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My new co-authored column, In this Turf War, Kids Are the Prize (Tallahassee Democrat, 6/13/07), defends the concept of Parental Alienation against recent attacks from the National Organization for Women, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and numerous other misguided women's groups.

The column, which appears below, was written primarily as a response to NOW president Kim Gandy's recent anti-father editorial Sick Joke or Sick Reality?

To write a Letter to the Editor of the Tallahassee Democrat regarding the column, write to letters@tallahassee.com.

In this Turf War, Kids Are the Prize
By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks
Tallahassee Democrat, 6/13/07

In part because of the Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger custody battle, the controversial concept of Parental Alienation is now being debated extensively in the media. Parental Alienation often arises after a divorce or separation, as one parent turns the children against the other parent, often employing false allegations to do so. Baldwin claims that he is the target parent of PA.

Misguided women's advocates assert that PA is a myth used by abusive fathers to blame their ex-wives when their children are hostile to them. Recently, Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women, condemned PA as "junk science, junk justice." NOW, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and a dozen other women's groups signed on to a complaint filed against the United States this month with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The complaint claims that American courts victimize abused mothers by "frequently awarding child custody to abusers."

In reality, when domestic violence allegations are made, judges take them very seriously, preferring to "err on the side of caution" even when evidence is lacking. By contrast, fathers who are targets of false accusations and parental alienation can only protect their relationships with their children by financing expensive legal battles.

Despite the controversy, PA is a common phenomenon which has been well-documented and widely supported in the mental health community. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 "high conflict" divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PA were present in the vast majority of the cases studied.

The pain that alienating mothers (or, in some cases, alienating fathers) visit upon their children would be hard to understate. In a new Psychology Today article devoted to this controversy, Michelle Martin, who was a victim of PA as a child, recalls:

"You were either on my mother's side or against her, and if you were on her side, you had to be against my father. She was so angry at him...you couldn't possibly have a relationship with him if you wanted one with her."

Martin describes her late father as a gentle, caring man who refused to criticize her mother. She says that she was so afraid of losing her mother's approval that she bought into her alienation campaign against her father, including her mother's systematic attempts to convince her that her father had been abusive...

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Roland Warren of the National Fatherhood Initiative and I are quoted on the problems faced by working fathers in Cindy Krischer Goodman's Balancing Act: Today's fathers feel neglected by their employers (Miami Herald, 6/17/07). My point is that I feel that ''Fathers are stretched thin"--we're still expected to be the family breadwinner (in an era of expanding workweeks), yet are criticized when we don't do as much as mothers do in the home.

Goodman writes:

"Fathers today don't want to be the dad in Harry Chapin's song Cat's in the Cradle. They don't want their son to ask, 'When are you comin' home, Dad?''

"Although employers are attempting to respond to work-life balance needs of fathers, they are having little or no meaningful effect.

"A Monster.com survey of working fathers found that 58 percent think their employers should do more to accommodate the demands of fatherhood.

"Why is this?

"Most work/life programs were created with mothers in mind, experts say."

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

To write a Letter to the Editor of the Miami Herald, click here.

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This week marks the one year anniversary of Darren Mack's murder of his estranged wife and shooting of a Nevada judge. The event is being recounted in several articles, including One Year Anniversary Haunts Reno (KREN, 6/12/07) and the more detailed Violence reverberates through lives (Reno Gazette-Journal, 6/10/07).

I've written about Mack on numerous occasions, including "Do I Even Need to Say This?" (6/19/06, see  below), Thomas Jefferson Murdered Women? (6/26/06), First Darren Mack, Now Herbert Chalmers--More Radical Fathers' Rights Idiocy (2/10/07), and Darren Mack and the Presumption of Innocence (2/24/07).

The evidence of Mack's guilt seems overwhelming, but we'll see what happens in his trial. Some of those on the not insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers' movement expressed sympathy for Mack, even likening him to the 18th century American revolutionaries. My view is that, after a fair trial, Mack deserves little more than a rope and a tree.

(Note: some have criticized me for ignoring the presumption of innocence in Mack's case. However, the presumption of innocence is a legal right--it has little to do with how I, an opinion columnist, am supposed to judge him. I've little doubt that Darren Mack committed the crimes I've mentioned. If it somehow turns out that he is innocent, I will of course correct myself and apologize.)

Reprinted below is what I wrote immediately after the killings last year. In reading it again now, I can't say I'd change a word.

Do I Even Need to Say This?

I'm not sure that this even needs to be said but I will say it anyway--I condemn without qualification the crimes allegedly committed by Darren Mack in Nevada last week. Mack was angered by his divorce and custody case. Some on the not insubstantial lunatic fringe of the fathers' rights movement see Mack as some sort of freedom fighter. Most of the commentary by other fathers' rights advocates seem to be of the "he couldn't take it any more and snapped" variety.

I don't buy it. Though everyone is focusing on Mack's attempted murder of a judge, everyone seems to forget that he first stabbed and killed his ex-wife. After murdering her, he shot the judge through the judge's third-floor office window with a sniper rifle from over 100 yards away. That's not "snapping"--that's premeditated murder. Mack is not a good man trapped in a bad system. He is a bad guy. Because of men like him the system had to create protections for women, and unscrupulous women have misused those protections to victimize countless innocent men. Men like Mack aren't the byproducts of the system's problems--they are the problem.

Whenever a divorced dad has done something crazy and I refuse to make excuses for him, certain misguided individuals get mad at me, call me a wimpy moderate, a sellout, etc. Often the fact that I have never been divorced or dealt with the family law system in my personal life is cited as the reason that I "just don't get it." For example, I heard this type of criticism when I condemned Perry Manley here. (I will admit though that Perry Manley is a saint compared to Darren Mack).

To all the radicals out there about to descend on me over my comments on Darren Mack, I offer the counter-example of the Englishman David Chick. If the system has screwed you and you want to do something about it, have the courage to do what David Chick did. Chick was denied access to his little daughter by the girl's vindictive mother, and had been to court 25 times and spent the equivalent of $30,000 in unsuccessful attempts to get English courts to enforce his visitation rights.

Chick then launched a world famous, traffic snarling, six day, one-man protest atop a 150 foot high crane near the Tower Bridge in London in November 2003. Facing a prison sentence for his protest, Chick was acquitted by an English jury, some of whom were reportedly moved to tears by his testimony. In 2003, Chick came in second in the Evening Standard London Personality of the Year contest and was the runner-up Political Personality of the Year on a major English television station.

In September 2004, Chick struck again, climbing the London Eye, an enormous 450-foot-high Ferris wheel on the banks of the River Thames. Chick spent 18 hours there--one hour for every month that had passed since he had been able to see his little daughter. Nearly 20,000 people were prevented from visiting the attraction because the police closed it down during the protest. Popular still, a London jury again acquitted Chick of causing a public nuisance.

Chick succeeded in changing his case and is now a regular part of his young daughter's life. David Chick acted with humanity and courage. Darren Mack possesses neither.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Background: On Monday I asked you to write newspapers in protest of Berkeley Breathed's new nationally-syndicated OPUS cartoon "Davie Dinkle has two moms" (pictured), which, I noted "gives fathers a nice kick in the teeth Father's Day week."

In the comic, which appeared in many of America's largest newspapers, two elementary school boys discuss a classmate who is being raised by two lesbian moms. One boy says, "Makes you wonder how he'll do without a male role model in the house." Right afterwards, the drunken, idiot father angrily throws the TV out the window, yelling, "Now THAT was a pitch you @$%* moron!"

Not surprisingly, the gay press fired back at me and also at conservative religious writer Jennifer Roback Morse, who had later criticized the same cartoon in a Townhall.com column. To learn more, see my blog posts Nationally-Syndicated Cartoonist: It's Better to Have Two Moms than a Mom and a Dad and Gay/Lesbian Press Mischaracterizes My Criticism of OPUS Cartoon.

Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, who is often sympathetic to men's and fathers' issues, covers the controversy over "Davie Dinkle has two moms" in her new column "Happy Father's Day, jerk." Parker writes:

"Men and fathers have been on the receiving end of a male-bashing trend for the past 20 years or so, and they've had enough. Breathed's comic strip might have faded into the ethers if it didn't cut so close to the bone, if it weren't one more insult added to a history that long ago ceased to amuse.

"On television, men are depicted as boors or buffoons, while in the broader culture, they're deadbeats or wife beaters. In a 1999 study of how fathers were presented in 102 prime-time shows, the National Fatherhood Initiative found only four in which a father was portrayed as present and involved in his children's lives.

"At the same time little boys and girls are seeing bad, dumb daddies on TV, more than a third don't live with their own father, owing either to divorce or single motherhood. Despite inevitable exceptions to the rule, it is merely ignorant to say that a father's absence has no effect on children. Study after study shows an association between fatherlessness and a wide range of social pathologies, including drug abuse, promiscuity and delinquency.

"Two mommies may work out fine for some children. And some men, just like some women, are contemptible slobs or worse. But neither observation diminishes the larger truth that children need fathers, most of whom are not, in fact, the cartoonish characters we love to loathe.

"Breathed's comic strip, intended or not, revealed where we have arrived as a society in our attitudes toward male role models, otherwise known as fathers: Two lesbian mommies are cool, while dad is a violent, profane, impulsive, substance-abusing slob."

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

The Washington Post is getting in on the Father's Day week dad-bashing that we've also seen from TIME magazine (click here), the nationally-syndicated OPUS cartoon (click here), Barack Obama (stay tuned), and others.

The article "Father Knows Best? These are 'facts' that dads have imparted to their kids. Not a big deal, right? Except that they're all wrong," while more light-hearted than most other recent Father's Day week attacks, nevertheless reinforces the mainstream media stereotype of dads as useless blowhards.

The article asserts that fathers who take their kids to museums answer their kids' questions confidently, even though they "don't have a clue." According to the Post, "The phenomenon of the 'know-it-all dad' is a familiar one to the docents, curators and keepers of America's museums and zoos."

On the web there's a companion photo montage called "Father Knows Jack," (pictured), featuring photos of fathers with their children coupled with insulting captions about the fathers' alleged ignorant pomposity.

To write a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post regarding Father Knows Best?, click here.

Father Knows Best? These are 'facts' that dads have imparted to their kids. Not a big deal, right? Except that they're all wrong
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 16, 2007

Doug Hardy was barely inside the door of the National Air and Space Museum when he made up his first "fact."

On a sunny morning a few days before Father's Day, Hardy and his son Andrei were huddled under the Mercury capsule. Like countless dads before him, he was explaining rocket science to his boy, in this case how the mottled heat shield protected John Glenn from a fiery death as the craft plunged through the atmosphere.

Then Andrei, 12, asked: What are these dark disks made of?

Again, like countless dads before him, Hardy answered confidently -- even though he didn't have a clue.

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (pictured) is part of the father-bashing Father's Day week pile-on that we've also seen from TIME magazine (click here), the nationally-syndicated OPUS cartoon (click here), the Washington Post (click here), and others. Speaking at a Baptist church, Obama said:

"It's about to be Father's Day. Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child."

To learn more, see the Associated Press' article Obama Calls on Fathers to Be Responsible (6/15/07).

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

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Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com Experience the Book that Dares to Scream the Inner Thoughts of Men Author Tom Ellis unleashes his savage wit on women's studies, gender norming, implants, affirmative action, rape hysteria, pornography, women's spirituality, homophobia, and bad dates. Intended for male readers, women also find it shockingly insightful. Contains adult situations and language. The Rantings of a Single Male: Losing Patience with Feminism, Political Correctness... and Basically Everything by Thomas Ellis -- $11.95 + shipping from Amazon via direct purchase--click here. A Compliment for an Opponent, Peggy Drexler Background: On numerous occasions I've criticized Peggy Drexler, author of Raising Boys Without Men: How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men, for her assertion that boys do better in mother-only homes. These include my columns Raising Boys Without Men: Lesbian Parents Good, Dads Bad (World Net Daily, 9/10/05), Are Boys Really Better off Without Fathers? (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/31/05), and numerous blog posts here. Sometimes an opponent pleasantly surprises you. Such was the case when I read Peggy Drexler's new column Father-Daughter Bond Enjoys a Growth Spurt (Huffington Post, 6/13/07). The article is actually pretty respectful of fathers, and it makes a couple of good points: 1) Drexler acknowledges the problem of maternal gatekeeping--when mothers assert their need to be #1 with their children, at the expense of their children's relationships with their fathers. Drexler admits she's guilty of it at times. No, I don't think that Drexler or most maternal gatekeepers are bad--it is, on some level, a natural human emotion. I stayed home with my little daughter for the first three years of her life, and if at night she ever called for her mother instead of me, I was disappointed. In fact, that I feel the need to tell you that she almost always called for me is probably evidence of my own mild gatekeeping. Mothers complain that fathers don't do enough with the kids, but one reason (among many) is the mother's gatekeeping. 2) Drexler asserts that fathers and their adult daughters are closer now than they were in previous generations because, now that most women have careers, the fathers and daughters are able to relate to each other better and have more common experiences. I think this is true, and could be called one of the legitimate positives that the feminist movement has created in our society. (I could talk about the negatives of feminism, of course, but we'll save that for another time.) Drexler's article is here. To discuss this issue on my blog, click here. Dr. Warren Farrell's Shared Parenting Evidence Kit--What You Need to Win Shared Physical Custody Dr. Warren Farrell, a top expert on children of divorce now offers a complete evidence kit to help you win shared custody.  The DVDs, audio CD and electronic files summarize the best scientific research available collected over decades.  Scientific research has proven that children do far better with near equal time with both parents with minimal conditions.  This video set was developed to educate parents, judges, lawyers, psychologists and other divorce professionals. Most judges are doing exactly what is worst for children with sole-custody.  Submitted as evidence this will maximize your chances. 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Not surprisingly, the gay press has fired back at me over my comments earlier this week in my blog post Nationally-Syndicated Cartoonist: It's Better to Have Two Moms than a Mom and a Dad, in which I criticized the OPUS Father's Day week cartoon "Davie Dinkle has two moms."

In the cartoon, which appeared in many of America's largest newspapers last Sunday, two elementary school boys discuss a classmate who is being raised by two lesbian moms. One boy says, "Makes you wonder how he'll do without a male role model in the house." Right afterwards, the drunken, idiot father angrily throws the TV out the window, yelling, "Now THAT was a pitch you @$%* moron!"

I wrote:

"[Cartoonist Berkeley] Breathed's message is clear--dads are useless as role models (when they're not outright destructive), and kids have little need or use for them."

I also noted, "My commentary above should NOT be construed as a criticism of lesbians, lesbian moms or gays. As I've made clear on many occasions, I fully support the rights of gays and lesbians to live their lives as they choose. What I oppose is the idea...that kids don't need fathers, that moms are better than dads, and that having two moms is better than having a mom and a dad.)

Now the gay press--including the prominent blogs Queerty and Pam's House Blend as well as the lesbian mothers' blog Mombian--are firing back. They criticize me and conservative religious writer Jennifer Roback Morse, who had later criticized the same cartoon in a Townhall.com column. I respect Morse and her work, but her views are obviously substantially different from mine. (To pick one example, she and I clashed a few months ago over my defense of lesbian social mothers' custody rights in gay/lesbian divorces or civil union dissolutions--to learn more, click here.)

My belief is that while gays and lesbians as individuals are just as competent as parents as heterosexuals are, children need fathers and do benefit substantially from both the male and female parenting styles. When two gay men parent a child, I believe children lose something substantial from not having a mother, and when two women parent a child the child loses something substantial from not having a father.

I might have hoped that critics would deal with my argument directly. Instead, as almost always happens, they glide past my argument to find a more radical one--in this case, Morse's--and then paint me with the same broad brush. When my work is discussed on feminist sites, my critics almost always cite some stupid or misogynistic thing which some other men's issues activist wrote--and such comments are not hard to find--and link me with it.

In Cartoon Causes Controversy: Conservatives Decry "Anti-Daddy" Droll, Queerty writes:

"Conservatives have their neatly pressed panties in a twist over this Opus The Penguin cartoon. The Berkeley Breathed-penned comic appeared Sunday (aka God's Day) and provides more fuel to the ever-raging debate over gay parenting. Rather than focusing on the alleged pros and cons of queer parents, the Right's taking a different angle--they're accusing Breathed of denigrating daddies...Glenn Sacks squeals, 'Breathed's message is clear--dads are useless as role models (when they're not outright destructive).'"

In other words, I'm an anti-gay conservative looking for a way to beat up on gays, and I used the OPUS cartoon as a way to do it. They have it almost exactly wrong. I'm not anti-gay, I'm not a conservative, and I don't like to criticize gays or gay marriage. However, I do have a major problem with the idea that fathers are useless or destructive and that kids only need mothers--an idea the OPUS cartoon clearly represents.

To discuss the issue on my blog, click here.

Some of you have remarked on the fact that in my newspaper columns I have taken to saying, "men comprise a significant minority of domestic violence victims," as opposed to saying "half of all victims." The reality of domestic violence can be fairly summarized as follows:

1) Women are as likely or more likely to abuse their husbands as vice versa.

2) Women are more likely to be injured in domestic violence than men.

3) Women are more likely to be severely injured in domestic violence than men.

It would be misleading of me to focus on only women as victims simply because they are more likely to be injured. At the same time, it would be misleading to say that men are just as likely to be victimized simply because women are as likely to initiate violence.

Word counts in newspaper opinion columns are tight, and I often have several points I want to make in a short space. Saying men "comprise a significant minority of domestic violence victims" seems like the best, short-but-accurate solution.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Many of you have written to me about the outrageous "justice" in the Mary Winkler case. (Winkler is pictured with her husband Matthew, who she killed, and their children in the photo above). Southern Dad, a reader and frequent poster on my blog, followed the Winkler case closely and describes the case below:

"Mary Winkler admitted shooting her husband in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun while he lay in bed early one morning back in March, 2006. What makes this story even more tragic is that he didn't die immediately.  According to the coroner he lived for upwards of 20 more minutes, slowly bleeding to death. At no time, as he lay there bleeding and gasping for air, did she offer any help or call 911 for assistance. Instead, she fled the state with the couple's three children, who by the way, were home at the time of the shooting.

"At first, she claimed it was an accident and she panicked. Then her defense was that he was abusive and she 'snapped.'  Never mind that there wasn't a single piece of evidence or corroboration to her claims of being abused, the jury bought her story and found her guilty of only voluntary manslaughter, which carries a 3-6 year sentence in the state in which the crime occurred.

"You can bet your last dollar that had the genders been reversed the husband would have gotten life without parole or worse. She will serve only a WEEK in prison and 60 days in mental health facility. After that, the remainder of her 3 year sentence will be on probation.

"That, my friends, is what a man's life is now worth in America if you are killed by your wife."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Background: With Father's Day coming up, I'm reprising some of the stories and posts about special fathers that I've written over the years. Tim Russert's Wisdom of Our Fathers has hundreds of stories men and women tell about their fathers. It's a remarkable book--to learn more, see my co-authored column America's Father Hunger (World Net Daily, 10/13/06).

This story is "He loved his family too much to say good-bye," from Carole Harris Barton of Burke, VA, about her father, coal miner Samuel Sterling Harris (1911-1983).

"Daddy never said good-bye. I first noticed it the year I turned five, when he used to drive Mother, my brother John, and me from our shanty at the coal mine into Madisonville, the heart of the West Kentucky coalfields. 'Be good babies,' he would say to John and me before he left us to wait with Mother in the car when he went inside to night school, where he was earning a certificate in mining safety that would entitle him to a raise.

"He had gone to work in the mine when he was fourteen, three years after his father died and left the family destitute. When the foreman learned that Daddy was underage, he sent him home; Daddy waited two years and went back to the mine. He had been there ever since. He didn't complain about his lot, but he was determined that his children would have more education than he did. He worked days and studied nights to get a better job, so he could save enough money to move us away from the mine, where there was no high school, into town, where there was.

"He never said good-bye when he left for work. 'Be a good baby,' he would say, throwing me a wave. It wasn't what I wanted to hear. Other kids had dads who said good-bye. Why wouldn't mine?

"Finally, Mother explained. Daddy never said good-bye because he was afraid of a fatal mining accident. He thought if he never said good-bye, there'd never be one..."

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.
 

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