Category: Blog

We’ve often discussed the problems faced by divorced fathers who serve in the military–to learn more, see my co-authored column Protect Deployed Parents” Rights (Trenton Times & others, 11/9/06). Lloyd, a reader and military serviceman, writes: “Glenn, I found this on the ‘Army Knowledge Online’ website, where my military e-mail account is. It’s the ‘National Fatherhood Initiative/Lockheed-Martin Military Father of the Year’ award, and they are taking nominations. The deadline is January 4, 2008. Perhaps there’s a chance to recognize a military father who has struggled but managed to maintain his relationship with his children post-divorce?”
The announcement, which can be found here, is below. While we’re on the subject of military dads, make sure to take a moment to watch one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at Soldier”s Home: Tearful Reunion as Sailor Returns from Iraq, Surprises Little Son in Class. The National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) is seeking nominations of outstanding military fathers to be considered for the 2008 NFI Lockheed Martin Military Fatherhood Award™. The Awardee and his family will be honored at the 2008 NFI Fatherhood Awards™ Gala, to be held in Washington D.C. on April 29, 2008. SUBMIT TO: militaryfa@fatherhood.org DEADLINE: January 4, 2008 Know a military father who deserves a Fatherhood Award™? Please send a brief, 1-2 page explanation that shows how this father meets most or all of the following criteria: Ongoing commitment and dedication to his children Extraordinary efforts to father from a distance during military separation Successfully balancing military life and fathering role Efforts to mentor/strengthen other military fathers and/or military children who are separated from their fathers Nominee must be nominated by someone other than himself Nominations must also include:

Those who suffer from child support enforcement’s abuses and errors lead difficult and stressful lives. Sadly, child support enforcement abuses may have contributed to the recent heart attack and death of an English father. All in the best interests of his child, of course.

From the Equal Parenting Alliance:

EPA Soldier dies in war on fathers
Sunday 9th December 2007

Last Thursday, 9th December, 36 year-old veteran soldier Lee Wilkins died while out running. He survived action in Northern Ireland, but those who knew him well believe it was the battles he had with Family Courts and the Child Support Agency which killed him.

His son lived with him, and in these circumstances, one wonders why the CSA were hounding him to pay them £650, instead of paying money to him. Lee could not understand this either, and we saw the increasing stress which this alleged debt, and the threat of bailiffs caused him. Now that he has died, the CSA will be
able to access the money from his estate, under draconian regulations proposed this year to pursue dead fathers beyond the grave.

Earlier this year, Lee asked the Equal Parenting Alliance to post this mini-biography of him and his fight with the CSA. Sadly, it was a fight which led was to lead to his death – a soldier who fought bravely for his country and survived, but could not survive this country’s war on fathers. His son, whom he always wished should not be named in publicity, now has to face a future without him.

CSA Incompetence Harms Children
22nd March 2007

Sometimes it takes a single story to illustrate the flaws in a system.

Lee Wilkins is a veteran soldier who lives with his 9 year-old son in Coventry. He obtained a degree in photography after leaving the army, and many of his impressive pictures have been exhibited in the Imperial War Museum. He hopes one day to work as a photographer in war-zones and the like, but for now, he is happy to just be a dad to his boy.

Although separated, Lee and his ex-partner have supported their son financially without involving the Child Support Agency for many years now, and so it came as a bolt from the blue when Lee received a demand for £650 from the CSA, followed by the threat of bailiffs if he did not pay up.

” I couldn’t understand it,” said Lee. “My boy lives with me nearly all the time now, and the money they wanted from me wasn’t for his mum, anyway. They were going to keep it themselves! I thought the CSA were supposed to give money to parents who are looking after children, not take it off them.”

Background: I’ve long believed that a male birth control pill would be a great thing for men, and that women might not be as happy about it as they may claim. In my column Do Women Really Want a Male Birth Control Pill? (Newsday, 4/11/05), I wrote:

“Women have long lamented the unequal burden they shoulder in the area of contraception. Today researchers are reportedly moving closer to perfecting a male contraceptive that is free of side effects, easy to take, and reversible. But do women really want a male birth control pill?

“Power is the reward which comes with responsibility. For example, during the Cold War Americans complained about the money and manpower spent protecting a reputedly ungrateful world from communism. Yet these sacrifices also helped give the United States great geopolitical power, with its attendant perks and privileges.

“Similarly, while women legitimately complain that biology has condemned them to bear the burden of contraception, this burden also gives women control over one of the most important parts of any human being”s life–reproduction. The male birth control pill will shift much of that control from women to men. Is the following conversation far away?

“Woman #1: ‘My [husband, boyfriend, significant other] is selfish. He’s on the pill and won”t get off. I”ve asked him to stop taking it but he always says he”s not ready. He just won”t grow up. I don”t know what to do.’

“Woman #2: ‘That”s what the pill has given men–a right to be perpetual adolescents. It”s given them veto power over women who want to have children’…

“While most women are responsible and want to have children with a willing, committed partner, studies show that lack of reproductive control can be a major problem for men today. For example, the National Scruples and Lies Survey 2004 polled 5,000 women in the United Kingdom for That”s Life! magazine. According to that survey, 42% of women claim they would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, regardless of the wishes of their partners…

“The advent of the female birth control pill greatly aided women”s struggle for autonomy and fulfillment. The male birth control pill will also create great changes, but these changes will not be to some women”s liking. Be careful what you ask for–you might get it.”

From Sara Feldkamp’s Male Birth Control Pill and Digestive Health Top List of New Medical Discoveries, AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition Kicks-Off in San Diego:

“New research presented at the 2007 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Annual Meeting and Exposition indicates that a new oral option for men to prevent pregnancy may be possible. The study shows the efficacy and side-effects of an oral contraceptive for males, which is similar to birth control pills currently available for women.

“To date, effective male contraception has been restricted to physical methods, namely condoms and vasectomy. However, the research conducted by scientists at GTx, Inc., the Ohio State University, and the University of Tennessee provides the first male oral contraceptive that has been found effective in preventing pregnancy.

“Additionally, the option is reversible: after the medication is stopped, fertility is fully restored.

“For 13 years, these researchers have been examining the reversibility of a compound that inhibits infertility by utilizing a non-steroidal hormonal therapy known as a selective androgen receptor modulator.

“‘Past clinical studies using testosterone for male contraception were not effective at preventing pregnancy without producing significant negative side- effects,’ said James Dalton, Ph.D., AAPS Fellow and lead researcher at GTx, Inc. and the Ohio State University.

“‘Our recent study was doubly successful because it completely and reversibly inhibited fertility without unwanted side-effects.’

“In fact, the study proved that this male pill had positive effects on muscle and bone. Clinical trials are expected to begin in one to two years.”

The drawing above was taken from Kara Bishop’s www.postcardsfromsplitsville.com. Bishop works with Children of Divorce, a class run by Tucson, Arizona-based Divorce Recovery. The class did an art project that included “sending away” the frustrations of divorce. The website is a place where Kara says “children can share their divorce-related feelings anonymously and parents can get a new perspective on how this life-changing experience impacts their children”s lives.”

To learn more, click here. Kara can be reached at Kara@PostcardsfromSplitsville.com.

As I’ve noted on many occasions, female violence against men is not treated seriously, and is often considered funny. Philadelphia Daily News reporter Dana DiFilippo’s article A GENITAL REMINDER (5/18/06) from last year is a good example. DiFilippo wrote:

“With their wedding anniversary less than two weeks away, Howard Randolph was thinking romance. He hoped to take his wife, Monica, out for an intimate dinner and maybe an oldies-but-goodies show to celebrate 11 years of matrimony.

“But yesterday, his mind was more on divorce and jail for his wife after she almost became Philadelphia’s own Lorena Bobbitt.

“Monica Randolph didn’t need a kitchen knife. She took matters into her own hands.

“The Nicetown man said he had been sleeping peacefully in the couple’s bed Tuesday night when his wife pounced on him without warning, grabbed his groin, dug her manicured fingernails in and flayed him, leaving his gore-slicked gonads dangling much lower than normal.

“‘She didn’t use no weapon – this was just sheer brute strength and fingernails. She grabbed me by my [scrotum] and ripped it apart with her bare hands,’ Randolph said yesterday from his hospital bed at Albert Einstein Medical Center, where he was in stable condition with stitched and bandaged genitals…

“A neighbor who heard the commotion also called police, who took Monica Randolph into custody and charged her with aggravated assault and related offenses.

“Talk about a strict violation of the penal code…

“Monica Randolph told arresting officers that she had attacked her husband because he was cheating on her. But her husband denied having any affairs. He remains mystified as to his wife’s motive and demanded that she receive a stiff punishment…

“News of the genital mangling aroused a mixture of horrified gasps and guilty giggles in the Randolphs’ neighborhood, where few knew the couple who had moved into the brick rowhouse on Pulaski Avenue near Bouvier Street in April.

“Meanwhile, neighbors were left to speculate on explanations for the attack.

“‘She got to be crazy,’ said Dionne Martin, 18, who basked in the spring sunshine on friend Rochelle Odd’s porch steps.

“Odd, 21, agreed: ‘That woman was crazy, but I’m on her side. I don’t think no guy deserves to have his balls ripped off. But she’s got to be deep in love – that’s what would make a woman do this. If they was together all those years and he cheated on her, she wanted him to feel what she was feeling. There’s a lesson to be learned here: Don’t cheat on your woman.'”

No mention of the phrase “domestic violence.” And Rochelle Odd’s comment? Talk about a vindictive woman. Does this mean a man has the right to beat his girlfriend up if she cheats on him? I guess so.

And while our opponents fall all over themselves to deny that there is such a thing as Parental Alienation Syndrome, is there any doubt that vindictive women like this would attempt to alienate their children from their children’s fathers?

[Note: If you or someone you love is being abused, the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women provides crisis intervention and support services to victims of domestic violence and their families.]

“Child support became politicized by the early 1990s, when parents who allegedly fail to pay–‘deadbeat dads’–became the subjects of a national demonology, and child support went from being a minor matter affecting a few people on the margins of society to a sacred political cow in the national vocabulary. ‘On the left and on the right, the new phrase to conjure with is ‘child support,”‘ writes Bryce Christensen, who notes that politicians see it as ‘the best rhetoric in the world’: ‘a rhetoric unifying political figures’ from both parties.

“Although Ronald Reagan seems to have coined the term deadbeat dads, it was Bill Clinton who took it on the campaign trail. ‘We will find you!’ he famously intoned at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. ‘We will make you pay!’ During the debate leading up to welfare reform, George Gilder warned of the bipartisan bandwagon being marshaled to punish private citizens who had been pronounced guilty by general acclaim:

“‘The president wants to take away their driver”s licenses and occupational accreditations. Texas Governor George W. Bush wants to lift their hunting licenses as well. Moving to create a generation of American boat people, Senator Bill Bradley is leading a group of senators seeking to seize their passports. Congressman Henry Hyde wants to expand the powers of the IRS to confiscate their assets. Running for president, Lamar Alexander wants to give them ‘jail time,’ presumably so they won”t vote. Also running for president, Alan Keyes suggests caning, recommending ‘a trip to Singapore to learn how to administer a civil beating.’ Governor William Weld in Massachusetts wants to subpoena their DNA, put liens on their houses, and hound them through the bureaucracies of 50 states.'”–Stephen Baskerville, PhD

Stephen Baskerville’s new article on the child support system is aptly titled–“From Welfare State to Police State” (The Independent Review, Volume 12 Number 3, Winter 2008.) Baskerville explains:

“Welfare reform in the United States has shifted the role of welfare agencies from distributing money to collecting it–not from taxpayers but from divorced fathers. Despite the stereotype of the “deadbeat dad’ as a wealthy playboy squiring around his new trophy wife in a bright red Porsche, federal officials have acknowledged that most unpaid child support is uncollectible because it is owed by fathers who are as poor as or poorer than the mothers and children.”

The full, 22 page article can be seen here. Baskerville also deals with this subject in his book Taken Into Custody.

The child support enforcement system has enormous powers, and is rife with abuses. To learn more, click here or see my recent co-authored columns below:

Passport Rules Unfair to Child Support Debtors (San Antonio Express-News, 9/8/07)

Child Support Enforcement System Victimizes Military Personnel, Innocent Citizens (World Net Daily, 6/27/07)

Most Illinois ‘Deadbeats’ Aren’t ‘Reprehensible’ — They’re Broke (Chicago Daily Southtown, 6/20/07)

“You were once my one companion / you were all that mattered / You were once a friend and father / then my world was shattered…”

Though it’s not talked about much, the theme of fatherneed runs through much of The Phantom of the Opera, and is powerfully displayed in the video clip below.

In the story, Christine Daae (pictured) was very close to her father, who died when she was seven, leaving her an orphan. Christine is still devastated by her father’s death even a decade later. The Phantom is able to capture her heart because he is a father figure, and Christine believes that he may be the “Angel of Music” who her father, a famous violinist, promised he’d send Christine after his death.

In the clip below, Christine, now age 16, is still agonizing over her father’s death, and visits his grave and sings a powerful ode to him–“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again.” The Phantom begins to lure her in by pretending to be the spirit of her father, until her suitor Raul arrives and shakes her out of her delusions.

To watch the video of the scene, click here or see below. The lyrics to Christine’s song to her father are also below.

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

You were once my one companion . . .
you were all that mattered . . .
You were once a friend and father,
then my world was shattered . . .

Wishing you were somehow here again . . .
wishing you were somehow near . . .
Sometimes it seemed if I just dreamed,
somehow you would be here . . .

Wishing I could hear your voice again . . .
knowing that I never would . . .
Dreaming of you won’t help me to do
all that you dreamed I could . . .

Passing bells and sculpted angels,
cold and monumental,
seem, for you the wrong companions –
you were warm and gentle . . .
Too many years fighting back tears . . .
Why can’t the past just die . . .?

Wishing you were somehow here again . . .
knowing we must say goodbye . . .
Try to forgive, teach me to live . . .
give me the strength to try . . .

No more memories, no more silent tears . . .
No more gazing across the wasted years . . .
Help me say goodbye.
Help me say goodbye!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5rsc4GLrd0#”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5rsc4GLrd0#]

This story illustrates both society’s double-standard on domestic violence and how vastly far ahead of us the feminist advocacy organizations are. According to Schools will give time off to domestic-violence victims (Palm Beach Post, 12/5/07):

“School district employees who are the victims of domestic violence can now take off work to get counseling, seek a restraining order or recuperate from injuries. A state law passed this year requires all employers with more than 50 employees to provide three days of leave if a worker or anyone in the worker’s family or household has been a victim of domestic violence or is seeking to protect themselves from it…

“Domestic-violence advocates say the law not only serves victims, it serves employers. Each year, domestic violence costs nearly $728 million in lost productivity, according to a 2003 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

“‘It’s good for business,’ said Dia Kuykendall, spokeswoman for the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ‘When you have a law like this, it allows employees to get time off to make their lives safer. They’re not at work thinking about their domestic violence situation.'”

Leaving aside the fact that some will falsely assert that they are domestic victims in order to get the leave, I have no problem with this law and think it’s generally a good thing. But consider this–every year hundreds of thousands of men are thrown out of their homes on ex parte protection/restraining orders. Some of them are innocent, some are guilty, but few of them have been afforded any meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. They’re immediately made homeless and largely possessionless, and often have been cut off from their bank accounts and money.

If there’s one group of people who could use some leave in order to get their affairs straightened out–find a place to live, scrape together money, try to get legal representation–it’s these guys. Yet if you went before the legislature and asked them to include men targeted by restraining orders in this law, they’d look at you like you were nuts. Somehow it’s OK to give a woman leave based on her word, but not to a man based on his word.