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Nick, I would really encourage you to get some counseling.

First off, when a man or woman loses custody as a result of a divorce decree and custody order, its noone's fault but their own. If they had married the right person, or lived up to their marital vows, they wouldnt be in that situation to begin with.

You seem to have a real problem with laying blame where it belongs. Listen close ~ if someone is unhappy with the terms of a custody order, it's their own fault. Not the judge, not society.

It was their choice to get married and have children to begin with. If you don't want to toss your hat into the ring of public law, then keep your johnson in the hangar to begin with.

That said, when a judge considers all the facts in front of him in making a custody decree, there is going to be a natural and eons old bias towards the mother. That is because when it comes to newbors, infants, toddlers and young children, the mother is more important. She nurses, she comforts, she mothers. That is NOT to say the father is unimportant. A concept you seem to have a real hang up about. That is just to say there is a natural bias because there is a natural fact ~ mothers ARE more important to a young child than fathers.

I would really encourage you to get some counseling.

Some barrister you are. Argumentum ad hominem. Is this really the limit of your talent? You can't answer my argument, so you question my mental stability? I hope you don't charge your clients more than five bucks an hour for that kind of performance.

when a man or woman loses custody as a result of a divorce decree and custody order, its noone's fault but their own.

Oh, stop it with the shibboleths. We're all big kids here and we all know better. I watched my brother-in-law get destroyed by the court system when even his ex didn't want it. When their kids entered kindergarten she went back to school herself, to finish her degree. Well, she got all infatuated with some professor, and the next thing we know she's decided to leave her husband for him. Couldn't help herself, ya know? She said herself that Mr. X was the perfect husband and father. The kids loved him. Hell, she loved him. She just didn't find him "exciting" anymore. She felt horrible about the whole thing... but she was in luuuuuuuv.

For this sin the father was sent into the distance of his childrens' lives by the court system -- for the good of the children, you understand -- and reduced to poverty while his ex moved in with her boyfriend and lived high on the hog with three sets of checks coming in. And you sit here and tell us that things are all as they should be, and that this is all his fault. What rubbish.

If you don't want to toss your hat into the ring of public law, then keep your johnson in the hangar to begin with.

We're talking about married people here. We're talking about the basic human capacity to have children, and the societal institutions like marriage that we use to insure that children are raised properly. What is this "keep your Johnson in the hangar" nonsense?

You are standing here in front of everybody, arguing that male citizens do not have a basic human right to expect to live in the same house with their own children... that they can and should expect to have their children taken away from them at the whim of government officials, and that their remedy for this is to "keep it in their pants." Don't go sending me to counseling until you figure out where that little piece of anti-male hatred is coming from.

Ultimately, you are about criminalizing male sexuality here, and you're trying to dress it up as some kind of age-old bias in favor of mothers. Did you even know that until this century, fathers were awarded custody of children in nearly all divorces? No, you didn't know that. You're just peddling nonsense to disguise your oh-so-reasonable-sounding arguments for why human males should be treated like animals in our court system. And why it's perfectly OK to do this on such a scale that we now have half the children in the country separated from their biological fathers.

I have to conclude from your comments and arguments here that you are not merely a bystander at this, or just some lawyer trying to justify making a living from other peoples' misery. You're actually in favor of criminalizing and dehumanizing men, and of separating the adult male population from children. In which case, God damn you.

"First off, when a man or woman loses custody as a result of a divorce decree and custody order, its noone's fault but their own.

That's the logic of an abuser. "I didn't want to hit you, you made me hit you!"

"If they had married the right person, or lived up to their marital vows, they wouldnt be in that situation to begin with.

Says who? Infidelity didn't exist a hundred years ago? Everyone on earth has a perfect "soul mate?" Divorce is the only reasonable response to marital discord? Utter hogwash and feminist propaganda of the highest order. The divorce industry has perfected the litigious game of "Let's you and him/her fight" to a degree heretofore unmatched by any other category of law. Divorce lawyers as a profession have taken marriage where Don King has taken boxing.

I've been following these issues intensely and studeously for almost eight years now with no personal axe to grind other than I'm a married man. This recent spate of FR threads on divorce and custody has been most enlightening, as they attract lawyers with opinions to a higher degree than the discussions in the men's or divorce forums. My new conclusion: Feminists, with their vitriol, their narrowminded bigotry, and their lack of common sense could not in a hundred years have advanced divorce and fatherlessness to the degree seen today. But in thirty years, the so-called "Family Courts" have become mills where the fastest track to a paycheck is to follow the "two legs good - three legs bad" stereotype to it's scripted conclusion. It's "for the children." The really cool thing for the legal profession is that it now harvests a second wave windfall as the sons of those custodial mothers move through the criminal justice system at about four times the rate of those from intact homes or even those with involved fathers.