Taking the Issue of Equal Parental Rights Out of Political and Cultural Darkness

Fathers interested in the progress of fathers’ rights may have heard that Michigan Representative Jim Runestad introduced House Bill 4691, which

Rep. Jim Runestad, Michigan House of Representatives.

aims at providing equal parental time to parents (the bill specifies that a child shall not spend more than 200 nights per year at one’s parent home, unless there is an agreement by both parties). Given that family courts tend to grant custody to the mother in divorce proceedings, Bill 4691 sounds like a step in the right direction.

So, out of curiosity, I decided to check where Representative Runestad stood on other issues. I was not pleased.

Runestad and I do not have the same view on parenting, starting with what he considers a safety issue for his 14-year old daughter, now in middle school. Interviewed by John Perry (Legal Analyst), Runestad blasted the Michigan Board of Education guidelines protecting transgender students. One of Runestad’s subject of wariness about the Board guidelines is the fact that a transgender (male) student can have access to female bathrooms. Runestad conjectures that these transgender students may not know who they are: one day they think they are male, the other day female. While Runestad totally ignores the much documented need to protect these students, he seems to fear a male predator taking the pretext of a fake identity to assail female students in the bathroom. No kidding.

If my daughters were of Runestad daughter’s age, rather than malevolent LGBT students, I would fear the occurrence of another Columbine or Sandy Hook, and the perils of more weapons to more armed nut cases. However Runestad proudly voted in favor of “the right to carry” legislation, meaning right to “conceal carry” on the laudable motive that law-abiding citizens, who can “already carry a firearm without permit or training requirement in the State of Michigan,” should not be unfairly penalized. Tears come to my eyes at this noticeable legislative achievement.

Last but not least, Runestad strives to improve “a perfect voting record” while working on a piece of legislation that would ban policies that protect illegal immigrants. In this project, the two sanctuary cities of Michigan, Detroit and Ann Arbour, are targeted on the usual obnoxious grounds that illegal immigrants imply increased insecurity, low wages and a drain on public resources. Trumpian fallacies.

So what? Shouldn’t fathers from all sides of the aisle, in a spirit of bipartisanship, support House Bill 4691?

I am no Michigan voter, but my answer is no, in a million years. Representative Runestad does not think straight about human rights and he urgently needs to correct that. The big picture of his voting records and legislative projects show that he does not care about the right of the most vulnerable people (refugees, immigrants, LGBT, etc). As a result, it is clear that he cares even less about the parenting rights of these folks.

Runestad has to be the sweetheart scarecrow of those who trash the father rights movement as a reactionary project of white men eager to restore the old patriarchic order.

I have no interest whatsoever in a fathers’ right movement that denies equal parenting rights to LGBT, refugees, or immigrants, legal or not. And the US fathers’ rights movement in the US has to make clear that it has nothing to do with fellows such as Representative Jim Runestad.

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Fatherhood in the NYC Subway

I cannot wait for this presidential campaign to end. The fool with a toupee is dragging people -immigrants, women, disabled – and any issue he dares to discuss in the mud. This is exacting.

The poor fellow is obviously proud in his own sick way of his  daughter, whom he shows off, and whom, miraculously, has not ended up in the beauty pageants he owns. He has absolutely nothing to say about love, fatherhood, education or family justice.

Even if I think the man is likely to take the beating he deserves, I have to grab signs that the world has not turned into a nauseous place he lives in. Sometimes, you find it in the NYC subway.

Photos Laura Martinez

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Personal Ethics, and What Is Left of It in Family Court

I saw Gad Elmaleh’s show, “Oh My Gad” last night at Joe’s Pub. Elmaleh is  a very

Gad Elmaleh (www.madamesioux.fr)

successful stand-up Moroccan French comedian who decided to make it in New York. Why New York? Gad knows. As I was thinking of the show, one of its main themes came to me.  America has mostly good people but bad institutions, like health care policy,  justice and gun laws. In France, or in Morocco, where Elmaleh spent part of his childhood, people are perhaps not so good, but institutions are much better.

Let’s leave Gad Elmaleh and let me take it from there. In New York for instance, we have the ethicist and his column in the Sunday Times. Each week, a bunch of good people are asking Kwame Anthony Appiah what is the right thing to do, because they care about it. Like this woman for instance, who asks the ethicist if she should tell her boy about his biological father (her ex). She cannot stand having his son learn about his biological father by anybody but her. That’s a woman thing: she wants to control the narrative, totally. The ethicist goes right to the point: tell your son. Now.

The surprising thing is that somehow, all these good intentions have come to be lost in the process of designing institutions, justice for instance. As this group of fathers demonstrating in front of Toledo family court on May 28 to ask for the basic right of having a role in the life of their children shows, there is little ethics in the working of family courts. It is a custodial- mother- take- all game.

Also let say it again. We need to seriously improve our narrative. No, “we are not -all- deadbeats- dads.” The deadbeats dads are those who have been bled by unreasonable child support payments. We want family courts not to mess up with us being dads.

 

 

 

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Daughters and Their Father

The captions of these illustrations are is in Spanish, but there is no need for translation.

http://www.boredpanda.es/pinturas-acuarela-vinculo-padre-hija-snezhana-soosh/

Hat Tip: Ari Divina

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About a Terrorist and his Daughter

Memorial to the Paris victims in New York (Photo AFP)

I am shocked by the November 13 Paris attacks, but I am mostly angry and disgusted. I cannot understand the scything of these civilian lives, which according to the nuts who conducted the attacks, was the price to be paid for France strikes in Syria. I cannot fathom the absolute arrogance of these so-called soldiers of God who decide who lives and who doesn’t, and the kind of paradise they pretend to earn with their crimes.

There never were just wars, and the war on terror which is unfolding in Syria is certainly not proof to the contrary, even if Daesh commits daily crimes against humanity. This is a war without soldiers and a lot of civilian casualties. Daesh hectors civilian populations, our strikes add to their misery, strenghten and legitimize Daesh yoke on them. I am tired of the rhetoric of the war on terrorism. One ought not conduct wars against terrorism, but intelligence operations at an international level, and police operations at a domestic level.

As I read the flow of articles about the Paris attacks, I was struck by Omar Ismael Mostefai’s story, one of the killers of so many people in the Bataclan theater, in the 11th arrondissement. Mostefai was twenty nine years old, born in a suburban town I know- Courcouronnes- because close to my hometown. The man happened to have a little daughter. Did he kiss her before going to the Bataclan? I don’t care if he is where he thinks he would be, but I am afraid she will live in hell, and for a long time.

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It Happened One Night: Fathers and Daughters Then and Today

Hitchhiking scene (It Happened One Night, Capra)

Praising a Capra movie is like touting the Taj Mahal as one of the greatest monuments in the world: it is neither original nor insightful. Anyhow, I will. I just saw “It Happened One Night,” a movie Capra directed in 1934. In a nutshell, the movie tells the story of a romantic encounter between a runaway heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), and a journalist, Peter Warren (Clark Gable).

This movie is a jewel, but I want here to chat about the father-daughter relationship, which is bumpy, physical and loving. Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly) is a rather invasive father: he has kidnapped his adult daughter on his yacht to have her break up with a fortune hunter she is supposed to marry. Ellie, the daughter, is not that fond of him but cannot stand her father telling her what to do all the time. She starts a hunger strike. Her father brings a tray of food in her room which she throws on the floor. He slaps her, and she escapes by jumping off the boat. On the bus to New York, she meets Peter Warren, a journalist she falls in love with. And she tells him. While Warren rushes to New York to get money and propose, Ellie is woken up by the owners of the motel, with no money to pay for the room. She naturally asks daddy for help. As she brings herself to marry the rich playboy, Andrews gauges her daughter’s true feeling in a beautiful scene, where Andrews comforts his daughter Ellie, as he did when she was a little girl.

Let’s face it. The story of “It Happened One Night” would not even be considered by Hollywood studios nowadays, if not for MAJOR changes. Let ‘s see… Upon her escape, Ellen rushes to court and gets a restraining order against dad…Better: she brings in Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler (Law and Order, Sexual Victims Unit), and they get her to sue the paternalistic pig. In the end, Ellie has Warren sign a prenup in Cancun. Lastly, Warren gets to work for Joe Biden’s campaign against domestic violence with Marishka Hargitay…

These timely adaptations of the script of “It Happened One Night” are of groundbreaking relevance. Oh, I forgot: In the movie, before going to the bottom of his daughter’s feelings, Andrews meets Warren to pay him back for his expenses, and finds out about Warren’s feelings for his daughter (see, that was a time when men dared to mingle into things that were none of their business). Warren, who is never at a loss for words, tells Andrews what he thinks of rich folks and the way they raise their kids. So thirties…

Is it Capra’s genius that makes Depression times almost charming?

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Amine Baba-Ali versus New York State Family Justice

Amine Baba-Ali (Photo B. Norman for the New York Times)

As a foreigner, there is something I always find troubling in this country, where I have lived for 23 years: Its prodigious ability to ignore horrors committed here, and move on.  It’ s not like there is a deficit of compassion; it’s just that compassion does not seem to translate into acting on the very reasons that caused the horrors in the first place. It may be the omnipresence of the flag, the daily shots of sport news of any kind, and the annoying belief that the future will be better (I have nothing  per se against optimism, except that I want it to be awake, that is to be grounded into a reasonable assessment of things as they are).

Speaking of nightmares, check this one: Amine Baba- Ali was wrongfully convicted of raping his four-year old daughter in 1989 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Where did the accusation come from? His ex-wife.  Then the diligence of New York State Justice system did the rest: a phony physician found evidence of rape that was contested by several experts, to no avail. Amine Baba-Ali’s conviction was overturned after three years spent in jail. Since public officials were unapologetic about the ordeal he had endured, Baba-Ali sued, and the State attorney general agreed to pay $1.25 million.

Yet Amine Baba-Ali has not seen his daughter for 20 years.  I challenge any accountant to put a price tag on that. Amine Baba-Ali hopes his daughter will see Michael Powell’s NYT article and contact him.

One of the many problems with current New York State Family laws is that lethal ex-wife accusations do not bear any consequences…for ex-wife. Ex-wife can send a man to death and kill his relations to his children in all impunity. The promoters of bill A6457 are kidding themselves and their constituents if they think that the fear of punishment for “malicious” accusations would deter ex-wife from making those.

But hey! I don’t need much to be convinced: I sign on the bill if just one “maliciously” intended ex-wife spends three years of her life, like Amine Ali-Baba, in Eastern New York maximum correction facility, in Napanoch, New York. It’s not the worst, according to a well-informed source.

Hat Tip: Mariana Carreño King

 

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The Fear of Lone Fathers with Children

I came across TyQan Brow’s story, which was on the news some ten days ago.  A new pearl in the nauseating list of encroachments of

Scottish Monster (Katie McPherson)

fathers’ rights by family courts.

TyQan is the father of an eponym son he conceived with Jonetta Woods.  In February 2013, Jonetta tragically lost three of her four children in a fire.  The story gets suddenly very complicated, thanks to erratic Kalamazoo (Michigan)  family court decisions. For a while, TyQan is granted custody of Drayanna, the daughter Jonetta had with another man and escaped the fire, and his soon-to-be-born son.  But not so fast: TyQan Junior is born in March 14, but his father TyQan does not even have a chance to bring his baby home, as  he has to face an accusation of child abuse and neglect:   A social worker, who had visited TyQan before the baby’s birth and had found no crib at home, jumped to the conclusion that he was not prepared for parenthood. Eventually TyQan is granted temporary custody of his son by Kalamazoo family court, after he showed he had all that was needed to take care of his son, and all the desire to do so. Yet,TyQan is a father on “probation.”  I could not  keep myself from thinking: what will he need to prove to the court to be granted permanent custody of his child?  How filled, and with what food, his fridge will have to be? How much money will need to be on his savings account?

My first reading of TyQuan’s  tangle with family court was that if the family court’s  crowd  despises the Patriarch figure, the man that provides, takes charge, and imposes his will on women and children, there is one type of men it hates even more: the poor. In the times we live in, low-income men don’t make it to the middle class, and their status as breadwinners is always fragile. If they get divorced, they don’t not remain breadwinners very long, as family courts turn them into deadbeat dads with inflexible child support payments. Eduardo Porter is right when he suggests to policymakers, in a New Times article from March 5 2014,  to try support instead of punishment for low- income fathers (and families).

However, a look  at family laws outside the US shows that  punishment by family courts also applies to low-income non custodial fathers in countries where the social safety net is better than in the US, in Ireland for instance. Dan Buckley from the Irish Examiner writes that judges are breaching human rights of fathers, keeping them from seeing their children and forcing them into poverty. The targets of family courts there are fathers who can just make it with state benefits. Too often, judges tend to order an excessive amount of child support (maintenance in Ireland) relative to income; the same judges will curtail visitations or send fathers to jail if child support is unpaid.

There is something in out- of- wedlock fathers with kids which deeply bothers our societies; perhaps, the fact that they could be totally autonomous with kids,  that they could not need the help from women to educate their children.

I will celebrate when the first custodial or  non- custodial father will be elected in office – any office-  anywhere.

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A Picture of a Dad Combing His Daughter’s Hair And the World Goes Nuts

A long, long blessed time ago, I was spending weekends playing dolls with my girls. And I liked combing the thick, curly hair of my little one. There is nothing especially unusual with that. Much less, I think, that a mum – late Adam Lanza’s– bringing his son to gun shows and planning to offer him one for Christmas.

Well, maybe I have it wrong,

Doyin Richards

Here is a nice guy, Doyin Richards. He has a blog, Daddy Doin’ Work, which is about him raising his girls. He is also on paternity leave, (paid paternity leave?), which, in this- not- so -socially- advanced country, is something that should make people rejoice. He posts a picture of him combing his girl, among others to show his wife he could handle the job.

His blog is flooded messages – from fathers-  calling him a sissy, a deadbeat dad, a kind of uncle Tom, a man who cannot handle a black woman. Some asked him if he rented the girls (?).  Enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doyin-richards/i-have-a-dream-picture-like-this_b_4562414.html

Perhaps we deserve the condescending family justice system we have that only sees fathers as just good enough to pay child support.

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Of Fathers and Cranes

Since Friday February 15, Serge Charnay, has been on top of an abandoned crane, in  a Nantes (France) old shipyard. Charnay spread a banner with these words: “Benoit, two years without his dad.”  Benoit is Charnay’s son. He has not seen his father for two years. Serge lost his visitation rights when he sequestered his son for ten days in 2010 and two months in 2011.

Serge Charnay (Photo Frank Perry, AFP)

Also Charnay wrote on top of the crane: “Let’s save our children from the justice system.”

What is it with some fathers and cranes ? Five years ago, in September 2008, Paul Fisher (Ohio) and Donald Tenn (California, President of Fathers for Justice USA) climbed on a crane near Ohio State University. They were requesting a non-partisan investigation into the family court system by the governors of their respective states – then Ted Strickland in Ohio, Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

I love it. Men perched on a phallic piece of machinery screaming their lungs and their powerlessness at the unfairness of the justice system and claiming their rights to see their kids, like their exes do.

In any case, Serge Charnay may have made significant breakthroughs for the fathers rights movement in France, perhaps because awareness on the topic has previously been raised by Moreno’s protests against the family justice system (Moreno went to Nantes to support Charnay). On Friday night, Serge Charnay was told – by  the Prefet (a high government official) that he could benefit from a request before family court to review his case. As Charnay refused to get off his crane, Jean Marc Ayrault – Mayor of Nantes and Prime Minister, mind you- asked the Minister of Justice (the French Attorney General) and the Minister of the Families to meet next week with father rights organizations.

When has any high- ranked government official ever met with fathers rights organizations in the US? Did governors Strickland and Schwarzenegger ever ask their Attorney Generals to investigate the family court systems in their respective state? I guess not. And  I think it may have to do with the fact that father rights movement are no lobbyists with big pockets.

Serge Charnay, you are most welcome to talk about your experience on this blog when you will get off your crane.

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