VAWA Challenge Fails On Small Technicality: Plaintiff Failed to Mention IMBRA
For about 2.5 years I have been watching the Men”s Rights Movement (MRM) struggle from being a backwater “Fathers have the right to see their kids too” movement to something that now encompasses a whole range of issues over which Marxist feminists and most of the political “Christian right” are passing laws to take away the rights of males and regulate them (or punish them for crimes that were not crimes yesterday).
To me, the most serious issue of all has been the IMBRA law, which the feminists cynically named the “International Marriage Broker Regulation Act.” The law forces American men to be background checked if they want a for-profit dating site or agency to allow them to communicate in any manner with a foreign woman. This violates the Right to Assemble of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, especially because there is a “written signature” clause in the law that forces foreign women, who might not have email, to approve of contact with specific males only via a written signature. This takes away the rights of foreign women to broadcast their own contact information in any manner they see fit.
In any event, most observers of the MRM have heard much less about IMBRA than they have heard vast and valid complaints about something called VAWA or the Violence Against Women Act (which IMBRA is a part of). The main complaint about VAWA is that it encourages all women, especially foreign born wives, to fraudulently accuse their husbands of abuse and benefit greatly from the fraud.
Enter a lawyer from New York City named Roy Den Hollander. In February 2008, Roy challenged VAWA as the plaintiff and the lawyer (a smart move in and of itself because men are not contributing any money to each other’s dreams of challenging feminist laws). He said that a stripper from Russia tricked him into marriage and then used false abuse claims under VAWA to get a stripping job in the USA. He seemed to make it clear that actual sex traffickers were involved in this criminality…but there was one thing he failed to do in my mind and in the mind of the Clintonite left wing feminist judge William H. Pauley III:
He seems to have failed to clearly show how the false accusations of the VAWA process causes irreparable harm to men.
Den Hollander did not show how restraining orders involved will always show up on sensitive background checks such as the one that IMBRA demands before a man can meet a new foreign female acquaintance.
Last February, Roy Den Hollander refused to add mention of IMBRA to his complaint, which was just dismissed by the castrated William H Pauley III on December 3, 2008 for not having shown evidence of VAWA;s lasting harm to the plaintiff (plus three co-plaintiffs who joined last July).
The eunuch Judge William Pauley actually admitted that VAWA proceedings are secret and excluded the accused from participating. He then had the nerve to say that, THEREFORE, the accused would never be harmed from all the secret deliberations and conclusions!
When the judge put it that way, he was kind of right. The judge said that VAWA proceedings are sealed and few would be allowed to find out that the man was ever accused of abuse.
Maybe…except aren’t restraining orders required to be reported on in background checks?
At least I know that the IMBRA law requires that information on restraining orders be sent to women who then have to sign in writing that a particular man can say hello to them.
While there are probably other ways for a man to prove that being falsely accused of abuse in a secret VAWA court can cause irreparable harm, the only one I can think of is that, under the IMBRA requirements, most foreign women would refuse to communicate with a man whose background report is sent to her first stating that he has had a restraining order placed on him by a previous foreign wife.
QED: The Den Hollander VAWA Challenge and any future challenge against VAWA needs to mention IMBRA as the means in which irrreparable harm is done to men falsely accused under VAWA.
I will be honest: Although I was effective in getting major MRAs interested in writing long articles about the evils of the IMBRA law (Glenn Sacks, David Usher, Marc Rudov), for the past 1.5 years everyone seems to have placed IMBRA on the back burner. Marc Rudov told me that he felt that talking about IMBRA on TV would actually hurt the men’s rights cause because he felt that the men who watch Fox News do not believe in premarital sex and would believe that “marriage agencies” are really all about American men conducting sex tourism in foreign lands.
Meanwhile, not one American citizen has challenged IMBRA as having violated his or her personal right to assembly.
Den Hollander can still appeal the lower court decision to the mostly Republican judges above Pauley. He can say he would have proved harm was done in a trial. He can say that it should be obvious that restraining orders cause irreparable harm. Everyone knows that restraining orders are a dangerous black mark in the USA today. He can say that every judge should have known that laws like IMBRA use restraining orders to ruin a man’s future happiness by blocking contact with potential future girlfriends and wives.
We will see whether there is an appeal.
Meanwhile, let everyone note that IMBRA is part of VAWA. VAWA and IMBRA are part of the same anti-male mindset.
The next VAWA challenger needs to keep IMBRA front and center in the challenge. It is a clear and present danger to anyone who has ever been falsely accused.
The right to say hello to a new woman is more important than complaining about having been defrauded by the old woman.
What I feel needs to happen is that we all organize to fight VAWA and IMBRA together and, for Heaven’s sake, let anyone who is embarrassed that some men date gorgeous young foreign women understand that this embarrassment itself is anti-male. Most divorced single men want to date and marry women who are still in their twenties and thirties so they can have babies. No male should be embarrassed about this fact.
We should not have to throw IMBRA opponents under the bus in order to get people like the Concerned Women of America to oppose VAWA in general. “Concerned women” on our side need to stick up for our rights to date whomever we want that is adult. IMBRA is part of VAWA and needs to go.
The feminists were motivated to get VAWA and IMBRA passed because most of the heterosexuals among them were abandoned by males long ago and they are furious that any male might find happiness with someone younger, friendlier, less feminist and more attractive than they are.
If anyone doubts what I just said, two cases in point are SOS Hillary Clinton and Senator Maria Cantwell.
There is nothing to be embarrassed about being a man who likes attractive anti-feminist women.
And, even if an older woman does not appreciate men dating younger women, she must not and cannot deny their inalienable RIGHT to say hello to foreign adult women on foreign soil (which means via the Internet or an agency if need be).
Before Hillary becomes Secretary of State for real, let us organize to get IMBRA and much of VAWA on restraining order from a Republican judge as soon as possible. Our complaint needs to be written so it can be easily used before an appeals court in case we receive another eunuch Clintonite judge at the district level again (we in the MRM keep getting Clintonite judges on the few complaints that have been filed).
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December 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
By the way, Judge Pauley clearly upheld the arrogant feminist lack of concern for a man’s broken heart.
I believe Den Hollander meant, deep down inside, to say that this had been the irreparable harm facilitated by an unconstitutional Marxist feminist law.
That blinded him from going into the emotionless detailing of future, more tangible harm that even emotionless robots like feminists could not deny.
I could have titled this article “Broken Hearts Need Not Apply to Feminist Judges”.
The emotionless robots would probably try to say that IMBRA’s denying two particular people from meeting causes no long term harm because “there are other ways for someone to meet other people” than the one who may or may not have been the love of your life.
A Republican jackass judge named Thomas Rose actually said the above (that there were other ways to meet people so IMBRA does not stop men from marrying someone – in general).
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I never made the statement that Jim Peterson attributes to me in the article above: “Marc Rudov told me that he felt that talking about IMBRA on TV would actually hurt the men’s rights cause because he felt that the men who watch Fox News do not believe in premarital sex and would believe that “marriage agencies†are really all about American men conducting sex tourism in foreign lands.”
What I told Jim Peterson is that IMBRA does not affect enough men — vis-a-vis DV fraud, maternity fraud, paternity fraud, rape fraud, divorce, child custody, child support, alimony, and paternal alienation — to convince the producers at Fox News to cover it. TV is all about ratings, which result from covering stories that interest the most people.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 pm
First of all, I have Marc’s emails that say he feels that IMBRA would be seen by Fox News viewers as being all about stopping sex tourism (a subject we can all assume would bring HIGH RATINGS)…but something that he felt the male viewers would applaud. He said “IMBRA is about getting laid in Paris” and noted that he thought he would lose the good will of the viewers who agreed with him on other issues.
He sent such emails to many MRAs in November 2007 who complained to him that this attitude was way off the mark.
They can confirm this here. They have been nice to him since because he is doing some good on other fronts.
So I maintain journalist integrity in that I can back up what I am saying with proof if that is necessary.
Secondly, and more importantly, IMBRA would be MAJOR NEWS if it ever got mentioned on TV. The subject brings HIGH RATINGS whenever shows like Tyra Banks and Montel Williams try to bring “Mail Order Brides” on their shows (in which case the feminists always get embarrassed because the happily married couples show them up).
To say that IMBRA does not effect enough men is absurd because Marc has stated himself that IMBRA is a gateway law that is intended to get the Supreme Court to agree that all communications between men and women can be regulated by the US Government.
Here is Marc’s article:
http://thenononsenseman.mensnewsdaily.com/2007/05/13/unhook-that-bra/
After reading his passion about IMBRA, one would wonder why he has been too embarrassed to discuss this on TV.
Sure, the number of American men who have the brains, culture and the cash to travel overseas is minimal.
But what is really going on is that some MRAs are as embarrassed as some conservative women are about the subject of middle aged men dating and marrying what statistics show are often adult women 15-20 years younger than they are.
Apparently, age-difference dating is seen as a form of borderline pedophilia by some…at least that is what the feminists (and Queen Victoria) always wanted “conservative men” and “good husbands” to think.
Another issue is that most American men who complain about feminism in the US…simply do not believe that, if they spent $2000 for a vacation, they could find that there really are fantastic women in other places.
The ideological alliance between feminists and Social Conservative Males is a well documented beast. The WKKK of the late 1800s was meant to vilify the male sex drive (they pretended that only black men wanted sex with gorgeous young women).
Most MRAs agree that the WKKK was the progenitor of the NOW.
I maintain that the primary motivation of the NOW and most feminists (or at least their primary propaganda means by which to ally with conservatives) is precisely the issue of older baby boomers not wanting men to abandon and ignore them. This is why we see the media desperately trying to promote the opposite mentality: where young men marry Madonna, Christie Brinkley and Demi Moore.
Note that Christie Brinkley called her cheating young husband a “borderline pedophile” for being with an 18 year old competitor of hers. The real reason for the Madonna divorce is that he found a 30 year old replacement for her. This really peaves older women and I do not blame them for being disappointed (as long as they do not try to take away the rights of males to find replacements for them).
Regardless of the reason why too many males are squeamish about the God-given right of other males to date 21 year olds when they are 41…the topic of so-called “Mail Order Brides” is a potential HUGE RATINGS BONANZA.
I maintain that the ONLY reason why Fox News would not do a series on “The growing phenomenon of American men dating foreign women”, including debates, is because the producers know that the Security Mom audience would split with the male audience on the subject.
And the Security Moms supposedly have all the cash to buy the sponsors’ products.
Older women can get very emotional about the subject of men their own age ignoring them for younger women.
On FreeRepublic.com, before the mention of IMBRA was banned in 2006 (yes, even mentioning IMBRA will get a FReeper banned), conservative women kept saying “There are plenty of conservative women in the US so it is no excuse to say you date foreign women because there are so many liberal women in the USA”.
In other words they were saying they would not help fight IMBRA because they felt there was no good excuse for a man to date a foreign woman even as variety.
When Eduardo Porter of the New York Times wrote a scathing article attacking IMBRA, his female editors completely rewrote it to praise IMBRA. He actually admitted this and apologized publicly on VisaJourney.com on October 26, 2006.
The phoney article was on the front page of the European edition of the Times.
Sam Brownback thought the subject was worth going on Vatican Radio about…so he could warn all foreign women that American men who seek to date them are evil.
When Dmitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune wrote a scathing article attacking IMBRA, he was told point blank by his editor or publisher that he was NOT allowed to publish the story at all.
No doubt they were also told “This is not of interest to anyone”.
But does anyone here REALLY believe that?
IMBRA is being blocked from any major media mention at all.
I can write a book on how other media outlets, like the Dallas Star-Telegram, stopped a journalist from showing integrity on the subject.
Let’s finally see how the audience would react if they were allowed to hear about this. Let us see a televised debate on IMBRA.
Bill OReilly showed in May 2006 that he was not on our side, however. This hypocrit, who likes his interns young, did a scathing attack on American men wo would date foreign women that was right out of a Marxist feminist faculty lounge.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:04 am
The bottom line is that “sex sells”.
If Fox News were to put up a photo of a Ukrainian 24 year old in a mini-skirt or conservative dress and say “Still to come: Are feminists trying to stop American men from meeting foreign women like this?”…men would be phoning each other all over the USA to say “buddy, get to a television set. There is an explosive segment coming up on Fox News”.
It would be massive ratings sensation…if for no other reason than because of the photos that would necessarily be shown in the background of any debate or discussion.
Plus it would probably cause another million or so males to decide to finally take a foreign vacation…precisely what insecure conservative women do not want their husbands and potential boyfriends to think about doing.
Sex really does sell and IMBRA can be a very sexy issue indeed.
So what is the problem? Like I said above, there is enormous resistance on this issue coming from the fact that older women really do control the USA.
Marc would not be allowed to do a segment on IMBRA even if he tried to push it.
To show that older women control the USA, let’s look at how younger women hated Hillary Clinton…yet despite being voted down by the younger women and most men, Hillary is now our Secretary of State.
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Meanwhile, consider this:
Maternity Fraud, because of DNA analysis, is clearly now less of an issue than mandatory background checks for dating women online.
Immigration Fraud, such as Den Hollander complained about, is ultimately mostly only humiliating and costly looking back for the men. The fraudsters most often just want the scammed man to sign a document (giving her citizenship) under blackmail duress and go on with his life.
I have been astonished at the number of broken men I have met online who say that VAWA destroyed them emotionally…but who have no interest or heart to attack IMBRA which serves to make sure they might never get happy with anyone else again.
Too many VAWA victims fail to look forward. They look back with anger. They have the wrong priorities when it comes to picking up their own lives and moving forward (which IMBRA tries to stop them from doing).
What I see is that many men who are humiliated by foreign scammers, via VAWA or otherwise, are turned against foreign women and, forgetting the principle that IMBRA represents as a gateway to the total regulation of male communication with female strangers, downplay IMBRA.
Sadly, we may have a situation of the MRM being split between those who think foreign women are a bunch of lying scammers whom nobody should bother meeting and those who see the majority as being otherwise.
I wish we would all just see what Marc Rudov noted: IMBRA is not about dating foreign women but about being the gateway law for regulation of all online contact between men and women whom they do not yet know.
Discussion of that would be a massive ratings bonanza. Producers are stopping discussion for another reason.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Correct me if i’m wrong – but IMBRA has no teeth at all if you are not using the internet to “search” for women? As a man that has traveled alot internationally – there is no need to use the net to communicate with women once you are in a foreign land. And in most cases, the women come to you out of natural curiousity. IMBRA is offensive, but easily avoided.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:54 am
IMBRA is not about dating foreign women. It is about being a gateway law for feminist government meddling in all communications between men and women. Please read Marc Rudov’s article linked above. Marc knows better than to suggest this isn’t an extraordinarily serious issue that would get very high ratings, especially if geared toward a military audience and accompanied with a photo or video background of mini-skirted Ukrainians or Russians wearing summer dresses.
And, even then, IMBRA is not just upsetting because it intends to be the basis for background checking all American men who use the Internet for any purpose.
Worse, it sets up liability for anything a man says to a woman and to third parties for ever giving out a woman’s contact information. It brings the government into relationships more than the rest of VAWA does because it goes beyond defining an argument as abuse to defining hello as a crime.
I met a former Canadian college professor the other day who said that women are suing men in Canada now for saying they are attractive (officer, I could not sleep at night because he said I was beautiful).
This guy is now a professor in western Europe where he regularly has affairs with his 18+ students.
IMBRA end-runs the Supreme Court decision in the CDA case that said that people had the right to anonymity in communicating with others. Remember that the 4 conservative justices were in the MINORITY in that decision, meaning they were our enemies regarding online anonymity.
Yes, the IMBRA law itself, narrowly seen as an attempt by feminists to stop men from dating the competition, has no teeth for men like me who live in Russia, but most American men can only come here three or four times in a lifetime. When its 20 below and the women are inside huge parkas, you might do better online where they are pictured wearing summer dresses than on the streets.
Heck…very few dating sites are complying with IMBRA and the first time a citizen challenges IMBRA, he or she will not just ask for an immediate TRO on the entire law, but also ask the following 2 questions that Layli Miller-Muro of the Tahirih Justice Center refuses to give me a straight answer on:
1) Would a tape-recorded approval of contact suffice as “written consent” if a woman does not have an email address or fax machine in her home on a day when both she and a male visitor to her country want to meet?
2) What can a dating site do to make sure it is not defined as a “marriage broker”? The wording of the law suggests that all a site has to do is say that it wants to include American women and offer women the chance to pay money to initiate contact with American men.
Note that the VAWA Challenge neither asked for an immediate restraining order nor asked the judge for clarification on what VAWA meant…which was a mistake IMHO. The number one rule in court challenges is that you cannot give a judge wiggle room or an excuse to dismiss your case.
The wording of the law says that A Foreign Affair only has to say it is a religious site that “Worships the Feminist Goddess” to be off the hook. A judge is going to have to declare that only certain religious groups apply for an exception. We will make enemy judges work hard to deny us our rights.
If a judge is going to try to uphold IMBRA, he will have to shred the Constitution a dozen times in the decision.
And, sure, maybe if A Foreign Affair had gone the route of Cherry Blossoms and completely IGNORED the law or made fun of it by declaring themselves a religious site, we could all just laugh.
But, unfortunately, some of the best sites took IMBRA seriously enough to effectively block men from meeting women when the men were already in their country but only had one or two days to make quick contact. IMBRA slows things down, sometimes for weeks, months or forever, depending on whether a woman answers email from an old email address when she also gave a valid phone number that she would have wanted a man to use to phone her if IMBRA did not block sites from giving out such “contact information” even when women wantes this to be done.
But Tahirih, with its federal funding of $Million per year to enforce IMBRA, is going to finally have to try to enforce it someday soon. They do not want to, but they know they will have to because we will tell Congress not to fund them anymore if they don’t try (and fail).
They are waiting for another murder, which statistics say might happen in the next two years. When it comes, expect mayhem in the courts.
I do not use these sites much (I have to say I use them in order to keep myself as a possible plaintiff), but what kills me is the shocking principle that, after 20 years of Marxist feminists carping about needing to block the competition, they actually scored a touchdown and with the help of treasonous Republican males and Rupert Murdoch of Fox News.
The betrayal of males by males is what kills me most.
It brings to mind the scene in Braveheart when William Wallace finds that Robert the Bruce was riding with and defending the evil king of England in a battle.
Fox News does not appear to be really warming up to men’s rights. I hope I am wrong, seeing that I am on the other side of the globe and do not see anything but Marc Rudov’s Media Events page on that matter.
I loved watching Marc Rudov on Fox News last year. But his own site shows that he has only been allowed on TV there 3 times in the past six months.
I hope I am wrong on that and he just didn’t post lots of appearance videos. But I see a video for July and one for September and one from last week.
His usual feminist opponent, Lis Wiehl, seems to have gotten a promotion and seems to be a Fox News employee now. She had Marc on as a guest on her Girl Power Show (Fox News Radio) a few weeks ago for a few minutes where she openly declares herself a Republican feminist. Marc was allowed to flirt with her and impress her with his “rational” depiction of Sarah Palin as someone who can improve herself in the next few years (I guess he wasn’t allowed to discuss why Palin let herself get publicly endorsed by a NOW leader on October 5th at a rally in Colorado).
It is clear to me that Fox News wants to promote the “Girl Power” of Lis Wiehl (and the NOW endorsed Palin) and leave Marc as a lesser paid and more rarely appearing foil who can bring in entertainment value as long as he promotes the “Strong Women are Needed in the Republican Party” mantra that Fox News clearly wants to promote.
This fits in with Marc’s theory that, because women own 60% of US capital and make most purchasing decisions, the media is totally beholden to them.
It kills me to watch how, despite his having won most debates, they promoted the feminist.
And I know from communicating with her that she is very pro-IMBRA and pro-VAWA. She also is not really a nice person in real life.
He is talented and smart enough to replace Bill OReilly, but that will not happen under Rupert Murdoch.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:39 am
The solution is simple but hard to do, get all the men together, tell the politician to get rid of VAWA and Imbra and all the other man hatting BS or come election day they will be looking for a new job.
It does not surprize me that the biased old judge found something he could use to not abide by and respect the rights of “some man”. The people who run the cesspool that is the legal system, are not simply going to give up and quit, if they are challenged. They are going to fight like hell, but there are enough of us, men and those who support men, to overcome and vanquish these bastards, but it will take time and even if the thugs who run this God awful racket, know they are going to lose they will not go without a fight. And it will be a fight that is long and bloody. We will win, history always favors the righteous over the evil, but we will have loses. The only thing that makes this fight worthwhile, is the fact that once these evil bastards are beaten and vanquished, our sons and grandsons will not have to experience the abuses, injustices and the indignities we have suffered.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
We need also to fight smarter, faster and stick together.
Plus, plaintiffs really need to be prepared in advance to take things to the Appeals process and write everything for that higher court and the SC. Roy wrote to everyone yesterday saying he would likely give up…even though he would have known that Pauley was a Clintonite judge whose decision was a foregone conclusion last February.
Den Hollander could have found out in 3 days last February that this sick bastard William Pauley was our political enemy. He only needed to ask for a TRO. When it was denied, we would have known 11 months ago as much as we know now. He could have either asked to immediately appeal that denial or at least gone into detail in a brief about the politics that have been involved regarding VAWA (these federal judges really do need to be told what side they are assumed to be on – they have memories like sieves and only think about the politics of the moment and what Senators are whispering to them illegally behind the scenes).
The Tahirih Justice Center and Arnold & Porter Law Firm got downright nasty and rude to Judge Clarence Cooper when he put a 6 month TRO on IMBRA in March 2006. They openly threatened him with legal humiliation and did threaten to “take it upstairs” when he wavered on lifting the TRO in Septemer 2006.
One could say that A&P lawyers have the power to do that while regular lawyers do not…but…the idea is to get a courageous lawyer who will match the tactics of the powerful ones or go Pro Se with friends and political forums visibly behind you.
It took the TJC and Arnold and Porter awhile to make Cooper realize that, as a Democrat Federal Judge, he was working for Hillary Clinton, and if he wanted a promotion to the Supreme Court, he had better reverse his attitude on IMBRA and find an excuse to uphold it (he finally did saying, correctly for this case, that no citizen had challenged IMBRA saying their personal rights were affected).
That liberal judge held out for as long as he could in the face of the increasing anti-male militancy of his party and his need to conform. Joe Biden apparently visited him in July 2006 to commit the actual crime of tampering with the case. To see that Cooper’s real sentiments had originally been with men, read his TRO at http://www.veteransabroad.com/TRO.pdf
Why aren’t our plaintiffs talking tough like the Arnold and Porter shyster lawyers? Roy could have shown the existence of the MRM and this forum and MediaRadar.org.
I consider revealing the MRM’s existence in court as basic as taking a breath of air before speaking.
It wouldn’t have helped much with the feminist castrati judge, but it would have at least shown the judge that we were all on to how he would be pressured to decide.
In business it always help to show that you know how the other person is being pressured to decide. It helps you make the right arguments to persuade them otherwise.
Even better…there are plenty of rhetorical tactics that I have devised to force a liberal judge not to uphold this kind of law. Example would be to ask for him or her to comment on whether VAWA applied to black males or gay males as well and could the judge please say to the face of a major black or gay group leader that their group gets no special treatment in the face of these laws.
This can give a liberal male judge a way out.
The easiest way to get a liberal judge to overturn IMBRA would be to ask if gay men had a constitutional right not to have to show their HIV certificates to each other before being allowed to communicate.
Roy could have officially asked the good-looking Russian-born female AG deputy why she was chosen for this case (and can we see all memos related to this choice of a young Russian woman lawyer to oppose a man who married a young Russian woman) and why was a Republican member of the Bush Administration trying to be rude to men by showing the cowardice of not even wanting the matter to go to trial.
Where were the $90 press releases? Where were the updates on MensNewsDaily, Glennsacks or even OnlineDatingRights?
Did the plaintiff buy a list of Republican voters in a swing state?
One has to play hardball, especially when one sees fellow Republicans opposing you like traitors unnecessarily in court. It does no good to pretend politics does not exist. It does no good to let the judge think that the treason of your political party is natural to you (if Roy ever voted Democrat he got what he deserved).
Roy could have warned future Republican judges in the appeals process that there was never going to be another Bush-style Republican President, who ignored the male constituents, and the future Republican Presidents would be more libertarian and more resepectful of the Constitution…which meant that judges’ future promotion prospects should not be predicated on the idea that of impressing the current power holders.
The TJC in the 2006 IMBRA case pestered Judge Clarence Cooper with brief after brief that said, like Columbo, “One more thing your honor, we have found another case where a man abused his wife (by yelling at her once)”. The dating site plaintiff’s attorney just kept silent or quietly protested that the TJC was disobeying “established protocol.” Who cares about protocol? The TJC briefs worked. The judge used them in his decision against the plaintiff.
Break the rules as much as the opponents do! Den Hollander issued no briefs between July and December where he could have been offering more evidence or showing how the New Jersey judge overturned their DV law.
That was a crime right there: The New Jersey ruling constituted a great excuse for the plaintiff in this federal case to issue another brief to Judge Pauley III.
Then there was the fact that the judge had, in fact, signalled his animosity at a hearing last spring (or in June or July) when he asked Den Hollander point blank “But what harm have you endured”? This clearly showed that a broken heart and humiliation by a Russian scammer wasn’t going to cut it in his courtroom.
So a later brief was obviously necessary to counteract the new information that the judge had a higher standard for “harm done” than what had been offered in the original unamended complaint from February and the amended complaint for July.
Recognition of a judge’s projected probable decision should be taught in Lawyering 101 at Law School.
Things got worse in terms of cooperation with MRAs.
Den Hollander largely ignored David Usher and spit in my face when I tried to offer help. Den Hollander thought Marc Rudov was a God but Marc never mentioned this VAWA challenge on TV nor did he likely offer to review Den Hollander’s complaint before it was submitted (Marc writes very well and would have added some good material for the Supreme Court to think about in an appeal).
The next challenger, or Roy in his appeal, had better ask an experienced MRA to review his material before submission.
With friends like we MRAs are to each other, who needs enemies?
Four major personalities were operating at cross purposes from each other during the 10 months of this one little challenge. SNAFU
I may be off base with some of the above ideas but we darned well could have been all having a monthly conference call on Skype to talk such ideas and talk turkey.
I only learned yesterday that the judge was a Democrat.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Another thing: Really long and verbose arguments do win in court, if for no other reason than a single sentence can become the clincher that wins 3 years later in the Supreme Court. You can never tell what might be the winning argument in the appeals process, so you might as well fill the original complaint with lots of them.
The porn industry survived a few years ago because someone had mentioned in a brief that the movie “American Beauty” could not have been filmed if a new law had been passed banning pornography where someone might, according to a judge, appear like she might be under 18 even if she was proven to be 18 or over when the film was made. Sandra Oconnor, the swing vote, stated that this one concept caused her to land on the side of overturning that law (note that Congress, if it had gotten its way with this and the CDA law that tried to take away Internet anonymity, would be presiding over the most intense police state since the Soviet Union).
The TJC in the Georgia IMBRA case issued a 98 page piece of BS listing every time a man ever abused a foreign wife (including hiding the car keys). This verbosity was effective. I said above they issued brief after nauseating brief that we had thought was angering the judge but, in fact, was impressing him with their determination and sense of righteousness in “protecting women.”
The side that shows the most indignation and righteousness via briefs usually wins.
The TJC got the TRO on IMBRA lifted by screaming that a woman was going to die any minute because a sex offender stalker might get her contact information (like one of her 4 email addresses that she checks once per month and wants strangers from all over the world to write to).
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Regarding how conservative Supreme Court justice might treat men in an appeals process…
Sadly to say, Republican justices in the Supreme Court (our only hope) voted mostly in favor of taking away Internet anonymity via the CDA and making most porn illegal. They lost because Anthony Kennedy sided with the liberals on these issues.
I don’t consider these guys my friends even if I am relying on them to rule against this radical feminism.
While Rehnquist was anti-feminist and hated VAWA openly, his successors might be more fuzzy minded about all this.
Brownback got Roberts and Alito vetted and Brownback is one of the biggest traitors of them all. We have to hope that his picks will disagree with him or that he will change his tune if he tries to run for reelection in Kansas and the MRM signals major opposition to him.
I had an Iowa lawyer who was a member of the Iowar Republican Committee approach Brownback last year before the Iowa primaries.
It shook Brownback up to be warned off by someone who had the power to sink his presidential hopes in Iowa.
The lawyer, Ted Sporer, said that Brownback was totally shocked that a prominent male lawyer would side with what he had honestly thought were the filth and scum who commit violence against women and exploit third world virgins.
Brownback honestly did not think many men would oppose VAWA and IMBRA.
Brownback has not been so active in feminism since then.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I don’t mean to be disparaging Jim, but it makes more sense to me that during your 2.5 years of observation, you’ve learned more about what’s going on. I’ve seen a broad range of issues being worked on for almost 20 years. The MRM takes the most general stance against anti-menism, but there’s enough of a distinction in purpose and people involved to refer to the FRM or FRAs w.r.t. fathers issues. Perhaps, if you’ve been focused on MRM, it explains why it took 2.5 years for you to find people involved in a broad range of father and family issues.
December 6th, 2008 at 2:36 am
But the movement is going to need to really break out big-time, to capture millions of Democrat-voting males and men like me who refused to vote for McCain-Palin.
My interviews with young Obama voters and men who refused to vote McCain, showed that the biggest albatross for the Republican Party was the anti-sex attitude of the socons combined with a horrifying lack of forgiveness for so-called sexual transgressions (the Republican Party needs to take the lead in making sure the sex offender registry is completely reviewed, that nobody goes on the national list who would be innocent in another state, and non-dangerous males taken OFF).
I see the Father’s Rights issues as something worthy of attention but not a blockbuster game-changer issue nor something that I would put anywhere near the center if I am the one who gets the next funding. The reason is that too many people, including myself, think of women as the first choice as caregivers for children. Also, too many single men would rather a woman abort than keep a child if he does not have any interest in being with her or losing $200,000 along with his freedom of movement for the next 18 years. Check out Rudov’s stance on that from some of his 2007 articles.
It would be nice if the Heritage Foundation could get on board with men, but I will savagely oppose them if they ignore issues like IMBRA (if they consider dating foreign women to be sex tourism) while only taking up father’s rights and a few clauses in VAWA. Plus, I will work with them but not vote for them if they help on IMBRA but also continue to try to keep the Republican Party in the anti-sex and unforgiving of transgressions mode.
To me, the continuation of any harping on the “morality” of abortion (as opposed to mentioning now and then that it is a states rights issue) is like being in the orchestra on the Titanic or like being the black knight that said ni on Monty Python who kept wanting to fight after his arms and legs were cut off.
Men should be given a choice on fatherhood…after the fact. Russia and Germany want more babies. Tons of families want to adopt.
But that is another topic.
Regarding the VAWA Challenge in New York, I am saddened that NOBODY has asked me in the past two days for the original documents and I doubt anyone reading this went to Den Hollander to ask to see the actual court documents or try to give him advice on how to appeal.
Den Hollander and I are not on speaking terms for some reason (VAWA victims are sometimes very strange people which explains why they were probably found, manipulated, used and discarded by the scammers – remember, the judge in this case saw a nerd who could not answer a simple question about what harm had been done to him).
I would really like to see someone challenge feminists who is personable and socially outgoing and entertaining with a great sense of humor.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Mark Rudov emailed me saying that “IMBRA = sex”. He said that IMBRA is about dating and dating is about f**ing. He told me that he hasn’t shifted his position on IMBRA, but has changed his focus away from it, and that when he garners enough support for more mainstream men’s issues he will then focus on “getting a piece of ass in Paris” (his own words).
I feel that IMBRA does affect a very narrow, niche group of people, but has broader implications that impact far more people than most realize. Rush Limbaugh once said that “even if a draconian law doesn’t impact you personally, if they get away with setting a new precedent, then someday they’ll come after something that DOES impact you and it will be too late to stop them”.
If feminists get away with sanctioning foreign dating, they will go after domestic dating.
If they get away with censoring a 40-something man who wants to meet a 20-something girlfriend in the Philippines, then why not go after him if her pursues a 20-something woman in the U.S.? What about a 30-something U.S. woman if he’s over 50? Do we want to lobby for gay rights and then turn around and tell a consenting heterosexual adult how old his love partner can be?
If foreign personals ads can be censored, then what about Match.com, your local newspaper personals, the Want Ads, the local bar, your church singles group? Where does it end?
At what point do we say “enough is enough” and stop tolerating the quest for an ever expanding government nanny state that dictates your private life? When do we start holding so-called “conservative” politicians to their word on their push for “personal freedom” and “individual liberty”? If we’re going to preach “individual liberty” and turn around and set limits on your choices based on someone’s personal moral belief system, then what exactly does “individual liberty” mean if it doesn’t mean what it says? Who decides what is “moral” and what is not, or should government dictate that at all?
I think people should have an unfettered right to meet the people of their choice, whether it’s through Cherry Blossoms, Match.com, AFA, the Sheela Wood column or by floating a message in a bottle across the ocean. Government should not be in the business of telling you who your friends can be.