FATHERS RIGHTS NUTS DEMAND JOINT CUSTODY
            Sunday July 2l, 1997  Boston Herald

         Ex-Hubbies Want Voters
         Help Harassing Ex-Wives

           As if the voters aren't tortured enough, they may now be dragged
into divorce court.
The fathers of Massachusetts are very busy this summer.
Not trying to do more for their kids. Trying to do more to get even with
their ex-wives. And they want our help.
 From trailer parks and bar rooms around the state, fathers rights activists
are organizing a referendum campaign asking voters to mandate shared custody.
 Judges, who now grant custody of the children to the mother in the vast
majority of divorce cases, would have no choice but to order joint custody
except in extraordinary cases of abuse.
 So the idiots who think that mailing a $50-a-week child support payment
makes them a hero can finally get a return on their big investment.
 The judicial-social service -me dia-police-feminist-polincal conspiracy to
keep good dads down will finally be broken.
  Fortunately, this stupidity probably will never make it to the ballot.
Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who must clear all referendum questions
for constitutionality, will probably reject it because it interferes with
judicial independence.
 But it points out ]ust how pathetic these fathers rights activists are, and
just how dangerous the lawyers who encourage them to devote their lives to
routinely dragging their ex-wives to court are as well.
 These are the same nuts who get together for monthly meetings to rid
themselves of the guilt of neglecting their kids, drinking a bit too much,
getting a bit too angry, losing a bit too much control.
  They're the same nuts who believe that the vast majority of restraining
orders sought by women are "cry wolf' complaints, and that child abuse
complaints are "fraud" perpetrated by social workers.
 They're the same nuts who proposed requiring equal access to school records
for their kids, a measure that would make any stalker smile.
 "Lawyers don't want to even go to probate court anymore, they get beat up so
bad if they represent a man," one Fatherhood Coalition activist told me the
other day. "We want the judges to be held accountable."
  Accountability? That's  a good word. Wonder how often it comes up at their
monthly feel-sorry-for-ourselves meetings.
  I don't get called politically correct very often. And I know there are
marriages that don't work and it's  nobody's fault and sometimes both parents
do care equally about their kids.
  But I also know that kids don't come first in a divorce proceeding.
   I know that an hour spent reading to your kid -- even if it is during the
terms of a strict visitation -- is better than 100 hours glaring at your
ex-wife in court or thinking about new and innovative ways for payback.
  You're talking to a man who believes in reading to his kids," the father
activist told me. "But I have to read to other people' skids because the
court haven't let me see mine for more than a year. They say I'm mentally
ill."
  I know one other thing: the last place to solve that problem is on the
ballot.

Read Joe Sciacca every Monday in the Boston Herald.

Copyright @ 2007 by Fathers' Manifesto & Christian Party