Novel Idea...

[MYSONSDAD]

Newspaper Ads on Family Crisis



The message below ran today as a full-page advertisement in the National Weekly Edition of the Washington Times.  It will be repeated next Monday, March 14.  To see the ad with graphics as it ran in the Times, vist the ACFC website at //www.acfc.org and click on the AD CAMPAIGN button on the lower left menu.

This is the first in a series of ads we plan to run in the Times and perhaps other newspapers as well. In subsequent ads, we expect to add endorsements from prominent leaders and groups here in Washington and around the nation.

For this to continue, though, we need your help. We need support from all our members and from parents who are not yet ACFC members. The ad shows how to contribute to ACFC to enable us to run more ads and to undertake other initiatives here in Washington to advance the cause of family law reform.

These ads are not the only actions we have in the works. This is a crucial time for fathers and their children. You may have seen three strongly worded recent columns by prominent syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly. An unprecedented article in the New York Times also called attention to the injustices of family law. Fathers in Britain continue to garner media attention.

For months, we have been working here in Washington to create awareness of the destruction of families in family court and create a coalition including sympathetic organization leaders. We have met with congressional staffs and representatives of groups to encourage policies and legislation that will address this crisis.

These columns and ads are the first products of this effort. We must do more, and we must do it faster. To achieve this, we need your help.

We need to be able to work on these issues full time. For this to happen we need to increase our funding. We are planning a drive to approach major donors. Yet the bulk of our funding must come from membership: from you. A large membership base also increases our clout with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Here is what you can do:

   a.. Please join or renew your membership in ACFC.
   a.. Please make a larger contribution to ACFC, in the amount of $100, $250, $500, or more.
   a.. Urge friends and family members to join. (Forward this email.) Urge your attorney to join as a show of commitment to the principle of equal justice.
   a.. Join your local fathers' group. If it is not yet an ACFC affiliate, begin the steps to make it one. The paperwork is very simple. ACFC and your group will grow together.
   a.. Contact your local newspapers and television and radio stations and politicians. Tell them your story (briefly). 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. Eventually they will listen.
   a.. Stay connected with ACFC through our new journal, The Liberator and through our email list-serve for information about national developments, local groups and their activities, and coordinate your work with others.
To get a copy of the paper and this advertisement, contact:

Brian Bauman of the Washington Times National Weekly Edition.  The cost per paper including shipping is $4.25  He can be contacted by email at [email protected]

Send a check or money order to:
Brian Bauman
The Washington Times National Weekly Edition
3600 New York Ave., NE
Washington DC 20009
Reference the March 7, 2005 edition


Stephen Baskerville, President
Michael McCormick, Executive Director

********************************************************************************




An APPEAL to the

PARENTS of AMERICA


about the


DESTRUCTION of the

AMERICAN FAMILY





Americans today are rightly concerned about the family. We hear of a 50% divorce rate and an alarming out of wedlock birth rate. We see the effects on the children of divorce, who are more likely to commit crimes, abuse drugs, suffer mental and physical ill health, do poorly in school, become marginally employed adults, and lack the skills to keep their own marriages together. We see the effects in our own homes and on our own children. We hear controversies surrounding marriage being debated on the federal and state levels. We see our governments spending millions of dollars to promote marriage, fatherhood, and family stability. But what many Americans do not realize is that families are being forcibly dissolved by family courts and other agencies of government.

The weakening of America's families is caused not simply by social forces or cultural decline. It proceeds directly from programs and policies of our governments, paid for with our tax dollars. Important facts about divorce are being obscured and ignored by the media and by our leaders.

You need to know these facts:

   a.. Through no fault of their own, divorce is forced upon unwilling parents who are guilty of no grounds, such as adultery, desertion, abuse, or the like. Few realize that family courts usually force divorce upon one spouse (and sometimes both spouses).
   a.. Federal family policy drives the destruction of American families. Taxpayers' dollars subsidize the destruction of families. Divorce has become a major revenue source for state governments. The federal government's financial incentives paid to states to collect child support (US Code, Title 42, Chap 7, Subchapter 7, part D, sec. 666.) prompt states to set support guidelines so high as to encourage divorce. Federal financial incentives remove the moral and political incentive for states to reduce divorce rates.
   a.. Federal child support law is undermining morale and readiness in the Army Reserve and National Guard. The Bradley Amendment and US Code, Title 42, Sec 666, sub sec(a), para (9), part c, bars courts from reducing child support arrearages. Many reservists deployed to Iraq with child support obligations had no time before reporting for duty to seek court ordered reductions on the grounds their military pay was insufficient to pay their current obligation. Thousands of reservists could return home to face financial ruin and even jail!
   a.. Over 4,000 children's relationships with their parents are groundlessly impaired or severed by family courts in America each day.
   a.. Young men are now reluctant to marry, knowing they can lose their children, homes, earnings, and can be jailed, groundlessly. This is at cross-purposes to stated policy objectives encouraging family formation, including programs costing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to promote marriage and fatherhood. A 50% divorce rate has created a huge army of financially ruined, heartbroken, alienated, and angry parents deprived of their children and is responsible for an alarming increase in divorce-related violence.
   a.. Family courts routinely violate the constitutional rights of parents. Parental rights have been recognized for centuries as among the most basic constitutional protections. Family courts routinely defy the Supreme Court's recognition of parents' fundamental "liberty interest" in the "care, custody and companionship" of their children.


Please join us to stop an abusive and runaway family law system: We invite parents to join us in demanding that our elected officials at all levels investigate the machinery of family law and child custody and render a full and candid account to the American people.



Your assistance will allow us to place this advertisement in other newspapers.

It will also help us persuade policymakers here in Washington and nationwide to confront the true causes of American family decline.

Please send your tax-deductible contribution to the:

American Coalition for Fathers & Children
1718 M Street, NW
Suite 187
Washington, DC 20036
[email protected]
800-978-DADS (3237)

Or contribute on the Internet at //www.acfc.org


American Coalition for Fathers & Children

Stephen Baskerville, President  Michael McCormick, Executive Director





***************************************
Stephen Baskerville, PhD
President
American Coalition for Fathers & Children
1718 M Street, NW
Suite 187
Washington, DC  20036
//www.acfc.org
[email protected]
800-978-DADS (3237)

Department of Political Science
Howard University
Washington, DC  20059
202-806-7267
703-560-5138

For more than 40 articles on families and fathers, see: //www.stephenbaskerville.net.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Children learn what they live"