William Malven post on the Mens News Daily website, in an article titled, “God’s Rights, Not Men’s Rights,†“Self-righteous anger is a dubious pleasure at best; at worst it is self-destructive and self-deceiving.†The articleâ€â€Âjust skim it to the catch the driftâ€â€Âis filled with self-righteous anger. It is obviously meant to be provocative and upset those that frequent Men’s News Daily. In and of itself, this is not necessarily a terrible thing to do, I certainly have spoken in forums where my view was the minority, but to engage in the very tactic that you are decrying is a fool’s enterprise. Psalms 26:4 “I do not sit with deceitful men, nor do I consort with HYPOCRITES.â€ÂÂ
What’s humorous is how he starts off with true sounding statements. “All over America men are being “screwed†by a court system that favors women over men.†“All a woman has to do is yell ‘Battery!’ and the judge automatically takes her side.â€ÂÂ
As an attorney, I can tell you that men do seem to be treated in an unfair manner by the court system. The is just one of many studies that documents this problem. And yes, very frequently women are given restraining orders with little to no proof that she was a true victim other than by her own self-serving declarations.
But then Malven starts piling on strawman arguments:
“The totally blameless male is the victim.†“He didn’t do a thing, honest!†“Women are the cause of all of society’s ills and any man who defends a woman is a traitor to his fellowsâ€ÂÂ
I don’t know why he didn’t add:
“All men are Godly and all women are works of the devil.â€ÂÂ
Mr. Malven is a pyromaniac in this field of straw men, burning one down after another. As soon as you start engaging in straw man statements that there is a serious effort to have people believe men never engage in domestic violence, well, you can’t be taken seriously.
Most people in the fathers’ rights movement (the “men’s rights movement†is very rarely used) simply want equality in family court. There are some that want to restore a “patriarchy,†but this is a minority, and I am not one of them. And endless experiences in court and statistical data demonstrate that men get a pretty bad shake.
Funnier still is the statement, one size fits all for everyone to wear, “It’s a lie, people and deep down inside you know it. Whether you like it or not, whether you are honest enough to see it (and worse, admit it) or not, we all have had a hand in what has happened to us in this life.â€ÂÂ
This is an interesting morally ontological view, but it is far too simplistic. Sure, we all have made mistakes that contributed to our fate, but there is evil in the word that contributes to that fate also. Fighting that evil is the work of God.
Mr. Malven writes, “The path to ‘happiness’ is not through the courts or by getting our own way; it is in doing God’s will (I haven’t quite figured out what that is or how to do it, but I know what it ain’t).†Let me give you a hint what God’s will is:
The Lord “defends the cause of the fatherless.†Deuteronomy 10:18
The Lord defends the cause of the fatherless. William Malven attacks that cause, but then adds we should follow God’s will. As Jesus said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.†Matthew 7:15.
In Malachi 4:5-6 it is written, “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
Those who attack a movement of people that want to bring the child to the father as a “bunch of whiners†are not animated by Christian principles or Judaic ones. It is a view not supported by any major religion.
Equally disturbing are Malven’s views of divorce. He writes:
“I know, I know…you didn’t do anything to deserve it, your wife just up and divorced you because she wanted to make your life miserable and take the kids away from you. You didn’t do a thing. You were the ‘perfect husband,’ and she just ‘screwed you.’ You were faultless. You were blameless. You tried, but she didn’t. Yeah, yeah, tell me another one.â€ÂÂ
Malven’s overstatements where men claim to be “faultless†or “blameless†are easily dismissed for the silliness that they represent. In all my years of representing fathers, I have never heard a statement coming close to that. But what I have heardâ€â€Ârepeatedlyâ€â€Âis that husbands are routinely dumped without marital fault, i.e., the type of extreme misbehavior that is needed to be shown in order for a divorce to be granted before the advent of uni-lateral no-fault divorce. Yet Malven response is to ask the father to take a deep look in the mirror, rather than blame his wife for dumping him. Rather than taking a look in the mirror, let’s take a look in the Bible:
“[A]t the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Mathew 19: 4-6.
Jesus added, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Mathew 19:9.
When the court system allows wives to just dump their husbands (and vice-versa) over minor faults, they violate basic biblical principles. That, as Mr. Malven put it, is telling “the difference between the real (that which of the spirit-the self-and thus eternal), and the unreal.â€ÂÂ
I certainly do not claim to be a Biblical scholar, but when someone comes along claiming to want to do “God’s Will,†and those statements do not reconcile with some of the basic tenents of the Bible, that man is either mistaken or a liar. But whether he is honestly mistaken or a liar, he is wrong. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.†Mathew 7:15. Those who attack the father’s rights movement:
(1) promote fatherlessness, and
(2) promote divorce.
There’s simply no Biblical support for this, no matter who much you think you should be supporting “God’s rights.†There is simply too many Biblical passage about the importance of fathers (and both parents), and the sin of divorce to take Mr. Malven’s arguments seriously.
Susan B. Anthony once said, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.†If he lived at her time, William Malven would have stood up and objected, “Hey, God’s rights, not women’s rights!â€ÂÂ
THE FATHER’S CAUSE IS GOD’S CAUSE
By Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, Esq.


