Fatal flaws: VAWA 2005

[Brent]

Fatal flaws: VAWA 2005

By Gordon E. Finley
The Washington Times
July 19, 2005

For the past decade, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a reauthorization hearing today, has been a nearly $ 1 billion-dollar-a-year tax-supported industry based upon fatal flaws in three areas: (A) conception, (B) discrimination, and (C) administration. (a) Conceptually, Domestic Violence (DV) programs are predicated on the false presumption men always are the predatory perpetrators and women always the innocent victims. By contrast, the strongest and most consistent finding in decades of worldwide empirical DV research is that both men and women initiate DV at about equal rates and men are at least one-third of the physically harmed victims.

A second conceptual fatal flaw is that the only solution to DV is to break up the family and isolate men rather than provide social and counseling services to reunite families that can be rehabilitated. (B) VAWA operates at such a high level of blatant sex discrimination it could not pass muster under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs.

VAWA application forms explicitly state programs providing services for men need not apply. Nor are there requirements that women (who initiate one-half of the disputes) take anger management classes to work out their differences equitably with men.
   
    (C) Tragically, the VAWA administration also seems to have fallen under the control of gender superiority ideologues who misuse tax dollars to destroy families. These tax dollars also are used to institute "must arrest" policies where a parent (almost always the father) must be arrested during a domestic dispute even when there is no physical contact and even over the objection of the other parent. These tax dollars would be better spent providing counseling for both parents.

    So, what to do?

    There is a wide range of views among members of Congress who soon must vote on the reauthorization of VAWA -- as well as the general public. For those with concerns about VAWA, there are but two choices: sunset or rewrite. My view is VAWA is so harmful to children and fathers it should be sunsetted.

    --Interestingly, while many members of Congress are fearful of a women's backlash if they vote for sunset, they appear oblivious to a growing men's backlash vote. Republicans, in particular, seem to forget they owe their political ascension to overwhelming support from males and their spouses.

    Further, there is some evidence the women's block vote is less unified than it once was. The first comes from the small turnout to elect Gloria Steinem as president of NOW. The second is more elusive but surfaces as multiple fissures on multiple issues in heterosexual women who appear to be at a crossroads on women's issues.

For VAWA, the critical question will be whether heterosexual women want to support a program that may destroy the lives of men in their family of origin (grandfathers, uncles, fathers, brothers, cousins) as well as current relationships (husband, boyfriend, friends, coworkers).

    On the other hand, rewriting VAWA to correct fatal flaws will be a daunting task with a very short time line. Below are a few examples of required changes.

    • First, and most critically, allegations of DV should be tried in criminal court with the protection of due process. If the allegations are unsubstantiated, the focus should be on family preservation and counseling services. If the allegations are substantiated, rehabilitation services should be considered.

    • Second, following Title IX, sex discrimination must be eliminated throughout and the focus should be on victim need.

    • Third, everyone should "follow the money." Administratively, it seems past VAWA funds have flowed to groups espousing a gendered political agenda. Two groups conspicuously absent from funding are men's programs and religious institutions. Religious institutions, along with the family, traditionally have been considered as bedrock social institutions. In my view, religious institutions should expand their ministries to meet two currently underserved but dramatically evident family needs: DV and divorce.

     While men's shelters and religious organizations lack a track record because of past discrimination, they should be considered on an equal footing with existing providers. Indeed, if reauthorized, a new mechanism must be established for fair distribution of VAWA monies on the basis of victim need.

    • Finally, for a comprehensive understanding of VAWA, two Web sites provide fine-grained analyses and excellent critiques: (//www.mediaradar.org) and ( //www.VAWA4ALL.org). Both should be required reading for members of Congress as well as the interested public.
   
    Gordon E. Finley is a professor of psychology at Florida International University.
   
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050718-092251-1716r.htm

[MYSONSDAD]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/ps20050718.shtml

Time to dispose of radical feminist pork
Phyllis Schlafly (archive)

July 18, 2005

If Republicans are looking for a way to return to their principles of
limited government and reduced federal spending, a good place to
start
would be rejection of the coming reauthorization of the Violence
Against
Women Act sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. It's a mystery why
Republicans continue to put a billion dollars a year of taxpayers'
money
into the hands of radical feminists who use it to preach their
anti-marriage and anti-male ideology, promote divorce, corrupt the
family
court system, and engage in liberal political advocacy.

Accountability is supposed to be the watchword of the Bush
administration,
but there's been no accountability or oversight for the act's
spending of
many billions of dollars. There is no evidence that the Violence
Against
Women Act has benefited anyone except the radical feminists on its
payroll.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is gearing up for a battle
royal
over the Supreme Court vacancy, has scheduled a hearing on the act
for
mid-July. It's apparently designed as a be-nice-to-Biden-before-the
court-fight event, since no critic has been invited to speak.

Let's have a reality check. The Violence Against Women Act's
gender-specific title is pejorative: it's based on the false,
unscientific, unjust and blatantly offensive premise that men are
innately
violent and abusive toward women, making all women victims of men.

The president of Harvard University was publicly pilloried for months
earlier this year for implying innate differences between men and
women.
But the act is spending a billion dollars a year to inculcate that
very
notion in the minds of men and women who are having marital
difficulties,
as well as police, prosecutors, psychologists and family court judges.

Feminists staged tantrums at the suggestion of innate math-aptitude
differences between men and women, but the whole premise of the
Violence
Against Women Act is that men have an innate propensity to violence
against women. It's not because some are bad individuals or drunks or
psychologically troubled, but because men want to keep women
subservient
in an oppressive patriarchal society.

The Violence Against Women Act was passed using such bogus statistics
as
"a woman is beaten every 15 seconds" and "80 percent of fathers who
seek
custody of their children fit the profile of a batterer." Remember
the
Super Bowl hoax, the ridiculous claim that "the biggest day of the
year
for violence against women" is Super Bowl Sunday? It's an assertion
conclusively refuted by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers' research.

The Violence Against Women Act comes out of Andrea Dworkin's tirades
of
hate such as, "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer
and
also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." The act
comes
out of Gloria Steinem's nonsense, such as "the patriarchy requires
violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain
itself."

Here is some mischief in act-funded activities that should be
investigated
in the coming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

The act refuses to provide any help whatsoever for male victims of
domestic violence. Let's hear from professor Martin Fiebert of
California
State University at Long Beach who compiled a bibliography of 170
scholarly investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 analyses,
which
demonstrate that women are almost as physically abusive toward their
partners as men.

The act encourages women to make false allegations, and then petition
for
full child custody and a denial of all fathers' rights to see their
own
children.

The act promotes the unrestrained use of restraining orders, which
family
courts issue on the woman's say-so. This powerful weapon (according
to the
Illinois Bar Journal) is "part of the gamesmanship of divorce" and
virtually guarantees that fathers are expelled from the lives of
their own
children.

A woman seeking help from an act-funded center is not offered any
options
except to leave her husband, divorce him, accuse him of being a
criminal
and have her sons targeted as suspects in future crimes. The Violence
Against Women Act ideology rejects joint counseling, reconciliation
and
saving marriages.

The act denies that alcohol and illegal drugs are a cause of domestic
violence, a peculiar assumption contrary to all human experience. In
fact,
most domestic violence incidents involve those components.

The act uses a definition of domestic violence that blurs the
difference
between violent action and run-of-the-mill marital tiffs and
arguments.
Definitions of abuse can even include minor insults and refusing to
help
with child care or housework.

The act funds the re-education of judges and all law enforcement
personnel
to teach them feminist stereotypes about male abusers and female
victims,
how to game the system to empower women, and how to ride roughshod
over
the constitutional rights of men.

The act forces Soviet-style psychological re-education on men. The
accused
men are not given treatment for real problems, but are assigned to
classes
where feminists teach shame and guilt because of a vast male
conspiracy to
subjugate women.

The Violence Against Women Act-funded centers engage in political
advocacy
for feminist legislation such as the "must-arrest" laws even if there
is
no sign of violence and even if the woman doesn't want the man
arrested,
and political advocacy against non-feminist legislation such as
shared
parental rights.

It's time to stop the act from spending any more taxpayers' money to
promote family dissolution and fatherless children.

©2005 Copley News Service

[MYSONSDAD]

Open Letter to Members of Congress on

      the Violence Against Women Act

      July 15, 2005

      For the Special Attention of Senators Biden, Specter, and members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee:

      Recognizing the need to protect all citizens from violence, the
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, S. 1197, HR 2876), as currently written,
is deceptive in its purported aims and destructive to American families and
freedom. Well-intentioned lawmakers are being misled about its purposes and
effects. Feminist advocate Andrea Dworkin acknowledged that the original
bill was enacted only because "senators don't understand the meaning of the
legislation that they pass." We urge you to withhold or withdraw support for
this bill until it is significantly modified.

      Destruction of Families First and foremost, this bill is highly
destructive to American families. It facilitates family dissolution and
increases the number of fatherless children.

      Though advertised as a measure to protect women, its provisions are
more likely to be used as weapons in divorce and custody battles. As Thomas
Kasper writes in the current Illinois Bar Journal, domestic violence
measures funded by VAWA readily "become part of the gamesmanship of
divorce."

      It is well established that most domestic violence occurs outside of
marriage or after its breakup and that a married household is the safest
environment for women and children. By encouraging marital breakup, this
legislation may exacerbate the problem it ostensibly exists to solve.

      At a time when governments are spending money to combat "Fatherless
America," we should not simultaneously fund programs that create the very
problem that elsewhere we are trying to solve.

      Funding of Ideological Advocacy VAWA funds organizations that pursue a
strongly feminist and leftist agenda. Regardless of partisanship, it is not
proper for the United States government to fund political advocacy or
ideologies. "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation," wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, "it is that no
official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics,
nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."

      Denies the "Equal Protection of the Laws" Scholars recognize that men
and women initiate domestic violence in roughly equal numbers and that a
large percentage of victims are male. Though men are more often victims of
violence that is premeditated or contracted, they receive no protection
under this act. Officials sometimes claim that the act is blind in its
allocating resources, though in practice this is not the case. "Strategies
for preventing intimate partner violence should focus on risks posed by
men," states a paper by the Department of Justice.

      Erodes the Bill of Rights Criminal statutes against violent assault
already exist, which guarantee due process of law to the accused. By
bypassing these statutes, VAWA also bypasses due process. The New Jersey Law
Journal reports on a training seminar where judges were openly instructed to
ignore the constitutional rights of Americans:

      "Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional
rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order.
Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him,
'See ya' around.' We don't have to worry about the[ir] rights."

      Politicizes Law Enforcement VAWA injects political ideology into law
enforcement and designates criminals and victims not according to what they
have done or suffered but by who they are.

      VAWA also blurs the distinction between violent crime and non-violent
personal conflict. Federally funded groups and the Justice Department itself
use vague terms to describe crimes: "jealousy and possessiveness,"
"name-calling and constant criticizing, insulting, and belittling the
victim, "blaming the victim for everything," "ignoring, dismissing, or
ridiculing the victim's needs," "lying, breaking promises, and destroying
the victim's trust," "criticizing the victim and calling her sexually
degrading names."

      Expensive and Wasteful Requiring federal taxpayers to subsidize family
destruction is poor public policy. This $4 billion could be returned or
spent more usefully elsewhere.

      Recommendations

      Though some advocate that VAWA funding be discontinued, at a minimum,
we urge the following modifications:

        a.. The name of the legislation should be changed to the Family
Violence Prevention Act.
        a.. The Act should be amended to explicitly prohibit denial of
funding or services to any victims of domestic violence, without regard to
race, ethnicity, gender, or religious affiliation. We suggest this wording:
"Nothing in this statute shall be construed as prohibiting funding for
programs focused on or serving male victims of domestic violence. Male
victims shall be considered an underserved population."
        a.. Funds dispersed under the Act should be strictly prohibited from
being used for any political purpose, including campaigns to influence
legislation or public policy.
      We are also concerned that legislative hearings receive testimony from
a diversity of witnesses, including male victims of domestic violence, women
who can testify to the harm VAWA has done to them and their families, and
researchers whose work is based on scientific principles rather than
ideology. We suggest, in particular, professors Murray Straus of the
University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory and Richard Gelles,
Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of
Pennsylvania.

      Sincerely,

      Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum

      Stephen Baskerville, President, American Coalition for Fathers and
Children
      Paul M. Weyrich, National Chairman, Coalitions for America

      William J. Murray, Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition

      Morton C. Blackwell, Virginia Republican National Committeeman

      Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman, American Family Association
      Deborah Weiss, GOPbloggers.com

      Steven Mosher, President, Population Research Institute

      Colin A. Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring

      James L. Martin, President, 60 Plus Association

      Stephen Stone, President, Renew America
      Maurice H. McBride, Tanya K. Skeen, Family Action Council
International

      Mark B. Rosenthal, RADAR: Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse
Reporting




"Children learn what they live"

[Hawkeye]

I'd bet everyone here a hundred bucks, these radical feminists, Orrin Hatches and Arlen Specters can't say "gender neutral" or "Gender Equality". You too, Joe Biden... and Wellstones... and Stienems...

Sorry if my spelling is off tonite, but these folks bask in what they've taken from US, our children, our money... and mess around with more and more, and yet MORE...  goofy laws.

And who benefits... The lawyers... come on, everyone... The lawyers, the ones who steal your kids away... from their other parent.

[MYSONSDAD]

RADAR ALERT:


Fresh Ammo for Shock and Awe

Pressure continues to mount to reform VAWA, a law that discriminates against men and shreds their civil liberties.

In recent weeks a number of Op-Ed columns have targeted VAWA. On Tuesday, well-known writer Phyllis Schlafly published a bell-ringer column that called VAWA an example of "anti-marriage and anti-male ideology" and called for persons to "stop the act from spending any more taxpayers' money to promote family dissolution and fatherless children."

Her full column is reprinted below.

WE NEED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MOMENT.

RADAR is calling on all persons to disseminate this column far and wide. TODAY, please forward Mrs. Schlafly's column to the following:

Your Representative and two Senators in Washington DC (fax, letter, or e-mail is OK - whatever is easiest for you)
The Editor(s) of your local newspaper(s)
One or more listservs or on-line discussion groups that you participate in
Remember that to the media, what's news today is history tomorrow, so please take action TODAY. And always be polite in your dealings.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Time to Dispose of Radical Feminist Pork
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=8134
Phyllis Schlafly
July 19, 2005

If Republicans are looking for a way to return to their principles of limited government and reduced federal spending, a good place to start would be rejection of the coming reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. It's a mystery why Republicans continue to put a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money into the hands of radical feminists who use it to preach their anti-marriage and anti-male ideology, promote divorce, corrupt the family court system, and engage in liberal political advocacy.

Accountability is supposed to be the watchword of the Bush administration, but there's been no accountability or oversight for the act's spending of many billions of dollars. There is no evidence that the Violence Against Women Act has benefited anyone except the radical feminists on its payroll.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is gearing up for a battle royal over the Supreme Court vacancy, has scheduled a hearing on the act for mid-July. It's apparently designed as a be-nice-to-Biden-before-the court-fight event, since no critic has been invited to speak.

Let's have a reality check. The Violence Against Women Act's gender-specific title is pejorative: it's based on the false, unscientific, unjust and blatantly offensive premise that men are innately violent and abusive toward women, making all women victims of men.

The president of Harvard University was publicly pilloried for months earlier this year for implying innate differences between men and women. But the act is spending a billion dollars a year to inculcate that very notion in the minds of men and women who are having marital difficulties, as well as police, prosecutors, psychologists and family court judges.

Feminists staged tantrums at the suggestion of innate math-aptitude differences between men and women, but the whole premise of the Violence Against Women Act is that men have an innate propensity to violence against women. It's not because some are bad individuals or drunks or psychologically troubled, but because men want to keep women subservient in an oppressive patriarchal society.

The Violence Against Women Act was passed using such bogus statistics as "a woman is beaten every 15 seconds" and "80 percent of fathers who seek custody of their children fit the profile of a batterer." Remember the Super Bowl hoax, the ridiculous claim that "the biggest day of the year for violence against women" is Super Bowl Sunday? It's an assertion conclusively refuted by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers' research.

The Violence Against Women Act comes out of Andrea Dworkin's tirades of hate such as, "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." The act comes out of Gloria Steinem's nonsense, such as "the patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself."

Here is some mischief in act-funded activities that should be investigated in the coming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

The act refuses to provide any help whatsoever for male victims of domestic violence. Let's hear from professor Martin Fiebert of California State University at Long Beach who compiled a bibliography of 170 scholarly investigations, 134 empirical studies and 36 analyses, which demonstrate that women are almost as physically abusive toward their partners as men.

The act encourages women to make false allegations, and then petition for full child custody and a denial of all fathers' rights to see their own children.

The act promotes the unrestrained use of restraining orders, which family courts issue on the woman's say-so. This powerful weapon (according to the Illinois Bar Journal) is "part of the gamesmanship of divorce" and virtually guarantees that fathers are expelled from the lives of their own children.

A woman seeking help from an act-funded center is not offered any options except to leave her husband, divorce him, accuse him of being a criminal and have her sons targeted as suspects in future crimes. The Violence Against Women Act ideology rejects joint counseling, reconciliation and saving marriages.

The act denies that alcohol and illegal drugs are a cause of domestic violence, a peculiar assumption contrary to all human experience. In fact, most domestic violence incidents involve those components.

The act uses a definition of domestic violence that blurs the difference between violent action and run-of-the-mill marital tiffs and arguments. Definitions of abuse can even include minor insults and refusing to help with child care or housework.

The act funds the re-education of judges and all law enforcement personnel to teach them feminist stereotypes about male abusers and female victims, how to game the system to empower women, and how to ride roughshod over the constitutional rights of men.

The act forces Soviet-style psychological re-education on men. The accused men are not given treatment for real problems, but are assigned to classes where feminists teach shame and guilt because of a vast male conspiracy to subjugate women.

The Violence Against Women Act-funded centers engage in political advocacy for feminist legislation such as the "must-arrest" laws even if there is no sign of violence and even if the woman doesn't want the man arrested, and political advocacy against non-feminist legislation such as shared parental rights.

It's time to stop the act from spending any more taxpayers' money to promote family dissolution and fatherless children.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date of RADAR Release: July 21, 2005

To track the current status of VAWA, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and enter the bill number: Senate bill S. 1197; House of Representatives bill H.R. 2876.

To receive RADAR Alerts, press releases, and other special announcements, sign up for the RADAR E-lert. You can sign up for the E-lert on the RADAR home page at http://www.mediaradar.org. Your e-mail address will be kept confidential, and will not be shared with any outside organization. It's fast, easy, and keeps you in the loop.

Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) is a coalition of men and women working to assure media balance and accuracy in coverage of the domestic violence issue.

 
"Children learn what they live"

[Hawkeye]

http://www.newswithviews.com/Sacks/glenn23.htm
http://www.americandaily.com/article/8342
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-20.html


More info links... VAWA is BOGUS... !!!!!!!!! It works both ways.

[MYSONSDAD]

                                                                   
 
The Violence Against Women Act is one of the most important laws affecting families, noncustodial parents, and children.  It is a 5-year authorization for most of the domestic violence programs (including restraining orders) used throughout the United States.  Once passed, it cannot be changed substantially for another 5 years.  
 
We at ACFC have been working unceasingly to raise awareness among legislators of the danger of this law.  We also need action from you now.  This is one of the highest priorities of the year.
 
Our strongest tool is the letter below: endorsed by 14 leaders of national organizations, was organized by ACFC and delivered to members of Congress on Friday.
 
We are publishing this letter as a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times National Weekly Edition and possibly other newspapers.
 
Here's how you can help:
Please second this action with your own letters to members of Congress now.  Regardless of what you might have read elsewhere, it is entirely appropriate and important to write your members of Congress (both the Senate and the House of Representatives) and express your views on VAWA.  You may use the pre-composed message below, but your voice will have a greater impact if you can compose your own message in your own words.  Please be positive and respectful. TAKE ACTION NOW.

Use the points in our letter, including the recommendations toward the end, as a guideline, but -- and this is important -- address your views to members in their own offices (preferably field offices in the home state or district), not to the committee offices or staff.  (Faxes or phone calls are best.  Emails have less impact.  Letters currently require 3 weeks to clear security.)  The Senate held hearings Tuesday, July 19 and the witness list was 100% stacked against us.  The House is not planning to hold hearings at all and VAWA reauthorization may be imminent.  The time to make your voice heard is NOW.

Also: Please donate to ACFC to enable us to run this letter as a newspaper ad and continue our larger campaign to educate public officials about the real causes of family breakdown.

BREAKING NEWS:  

1.  Phyllis Schlafly has just written her second article on VAWA (stronger than the first), which is also her sixth this year on the corruption of the divorce industry.  Urge your local newspaper to run this syndicated column by Phyllis this week.  READ THE ARTICLE.

2. Gordon Finley had a fine op-ed piece in Tuesday's Washington Times.  READ THE ARTICLE.

3.  I have an article on VAWA scheduled for next issue of The American Conservative, due out next Monday, July 25.  

IMPORTANT:  At ACFC, we are working non-stop to protect your interests, your families, and your freedom, here in Washington.  But we cannot do this alone.  We need financial support from you to continue.  The signatures below demonstrate how much support we have already garnered with important groups nationally.  With your support, we can expose this family-destruction machine and bring it under control.  Without it, our efforts will collapse.  

Please click here to make your tax deductible contribution.

Final Note: We have only begun to fight back against the destruction of our families.  We will be undertaking MORE campaigns. We will confront the federal child support regime.  We will encourage officials to protect parental rights.  We will be publishing MORE newspaper ads.  Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know and spread this message to millions of American families!  Let no one doubt our resolve.

Stephen Baskerville
President, ACFC
 
*****************************************************

ACFC thanks David Burroughs of the Safe Homes and Families Coalition for his contribution to the letter below and his continual effort to change this flawed legislation.  Visit David's site at:  http://www.vawa4all.org/

The following letter was hand delivered by dedicated volunteers to every member of Congress last Friday, July 15 2005. Together, we make a difference.

Open Letter to Members of Congress on

the Violence Against Women Act

July 15, 2005

For the Special Attention of Senators Biden, Specter, and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Recognizing the need to protect all citizens from violence, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, S. 1197, HR 2876), as currently written, is deceptive in its purported aims and destructive to American families and freedom. Well-intentioned lawmakers are being misled about its purposes and effects. Feminist advocate Andrea Dworkin acknowledged that the original bill was enacted only because "senators don't understand the meaning of the legislation that they pass." We urge you to withhold or withdraw support for this bill until it is significantly modified.

Destruction of Families First and foremost, this bill is highly destructive to American families. It facilitates family dissolution and increases the number of fatherless children.

Though advertised as a measure to protect women, its provisions are more likely to be used as weapons in divorce and custody battles. As Thomas Kasper writes in the current Illinois Bar Journal, domestic violence measures funded by VAWA readily "become part of the gamesmanship of divorce."

It is well established that most domestic violence occurs outside of marriage or after its breakup and that a married household is the safest environment for women and children. By encouraging marital breakup, this legislation may exacerbate the problem it ostensibly exists to solve.

At a time when governments are spending money to combat "Fatherless America," we should not simultaneously fund programs that create the very problem that elsewhere we are trying to solve.

Funding of Ideological Advocacy VAWA funds organizations that pursue a strongly feminist and leftist agenda. Regardless of partisanship, it is not proper for the United States government to fund political advocacy or ideologies. "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation," wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."

Denies the "Equal Protection of the Laws" Scholars recognize that men and women initiate domestic violence in roughly equal numbers and that a large percentage of victims are male. Though men are more often victims of violence that is premeditated or contracted, they receive no protection under this act. Officials sometimes claim that the act is blind in its allocating resources, though in practice this is not the case. "Strategies for preventing intimate partner violence should focus on risks posed by men," states a paper by the Department of Justice.

Erodes the Bill of Rights Criminal statutes against violent assault already exist, which guarantee due process of law to the accused. By bypassing these statutes, VAWA also bypasses due process. The New Jersey Law Journal reports on a training seminar where judges were openly instructed to ignore the constitutional rights of Americans:

"Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order. Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, 'See ya' around.' We don't have to worry about the[ir] rights."

Politicizes Law Enforcement VAWA injects political ideology into law enforcement and designates criminals and victims not according to what they have done or suffered but by who they are.

VAWA also blurs the distinction between violent crime and non-violent personal conflict. Federally funded groups and the Justice Department itself use vague terms to describe crimes: "jealousy and possessiveness," "name-calling and constant criticizing, insulting, and belittling the victim, "blaming the victim for everything," "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim's needs," "lying, breaking promises, and destroying the victim's trust," "criticizing the victim and calling her sexually degrading names."

Expensive and Wasteful Requiring federal taxpayers to subsidize family destruction is poor public policy. This $4 billion could be returned or spent more usefully elsewhere.

Recommendations

Though some advocate that VAWA funding be discontinued, at a minimum, we urge the following modifications:

The name of the legislation should be changed to the Family Violence Prevention Act.
The Act should be amended to explicitly prohibit denial of funding or services to any victims of domestic violence, without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, or religious affiliation. We suggest this wording: "Nothing in this statute shall be construed as prohibiting funding for programs focused on or serving male victims of domestic violence. Male victims shall be considered an underserved population."
Funds dispersed under the Act should be strictly prohibited from being used for any political purpose, including campaigns to influence legislation or public policy.
We are also concerned that legislative hearings receive testimony from a diversity of witnesses, including male victims of domestic violence, women who can testify to the harm VAWA has done to them and their families, and researchers whose work is based on scientific principles rather than ideology.  We suggest, in particular, professors Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory and Richard Gelles, Dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sincerely,

Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum

Stephen Baskerville, President, American Coalition for Fathers and Children

Paul M. Weyrich, National Chairman, Coalitions for America

William J. Murray, Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition

Morton C. Blackwell, Virginia Republican National Committeeman

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman, American Family Association

William Greene, President, RightMarch.com

Deborah Weiss, GOPbloggers.com

Steven Mosher, President, Population Research Institute

Colin A. Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring

James L. Martin, President, 60 Plus Association

Stephen Stone, President, Renew America

Maurice H. McBride, Tanya K. Skeen, Family Action Council International

Mark B. Rosenthal, RADAR: Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting

 
 
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"Children learn what they live"