Posted on 06/24/2005 5:10:11 AM PDT by RogerFGay
Death of a Father
June 23, 2005
by Roger F. Gay
Perry Manley is dead. He was a father and a good man. He spent a great deal of time and effort over the past 15 years fighting injustice in family law, particularly regarding issues of custody and child support. On Tuesday, he gave his life to the cause.
After years of protest marches, filing lawsuits, and objecting to the treatment he and other parents receive, to no avail, Perry Manley dressed himself in military clothing and went to the courthouse with one last appeal - and a dummy hand grenade. After being noticed by security guards, and confronted by police, he placed papers on the floor that he wanted to present to a judge. Then, one twitch and it was over.
The tragedy of Perry Manley's life and death is apparently not at an end. Readers of MensNewsDaily.com will likely not be surprised by the aftermath. A local paper, The Seattle Times, went directly into spin mode. (article) Not one, but three staff writers, plus two contributing staff writers and a researcher went to work portraying Perry Manley as an angry, confused, and obsessed personality who was simply too stubborn for his own good. Perry Manley's death, they contend, was suicide - that's just the kind of guy he was.
For 15 years Perry Manley raised critical issues that lie at the heart of human existence; family matters, children, his right to sustain himself, to act as the father he was, and for basic freedom from arbitrary government intrusion - and he was ignored. It is clear that there are those among us that would like everything he fought for during his life to die with him.
The staff at The Seattle Times started their report with "Perry Manley didn't want to pay child support" and described his legal pleas as "rambling." He didn't have a problem that needed to be fixed. He had an obsession.
But RealChangeNews.org, in an article the week before, seemed a great deal less confused. (article) He objected to divorce on religious grounds. He did not object to supporting his children, but objected to being forced to pay arbitrary amounts to his ex-wife. Forced to accept divorce, he felt strongly that he should have equal parenting time and that under such an arrangement, child support should not be ordered. He strongly objected to having child support withheld from his wages.
But even RealChangeNews.org got caught up in the spin. "Three attorneys with experience in family law say Manley's legal arguments don't excuse a man from supporting his children. They agree, however, that representation of fathers has been atrocious over the years - something that's slowly changing." I suppose though, if you're sufficiently intelligent and have a few more facts, you can put two and two together from that. Fathers get screwed in court. Perry Manley, who had suffered unemployment, was not able to pay the large arbitrary amounts the system requires of him. Screw him though - throw him in jail (again) for non-payment. Things are slowly changing. I guess that means someone might consider doing the right thing when hell freezes over.
It's certainly no coincidence that his fight began following the federal family law reforms (around 1990) that created a national fathers' rights movement. Similar reforms have gone into effect in other countries with an international fathers' rights movement as a direct result. What is called "child support" today is a large arbitrary amount set by a political process intended to favor private and public collection agencies. The higher the amounts are set, the more these institutions profit. "Child support" is just a label. The amounts ordered no longer have any direct relationship to children's needs or often - as in Perry Manley's case - the ability of parents to pay.
Attorney Ruth Moen insisted that men manipulate the system as often as women, a position that seems entirely untenable. Her description of how things work is built on images of court proceedings that took place at least a quarter century ago. Courts based decisions on facts and feelings in individual cases. Litigants (parents) tried to "manipulate" the court by presenting their circumstances and pleading their cases. Today, decisions are made en masse by legislators and review committees. How is it that a practicing family lawyer isn't aware of such dramatic changes in family law that have been in effect for 15 years?
RealChangeNews.org: "Lawyers say shared custody is a growing phenomenon, but one that only works when the divorced mom and dad can communicate without conflict." Raise your hand if you consult a lawyer when trying to decide how to best raise your children. Just as I thought - I don't see any hands. Responsible parents decide how best to raise their own children. If divorced, they may need to consult a lawyer to help make the arrangements they need. If a lawyer can't help make those arrangements, then a lawyer is of no use. Perry Manley found himself in that situation - oh, so familiar to millions of parents, especially fathers. He represented himself.
To construct an image of Perry Manley as a rambling buffoon, the staff at The Seattle Times turned to his ongoing disagreements with U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly. "Being required to pay child support for his three children, Manley claimed, was a form of involuntary servitude, where a man is forced to work to support a child he is not responsible for raising." Judge Zilly, along with several other judges, dismissed his claims that the state was violating his rights by garnisheeing his wages. In April, Perry Manley sent a letter to Judge Zilly accusing him of Treason. Manley said the crime was punishable by death and the letter was turned over to the U.S. Marshals Office.
Finding protection of individual rights AWL in the modern practice of law, he did the best he could on his own. In the years I've dealt with fathers' rights issues I've heard the effect of current "child support" law described as "involuntary servitude" many times and Perry Manley is not the first to conclude the laws are unconstitutional and to describe judicial support for these laws as treason. His arguments may have been technically incorrect, but I have never found these arguments illogical.
Finding current child support law to be unconstitutional is not particularly difficult. The amounts ordered as "child support" are arbitrary. They are decided en masse and applied in procedures that literally defend the arbitrary amounts against the intrusion of due process of law. Courts have preserved these laws only by taking the dramatic step of reclassifying marriage and family as public institutions and declaring that individual rights do not apply. (Thus, a fathers' rights political movement was born rather than fixing the problems through a correction in law obtained through litigation of an individual case - i.e. through "due process of law.")
Related: P.O.P.S. v. GARDNER, 998 F.2d 764 (9th Cir. 1993), U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals - child support reclassified as "social policy" to be legally treated like taxes and welfare entitlements rather than as a private interest subject to respect for individual rights. This case directly affected family law in the State of Washington where Perry Manley lived.
The arbitrary en masse approach leaves many fathers with unpayable debts. They face financial ruin when they cannot get orders realistically adjusted to circumstances. They are ordered to work most of their adult lives to pay off an arbitrarily determined debt - an amount unrelated to their children's needs - and threatened with debtors prison if they don't. No reasonable person would accept this debt and its enforcement procedures voluntarily. The issue of servitude is clear by definition. What distinguishes current "child support" from a personal obligation (incurred willingly by having children) is that the amounts are not realistically related to support of children and cannot be realistically adjusted to family circumstances.
Treason was intentionally defined very narrowly by the authors of the Constitution, does not include errors in judgment nor normally would it include intentional acts of corruption by judges. You cannot be charged with treason merely for defying the king - so to speak. You pretty much have to be a citizen who's helping a foreign force invade the country. But for someone not armed with this particular legal knowledge - even if wrong - the charge is not entirely unreasonable. (And besides; Maybe Perry Manley was just as correct in his interpretation as judges who canít find any reason to declare current child support laws unconstitutional.)
Judges have the power and the obligation to protect and defend the Constitution. That includes the power and obligation to protect and defend individual rights and the system of individual rights that is defined by the Constitution. No reasonable and informed person can now perceive the support of many courts over many years given to an alternate system, in which individual rights have been abolished, as upholding the obligation. By striking so directly at the heart of our political definition and identity, they strike at the country itself. The death of the Constitution by refusal to apply it is literally the death of the United States.
Corruption of family law started with a profit motive, but itís obviously had a much deeper impact. Perry Manley, like many others, recognized that it does not make sense to continue to ignore the problem. The problem Perry Manley and others face is that if judges refuse to obey the constitution and massively support corruption instead, who is going to do what to fix the problem? Perry Manley, a father and a good man, never asked to be part of this world of corruption. He just needed his problems solved.
Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst, international correspondent and regular contributor to MensNewsDaily.com, as well as a contributing editor for Fathering Magazine.
So he just quit and committed suicide by security guard? Seems awefully senseless to me. Not only did he cause harm to the guard (who had to kill him) but he caused harm to all his survivors and he destroyed any credibility he might have had and therby caused harm to the rights of fathers everywhere.
If his life was made into torture it's because he let it be torture to him. There is always a way out that isn't suicide.
While we disagree on the result of the POPS case, this article is very well done. I would only add the reason behind our takings clause added quite a lot of fuel to this fire.
Good.
What I was responding to was part of the article, so not, I'm not off the subject of the article.
Doesn't matter - he's dead.
No, dear, what I meant was, the man is dead - there is no case to comment on. He killed himself.
If you haven't survived 15 years of anything as gruesom as what he went through, you're in no position to judge. This isn't Monday night football ... the guy is dead ... armchair quarterbacking in this situation is more than a little tasteless.
Certainly I am. Did he commit suicide by security guard? yes he did. That means that rather than continue the fight he quit and sacrificed both his life and his cause for nothing.
Suicide is never the right answer. (now in his defense, since he did suicide that shows that he was not mentally competant but that fact also destroys his credibility. His cause loses again)
You have an agenda. Why bother us if you´re not revealing it?
I'm not the one taking a suicide story and turning it into a propaganda piece for the men's rights movement.
Look, I agree 100% that this guy got a bum deal. I agree that child support rules/regs and laws are dreadfully unfair to fathers in almost every case. I agree that divorce judges seldom if ever consider what is best for the children when awarding custody. I agree almost entirely with the guy's protests against how the law shafted him.
HOWEVER, and it's a big however, he destroyed his case when he committed suicide by security guard. He made it far too easy for his opponents to paint him as a mentally disturbed freak who didn't really know what was going on. (only the mentally disturbed would bring a hand grenade to a courthouse. And only the mentally disturbed would suicide)
By quitting he gave his enemies a clear field of fire to destroy everything he tried to build/fix. Not a smart move
So do I have an agenda? Probably. I have an agenda for the right (correct in this case) side to stop shooting itself in the foot by doing stupid things like committing suicide by security guard. How are the rest of us going to make any changes when people like the dearly departed allow the enemies to portray us all as mentally incompetant?
I have the same objection against those who kill abortionists. While I agree that all abortionists should die quickly we cannot do that as it leads to the pro-life cause being damaged. (We can however pray that God will change them or destroy them before they kill again). One 'pro-life' abortionist murderer tars us all with the religious wacko brush.
Do you understand me now?
Where in the world do you get that? I never said anything even remotely similar to that.
Only an idiot would really believe that corruption should be accepted because it has tragic consequences.
Corruption should never be accepted. One of the reasons I am displeased at this guy is that he accepted corruption by quitting.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Everybody understands that.
Exactly. Just because the government (or whomever) is corrupt does not give you the right tomurder yourself.
It does not excuse what the system did to him and continues to do to many others.
And where did I say it did?
You seem to be missing the entire point here. Instead of being a hero and continuing the fight this guy chose to be a loser and committed suicide by security guard. Nothing will ever change that. He damaged us and the cause of fathers everywhere by quitting. Why should fathers make a hero out of a quitter?
This guy is just a failed suicide bomber in the mens movement. And he had the same results as the islamic ones. Turned the rest of the country against his cause and harmed his family and children. He chose to be a loser
You're spinning so much that your comments have become quite dizzy. "Suicide" ... "quitter" ... those are your characteriztions aimed at attacking the guy to undermine the clear message of the event.
To understand the "clear message of the event" you must first understand the event.
A man walks into a courthouse with a grenade resulting in the security guards shooting him dead.
I'd call that suicide by security guard because no one in their right mind walks into a courthouse with a grenade (even if it turns out to have been a fake). The only conclusion that can be drawn is that he wanted to die and was too cowardly to do it himself so he used the security guards to pull the trigger.
So what's the message of the event? Don't walk into a courthouse with a grenade unless you want to die
Now, how does that help the cause of fathers and the unfair child support system?
John -- Your attempt at spin has failed. I'm being fair by telling you so. Your logic fell off a cliff some time ago. Now it's just downright idiotic.
It's a shame really, you could have done something good.
(BTW, please note that until this post I never said anything bad about you even while you were attacking me. With those manners I'd be amazed if you ever amount to much)
"Tragic but it's not a smart idea to take a hand grenade, live or not, to a courthouse."
The word "martyr" applies here. And it is a just cause.
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