I did not intend to get involved in the politics of the Father's Rights movement and was happy at the start just telling my story to anyone that would listen.
That was until I stumbled on a story from
I wrote the man that whose case this was and asked if I could out a link to the case on my website. That permission was granted and subsequent conversations lead to my forming a chapter of Parents And Children for Equality in Akron. Working to get a chapter up and going was a struggle but a challenge that I liked. I was glad that I had others that shared my views on this problem and together we were able to get this new chapter going. I was introduced to a man that helped get a separate website going for the Akron Chapter and have since taken that site over and serve as webmaster to this day.
The letter that I wrote to Justice Pfeiffer and sent to the
rest of the Ohio Supreme Court started that ball rolling for me. I started to
write to the local representatives of the US Congress, Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich and
the House of Representatives
in
During my activities with PACE I have worked on many projects including helping to write a equal custody bill that was introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives. This bill died in Committee as the Judges and lawyers refused to meet with us to discuss changes that they wanted made to the bill. My guess is that they didn't like our offer of "any time, any place". They may not have understood the simplicity of that offer just as they can't understand equal rights for all fit parents.
I have also helped to organize two different rallies that
were held on the steps of the Statehouse in
Still I pressed on and wrote the next time to every member
of the both sides of the
Please take the time to read all the information and look at all the links I have provided here. After you do, write letters and make phone calls to your representatives at the Statehouse press for changes to protect American families after divorce. Tell them that divorce does not make one unfit and that it is time to change the law to protect all fit parents.
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Recently I was asked to respond to
a question or statement that was posed about whether or not the Father's Rights
movement was effective in what they were doing and their approach. My answer is below and while it may shock
some, it is the truth.
________________________________________________________________
Is the Father's rights movement currently effective in creating change? That question can be answered simply by saying no. BUT it is fixable.
Why? That answer is simple also. A lack of co-operation and an inability of the various groups to put their individual egos aside and work for the common good.
The misguided perception is that this is a father's rights movement and by calling it that the general public will never accept what is really going on here. This has to be called a parental rights movement. If we continue to fail to include every fit parent that has been denied their Constitutional Right to equality and due process by the courts, this movement will collapse on itself. By presenting the issues in this manner to the general public a deeper understanding and farther reaching sympathy will be gained. Many organizations have recognized this problem and have reflected that by changing their names or the public policy to include all fit parents.
The public in general is not educated in the problems of the
current domestic or family court system that exists in this nation and the
problems that this system is causing this and future generations. It is not
until
Until the general public is educated properly about the way
that things are d
That change must first start by educating parents when they are young and their children are young or before they even consider having children of the problems that they could come to them should they decide to end their marriage or relationship. We have failed to do this so far. As a very active advocate in this area, by the time a parent comes to me for advice, their life has been thrown into turmoil and the relationship that they once had with their children has already been disrupted, often to a point where they will never recover from this disruption. If the message is spread prior to the interference of the State into their lives unjustly they could often avoid the headaches that follow.
I was told when I was going thru my divorce that I would
never have custody of my son because I was a male and they don't award custody
to fathers in my county. I found this unacceptable because I had been the
primary parent in my son's life and because of my beliefs in the Constitutional
right to equality that I had been taught as I grew. Frankly I dug my heels in
hard when my attorney said this and told him flat out that this was
unacceptable to me. Poor guy thought he had some
That heel dig is what has made me what I am today and what has made my son what he is today.
To educate the public properly we must take a consistent and unified message to them that this issue is about the Constitutional rights of all fit parents to equal legal and physical custody of their children. The use of the term "shared parenting" must end and end now. Shared parenting is nothing and does not properly reflect what must happen to protect the rights given to us by this Nation's Founding Fathers. Shared parenting is and will remain a poor term for in reality it means nothing.
That education can not stop with an education of the public but must be continued to the legislators of every state. Forget hammering on the federal legislators are they will take, as they have taken in the past, that this is a state issue. The only true federal issue here is the protection of our United States Constitutional rights. If our state legislators are educated properly on how the current state laws effect the destruction of family and personal rights then, and only then, will effective changes be made to the laws that directly affect the equal rights of fit parents.
That education must start before the person is elected as a representative in state government.
This takes time and constant gentle talking. It took over
three years for us to be able to put together an equal parenting bill in
That reinvention of the wheel comes from the fact that many
groups and their leadership refuse to put aside their individual egos to work
for the greater good in favor of putting their personal agendas forward. There
can be only
This ego trip is an admitted stumbling block that many
"leaders" have admitted is the largest problem that exists to moving forward to
solving the problems at hand. If we fail to pay attention to the successes and
failures of what others have d
I am a Director of a local chapter of Parents And Children
for Equality (PACE) and a board member with them. I am also a Vice President
with the Nation Organization for Parental Equality (NOPE). These two positions
do not conflict with each other, they complement each other. PACE is
Membership efforts are also what got the equal custody legislation introduced.
NOPE is an effort that Mike Galluzzo, Chuck Evans and I have started and are forming as a blanket organization for every group nationally to come together and share resources. Our intent is to not interfere with any groups individual agenda or ego. The intent is to give a single place where groups can come together and discuss and learn from our experience with legislators and the courts. The purpose is to gain strength thru numbers much in the way that NOW was able to push woman's issues forward and King was able to push the Civil Rights issues forward in the 60's.
Others have claimed to be doing this but fail because they
push their own thoughts on the groups and put forth a "my way or the highway"
attitude that has brought about failure with their projects. Failure brought on
by not listening to the experiences of others. One such group that comes to
mind here was
NOW he is attacking other advocates because they will not fall in line with his way of thinking and his flawed methods. He recently posted a message to the internet which makes false claims about advocates that have been more active than him for more years.
When he purposed the original class action suits Nationwide,
we examined the complaint that was purposed by this group and told them that
this was a doomed effort because the wording and legal approach would not work
based on our past experience and what we were finding out with the Galluzzo
case at that time. The end result was a mass dismissal of all of the cases that
they brought forth and financial losses that were unnecessarily placed on the
people that this wannabe leader had duped them into. This
It does not take many court cases for this parental rights
movement to gain ground. It only takes
That has not stopped our efforts though as we now have taken what we learned from Galluzzo and currently we have two suits active in Ohio that are asking for Declaratory Judgments that Ohio's custody law is unconstitutional. One suit was filed in state court and the other was filed in federal court. Both include what we learned in past efforts and both brought that forth to attack the issue again.
People remember the suits that win and set precedence, they
do not remember the efforts that did not succeed. Brown V Board of Education
was a precedence setting case and every
If we continue we will succeed in court but it will take a
judge with the right frame of mind that decides that they want to hear this on
the Merits not on the lobbying efforts that all too often happen in court
cases. I maintain that the Federal Court System is the proper place for this
and likely to be the best venue because the federal judges are appointed not
elected. Appointments put distance between the judge and the influence of m
If we are to succeed, we must:
Is the current movement broken? DEFINITELY.
Is it fixable so that we can achieve our goal? Definitely.
Ray R. Lautenschlager
Cell: 330-907-0664
