In Honor Of Father's Day
In honor of father's day, I'd like to encourage you to check out the NFI's Father Facts web site. It hasn't been fashionable to say so in a long time, but we fathers matter--a lot. It doesn't hurt to remind ourselves how much.
On the flip side, fathers do get taken for granted in this country. Nowhere is this more evident than in our horribly unfair custody and child support laws. What's worse is, as Glenn Sacks notes, the Supreme Court recently took away more rights from non-custodial parents which, of course, more than 90% of the time means fathers.
We often treat fathers like dirt in this country, we really do. This is not a bad day to reflect on that.
If you're a dad, I hope you have a good day today.
Happy fathers day Dean.
Happy Father's Day, Dean.
I think about my father all the time. He was a great man.
Actually, Sacks needs to tone down the rhetoric. The case was brought under California law, and doesn't even have precedential value because the case was NOT DECIDED. The Court said - in THIS PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCE, under THIS PARTICULAR SET OF LEGAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Newdow doesn't have standing.
As my media law professor said after hearing the verdict: "That's what they should do. It would be worse if they decided the case DESPITE the legal disqualification." At first I thought that was a cop-out, but the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with him, and the less I tend to think of Glenn Sacks' logic.
As the court said in its opinion: "The California cases simply do not stand for the proposition that Newdow has a right to reach outside the private parent-child sphere to dictate to others what they may or may not say to his child respecting religion. A next friend surely could exercise such a right, but THE FAMILY COURT'S ORDER has deprived Newdow of that status."
In short, The court is depriving Newdow of a right that he never had to begin with, so it hardly rises to the level of Sacks' rhetoric.
Anyway, happy father's day.
I support the Pledge of Allegiance.
I don't know about you, but my family never treats me like dirt. Clay to be molded, maybe. But not dirt.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I had a great father's day. Spent it with wife and my SF resident son on the cool waters of SF Bay having brunch at the Spinnaker restruaunt, Sausilito, California over looking the Golden Gate Bridge SF, Alcatraz, Oakland-Bay SF Bridge. They treated me mighty fine. And I had plenty of time to think about my father and how he would have loved being with us today. Plenty of sailboats, wind surfers, kite surfers, joggers, skaters, beach people, bikers, strollers. Couldn't have had a better afternoon.
Dean
Here in Iowa we just passed a law effective July 1, 2004 requiring that a judge provide, when joint custody is requested, specifically, a specific reason as to why joint custody is denied by the court. This will unlikely make a dramatic change in the way custody is handled here but the fathers' rights group here is heartened by this small step in the right direction. Let's hope it does some good in helping a father be a parent to his kids.
My mother grew up fatherless, as did many of her generation - her father died in WWII and she was raised by her aunt (apart from her siblings; she has a good relationhip with them in spite of the fact that she didn't meet them until she was a teenager.)
One of the reasons she was attracted to my dad was that she knew he'd make a good father (and not for her but for her kids.) All I have to say is that she had very good judgement, absent any personal father figure to base it on. Though I'm sure she had plenty of friends with fathers, come to think of it...