Messages

From:
http://www.glennsacks.com/nysp/

New York's Shared Parenting Bill has reached a critical point and we want to help give the bill a strong push forward.

New York is a battleground state for shared parenting and fatherhood. Family law has been in the spotlight there, as the New York Matrimonial Commission has held hearings on family law across the state. The Commission recently recommended no-fault divorce for New York.

A330, the New York Shared Parenting Bill, is sponsored by the Coalition of Fathers and Families New York, the New York affiliate of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children.

What the Bill Would Do

Today joint custody is rare in New York and sole custody for mothers is the norm. A330 would "require the court to award custody to both parents in the absence of allegations that shared parenting would be detrimental to the child." It would place the burden of proof that shared parenting would be detrimental where it should be--on the parent requesting sole custody.

The bill also establishes an order of preference for custody, the top preference being joint custody. If the court decides against joint custody, it must state its reasons.

How to Take Action

The bill is slated to be heard by the New York State Assembly's Children & Families Committee within a few weeks. Nearly three dozen New York State Assemblypersons have signed on to the bill as sponsors or co-sponsors, giving the bill momentum. This momentum will be lost if the bill dies in committee. That's why I want all of you to write to the committee members with your support for this bill.

According to FAFNY, letters and calls from anywhere in the country help because they give the bill attention and show the broad national support for shared parenting.

Like California, New York is a battleground state for family law because what happens there has a great impact on the family law of other states. A victory on A330 would reverberate across the country, aiding in ways large or small every child of divorce.

Hearing from so many of you over the past several years, it would be hard to put into words the amount of pain and misery caused by our current family law system and its sole custody, win/lose orientation. Now is your chance to help change the system.

Go to the following web page to find further instructions and links to communicate with the committee members:

http://www.glennsacks.com/nysp/

Maligning fathers
By Cathy Young  |  January 23, 2006

LAST NOVEMBER, I wrote about the controversy about the Public Broadcasting Service documentary, ''Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories," which claimed that male batterers and child abusers frequently gain custody of their children in divorce cases after the mothers' claims of abuse are disbelieved by the courts. The film caused an outcry from fathers' rights groups. In response to these protests, PBS announced a 30-day review to determine whether the film met the editorial guidelines for fairness and accuracy.

Unfortunately, it seems that the review amounted to little more than a whitewash.

On Dec. 21, PBS issued a statement acknowledging that the film ''would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues," but also concluded that ''the producers approached the topic with the open-mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists" and that the program's claims were supported by ''extensive" research.

Those claims included some highly inflammatory assertions: for instance, that three-quarters of contested custody cases involve a history of domestic violence, and that wife and child abusers who seek child custody after divorce win two-thirds of the time.

Connecticut Public Television, which co-produced ''Breaking the Silence," has supplied me with two detailed reports -- one from producer Dominique Lasseur, the other from Lasseur and George Washington University law professor Joan Meier, the film's lead expert -- on which PBS drew to support its conclusion. To call these reports shoddy and self-serving would be an understatement.

Thus, the reports cite the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Gender Bias Study of 1989 as proof that fathers who seek custody receive it at least 70 percent of the time -- even though this study does not distinguish custody disputes from cases in which the father got custody by mutual agreement. Other sources used to support the claim of male advantage are even weaker: They include the Battered Mothers' Testimony Project from the Wellesley Center for Women, which used a sample of 40 women with grievances about the family courts. No mention is made of much larger, representative studies of divorcing couples (such as the one reported by Stanford University psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and Harvard law professor Robert Mnookin in the 1992 book ''Dividing the Child") showing that far fewer fathers than mothers get the custodial arrangements they want.

Assertions that abusive men are especially likely to seek custody of children and are likely to prevail in court are backed by similarly slipshod evidence.

Defending the claim made in ''Breaking the Silence" that children are in greater danger of abuse from fathers than from mothers, Lasseur and Meier point to several limited studies that often lump together biological fathers with stepfathers and mothers' boyfriends (who, statistically, pose a far higher risk). Yet even these cherry-picked statistics show that a significant proportion of perpetrators of severe child abuse are mothers -- which makes the film's exclusive focus on abusive fathers difficult to defend.

The producer's account of how he went about researching the film reinforces the impression of bias. Battered women's advocates are presumed to be disinterested champions of victims, even though many of them have an ideological agenda of equating family violence with male oppression of women and children; advocates for divorced fathers or abused men are seen as tainted with ''antiwoman bias." In the same vein, Lasseur's report is supplemented by a letter signed by ''98 professionals" who support the film's conclusions -- but a number of those ''professionals" are feminist activists, including National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy.

Lasseur and Meier profess to be shocked that anyone could see the film as collectively maligning divorced fathers when it focuses only on abusive fathers in contested custody cases. Yet the film clearly suggests that if a divorcing father decides to fight for custody, chances are he's a batterer who's using the custody suit as an abuse tactic -- and that if he's accused of abuse, he's most probably guilty. And that's not prejudicial?

Notably, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler and especially Corporation for Public Broadcasting ombudsman Ken Bode have taken a far more negative view of the film than did the PBS review. On Jan. 4, Bode wrote, ''After close review including discussions and e-mail exchanges with those involved with the program or closely affected by it, I found the program to be so totally unbalanced as to fall outside the boundaries of PBS editorial standards on fairness and balance."

The one silver lining in this mess is that PBS has decided to commission another, more in-depth film on the subject of abuse and child custody. Let's hope that this time, it tackles the subject with real ''open-mindedness and commitment to fairness."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/23/maligning_fathers/

Sorry, I haven't been posting on the boards for a while. The SPARC boards are the best. I've still been chatting at SPARC, but a lot of my time has gone towards enlightening others at different sites. But, I consider SPARC my home. I wanted to share with my SPARC family some of what has been going on.

I chose to start posting on the JohnKerry.com website mainly for two reasons:
1) The site has forums which allow for posts to be made.
2) John Kerry is the first presidential candidate who is a divorced dad.

Before anyone gets too worked up about political party partisanship, that is not what this is about. I can show many members from each party who stand on both sides of the issues that affect us all. I'm a political praSLURPist. I don't really care what politicians call themselves as long as they do what I want. As such, I'm always looking for opportunities. The current political climate allows us to help reshape the political agenda.

When I first started posting on the JK site a couple of months ago, there were a fair number of regulars who posted adversarial comments about joint custody, equitable child support laws, and even about men in general. That did not discourage me; I saw it as a target rich environment. As you might imagine, I was the subject of much ridicule. Hey, so what, I've been through a divorce. It would be kind of hard for them to hurt my feelings, LOL  Instead of getting into personal spats with them, I backed up my arguments with the facts. Of course, it was hardly a fair fight with the resources that SPARC provides. The only rebuttals I've ever faced there were like, "that's not the people who I know."

Troubledmom came over to one thread. It was great to have a wingman, or wingmom as I called her. In that 60 some post thread, I was forced to call someone a bigot. Those are kind of harsh words, but I saw no other recourse for someone who continually made bigoted statements. Early on in the thread, I asked for the site administrators to look at the thread, but there was no intervention. So, I did what my dad taught me to do when I was being picked on and no one else was around. I didn't see walking away as an option, because to me that would be like walking away from the needs of my son. So, I fought back. Again, the resources of SPARC alone made it an unfair fight.

To my surprise, after we were already spatting, I realized that I was dooking it out with one of the moderators for the JK site. That's about the time I figured I would soon be posting more often back at our SPARC boards, because I didn't think I'd be around there much longer. Interestingly though, it was her posts that were finally edited/deleted and not my own. Mine were only edited where I called her a bigot, but all the posts of hers that substantiated that claim were removed. Somehow, POC had survived to post another day. But, the moderator was relieved of her duties.

For the most part, the JK site skies are now clear of jont parental adversaries. That is not to say that there aren't plenty more on the ground, waiting to take off and spew their venom if they think big brother is not hovering in the skies above. But, now there is a real opportunity to help reshape the agenda. The John Kerry site has pinned a topic to the top of a board entitled, "Parents Without Rights, Child Custody Laws".

Initially, the thread was not pinned and my reply to it was deleted. I figured I would receive some moderator action email warning that it might be the last time I was being warned. So, I replied to the thread again saying others knew what she was talking about, but not everything is displayed in the forums. This morning, I went to see if that was deleted too, and is when I found out that my original reply had been re-displayed and the thread had become a pinned topic.

I strongly encourage all of my SPARC buddies to make your thoughts known. I've had private conversations with some of the moderators at that site that John Kerry could make a statement about this issue. They seem to be wavering where once before, I don't believe that was a consideration. They need to hear from the millions of parents who have remained mostly silent until they get to court. If you guys speak up loud enough and often enough, there might not be so many of us being forced to be heard in court rooms.

Please share your thoughts on this pinned topic at the JK site:

http://forum.johnkerry.com/index.php?showtopic=34787

NBC Says Dads Can't Care for Their Kids
in New Series

August 4, 2005


Glenn Slams NBC's Meet Mister Mom on Air America's Charles Goyette Show
I slammed NBC's new "reality" show Meet Mister Mom on the Charles Goyette Show on Air America KXXT AM 1010 in Phoenix, Arizona on August 4. The tone of the show can be gathered from the intro:

"For most dads, 'man of the house' is more of an honorary title. Give dad a wrench or a carving knife and...well, he still needs lots of supervision. Sure, he'll squeeze a melon, but he has no idea why. Many dads go off to work and leave the tough job to mom--until now.
[Mom says goodbye, kid says 'we're doomed,' and an overwhelmed dad says 'I'm sweating']

Coming to NBC Tuesday, dads take on their greatest challenge--being a mom, and find out that doing mom's job can be a real mother.

[Overwhelmed dad says 'this is horrible' and then asks 'when's my wife coming home?']"

I contest the show's message that mom has it rough while dad has it easy, mom is smarter than dad, and mom is always right.

To watch excerpts of Meet Mister Mom, click here. To comment on Meet Mister Mom, click here.

To learn more about the contributions fathers make to their families, see my columns: Indiana Woman's 'Housework Strike': Maybe It's Husbands Who Should Strike (Gary Post-Tribune, 11/8/02) and Stay-at-Home Dads: A Practical Solution to the Career Woman's Dilemma (Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/29/02).

To learn more about unfair media depictions of fathers, see my column Why I Launched the Campaign Against Verizon's Anti-Father Ad (Pasadena Star-News, 11/18/04) and the His Side Campaign Against Anti-Father Verizon Commercial.

The show got lousy ratings and is being critically panned, so hopefully its run will be mercifully short.

Glenn Sacks




POC's Letter to NBC:

To Whom it May Concern:

In this day and age when the biggest barrier to good dads being able to spend more time with their kids is a court order, not a lack of desire, it is disheartening that NBC chooses to depict fathers as morons. It is about as funny as running a spoof telling black people to get to the back of the bus. If ever given the opportunity to participate in televison ratings I will make sure that even if I want to watch an NBC show that it is on one of my TV's that is not being monitored. That will be my form of protest until your company decides to air programs that portray families who value fathers. I will share this correspondence with friends and family and ask that they do the same.

Sincerely,


POC

I wrote my letter to Toys R Us. Long/short, I guess they don't want my son's Christmas list filled by their stores. Also told them to talk to Dominos Pizza to see how smart their marketing campaign is.

Minister tells fathers: Don't be wet
By Paul Waugh Deputy Political Editor, Evening Standard
28 October 2004
Fathers should spend more time alone with their children to help build up bonds that cannot later be broken by divorce, the Government's new minister for the family said today.

Lord Filkin also said fathers who gave up on their children because they received a brushoff from their former partners were "a bit wet" and should persevere in making contact.

The minister, himself a divorced father of three, said the protests of groups such as Fathers 4 Justice were "extreme" but insisted more needed to be done to improve relations between separated parents and their children.

While the state should not tell them what to do, fathers should be "going to the school open day" and also "cooking a meal occasionally or taking children on an outing by themselves".

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/14339105?source=Evening%20Standard

Even though my dad died from smoking cigarettes, I'm not going to get into whether grown ups should smoke and drink, or not. But, there can be no doubt that child support should not be based upon that consumption. Yet, that is exactly what income shares guidelines are based upon. Ask 10 people you know what child support is based upon. See how many know it is parental tobacco and alcohol consumption.

Here is your proof:

http://www.guidelineeconomics.com/fightcase/incomeshares.htm

Remember Rosa Parks?

Essentially this says that they believe kids should spend equal time with each parent. But, basic needs of chidren are less important than parental labels (CP vs. NCP). It's not hard to figure out what is right. If the kid spends 183 days at one home and 182 at the other, and both parents make the same money, then the 182 day parent should pay the 183 day parent 1/2 the price of one day of keeping the kid. As circumstances vary from that point on the spectrum, incremental differences in child support should coincide with the corresponding change in time or incomes. Duhh?? Hello, anyone home??

They are a complete joke. They would rather base child support upon parentla use of tobacco and alcohol than try to equitably provide for the needs of children. That is exactly what they have done.