San Jose, CA–"Biden says in family policy, 'Moms and kids come first.' For nearly two decades Biden has put fathers last."

My new co-authored column, Biden Selection is Bad News for America's Fathers (San Jose Mercury-News, 9/2/08), discusses Senator Joe Biden’s role as the principle architect of federal domestic violence policy. While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama specifically praised Biden for this in his introduction speech, Biden’s legislation has trampled the rights of the accused and driven a wedge between many innocent fathers and their children.

To write a Letter to the Editor of the San Jose Mercury-News, a top 40, 250,000 circulation newspaper, regarding Biden Selection is Bad News for America's Fathers, click on letters@mercurynews.com.

The column, co-authored with Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, is below.

Biden Selection is Bad News for America's Fathers
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks

When Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama announced his selection of Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) as his vice-presidential candidate, one of the two pieces of Biden legislation he saluted was the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Biden, who has long been the principle architect of federal domestic violence policy, spearheaded VAWA’s two subsequent re-authorizations and calls VAWA "What I'm most proud of in my entire career.”

Biden means well, but he has consistently misunderstood the domestic violence issue and his legislation has harmed many innocent men. Given recent legislation Biden has proposed, as well as the promises made in the Democratic National Committee’s platform, an Obama-Biden victory would be bad news for American fathers.

Biden says one of his main achievements has been “training police and prosecutors to arrest and convict abusive husbands instead of telling them to take a walk around the block.” While it is true that in past decades police sometimes didn’t take DV seriously enough, under Biden’s leadership, arrest and prosecution policies have lurched sharply in the other direction. The modern trilogy of mandatory arrest, the primary aggressor doctrine, and “no drop” prosecution policies has trampled the rights of the accused.

Greg Schmidt, who created the Seattle Police Department’s domestic violence investigation unit in 1994, says that mandatory/presumptive arrest laws force police officers to make arrests “in petty incidents, often where the abuse is mutual or it is unclear who the aggressor was.”

When mandatory arrest laws were first passed, they led to a sharp increase in the number of women arrested. This reflects what DV research has long showed: women are as likely to initiate and engage in DV against their male partners as vice versa, and women use weapons and the element of surprise to partially balance the scales. In response, the VAWA-funded DV establishment promoted the primary aggressor doctrine.

Under this doctrine, when police officers respond to a domestic disturbance call, they are instructed not to focus on who attacked whom and who inflicted the injuries. Instead, they are compelled to employ factors such as comparable size and strength, which will almost always weigh against men.

Under "no drop" prosecution policies, many cases of mutual, trivial, or nonexistent "violence" are prosecuted as if they are serious crimes–even when the alleged victim recants or asks that the charges be dropped.

VAWA has helped provide an easy avenue for disgruntled women to kick decent, loving fathers out of their homes and exclude them from their children’s lives via restraining (aka “protection”) orders. In the wake of VAWA, there has been an explosion of such orders.

When a restraining order is issued, the man is booted out of his own home and can be jailed if he tries to contact his own children, even though he has never been afforded the opportunity to defend himself in court. The hearings held two weeks later to make the orders permanent are often just a formality for which no more than 15 minutes are generally allotted.

Many prominent family law professionals, including leading members of the State Bar of California Family Law Section, are cautioning that restraining orders are too easy to obtain, are often used as child custody maneuvers, and that there are scant protections for the falsely accused.

Biden’s latest DV bill, the National Domestic Violence Volunteer Attorney Network Act, would create an extensive network of attorneys to provide allegedly abused women free lawyers to win child custody. Yet the bill has no mechanism to adjudicate whether the abuse claims made against the fathers are true.

Biden’s website says his family policies “help women take charge.” However, domestic violence policies which have put women “in charge” have led to abuses just as when men were in charge. What the DV system needs is balance, not prerogatives for either gender.

Biden was a single father who successfully raised his two sons after his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident in 1972. Yet, paradoxically, Biden says in family policy, “Moms and kids come first.” For nearly two decades Biden has put fathers last. VAWA has greatly weakened the institution of fatherhood, and has harmed fathers and the children who love them and need them.

This column first appeared in the San Jose Mercury-News (9/2/08).

Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. Their website is www.acfc.org.

Glenn Sacks’ columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. He invites readers to visit his website at www.GlennSacks.com. 

Glenn's E-Newsletter/Week in Review, September 3, 2008

Los Angeles, CA–Are You a Divorced Dad Having a Hard Time Getting Your Kids' School Records? If Yes, please fill out this out.

I sometimes hear from divorced fathers who tell me that it is difficult for them to get their children's school records from their kids' schools. This can include: report cards; notices of parent-teacher conferences; notices of school events; or others.

If you have had this problem, please fill out the form by clicking here. Noncustodial mothers are encouraged to respond, too.

Penn. Supreme Court Study: Gender by Far #1 Indicator of Sentencing Disparity

I've often complained about the female sentencing discount, and recently reader Garrett Luttrell, a paralegal, sent in an interesting letter about a recent study on it. Luttrell writes:

A couple years back there was a huge study done by the Pennsylvania Commission on racial and gender discrimination in the courts, and the results were published in 2004 as the ‘Final Report of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System’.

Most of the study was predictably biased and based on anecdotal ‘evidence’, but in the section on criminal sentencing, they had a large and seemingly well done study – performed specifically for the Commission – on sentencing disparity based on combinations of gender, race, and age. The section was called 'Sentencing Disparities in the Criminal Justice System’ and was published along with the Report in 2004.

The study concluded that when the three criteria were considered together, there was a surprising pattern. Gender, more than race or age, was by far the number one indicator of sentencing disparity…

Sadly, the Commission has declined to act on the study, instead attempting to get another study done that will not consider gender or age, and will only take capital crimes into account. The initial study is being buried, and I’ve been trying to get someone to give it some attention, so far without any luck.

To learn more, click here.

Oprah Magazine: Female Teachers Who Have Sex with Students Are Misguided Poor Souls Looking for Love…

"Sex with students is bad, but why should it be the case that for women it's a case of 'poor boundaries' and for men it's hardcore brutal predation of the most evil sort?"

Jay, a reader, recently wrote me a letter about an article in Oprah magazine on the number of female teachers caught having sex with their students, such as Debra Lafave (pictured). The article is "Why Did the Teacher Have Sex With Her Student?"… To read more, click here.

In Case Divorced Dads Ever Thought They Were Anything but a Wallet…

Here's another wonderful example of the absolute disregard our family law system has for fathers as anything but wallets. In this case, a distraught/disturbed man shot himself in the face and ended up disabled, perhaps crippled.Yet, according to the Associated Press, the man can't get a reduction on his child support because the "Laconia Family Court had ruled that Calvin Dunn should be considered voluntarily underemployed because his injury was self-inflicted."Yeah, smart judge there–Dunn shot himself in the face to try to get out of child support, but our clever jurist smoked out the deadbeat's scam.

Obama Panders to Women by Pushing 'Wage Gap' Myth in Acceptance Speech

"And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons."In his acceptance speech last night Barack Obama pandered to women by pushing the "wage gap" myth. As we've discussed many times, men earn more than women on average for many legitimate reasons. These include:

1. Men work longer hours at more demanding and hazardous jobs
2. Men are more likely to travel, relocate or have long commutes for their jobs
3. Men are more likely to have more years and more consecutive years of experience, because women are more likely to work part time or take years off of work to care for their children.

Given these factors, it would be very hard for men to not earn considerably more than women. When men and women of matched qualifications are working in matched jobs, women earn as much as men do.

Obama has made these claims this many, many times. For example, in this interview he claims that women are paid only 78% as much as men are for the same job. He also discusses his new economic plan, which is oriented towards women. (Starts at 5:30, ends at 6:30)

To be fair, Republican party presidential candidate John McCain to date hasn't been any better. For one example, in this interview, McCain decries the mythical gap and pledges to eradicate it, saying, "We haven't done enough. We have not done enough. And I'm committed to making sure that there's equal pay for equal work. That there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society. And that is my record and you can count on it."

'In the park a guy was sitting on the ground. My son asked him if he was his daddy…it is heartbreaking'

Syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon sent me something touching and telling the other day. It's an email she received from a heroic single mother who adopted the child of two neglectful, drug and alcohol-abusing parents. The mother wrote:

We were in the park the other day and there was a guy sitting on the ground. He walked right up and sat down by that man and asked him if he was his daddy…

Men do not even have to be of the same race for him to ask if they are his daddy so he is not identifying with men who look like him. He is just identifying with men…This is a daily routine for us and it is heartbreaking.

Ouch. Read the full letter here.

Appeal Court Overrules Family Court's Shakedown of Dad

"Where husband earned a fixed annual salary that was half of what husband had previously earned, with a possible discretionary bonus up to 150 percent of that amount, support agreement requiring husband to pay nearly all his take-home pay in support payments and borrow for living expenses…was a miscarriage of justice…"

The recent decision by California's Fourth Appellate District Division Three in re Marriage of Mosley (8/14/08) speaks volumes about the way the child support system manhandles fathers. A father had to fight a big, expensive case just to get the courts to set his child support obligation on what he earns as opposed to what the court feels he might be able to earn. To learn more, click here.

Some of the other issues I'm covering this week include:

NOW's Position on Sarah Palin–an Appropriate Response?

Obama's Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act–Fair to Fathers?

Women's eNews Commentator Wants to Get Rid of Bikini Car Washes

Labor Day: Bruce Springsteen & the Quiet Dignity of Blue-Collar Men

He probably thought that we don't imprison people for being poor or in debt. He was wrong.

'I remarried with the understanding that I could never move away from my little girl's dad…'

Kathleen Parker: 'Fathers teach their girls how to live among men…a skill both useful and enjoyable'

New NOW Birth Control Campaign Might Be Worth Supporting

Baskerville: 'Many divorcing fathers innocently expect sympathy from feminists…They are soon disabused'

Program Helps Military Dads Stay Connected to Their Kids

Joe Biden: An Admirable Single Father

Author/Radio Host Shmuley Boteach: 'Do We Even Need Dads?'

Steve Moxon: 'Modern extreme feminism…[has] always been in the interests only of the elite of women'

If It's Stupid or Lazy, It Must Be Male

To comment on what I've written or to join the lively discussion on my website, simply click on the "comments" link below each blog post on my website.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks www.GlennSacks.com

Los Angeles, CA–Kathleen Parker's Save the Males criticizes the way "men, maleness, and fatherhood have been under siege in American culture for decades."

In the following excerpt from her chapter "Our Fathers, Our Selves," Parker discusses the damage that divorce (and being separated from their fathers) does to girls. Parker writes:

Another rarely mentioned reason that children need two parents is that they need protection from the other parent—not just physical, but emotional as well. Often a child raised by a single parent becomes too much the focus of that parent, too much the emotional partner. Adults who need their children to fill some void in their own lives are unintentionally placing an enormous burden on their children.

Boys who become little men to their mothers, and girls who become little women to their fathers, are being deprived of their rightful claim to more innocent concerns. I’m not talking about incest as we think of it, but there’s such a thing as emotional incest. Boys drafted to become emotional caretakers to their mothers—often forced to measure up to an unfair standard—eventually may find ways of proving themselves imperfect.

Girls, meanwhile, are at risk of being too controlled by their adoring fathers and may have problems exercising independence or finding males who measure up as mates. One thing fathers do exceedingly well is teach their girls how to live among men. This is a skill both useful and enjoyable. It also seems to be in short supply these days.

You don’t suppose there’s a corollary between father deprived daughters and an inability to relate well to males of the species? Or, just possibly, that teenage girls’ early sexual activity is related to a misplaced search for male attention and affection?

In fact, research tells us that girls who grow up without fathers tend to become promiscuous at early ages. Females want and will seek male affection. In the absence of a father in the house, a girl will seek male, fatherly affection outside the home. This is not genome tracking here. Two-thirds of births to unmarried teen girls are fathered by adults, usually men in their twenties. In looking for love from older men, girls would appear to be seeking father figures in their mates, confusing sexual attention with love.

Research also shows that girls without a biological father in the home tend to reach puberty earlier than girls with fathers. In a 1999 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that girls who have fathers actively involved in their lives—and who were also supportive of the girls’ mothers—tended to enter puberty later.

Nature is not stupid. Researchers theorize that a father’s physical presence keeps his female offspring sexually immature so that she is safe from other males who would exploit her, and possibly to reduce the risk of incest.

Girls also may unconsciously delay puberty based on their fathers’ behavior. Without the father, she becomes more readily available to other men. The same study suggests that exposure to the pheromones of unrelated males in the household—either Mom’s boyfriend or new husband—may cause girls to enter puberty prematurely. Where there is puberty, needless to say, there is the greater likelihood of sexual activity.

To learn more or to purchase Save the Males, click here. To read previous excerpts, click here.

Parker, a syndicated columnist who is published in over 300 newspapers every week, is concerned about the decline of fatherhood, and has favorably covered many of our action campaigns.

These include: Campaign Protesting Fox's Reality Show Bad Dads; Campaign Protesting Florida DCF's Mistreatment of Loving Father in 'Elian Gonzalez II' Case; Campaign Against PBS's Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence; and Campaign Against 'Boys are Stupid' Products.

Los Angeles, CA–Marlene, a reader, writes:

My divorce was finalized on my daughter's second birthday.  My ex-husband and I went through the motions to please the judge, but did it "our" way.   We maintained a proximity of less than 3 miles, spent holidays together, shared in all of our daughter's sports and academic activities.  I remarried with the understanding that I could never move away from my little girl's dad.  My ex never paid child support.  He "paid" by supporting our child.  She is the one that "paid" for our mistakes, and we had the obligation to make our decision to be apart as painless as possible.

Personally, I don't get it.  I think that if we step back to remember the passion and love that we once had for our ex-spouse, we will remember how we wanted the very best for each other. My ex (I would rather refer to him as my daughter's dad) and I now enjoy seeing our 21-year-old young lady flourish with a world of confidence.  She has been shown so much love by her dad and stepdad.  She is very stable and has adjusted well to our selfish decisions.

I urge any moms out there to take a step back and examine themselves.  The courts make the rules.  The courts are DESTROYING families because we're letting them.  Be fair to your kids.  In the end, your children will praise their mom for being the hero that says, "What the heck?  You wanna see your dad?  How long will it take you to get dressed?"  After all, ladies, what will it really hurt?

Flint, MI–From Friend of the Court nabbing parents who owe child support (Flint Journal, 8/13/08):

FLINT, Michigan — A floor installer had two choices Wednesday night — fork over $4,000 in unpaid child support or take his chances with the judge.

He chose the judge.

"I'll just have to go to jail I guess … I don't have any money," said the man as he was led away to a holding cell at the Genesee County Courthouse.

The Flint man, 44, was among the deadbeat parents in Flint who got unexpected visitors this week as part of the Friend of the Court's night warrant sweep that has been traveling around the county this summer.

"Some of these parents haven't paid in four of five years," said Friend of the Court Jack Battles.

Since June, the Friend of the Court has partnered with local police departments to round up parents for unpaid support.

This week's two-night operation in Flint added an extra twist as two judges gave up their evenings to arraign parents on the spot.

Of the 18 arrested Tuesday night, five saw a judge and were given the choice of making a payment or spending 45 days in jail.

One woman avoided jail when patrons at her local bar passed the hat to pay $500, Battles said.

At one Flint locale, police didn't find the man they were looking for but discovered someone there who wasn't on the list but who did have a child support warrant.

"So we grabbed him," said Battles.

Police brought in more wanted parents Wednesday night, knocking on doors around the city in the hunt for about 700 parents — a fraction of the 6,500 active warrants for unpaid support in Genesee County.

Nearly $13,000 was collected before Wednesday night's sweep and Battles said his office is constantly working on new ways to collect the debts.

The office is already looking at a plan that would allow them to seize vehicles from debtors.

I'm glad they're seizing the "deadbeats" cars–that way they won't be able to get to work to pay their child support.

I don't imagine this floor installer is one of those high-flying "deadbeats" in media mythology–it's a low-wage and unsteady trade and in a period of economic downturn, I imagine that his type of work is very much affected.

This floor installer probably chose the judge over the $4,000 he didn't have anyway in part because he thought the judge would be reasonable. He probably thought that we don't imprison people for being poor or in debt. He was wrong.

What's wondrous about this is that we hear a great deal about the punitive actions of child enforcement in Michigan. At the same time we hear a lot about the state's economic troubles–the lay-offs, the unemployment, etc. Hmmm–lots of "deadbeats," and lots of layoffs and unemployment–could there be a connection?