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Show Archives - 2007
- 2005
- 2004 - 2003
December 26, 2004
Fathers Targeted by Cox Speak Out
Keith, a Michigan father, has been ordered
to come up with $33,000 by January 1st or he will go to federal
prison for four years. Like so many divorced fathers, his child
support arrearage is not the product of irresponsibility or
neglect but instead because the courts were slow to adjust his
support obligation downward after he lost a well-paying job.
more >>
December 19, 2004
Spontaneous
Reunification
There are few experiences more heartbreaking
than being the target parent in a Parental Alienation campaign--your
own children are withheld from you and taught to despise you.
Often these situations are so contentious that intervention
by a court or mental health professional is not permitted or
is ineffectual. However, according to psychologist Douglas C.
Darnall, Ph.D., author of
Divorce Casualties:
Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, new research
shows that there is often good cause for hope in these situations--"Spontaneous
Reunification." more
>>
December 12, 2004
Are
Child Support Levels Too High?
According to economist
R. Mark Rogers, "Child
support guidelines currently in
use by the U.S. states typically
generate awards that are
three to four times what they
should be if based on
economically sound cost tables
and on a true equal duty of
support standard for both
parents."
Rogers also
believes that support levels
have become so skewed in favor
of custodial parents that even
custodial parents with a
substantially lesser income will
still end up with a "significantly
higher standard of living than
the non-custodial parent." The
situation is even more
inequitable in cases where the
custodial parent has a
significantly higher income than
the noncustodial.
more >>
December 5, 2004
NY Family
Law: Justice or Bloodsport?
The New York State National Organization
for Women has declared a crisis for women in family law and
made it the theme of their
December 4-5
Annual Convention. According to NOW-NYS, the NY family court
system "routinely deprives mothers and their children of their
human and civil rights. These violations frequently result in
mothers losing custody of their children to batterers, even
in instances where there are outstanding allegations of child
abuse...[the] court system allows batterers to destroy [mothers]
financially through years of costly litigation, supervised visits,
and related practices."
By contrast, fathers' groups
view the NY family law system and its sole custody norm as bloodsport,
where parents must fight like gladiators in a ring for
custody in a match which is thoroughly rigged against dads.
more >>
November 28, 2004
Are American Women Oppressed?
According to a highly
publicized new study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, American
women are "still 100 years away from full equality." Heidi Hartmann, the group's
president, says:
“At the rate things are
changing, it’ll be 50 years before women’s paychecks equal men’s, and nearly a
full century before women hold half the seats in Congress...wherever you go in
America, women are shortchanged, starting with their paychecks...American women
are paid 76 cents for every dollar men earn. more >>
November 21, 2004
First Wives vs.
Second Wives
"Remember, the first wife is
normally the one that lives over the store, who puts hubby
through school, who works and raises the kids," says divorce
lawyer
Lynne Gold-Bikin, former chair of the American Bar
Association's Family Law Section. "The second wife gets not
only the fruits of his career building but also the benefits of
his midlife interest in family. Now, when she has the baby,
he's in the delivery room--he wasn't there the first time. And
she gets the fur coat." more
>>
November 14, 2004
Verizon
Campaign: Avalanche of Protest
and Media CoverageGlenn discussed the
Verizon
campaign and the avalanche of media coverage it has
received, along with various other topics, including:
Police: Woman's Road Rage Targets Wrong
Car (KIRO TV,
11/10/04)
[When a woman tries to kill her former boyfriend by running
his car off the road, it's domestic violence, not "road
rage"--even though the perpetrator is a woman]
Mom Collects Child Support from Two Men
for Same Child (FathersandFamilies.org)
California
National Organization for Women Responds to Elections
[CANOW refers to "daughters and sons lost to the war in
Iraq." No, you don't have dyslexia]
The Scott Peterson verdict and
Glenn's column
'Fatal Fathers' Myth Promoted in Wake of Peterson, Hacking
Cases (Daily
Breeze [Los Angeles],
9/17/04)
more >>
November 7, 2004
Feminist Law Professor Leads Backlash
Against Paternity Fraud Laws
The stories of victims of paternity
fraud often provoke disbelief. Many men are falsely assigned
paternity in default judgments and are compelled by the state
to pay 18 years of child support for children whom DNA tests
have proven are not theirs. Many of these men are not properly
served notice of the paternity proceedings, never get their
day in court and have no idea they are "fathers" until their
wages are garnished.
Often by the time these men
realize what has been done to them, the statute of limitations
for challenging paternity has already passed, and sometimes
lose half or more of their take-home pay to child support, arrearages,
interest, and penalties -- often to support children they have
never even met. more >>
October 31, 2004
The Lohstroh Case: Alienating Mother Pushes
10 Year-Old Boy to Kill Father
In one of the most shocking
murders in recent history, a 10 year old boy caught in his mother's
vicious alienation campaign shot his father in the back after
his father came to pick him up as part of his post-divorce shared
custody arrangement.
Judy Jones, a long time friend
of the victim, Dr. Rick Lohstroh, an emergency physician at
the University of Texas, has set up a
website in his memory.
According to Jones:
"[Rick was] a very loving and
devoted father. He was a compassionate man who devoted his life
to saving the lives of others....he had been through a very
contentious divorce with his ex-wife, Deborah Geisler, who had
made allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Those abuse allegations
had been proven false by several police departments, CPS, and
a voluntary lie detector test taken by Dr. Lohstroh.
more >>
October 24, 2004
Libertarian Presidential
Candidate Defends
Noncustodial Parents' Rights
Libertarian
presidential candidate Michael
Badnarik has taken a strong
stand in defense of parents and
noncustodial fathers--the only
2004 presidential candidate to
do so. According to Badnarik:
"In divorce
proceedings, the states
routinely award custody of minor
children to one
parent...relegating the other
parent to the status of
'second-class citizen'--not
because the latter parent has
been convicted of any crime, or
found unfit, but because of a
prejudice in favor of....the
best 'single' parent.
more >>
October 17, 2004
Feminist
Ex-ABA Leader Slams Shared
Custody,
Fathers' Movement
This week in
newspapers all over the country
high profile family law attorney
Lynne Gold-Bikin, former
chair of the American Bar
Association's family law
section, slammed shared custody
and fathers' activists.
According to Bikin, a recent
federal class action suit
filed on behalf of noncustodial
parents is:
"One more attempt to say that
every case that goes into court
should start with the assumption
that it's 50-50 time -- even if
they haven't been putting in
50-50 time before that. And why
do they want 50-50 custody? Some
people want it because they know
they can reduce the support they
pay to their wives."
more >>
Extra
His Side Show
Fathers Targeted by Cox Speak Out
Keith, a Michigan father, has been ordered
to come up with $33,000 by January 1st or he will go to federal
prison for four years. Like so many divorced fathers, his child
support arrearage is not the product of irresponsibility or
neglect but instead because the courts were slow to adjust his
support obligation downward after he lost a well-paying job.
more >>
October 10, 2004
CBS' 'Suburban Madness': It's OK to Kill
Your Husband
Clara Harris murdered her
husband by running him down repeatedly as the man's teenage
daughter begged Harris not to kill her father. In its new movie
"Suburban Madness," CBS whitewashes Harris' “Murder by Mercedes”
and portrays the convicted murderer as a victim worthy of
sympathy.
Clara Harris claimed that she
killed her husband in sudden passion because he was having an
affair. CBS covered up convincing evidence that Clara was also
having an affair at the time of the murder, and that David
Harris--killed by an angry, controlling spouse as he tried to
get out of a bad relationship--was in fact a victim of domestic
violence.
more >>
October 3, 2004
Michigan's Top Cop Tells Kids:
Denounce Your Daddy
Politically
savvy Michigan Attorney General
Mike Cox has found a good way to
ride to a higher office—beat up
on "deadbeat dads." Cox has led
a highly-publicized campaign
against Michigan fathers which
has included prominent
billboards boasting of jail time
for fathers struggling with
child support obligations.
|
However,
according to a recent Family
Independence Agency study, 87
percent of all Michigan child
support arrearages are owed by
those earning less than $10,000
a year. |
|
|
more >>
August
8, 2004
Appeal Court to LA County: 'We Won't Sully
our Hands' Enforcing False Paternity Judgments
The Second District
Court of Appeal recently dealt a
devastating blow to the efforts of Los
Angeles County and others to collect
child support based on false paternity
judgments. In County of Los Angeles
v. Navarro, Manuel Navarro was
trapped into a default judgment because
he did not learn of the paternity
proceedings against him before the time
limits to contest the judgment had run
out. In an opinion dripping with
contempt, Justice Rubin wrote:
"By strict application of the law, appellant
should be denied relief....Sometimes even more important
policies than the finality of judgments are at stake,
however...the County...should not enforce child-support
judgments it knows to be unfounded. And in particular, it should
not ask the courts to assist it in doing so...We will not sully
our hands by participating in an unjust, and factually
unfounded, result. We say no to the County, and we reverse."
more >>
August
1, 2004
'Three Strikes' Laws Hurt Low Income,
Minority Men
A
man gets a 25 year to life sentence for
stealing a piece of pizza. A homeless
man receives the same for attempting to
steal food from a church. A
man gets a life
sentence for convictions for stealing
meat, then for stealing a television,
then for stealing a VCR. A small-time
thief gets two 25 years-to-life
sentences for stealing $153.54 worth of
children's videotapes, including "Snow
White" and "Cinderella,"
from a Southern
California K-Mart.
One California judge has
compared such sentences to the ordeal of Jean Valjean of Victor
Hugo's Les Miserables, who spent 19 years in prison for
stealing a loaf of bread. more
>>
July 25, 2004
Is Today's Dad a Wimp and a Slacker?
In a column called "Meet
Today’s Dad: A model to avoid" (National
Review Online , 6/16/04), Catherine
Seipp describes the modern dad as being
"a guy whose wife slaves away at an
office job so dreamy artistic dad can
pursue his dreamy artistic dreams" and
who feels that he "deserves a medal for
[doing] what women do as a matter of
course." Seipp, media critic for Los
Angeles City Beat, notes:
"To borrow Samuel Johnson's observation
about women preachers, seeing a man take
care of children is sometimes like
seeing a dog walk on its hind legs: It
is not done well, but you are surprised
to see it done at all...while Today's
Dad is certainly involved in his
children's lives, his childcare skills
aren't always quite as honed as he
imagines.
more >>
July 18, 2004
Child Support Civil Rights Violations
Steven, a California father of two, was
assigned an erroneous child support
arrearage, arrested by federal agents at
gunpoint, jailed without due process,
and locked up for seven months with
murderers and other violent criminals.
He and tens of thousands of other
fathers are victims of perhaps the
greatest civil liberties violation of
our era--the war against so-called
"deadbeat dads."
Though the mainstream media and civil
libertarian groups have been extremely
slow to recognize it, child support
enforcement's police state tactics
routinely violate fathers'
constitutional rights and right to due
process, as do the actions of
out-of-control judges.
more >>
July 11, 2004
Newsweek: When Wives Cheat, It's OK
It's always his fault, never her fault.
"With the work place and the Internet, overscheduled lives
and inattentive husbands—it's no wonder more American women
are looking for comfort in the arms of another man," says
Newsweek magazine, in a just-released cover feature. The
cover sports an attractive, smug woman holding the hand of
her husband and also of her male paramour, under the
headline "The New Infidelity: From Office Affairs to
Hook-ups, More Wives are Cheating, Too."
Many popular movies, TV shows and books have celebrated the
cheating wife, including the movies The Bridges of
Madison County, and The Piano, and
Danielle Steele's romance novels To Love Again and
Crossings.
more >>
June 27, 2004
Allred vs. Tong--Is Parental Alienation Syndrome a
Fathers' Rights Hoax?
T he high-profile Bridget Marks custody case in New York has
put the gut-wrenching issue of sexual abuse allegations in
custody battles in the headlines, and Marks has become a
cause celebre for many feminists. In that case the court
determined that Marks had coached her four year-old twin
girls to claim that they had been sexually molested by their
father, and judge Arlene Goldberg switched custody from the
mother to the father. False allegations of sexual abuse are
an important part of a pathology dubbed "Parental Alienation
Syndrome," wherein one parent tries to turn his or her
children against the other parent.
Feminists assert that
Parental Alienation Syndrome is a fathers' rights
hoax--"junk science"--which unscrupulous fathers use to
wrest custody from decent, loving mothers. The fathers'
rights movement sees PAS is a damaging epidemic--one which
family courts usually turn a blind eye to .
more >>
June 20, 2004
Liz Taylor's Son-in-Law Says Taylor, Daughter Kidnapped His
Two Year-Old Son
Thomas McKeown, Elizabeth Taylor's son-in-law and the
estranged husband of Maria Burton, says that Taylor has
conspired with his wife to abduct his two year old son and
has kept the boy hidden from him. McKeown, who has not seen
his little son since October of last year, was booted out of
his son's life after his wife got a restraining order
against him for alleged emotional abuse.
McKeown, a 49 year-old Wall Street executive, has been
arrested twice for violating the order in efforts to "find
out where my son was, who was caring for him, and find out
about his well-being." According to Taylor's
representatives, the boy is being held at an undisclosed
location near Taylor's Bel Air mansion in the Los Angeles
area. McKeown says he is preparing to file kidnapping
charges against the wealthy 72 year-old actress.
more >>
June 13, 2004
Bridget Marks
PAS/Custody Case
For the first segment of the show I discussed the
Bridget Marks PAS/Custody Case. For background information, see "TUG-OF-LOVE
ENDS IN AGONY"
(New York Post, 6/1/04). The New York
Daily News and New York Post seem to have given it the
most attention.
Read Glenn's commentary "In
Defense of
Arlene Goldberg"Mailing address Marks case judge:
The Honorable Judge Goldberg
60 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10013
Contact NY newspapers about
the Marks case:
New York Daily News
New York Observer
New York Post
New York Sun
New York Times
Some of the other topics we discussed included:
1) Chad Taylor, a New Mexico father who was reported to New Mexico's
Department of Children, Youth and Families and reportedly threatened
with loss of custody and criminal charges for child abuse for taking
his son off of Ritalin. The boy's teachers preferred that he remain
drugged. more >>
June 6, 2004
The Boy Who Was Raised as
a Girl
When David Reimer was eight months old he suffered a botched
circumcision which destroyed his penis. Desperate for help,
David's parents sought the advice of sexologist Dr. John
Money. Money, who believes that children are born
psychosexually neutral, convinced David's parents to have
their son completely castrated and raised as a female.
Because David had an identical twin who was being raised as
a boy, it was an ideal test case for the popular feminist
idea that it is nurture, not nature, which differentiates
between males and females.
more >>
May 30, 2004
Darkness at Noon: Soviet-Style Re-education in
State Mandated 'Batterers' Classes
It doesn't matter that you're innocent. Or that she attacked
you first. Or that you both went over the line and that both
of you want to put it behind you and work it out. The system
will prosecute you and persecute you until you've confessed
your sins--even if you've none to confess. And you're not
cured until they say you're cured--even if you were never
sick to begin with.
In
Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler wrote of the
nightmarish world of the Stalinist Soviet secret police,
wherein all accused were guilty and protestations of
innocence were acts of subversion. Koestler describes how
police power was used to extract confessions and the way
perfectly innocent men were manipulated into publicly
declaring their crimes and their guilt.
more >>
May 23, 2004
Why Girls Need Fathers
Of all the bonds between family members, those between
fathers and daughters are sometimes the closest but are
often also the most tenuous. And while many do acknowledge
the importance of a father in a boy's life, the huge impact
a father has on his daughter is less publicized and more
elusive.
Many daughters crave a better relationship with their
fathers but are unsure how to approach their dads. Many
fathers desire closer bonds with their daughters but are
similarly perplexed. Since 1990
Dr. Linda Nielsen of Wake Forest University has taught
the only university course in the country that focuses
exclusively on father-daughter relationships.
more >>
May 16, 2004
Gloria Allred vs. LaMusga's Attorney on Move-Aways
Since the 1996 Burgess decision, California courts
have allowed custodial mothers to move with their children
after divorce. While Burgess involved only a 40 mile
move within the same county, it has been interpreted by
California courts to permit moves of hundreds or thousands
of miles. Recently the California Supreme Court issued an
historic opinion in LaMusga which will allow divorced
dads to block moves which can be shown to be harmful to the
bonds they share with their children.
At the heart of many move-away decisions is the question "do
fathers matter or not?"
more >>
May 9, 2004
A Mother's Day Tribute to Mothers Who Co-Parent
Divorce doesn't have to be a catastrophe for children. For
all of the suffering and cruelty endemic to our current,
sole custody/winner take-all system, there are millions of
mothers and fathers who co-parent after divorce. They
understand that the best
parent is both parents.
On Mother's Day His
Side saluted mothers who co-parent and respect
and promote the bonds between their children and their
ex-husbands after divorce or separation. We also
discussed the holy grail of the fathers' rights
movement--the
rebuttable presumption of joint physical custody after
divorce.
more >>
May 2, 2004
The Advice Goddess: 'I'm Not Anti-Male'
According to nationally syndicated advice columnist
Amy
Alkon (aka the "Advice
Goddess):
"Men can be whiny crybabies, too! Radio host Glenn Sacks
proves that the men's movement Cassandras can be just as
irritating as the women's movement Cassandras. Do men really
need protecting from those meanie women? Are they really a
downtrodden class?...Can't we all stop whining and get
along?"
According to Alkon, whose column runs in over 100 newspapers
across the US and Canada, after she was criticized on
His Side she was
"deluged with mail from hostile men who thought I was Andrea
Dworkin in heels."
more >>
April
25, 2004
National Fatherhood Initiative Attacks
Black Fathers
The National Fatherhood Initiative has launched an insulting
billboard and bus-card campaign depicting small black
children who have biting words for their fathers. While
vilifying absent black fathers, the campaign ignores the
fact that many black fathers have been driven out of their
children's lives by vengeful or selfish mothers and the
family courts which support them.
Reginald Brass and Alvin Thomas of
My Child Says Daddy
help young inner-city fathers fight to connect and reconnect
with their children. Roland Warren, the president of the
National Fatherhood
Initiative, helped create the billboard campaign. Reginald,
Alvin, and Roland joined Glenn on a spirited
His Side with Glenn Sacks
on Sunday, April 25 ,
2004.
James, a young black father who has struggled to remain a part
of his little daughter's life, was also in studio and told his
story. more >>
April 18, 2004
Showdown in Motown: Michigan Dads vs. Leader of ACES
Are they deadbeats who've walked out on their kids and their
responsibilities? Or decent fathers persecuted by a system
which values them only as wallets?
Over the past several months the government of Michigan has
been singling out so-called "deadbeat dads" for humiliation
and punishment, including new punitive laws and an
incendiary billboard
campaign.
Debbie Kline is the new Executive Director of the
Association for
Children for the Enforcement of Support, a nationwide
organization which advocates tougher child support
enforcement and has frequently been an opponent of the
fathers' rights movement. Murray Davis is a longtime
Michigan fathers' rights activist and the vice-president of
the National Family Justice
Association .
Kline and Davis squared
off on the Michigan crackdown,
child support, and child support enforcement.
more >>
April 11, 2004
Liz Taylor's Son-in-Law Says Taylor, Daughter Kidnapped His
Two Year-Old Son
Thomas McKeown, Elizabeth Taylor's son-in-law and the
estranged husband of Maria Burton, says that Taylor has
conspired with his wife to abduct his two year old son and
has kept the boy hidden from him. McKeown, who has not seen
his little son since October of last year, was booted out of
his son's life after his wife got a restraining order
against him for alleged emotional abuse.
McKeown, a 49 year-old Wall Street executive, has been
arrested twice for violating the order in efforts to "find
out where my son was, who was caring for him, and find out
about his well-being." According to Taylor's
representatives, the boy is being held at an undisclosed
location near Taylor's Bel Air mansion in the Los Angeles
area. McKeown says he is preparing to file kidnapping
charges against the wealthy 72 year-old actress.
more >>
March
28, 2004
Whatever Happened to the Mythopoetic Men's Movement?
In the early 1990s tens of tho |
