Equal Rights

The parental rights movement has been around for years but has seemingly gone nowhere toward it real goal of equal rights for fit parents. Or should I rephrase that statement and say where it should be going.

Someone recently did a count on Yahoo and found something like 10,000 various groups supposedly working towards the goal of shared parenting. Shared parenting has been around since the 70's and has done nothing to guarantee the equal rights of fit parents. It has not protected a single parent from the total judicial discretion that has ruined the lives of so many children and good parents in this country. The only thing it has done is place a legalize shell for the courts and give them unfettered discretion to do as they damn well please.

The only people that have truly won in this are the lawyers, as they have raped the country and destroyed the constitutional rights of nearly 25% of the country that have become embroiled in the family court system. The lawyers have run to the bank while avoiding they own oath of office to protect the constitution of the United States.

This is a movement rampant with souls that come and go as they please and as it suits their individual needs. I hate to say this but it is true. As webmaster for NOPE, I answer the emails that come to the group. Now I try my best to give correct information to each person that asks a question and base my answer on the information that I am given at the time. I will ask some probing questions of some that write at times to make sure that I point them in the right direction. Many times I have to tell the person that they are basically screwed because the law does not protect their equal rights. Many are their own worst enemy. Educate your self so you know what you are dealing with.

Mind you, I was born in 1955 and grew up in the turbulent times of the 60's and 70's with the equal rights movement and then the protests against the Viet Nam war. I have lived in Akron, Ohio most of my life and watched this city and Cleveland burn during the equal rights race riots of the 60's. I got a close up look of the effect that the Kent State shootings had on someone as a teacher that I had received a phone call from his wife telling him that she was OK but there had been several shootings on campus. Truth was these occurred less than 100 yards from where she was working at the time.

People were free to express themselves during this time and were more than happy to take t the street to call upon the government to make a change in public policy that treated everyone as an equal. As a society we have become lazy and now think that change is the job of someone else or that someone else will do this.

The only one that can and will bring about change is each of us. Sitting around bitching about it will do no good, only taking action will.

When I have talked to anyone that is not familiar with the problems within the family court system today I generally get a look of dismay. "Why this is a court and the courts are fair to everyone that walks through the door". Sad to say this is not true and will never be until everyone works toward a common goal of equal rights for every fit parent in this country. I often ask them if it is alright for the courts to remove a fir parent from the life of a child. I get the answer of no but then have to explain to them that this happens every day because the current system of best interests of the child is totally discretionary and has no definition as to what it really is.

"Why judges only look at the facts when they decide who gets custody." Not under the current system. A judge is free to do as they please and can award custody and control to anyone they so desire. In Ohio they can change a custody order without a motion from an outside party.

Tell me that is right and fair.

For this movement to succeed, we must all work as a cohesive unit to change public perception that a mother is the only one that can raise a child. If you think about this statement and the perceptions that we have all had before we faced the family court system, that perception being that if a father was not given custody of his child or had "standard" visitation that , well that is alright because the court did what was best for the child. Now, turn the other cheek and if a mother was placed in the same position, well, then she must be unfit or abusive towards her children. What is wrong with equal custody between two fit parents? That is the way it was when they were together and it is the way it should be when they have separated. A divorce does not make a parent unfit.

Truth be told, it is more likely that both the aforementioned parents are fit loving parents that are more than capable of taking care of their child, with or without a partner. But a third party (the family Court System) has decided that they are going to be a full and equal parent to their child based on a standard called "Best Interests of the Child" which is the most over used and the most undefined term in legal history, in my opinion. I have yet to find a state law which defines BIC. Now many will give criteria that they "use" to determine what they feel is in the best interest of the child but this is subject to judicial discretion and bias.

When I say bias, I do mean bias. Mike Galluzzo, Chuck Evans, Dennis Caron and I have posted a challenge to anyone to bring us a case where the mother and the father were both deemed fit parents and the father was given custody over the mother. Many have tried and as of today, no one has succeeded in doing this. We have received a few cases where the people thought they met the criteria here but upon reading the case and resulting decision, there always is a finding of unfitness buried somewhere in the decision against the mother. Rulings involving fathers they just up and declare that the father will have standard visitation of every other weekend and maybe a day in the middle. With solid statistics from the U. S Census Bureau that show that custody is awarded to the mother 85% of the time over the father and a further break down that shows that that the 15% that went to father were uncontested 11% of the time ( that is 11% of the total 100%). In a country that has a constitutional amendment that declares that there shall be no law that disregards equality, which suggests that something is real wrong with this picture.

If we are to win this war on our families we must put build the strongest coalition of people since the equal rights movement and the anti-war protests of the sixties. I have the tools available to do this thru this site and have done so in some protests in the past. We must ramp this up to a level that has not been seen in years. I have a map on this site to show who is working within each and every state of the union on this problem. If you want your name added to this list please go to the add a name page

to fill out the form and I will add your name as soon as possible. If we put together a list of people nationally, we will achieve our goal, which I can promise you, BUT it will take a major effort on all part to do this.

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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.

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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 one becomes caught in the trap of family court that one realizes the problems that exist. If one tells the average person on the street that there is a problem with the way that things are with the court system and the way that it treats fit parents as they choose to end a marriage, they will say that the courts are fair. They accept that fact that fathers are regularly taken out the lives of their children and reduced to a 20% or less roll because that is the way it has always been done. Tell some one that a mother has been placed in the same position and the perception is that she is unfit while that may be the farthest thing from the truth.

Until the general public is educated properly about the way that things are done, nothing will change.

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 someone that would accept the norm and move on. Instead he got a fighter who knew that things were going to change and would not accept less than an equal role in my son's life, in divorce as it had been in marriage. It was the end of a marriage NOT the end of my role as a parent. I got and held onto a 50/50 custody situation for 10 years despite the fact that I was challenged four different times by my ex-wife.

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 reality because it means nothing.