bringing questions of justice, rather than therapy or social engineering, back into courtrooms. This certainly includes the joint custody (properly understood) that Young proposes. But any solution will effectively minimize divorce damage only by identifying the interests inflicting that damage and vigilantly monitoring them.
Reason and Cathy Young deserve credit for opening a dialogue, but they would be doing a greater service through a more extensive investigation into this hijacking of the justice system.
The Father: A Family’s Weakest Link
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville020104.htm
Stephen Baskerville,
Ph.D. 02-01-04
Thanks to a recent court
case in Massachusetts, issues of marriage and family now cover the front pages.
But the family crisis is much larger than same-sex marriage or homosexuality.
The family today is under
attack on many fronts: pornography, popular culture, public schooling,
abortion. But to see these as serious threats to the family is like ascribing
the defeat of an army to people shooting at it. If the family were sound it
could withstand these pressures.
The most serious attack on
the family today is the one that comes at its weakest point: the father.
Anthropologists have long recognized that the father is the family’s weakest
link. By destroying fathers, the government can, and does, destroy families.
Until now, fathers have not
been heard much on family issues. That is about to change. I have recently had
the honor to be named President of the American Coalition for Fathers and
Children. This is the largest group representing fathers and their families in
America. Unlike organizations you probably know, it is not a group about
fathers, or for fathers; it is a group of fathers—fathers who can speak for
themselves and who intend to start doing so.
Until fathers are part of the
dialogue on marriage and family, that dialogue will be empty chatter. And I
don’t mean fathers as prison inmates, as the Justice Department would have it.
I don’t mean fathers as subjects of government therapy, as the Department of
Health and Human Services wants. I don’t mean fathers as labeled by the
government as "deadbeats," "batterers," and
"pedophiles." I mean fathers as heads of their families, fathers
speaking for their children rather than allowing government officials to do it
for them, in some cases fathers defending their children from those same
government officials.
No, this is not another
victim group, not another whiny special interest. For unlike most political
professionals, the fathers standing up and speaking out are not activists but
citizens. The difference is that activists are moved by abstract ideologies.
Citizens act out of love for family, cooperation with neighbors, loyalty to
country, and faith in God.
It is an ideal that, in a
very short space of time, has been all but lost in modern politics. And it is
very likely no one can restore it, except possibly the fathers.
Message from Stephen Baskerville,
President,
American Coalition for Fathers and Children
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/2004/baskerville010704.htm
Stephen Baskerville,
Ph.D., 01-07-04
It is a tremendous honor to
be asked to serve as President of the American
Coalition of Fathers and Children. We stand at a critical point. Families
today are under attack as never before. But this attack does not come primarily
from pornography, television, rock music, drugs, or even homosexuality. The
attack comes from government, and it targets the family's weakest and most
vulnerable point: the father. The wholesale separation of children from their
fathers, the mass incarceration of fathers without due process of law, the
seizure of children from both mothers and fathers, the abuse of children by the
very officials who claim to be protecting them -- this is hidden behind a media
blackout, hidden behind the silence of the politicians, but it is the
terrifying reality for millions of Americans.
The crisis is especially
acute now. Sharp increases in already-crushing "child support"
burdens, new penalties ostensibly to combat "domestic violence" --
these will produce more broken homes and fatherless children, more parents in
jail, and further erosion of constitutional rights.
But it is also a hopeful
time. As Americans wake up to the crimes being committed against families by
their own government, they shake their heads in disbelief but cannot deny the
reality they witness in their own lives. The media and politicians too can no
longer look the other way, as fathers speak out and organize to protect their
families.
Family and marriage issues
are on the front pages around the world, and ACFC intends to make fathers and
parents generally a leading voice in that conversation.
In the coming months and
years, I look forward to working with ACFC Founder and Board Chairman David
Roberts, Executive Director Mike McCormick, Communications Director John
Maguire, Treasurer Ileana Basil, Membership Director Susan Antomarchi, and
other prominent activists and all of you to stop the systematic destruction of
families. ACFC is a rapidly growing organization, with new members and new
affiliates added daily. In partnership with groups formed by many of you, ACFC
will publicize and challenge the government's offensive.
Parents are now resisting
the government's intrusions with new determination. I hear parents asking how
they can become active, pledging to sacrifice whatever is required, vowing
never to relent, dedicating the remainder of their lives to rescue their children
from the clutches of this cruel machine. And yes, I hear some parents
(increasing numbers, it seems) threatening to use measures which we dare not
condone. But I also hear them vowing sacrifices which we can only admire.
Even now, we witness courageous
deeds and heroic sacrifices. In Britain, fathers have placed their demands on
the front pages of the most prestigious news organizations in the world. In
Australia, Prime Minister John Howard has put divorce and custody issues before
the national legislature. In Canada, debates on custody law are also national
news.
What Lies Ahead?
As fathers and parents, we
are uniquely situated to lead families out of this bondage, as others have done
before. But we must have no illusions. Before we reach the promised land of
freedom, we must fight our way through a wilderness of despair.
We will be called vicious
names: "deadbeat," "batterer," "pedophile," and
more. We must withstand scorn from the media and politicians that offers us no
platform to defend ourselves. We must be prepared to endure fabricated
accusations of the most hideous crimes against our own children, with few
constitutional protections for our rights. We must face summary incarceration
from government bullies motivated by a toxic mix of self-righteousness and
self-dealing. Indeed, some of us will find ourselves called upon to make (as
some have already) the supreme sacrifice that fathers have never hesitated to
make for the children.
We must dispense with the
illusion that others will win this struggle for us. We must discard the vain
hope that if only we inform them of the terrible injustices perpetrated against
parents and children, then journalists, politicians, family advocates, or civil
libertarians will wake up, and do their jobs, and end this injustice.
The bitter truth is that no
one can "save the children" but their parents. We alone are
responsible for our children, and we alone must protect them. No one will cry
for us if we succumb. No one will respect us if we complain. No one will listen
to our excuses if we fail. No one -- including our children themselves.
The entire burden rests upon us and no one else. But when we succeed -- and we will
succeed -- we will create a legacy of moral authority and family strength that
will be passed to our children, and to theirs, and beyond.
Even the most vicious among
our opponents have paid us this high tribute: They have made us responsible.
"Father absence," we are told (and told correctly), accounts for
virtually all today's social problems. And so we are blamed for being
"absent" -- even when we have no right to be present. We are held
responsible when a marriage ends, even when we did not end it. We alone are
made responsible for providing for our children, even when they are forcibly
removed from our care. We alone are held responsible for violence in the
family, even when we have not committed it (and even when it is committed
against us). We are held responsible for the abuse of our children, even when
they are abused by others. We are held responsible for the wayward behavior of
our children, even when we are not permitted to offer them guidance and
correction. Even when it is beyond our control, we alone are responsible.
We must not shirk this
responsibility, for it is the essence of fatherhood. We must embrace it, for it
is the salvation of our children and the restoration of our families. It is
time we took the fair-weather friends of fatherhood at their word by standing
up and taking action. The time for talk is past. It is now time to act.
Who We Are
So let us take this
opportunity to state clearly before the world who we are and what we stand for.
There are those who claim
to advocate for an abstraction called "fatherhood." Others describe
themselves as defenders of "the" family. Many are well-intentioned.
But they tend to be political professionals, and they often claim to speak for
"the children," not their own.
Some of these professionals
chide us because (they say) we are looking out for our own interests, our own
families. They seem to claim moral superiority because they concern themselves
with other people's children.
It is true that we have a
personal interest in preserving families. Because we (and we alone) are
defending our families. For us, the family is not an abstraction or an
object for our good deeds. We do not pretend to be motivated by concern for
someone else's children. We concern ourselves only with our own. We are not
crusaders or zealots. And we are not professionals. We are proud to be amateurs
(literally, those "who love"). We are parents, and our aims are
limited. But that is not our weakness; that is our strength.
It is our strength because
we have the authority not of paid officials but of parents and citizens.
Politicians always promise to return power to "the people." But we are
the people. We have endured much from the politicians, but when they take our
children, we draw a line.
The good intentions of
fatherhood promoters, family defenders, and children's advocates cannot meet the
test. They will not fight for our children. They will not sacrifice for our
children. They will not risk their careers or livelihoods or lives for our
children. They will not die for our children.
There is no such
abstraction as "the" family. There are only families -- our
families. We alone can and will defend them. If others wish to help --
journalists, politicians, defenders of the Constitution, critics of the
judiciary, civil libertarians -- we welcome them, and they will have our
gratitude. But we must make it clear to friend and foe alike that this is
foremost our struggle. We -- and we alone -- can save families,
because they are our families.
Likewise, we do not trumpet
an abstraction called "fatherhood." We are concerned with our fatherhood,
the fatherhood of each individual father. And we will establish it not with
words that cost nothing but with deeds that may cost us dearly indeed.
If those who pose as the
champions of fatherhood dislike our deeds, then it is time they examined what
they mean by "fatherhood." For if it means anything less than
defending one's children against those who would interfere with them or take
them away, then theirs is a definition of fatherhood we find wanting. They are
entitled to their opinion, of course, but we are entitled to our children. And
our children are entitled to us.
Opinions are important (to
a point), and "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" is
obligatory in a democracy. But few who have both would regard their opinions as
being of equal importance as their children. While we respect the opinions of
others about the best interest of children in the abstract, we expect others to
respect our decisions about the best interest of our own children. And we
expect them to understand something more: that no parent is answerable to
government officials for how they raise their children or for exercising their
right and duty to protect them. The best interest of children is a
continued meaningful relationship with both parents. And the best way to
achieve that is limit the discretion of judges with a rebuttable presumption of
50-50 shared parenting
Where We Stand Now
It is impossible to
overestimate the burden that weighs upon our shoulders. We face a government
that threatens our children, our lives, our Constitution, and quite possibly
the very basis of civilization itself. Before our very eyes we see history's
greatest experiment in human freedom being debased into a ruthless, depraved,
diabolical tyranny.
It has fallen to us
"to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark,
lamentable catalogue of human crime." But this tyranny does not come from
abroad; it has arisen in our very midst. It is a tyranny of cowards, that hides
in secret courtrooms and protected offices, that fears the citizens it
ostensibly serves, while cynically using and abusing innocent children to
increase the power of grown-ups.
Against this foe, we have
no illusions that our struggle will be easy, that laws will be passed tomorrow
to free our children. Even were this to happen, it would be to little avail.
New laws are only as effective as the citizens who demand them. The means of
freeing our children are already in our own hands. Our children will be free
when their fathers stand up and speak out like men. Families will be safe and
strong when parents everywhere know they must join us and build upon our work
or face destruction, as we do now.
Defeat is not an option,
because we fight for our very survival and for the survival of our children,
and of their children. We will comport ourselves with dignified outrage. We
will never cross the line into violence. But neither will we relent, withdraw,
or surrender. And if we are struck down, others will rise up in our place.
How Far Do We Go?
How we speak out is a
decision that each of us must make alone. We in the national offices of ACFC
understand our task of providing leadership. But some initiative must come from
you. Throughout the US and the world, parents are finding bold and creative
ways of calling attention to this tyranny. Their courage is producing results.
ACFC is a broad political
church. Each of us has our own views about the most fundamental questions
before us: the goals we seek, the priorities we deem most urgent, the methods
of achieving those aims. Inevitably, differences and disagreements must arise.
As always, there will be the cautious and the impatient, the timid and the
eager, the moderates and the militants. In our case, however, these difference
represent more: Often, they reflect what the government has done (and can still
do) to us in particular and to our children.
To the usual need for unity
and forbearance of differences, therefore, we have a special need for charity
toward one another. No man who sees his children has a right to brand as
extreme one who does not. Likewise, no man has a right to label as timid one
who, by acting rashly, could lose access to his children as a result. Were the
circumstances reversed, the self-styled man of reason may be the one to find
himself (as journalists say) "foaming at the mouth," and the coward
may prove a hero.
However each decides to
serve, each has a role, and all are needed. ACFC is here to offer support. The
only line we draw is that ACFC does not condone violence in any form as a political
method.
What You Can Do
The power of the divorce
regime is formidable, but the power in our own hands is much greater. They are
trading in lies, and as Dr. King said, "No lie can live forever."
Beyond the power of the
truth, we have 15-20 million non-custodial parents, plus tens of millions more
who love and support them. United in one voice and with our friends abroad, we
have the power to check the global destruction of families.
But even short of that,
your personal action now sends a message to your own children in particular,
even children whom you may think have been irrevocably lost to you: Their
father or mother loves them enough to sacrifice, to risk, and to act.
Many good parents' groups
already operate across America and the world, and ACFC does not intend to
duplicate or replace or preempt the work of any. Our aim is to unite and
facilitate and support.
If you ask what you must
do, this is my reply: I personally urge every parent in America -- single,
married, or divorced -- to the following actions IMMEDIATELY:
First, if you have no done
so already, join ACFC. (Call 800-978-DADS, or www.acfc.org.)
Second, join your local
group. If it is not yet an ACFC affiliate, begin the steps to make it one. The
paperwork is very simple. DON'T BE PUT OFF. ("Yea, I went to a fathers'
group, but it was just a gripe session, everyone complaining about their
ex-wives and the judge. So I never went back…") A group is what its
members make it. If you don't like it, join and change it. YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH NOTHING
ALONE.
Third, contact your local
media. Tell them your story. Tell them about your local group. Say they are
affiliated to ACFC. Get others in the group to do the same. Then do it again.
And again. Be respectful but persistent. Do not let them put you off.
Investigating government wrongdoing is their job. Eventually they will respond.
Stand up in your church,
your civic group, union, or place of employment, at candidates' campaign
rallies, PTA or school board meetings, or wherever issues of the family or
children or public policy are being discussed. Tell them what has happened to
you, to your children, and to countless others. Don't be afraid to change the
subject. (Getting our issues on the public agenda by definition means
changing the subject.) Is what they are discussing more important than your
children? Try to have others present to second you. Do not be afraid of what
people will think of you. Is the opinion of the world more important than your
children? Do not be afraid to be called angry. You should be angry. "There
are some things…to which I am proud to be maladjusted," said Dr. King,
"and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted." Be dignified but
outraged. Show yourself to be a man of courage and a leader. You do not have to
climb a scaffold 200 feet into their air, but is it too much to raise your hand
or stand upright and relate the atrocious crimes the government has committed
against your children? "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the
manhood of every one of its members," wrote Emerson. "Whoso would be
a man, must be a nonconformist." Show the world and your children that you
are not afraid to be different, that you are a man.
Finally, stay connected
with ACFC through the email listserve or by the web site for information about
developments, groups, and activities.
In times of crisis, people
often ask, "Where are the heroes?" In this crisis, the heroes can
come from only one place: the parents, and foremost fathers. You may not realize
it yet, but eventually the eyes of the world and of history will be upon us. We
will be weighed in the balance, and future generations will judge what we do.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/03/baskerville122303.htm
Stephen Baskerville,
Ph.D., 12-23-03
Columnist Cathy Young is
known for her even-handed attempts to cut through the pretensions of both the left
and right. She has also shown considerable courage by delving into what for
many journalists is a no-go zone: divorce and fathers' rights.
So it is a little awkward
to find myself cast as one of her combatants, with my own views and others'
whom I typify characterized as "extreme." In the December issue
of Reason magazine, Young sorts out, with her customary balance, a debate
between proponents of Clinton-Bush family engineering schemes and those of us
who take a more laissez-faire attitude toward government intervention in
family life.
Actually, it is not my
positions that are extreme but my "rhetoric" – specifically, the
words I use to describe how government is systematically destroying families
and fathers. "Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible," wrote George Orwell. "Thus political language has to
consist largely of euphemism." If my language seems direct, it may be
because euphemism currently obfuscates the most indefensible politics of our
time.
That a writer as informed
and astute as Young has difficulty grasping the larger trend at work here
validates Orwell's observation about the power of language. Clichés about
"divorce" and "custody" do not begin to convey the civil
liberties disaster taking place. We are facing questions of who has primary
authority over children, their parents or the state, and whether the state's
penal apparatus can seize control over both the children and the private lives
of citizens who have done nothing wrong. Rephrased, the question is, Is there
any private sphere of life that remains off-limits to state intervention? Bryce
Christensen of Southern Utah University (and not a fathers' rights activist,
extreme or otherwise) has characterized fatherhood policies as creating a
"police state."
Developments in only the
last few days amount to government admissions of Christensen's charge. Under
pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a Montgomery County,
Pennsylvania, judge has just freed some 100 prisoners who had been incarcerated
without due process for allegedly failing to pay child support. The fathers
were sentenced with no notice given of their hearings and no opportunity to
obtain legal representation. Fathers relate that hearings typically last
between 30 seconds and two minutes, during which they are sentenced to months
in prison. ACLU lawyer Malia Brink says courts across Pennsylvania routinely
jail such men for civil contempt without proper notice or in time for them to
get lawyers. Lawrence County was apparently jailing fathers with no hearings at
all. Nothing indicates that Pennsylvania is unusual. After a decade of hysteria
over "deadbeat dads," one hundred such prisoners in each of the
America's 3,500 counties is by no means unlikely.
Also last week, a federal
appeals court finally ruled unconstitutional the Elizabeth Morgan Act, a
textbook bill of attainder whereby Congress legislatively separated father and
child and "branded" as "a criminal child abuser" a father
against whom no evidence was ever presented. "Congress violated the
constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder by singling out plaintiff
for legislative punishment," the court said. The very fact that a bill of
attainder was used at all indicates something truly extreme is taking place.
Bills of attainder are rare, draconian measures used for one purpose: to
convict politically those who cannot be convicted with evidence.
So do these decisions
demonstrate that justice eventually prevails? Hardly. In both cases, the damage
is done. Foretich's daughter has been irreparably robbed of her childhood and
estranged from her father. Moreover, millions of fathers continue to be
permanently separated from their children and presumed guilty, even when no
evidence exists against them.
The Pennsylvania men will
fare worse. For many, the incarceration has already cost them their jobs and
thus their ability to pay future child support. As a result, they will be
returned to the penal system, from which they are unlikely ever to escape.
Permanently insolvent, they are farmed out to trash companies and similar
concerns, where they work 14–16 hour days. Most of their earnings are
confiscated for child support, the costs of their incarceration, and mandatory
drug testing.
This gulag recalls the
description of the Soviet forced-labor system, described by Carl Friedrich and
Zbigniew Brzezinski in their classic study of totalitarianism: "Not
infrequently the secret police hired out its prisoners to local agencies for
the purpose of carrying out some local project…. Elaborate contracts were drawn
up…specifying all the details and setting the rates at which the secret police
is to be paid. At the conclusion of their task, the prisoners, or more
correctly the slaves, were returned to the custody of the secret police."
New repressive measures
against fathers are enacted almost daily. Last week, Staten Island joined a
nationwide trend when it opened a new "integrated domestic violence
court." The purpose of these courts, says Chief Judge Judith Kaye, is not
to dispense justice as such but to "make batterers and abusers take
responsibility for their actions." In other words, to declare men guilty.
Anyone who doubts this need
only look to Canada, where domestic violence courts are already empowered to
seize the property, including the homes, of men accused of domestic violence,
even though they are not necessarily convicted or even formally charged.
Moreover, they may do so "ex parte," without the men being
present to defend themselves. "This bill is classic police-state
legislation," writes Robert Martin, of the University of Western Ontario.
Walter Fox, a Toronto lawyer, describes these courts as
"pre-fascist," and editor Dave Brown writes in the Ottawa Citizen,
"Domestic violence courts…are designed to get around the protections of
the Criminal Code. The burden of proof is reduced or removed, and there's no
presumption of innocence."
Special courts to try
special crimes that can only be committed by certain people are a familiar
device totalitarian regimes adopted to replace established standards of justice
with ideological justice. New courts created during the French Revolution led
to the Reign of Terror and were consciously imitated in the Soviet Union. In
Hitler's dreaded Volksgerichte or "people’s courts," write
Friedrich and Brzezinski, "only expediency in terms of National Socialist
standards served as a basis for judgment."
Even more astounding,
legislation announced in Britain will require the police to consider fathers
guilty of domestic violence, even after they have been acquitted in court.
Fathers found "not guilty" are to be kept away from their children
and treated as if they are guilty. As Melanie Phillips writes in the Daily
Mail, "This measure will destroy the very concept of innocence
itself."
These are only the most
recent developments. Young herself has written eloquently on the practice of
extracting coerced confessions from fathers like Massachusetts minister Harry
Stewart. In Warren County, Pennsylvania, fathers like Robert Pessia are told
they will be jailed unless they sign confessions stating, "I have
physically and emotionally battered my partner." The father must then
describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. The documents
require him to state, "I am responsible for the violence I used. My
behavior was not provoked." Again, the words of Friedrich and Brzezinski
are apposite: "Confessions are the key to this psychic coercion. The
inmate is subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda and ever-repeated
demands that he ‘confess his sins,’ that he ‘admit his shame.’"
G.K. Chesterton argued that
the most enduring check on government tyranny is the family. Ideological
correctness notwithstanding, little imagination is required to comprehend that
the household member most likely to defend the family against the state is the
father. Yet as Margaret Mead once pointed out, the father is also the family's
weakest link. The easiest and surest way to destroy the family, therefore, is
to remove the father. Is it extreme to wonder if government is quietly engaged
in a search-and-destroy operation against the principal obstacle to the
expansion of its power?
How much authority do we have to
create justice when we are dismantling it at home?
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/baskerville/03/baskerville121803.htm
Stephen Baskerville,
Ph.D., 12-18-03
A judge in Illinois wants
to create special courts specifically for fathers. Judge Robert Spence claims
these courts can somehow collect more child support from fathers whose children
it has taken away.
In Staten Island this week,
a new "integrated domestic violence" court will debut. The purpose of
these courts, says Chief Judge Judith Kaye, is not to dispense justice but to
"make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions."
In other words, to find fathers guilty.
Special courts to try
special crimes, that can only be committed by some people, are long familiar as
a device to circumvent established standards of justice and implement
ideological justice: revolutionary justice or socialist justice or gender
justice. Special courts created during the French Revolution led to the Reign
of Terror and were consciously imitated in the Soviet Union. Hitler created the
dreaded Volksgerichte or "people’s courts" described by Carl
Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski in their classic study of totalitarianism, as
tribunals "in which only expediency in terms of National Socialist
standards served as a basis for judgment."
Canada is already creating
special domestic violence courts that can seize the property, including the
homes, of men accused of domestic violence, even though the men are not
convicted or even formally charged. Moreover, they may do so without the men
being present to defend themselves. "This bill is classic police-state
legislation and violates just about every constitutional principle,"
writes Robert Martin, of Western Ontario University.
Walter Fox, a Toronto
lawyer, describes these courts as "pre-fascist."
As Dave Brown writes in the
Ottawa Citizen, "Domestic violence courts . . . are designed to
get around the protections of the Criminal Code. The burden of proof is reduced
or removed, and there's no presumption of innocence."
Proposals have been mooted
in the Justice Department to create similar tribunals in the United States.
But most astounding of all,
new legislation in Britain will allow to the government to consider men guilty
of domestic violence, even after they have been acquitted in court.
I'm not making this up: Men found "not guilty" are to be issued with
restraining orders and treated as if they are guilty. As Melanie Phillips
writes in the Daily Mail, "This measure will destroy the very
concept of innocence itself."
Countries that have upheld the
Common Law traditions of freedom and justice are now rapidly dismantling them.
How much authority do we have to create the institutions of freedom in Iraq and
Afghanistan when we are destroying them at home?
Stephen Baskerville Takes On Wade Horn
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-e/baskerville/03/baskerville110703.htm
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D, 11-07-03
No reasonable person denies
the value of marriage to adults, to children, and to society. But Wade Horn
never answers the question promised in 'Closing the Marriage Gap' (June 2003):
How specifically can the government save marriage?
Even granting the efficacy
he claims for various marriage-saving schemes (a large concession), what
precisely can government add that couples and counselors cannot do on their
own? More importantly, what dangers accompany government involvement in the
most private sphere of life? Government's role is to coerce, on pain of
incarceration or death. Not surprisingly, this seems to be precisely what it is
doing.
Helping troubled marriages
is a valuable activity of churches. But federal funding is a formula for
turning pastors into police—and at precisely the time when many churches have
abdicated their role as the guarantors of the marriage contract. Initial
measures indicate this is already happening.
In January, the Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced $2.2 million in grants to
faith-based groups to "promote fatherhood and healthy marriage." Horn
said the grants "reach out to those who need help in acquiring the skills
necessary to build relationships." Yet only 25 percent of the funds are
earmarked for marriage; the rest will deputize private groups to collect child
support, though the therapy and the policing are not strongly distinguished.
The Marriage Coalition, a 'faith-based organization” in Cleveland, is to
receive $200,000 to assist child-support enforcement.
In May, HHS was again
conflating therapy and law enforcement, announcing more grants "to support
healthy marriage and parental relationships with the goals of improving the
well-being of children." Here again marriage promotion is a smokescreen to
collect child support. Almost a million dollars is going to Michigan’s
child-support enforcement agency.
"The policy is
designed to mobilize the entire community"including clerical, political,
medical, business, and judicial leaders"to support children by
strengthening marriage," according to the Michigan agency. These measures
follow more forthright expansions of police power, wherein HHS revealed that
its principal method for rebuilding marriages and “parental relationships"
is by arresting spouses and parents. Under a Clinton administration initiative
called "Project Save Our Children," HHS last year announced mass
arrests "reminiscent of the old West," as the Christian Science
Monitor described it. "Most Wanted lists go up, and posses of federal
agents fan out across the nation in hot pursuit." Among "the worst of
the worst" was James Circle, earning all of $39,000 a year and ordered to
pay $350 a week for one child, about two-thirds of his likely take-home pay.
Dr. Horn has revealed that
promoting marriage effectively means collecting child support: "These
projects are a sensible government approach to testing and evaluating creative
approaches that enhance the overall goals and effectiveness of the
child-support enforcement program by integrating the promotion of healthy
marriage into existing child support services."
How? How precisely can law
enforcement agents improve anyone's marriage? It is likely to have the opposite
effect, since any bureaucracy develops a stake in perpetuating the problems it
ostensibly exists to solve.
Child-support enforcement
is actually a mechanism for destroying marriages by subsidizing breakups and
enticing mothers to divorce. Bryce Christensen points out a "linkage
between aggressive child-support policies and the erosion of wedlock."
In her new book, Stolen Vows:
The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of the American Divorce Industry,
Judy Parejko exposes how government-funded marriage therapists in fact destroy
marriages. Parejko was locked out of her office as a court- affiliated mediator
for trying to reconcile couples. Now she is challenging no-fault divorce, the
legal basis for the decline of marriage. Her group, Defending Holy Matrimony,
is unlikely to receive federal funds.
Child-support enforcement
is corrupting government throughout America (see "The Politics of Family
Destruction," Crisis, November 2002). HHS now promises to spread this
corruption to the churches and to the institution of marriage itself. Recently,
the American Prospect castigated the administration for "promoting
religion." But they are missing the point. By recruiting churches and
citizen groups to collect child support, HHS is profaning religion. It is
turning the clergy into informers and churches into extensions of the federal
government.
Horn also invokes the
bugbear of "domestic violence," implying that government agents are
necessary to make marriage "safe" (from husbands, of course). In
fact, marriage is already the safest environment for women and children, since
most domestic violence takes place after separation and involves disputes over
child custody.
In short, the government destroys marriage with one hand, and claims to rebuild it with the other. And when"inevitably"it cannot rebuild it, it takes the "batterers" or the "deadbeats" away to jail, thus