Divorced Dads: Family Champions

July 14, 2003

Which came first; children or marriage licenses? The focus of national debate on marriage obscures the critical issue. Family is fundamental. Fathers' rights advocates appear to be the sole champions in the battle for political and legal recognition of the fundamental social unit.

One side of the current debate says that marriage should be extended to include "same sex partners" because a range of legal and financial entitlements would follow. People on that side of the argument helped initiate the attack on the traditional family, and follow other groups that have tried to redefine it. The other side says that a family does not exist outside of marriage. People taking this position have often been mistaken as defenders of the family. In truth, their position is a direct denial of its fundamental nature.

The spearhead of the anti-family movement has historically been aimed at fathers, and has often been part of an attack against men generally. "Women's Liberation" was largely about liberating women from the "slavery of marriage," a difficult concept to grasp without a "vast conspiracy against women in a male dominated society." Feminists regard all women everywhere as some kind of mass communal or spiritual family. Men need not apply unless they want to donate money and sperm to a family to which they can never belong.

The feminist campaign was successful. The United States is unique in having established the first reverse Islamic culture in which women hold all family rights and men have none. Children are generally treated as the property of their mothers. Fathers are assigned responsibilities and can be punished severely, by the will of mothers and with the full support of states and the federal government, if they do not do as they are told. Many fathers lose their homes, their incomes, and their children simply because their wives lose interest in them. Government support for the practice is so strong, that changing spouses after children have been born has become a viable method for women to accumulate wealth.

It works imperfectly of course. Since all of the above is unconstitutional, serves a variety of illegal purposes that have nothing to do with family, makes no sense, and would not be publicly accepted if the public generally understood, no state legislature has tried to write the laws in such a way that the effects are clearly stated. When fathers get custody of their children, which happens from time to time, gender roles are reversed. N.O.W. is working for reforms that would make gender roles more absolute by preventing women from being treated like men following divorce.

Despite the fact that the battle against fathers has been the most effective element of the war against family, none of the groups given attention on the national stage are pro-father. The political movement to "preserve marriage" is not focused on family, but on an association between political rights and marriage. It's as though the rank and file of the popular debate think that the battle for fundamental family rights was lost in some by-gone era. Now everyone agrees that family must be redefined. Social conservatives and homosexuals agree that marriage is essential, but disagree about who can get married. Feminists want families without fathers. None of these positions accept a real relationship between father and family, or that any such relationship can exist without political approval. Therefore, all these positions deny the fundamental nature of family.

A case in Georgia is on its way to saving the traditional family or pounding the final nail in its coffin. A final decision in Georgia verses Sweat [trial court decision] [state supreme court decision], perhaps in the US Supreme Court, will also have the most profound effect on the preservation or destruction of the institution of marriage since the introduction of so-called "no-fault" divorce.

The trial court recognized family rights in a decision requiring the state to treat the redistribution of income following divorce rationally, based on real family relationships and circumstances. The state supreme court refused to recognize family rights as fundamental rights. It applied a lower standard of constitutional review that is normally reserved for matters of social or economic policy. If this treatment of family law stands, then family will no longer be legally recognized as fundamental. The way will be clear to define and manipulate the concept of family arbitrarily. Politically, family will be nothing more than an arbitrary construction in social and economic policy.

No-fault divorce started marriage and family down a slippery slope by eliminating legal recognition of the marriage "contract." We now know that led to the edge of a steep cliff. If we fall off this one, it will be much harder, probably impossible in any foreseeable future, to get back up again.

For all the talk about the importance of preserving family, the strange thing is that only fathers' rights advocates show serious interest through their words and actions. It is extremely unfortunate that they find it difficult to get attention in the national debate. Their cause is related to family rights and thus preservation of family. If the state does not recognize and respect family relationships, then the marriage license will become about as important as a hunting or fishing license, and perhaps much less important for anyone who depends on hunting and fishing for nutrition.


Additional note: For those interested in a detailed academic commentary on family rights, see Parental Rights and Due Process from the philosopher Donald C. Hubin.

Roger F. Gay