Free Republic

The recent reincarnation of the Equal Rights Amendment was a good idea—until its backers decided to change the name. The ERA has been reintroduced into both the House and the Senate, and has over 200 congressional co-sponsors. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights, and civil liberties, says the bill "is going to be one of the items at the top of the agenda." Unfortunately, the bill’s sponsors have changed the ERA’s name to the “Women’s Equality Amendment.” There’s a major problem with that, because when considering injustices based on gender, today men...

Call it the backlash against the backlash. Over the past decade, Americans have increasingly understood that the divorce revolution, fatherlessness and single parent households are harming our children. Now those who view the traditional family as disadvantageous to women are firing back, defending women who choose single motherhood and depicting fathers as superfluous. Last fall Stanford University Gender Scholar Peggy Drexler penned the highly-publicized book Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men. This month Oxford Press released Wellesley College Women's Studies Professor Rosanna Hertz’s Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women...

Jane is a successful career woman. She has moved up rapidly in a competitive field, and is advancing her career by attending business school at night. Bob works out of their home and does most of the childcare. If Bob decides he doesn’t want Jane anymore, should he be able to take her kids away and push her to the margins of their lives? The opponents of the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative think he should. Under the NDSPI, unless a parent is unfit, both parents in a divorce will have joint legal and physical custody of their children. By...

Schwarzenegger Should Veto AB 2051 By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks The California Assembly just passed a domestic violence bill which will perpetuate the state’s harmful policy of excluding men and their children from receiving state-funded domestic violence services. Under AB 2051, only “battered women” are eligible for the shelters, hotel vouchers, counseling and legal services the state provides victims of domestic violence. Governor Schwarzenegger should veto this misguided legislation. Because AB 2051 is based on the discredited premise that men are rarely the victims of intimate partner abuse, the bill has aroused considerable opposition from domestic violence researchers and...

Child support enforcement programs are supported by all sides of the political spectrum, from women’s advocates on the left to traditionalists on the right. While this popularity is sometimes understandable, it has also allowed glaring and inexcusable abuses to fester and grow. Of these, none is more egregious than when men are forced to pay 18 years of child support for children who are not theirs, and who in many cases they’ve never even met. In “The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud,” a new article in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly, Washington DC attorney Ronald K....

In Kai Ma’s recent AlterNet column “The Difference Between a Womb and a Wallet” (7/26/06) she applauds a U.S. District Court judge’s quick, contemptuous dismissal of Matt Dubay’s “Roe v. Wade for Men” lawsuit. Dubay sought to wipe out the child support payments he is obligated to make to an ex-girlfriend who, he says, used a fallacious claim of infertility to deceive him into getting her pregnant. In opposing “Choice for Men,” Ma asserts that a “woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy is not the equivalent of a man's choice to financially opt out of fatherhood.” She cites the pain...

An important truth has been lost in the controversy over the way the Philadelphia Phillies handled pitcher Brett Myers after his recent arrest for spousal abuse. Mrs. Myers’ injuries and the accounts of several witnesses leave little reason to doubt her husband’s culpability. Nevertheless, the Phillies at first reserved judgment about the case, and allowed Myers to pitch. This was wrong, as the team admitted after widespread criticism, and Myers was given a leave of absence. However, in many domestic violence cases the men arrested do deserve the open mind and support which the Phillies mistakenly extended Myers. Spousal abuse...

Child support debtors are everybody’s favorite punching bag. The Daily News is apparently no exception, as reporter Dana DiFillippo recently penned two ill-advised, one-sided critiques of divorced and separated fathers. In Jail Threat Springs $$, DiFillippo highlights the story of a local "deadbeat” who offered a judge a “list of reasons why he had failed to pay almost $16,000" in child support. The judge “barks” at these explanations and gives the surprised father two months in jail. DiFillippo approvingly quotes prosecutor Maria McLaughlin, who “chalked up another victory” with the case, as McLaughlin blames the debtor for his incarceration. According...

The National Organization for Women turned 40 this summer, and formally celebrated its anniversary at its national conference in July. NOW President Kim Gandy has proudly recounted her organization's successes in opening up opportunities for women, and says they are “never giving up the dream of full equality for all.” Unfortunately, on some issues – particularly in family law and child custody – NOW's policies and actions contradict its ideals of “full equality for all.” This is most evident in the group's dogged opposition to joint custody and shared parenting. The logic behind shared parenting is hard to dispute. Kids...

The National Organization for Women turned 40 this summer, and formally celebrated its anniversary at its national conference in July. NOW President Kim Gandy has proudly recounted her organization's successes in opening up opportunities for women, and says they are “never giving up the dream of full equality for all.” Unfortunately, on some issues – particularly in family law and child custody – NOW's policies and actions contradict its ideals of “full equality for all.” This is most evident in the group's dogged opposition to joint custody and shared parenting. The logic behind shared parenting is hard to dispute. Kids...

BREAKING NEWS: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Slams PBS's Breaking the Silence November 30, 2005 Some of you have contacted me concerning donations to our PBS campaign. It is certainly true that this campaign has been costly both in terms of money and time. If you'd like to donate to support our efforts, click here. Thanks to those of you who have already donated. To learn more about our campaign, click here. To learn more about the way Breaking the Silence portrays a known child abuser as a heroic mom, click here. Corporation for Public Broadcasting Report: 'No Hint of Balance...

Over 2,000 Protesters Call, Write PBS over Anti-Father Film Breaking the Silence Within the first 48 hours of our new campaign, over 2,000 people called or wrote PBS to protest their anti-father film Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories. The film, which aired on some PBS affiliates on October 20 and will air on many others in the coming weeks, is a direct assault on fatherhood. The film portrays fathers as batterers and child molesters who steal children from their mothers.

A source at PBS sent us this confidential internal memo on Friday. The memo is an instruction sheet that PBS's national office has dispensed to their affiliates to instruct them as to how to deal with the thousands of people who have called or written them to protest the anti-father documentary Breaking the Silence. As you'll notice, the common theme of this memo is to stonewall protesters. As you may know, a men's and fathers' issues columnist named Glenn Sacks has asked his readers to contact PBS and member stations regarding BREAKING THE SILENCE, which is scheduled to air...

New Report on Maternal Homicide Crisis: Myth-Making and Manbashing By Glenn Sacks "Pregnant women murdered at an alarming rate." "Killings of new, expectant mothers mount." "Many new or expectant mothers die violent deaths." "Violence trails expectant mothers." "Pregnant mothers often die of murder." These headlines top a highly-publicized new series of articles by Donna St. George of the Washington Post. The series, which appeared in many major newspapers and media outlets this week, details an alleged epidemic of maternal homicide by male intimates. The series powerfully depicts the tragedies of murdered expectant or new mothers. The mother-to-be killed the day...

In the face of enormous opposition, California Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) has decided to withdraw a bill which would have granted custodial parents an almost unlimited right to move children far way from their noncustodial parents. The bill, SB 730, would have abrogated the California Supreme Court's recent LaMusga move-away decision. In that decision, the Court affirmed custodial parents' presumptive right to move but ruled that courts have the power to restrain moves which run counter to children's best interests. Opposition to the bill and unrestricted move-aways was led by the Alliance for Children Concerned About...

Men's rights radio talk show host and columnist Glenn Sacks recently announced the signing of a syndication agreement with the Salem network to bring his Los Angeles-based radio talk show, His Side with Glenn Sacks, to Seattle. The show, currently heard on KRLA 870 AM in Los Angeles,  will begin airing on September 7 on KKOL AM 1300 in Seattle, putting His Side in two of the top three markets on the West Coast. According to Sacks: "Most radio talk show hosts either ignore men's issues or use them as filler between sex talk. The expansion of His Side...

Mysterious Decline-Where Are the Men on Campus?By Glenn Sacks on 04/30/03 Everybody wants to know where all the men have gone. The Washington Post calls their disappearance the "question that has grown too conspicuous to ignore," and USA Today notes "universities fret about how to attract males as women increasingly dominate campuses." Females now outnumber males by a four to three ratio in American colleges, a difference of almost two million students. Men earn only 43% of all college degrees. Among blacks, two women earn bachelor’s degrees for every man. Among Hispanics, only 40 percent of college graduates are male....