Insitutional Discrimination against Fathers
Aussie PM in denial as her support amongst Males drops to all time low
Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has responded to news of the collapse of her support amongst Australia’s voting public with an air of denial that has even stunned her harshest critics.
With news today that Labor’s support has fallen to 28 per cent, just one percent shy of the figure that has decimated the Queensland Labor party only a few days ago, with a loss of over 40 seats, fears are now growing that Gillard is simply too detached from reality to meet the herculian challenge that is facing Labor at a federal level.
Many critics have identified two key policies that have wedged hard-core Labor supporters away from Labor and into the fold of the Coalition.
A policy that has received little news media coverage but has caused significant grass roots upheaval has been the recent 2011 Family Law amendments, which have effectively dismantled Australia’s popular and broadly successful shared parenting laws, and replaced them with what is largely perceived to be anti-male, anti-fatherhood policies, many seeing this as Gillard cowering to feminist ideologues.
Read full article on Ezine4Males.com
DIVORCE LAWS: Family Court loathed for the vast harm it does
The Americans have a well-known saying for politicians, “It’s the economy, stupid!” — meaning that what matters most for people are economic issues. It’s false.
What matters most to people, and most affects their well-being, are close relationships, and above all family relationships. These are areas where politicians and bureaucrats can do only limited good but almost limitless harm, and huge harm is being done.
Here are some facts regarding Australia today. If there’s a marriage or relationship break-up involving children, and custody or access is in dispute, the parties must submit to an inquisition by Family Court social-workers or the latters’ pet psychologists regarding their past behaviour towards and in the presence of the children.
A major purpose of the exercise is to identify “family violence” by the male, with this being defined as any behaviour “actual or threatened” which causes any member of the family “to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal well-being or safety”.
The term “well-being” is infinitely elastic, and meant to be, as are the other catch-all Family Court categories of “family violence”, such as “psychological violence/abuse”, “emotional violence/abuse”, and “controlling behaviours”.
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: A response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia
The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.
IVF – Where governments provide funding for fatherless families
Fathers’ rights and shared parenting campaigners have for decades been fighting for the rights of children from separated families to be in the loving presence of both their biological parents.
It has been a hard fought battle which has seen only minor inroads being made, given the ferocious resistance from government funded women’s’ groups, who ironically had been set up in the first place to promote policies of equality amongst the sexes.
As many would know, Australia’s record on human rights had a significant setback last November 2011, when Australia’s world renowned Shared Parenting laws were watered down by the Australian Labor government, being replaced by a set of laws heavily laced with anti-fatherhood dogma, designed primarily to entrench a sole-mother, fatherless family unit post-divorce, regardless of the needs of the children or the qualities of the father.
Having said that, Shared Parenting is not out of the question, and a growing number of divorced mothers are ignoring the sexist overtures of the Gillard Labor government and opting for Shared Parenting arrangements post-divorce.
However, while Shared Parenting advocates continue to knock on the doors of open minded politicians lobbying for genuinely gender-neutral family laws in this country, an insidious, almost silent development has been occurring behind the scenes, a development that no-one ever voted for, and a development that has never been assessed in terms of whether it is in the best interests of the child.
European Court of Human Rights does a backflip: Biological fathers’ lawsuits dismissed
Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights: Biological fathers have no right to recognition of paternity if the mother lives with another man.
In 2010 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that German legislation prohibiting biological fathers from having any contact with their child without the biological mother’s consent was discriminating against fathers and a violation of the men’s human rights.
Refer to article: European Court Bolsters Fathers’ Rights
However, the European Court of Human Rights has just announced a backflip on its previous position, now claiming a ludicrous exception to this ruling by removing the parental rights of the biological father merely because the mother has moved in with another man.
Its a bizarre case of one step forward, ten steps backward for fathers all around the world, and this particular decision exemplifies the entrenched discrimination against biological fathers at every level of the legal system.
Rugby League – Abusing the truth in its fight against Domestic Abuse
The NRL and the NSW government have recently launched an educational DVD to teach young rugby league players and male students across Australia about the negative impact of violence against women.
This campaign, although well-meaning, has been slammed by many domestic violence experts as a mis-representation of the true nature of domestic violence in this country. Many argue that such a simplistic portrayal of domestic violence will only encourage further abuse, especially amongst the young, because the whole campaign is based on the falsehood.
Although it is fairly well documented that domestic violence is a relationship dynamic, with both parties contributing to the violence and abuse over an extended period of the life of the relationship, Australian sporting codes are unfortunately ‘buying in’ to the myth that domestic abuse and violence is a unilateral phenomenon, and can somehow be stopped by simply vilifying men.
Most domestic violence has a backdrop of abuse tactics from both the male and female in the relationship, dating back many years before the authorities may be involved.
When Abortion is not Enough: Women’s Rights Reaches New Low
Editor: KILLING newborn babies should be allowed if the mother wishes, Australian philosophers have argued in a prestigious journal, however their whole argument is premised on the notion that mothers ‘own’ children, and this property is theirs solely to decide on matters as important as life or death.
The role, rights and responsibilities of the fathers and other family members is ignored, perhaps denoting that these supposed philosophers are engaging in something other than open-minded scientific debate. Perhaps this discussions has something to do with the growing number of women being persecuted for filicide, the murder of the children, especially at the point of birth. We in Australia are quite familiar we a particularly high profile case of a sports personality who killed her new born child because it was expected to interfere with her sports career.
Perhaps in the well tried fashion of the likes of Jen McIntosh, this publication’s true purpose is to provide legal leverage to such mothers, in order to avoid prison terms for killing new born babies.
Its quite interesting that such leniency does not seem to be extended to the father in this philosophical discussion.
Where Good Men Don’t Count: The Dire Repercussions of Ignoring Men’s Welfare – Story Bridge Murder/Suicide
In another case reflecting the lack of support experienced by separated fathers in this country, many Australians are now questioning the wisdom of Australia’s family support services which have focussed almost exclusively on the welfare and support of women, while ignoring the needs men, resulting in a culture of vilification that has driven some men over the edge, with dire consequences for the innocent children of separated families.
IT WAS dark outside when Danielle Lees woke and reached for her mobile phone. It had only been hours since she last saw him, but something made her dial her husband to see if everything was OK.
By the time the call connected with Jason Lees’ mobile, both he and their son, Brad, were already dead.
Danielle, a psychologist, had been staying with her parents on the Gold Coast.
Neighbours say the couple appeared to have separated, but Jason, a teacher at Brisbane’s “Churchie” and a former rugby union referee, drove to meet her for lunch on Sunday.
He left again for home in the afternoon, taking Brad with him – the two-year-old attended his school’s kindergarten.
It was about 2am when Jason strapped Brad into the car, loaded his bike and drove from their Seven Hills home in suburban Brisbane to Kangaroo Point.
ABS Releases Gender Indicators and Ignores Male Disadvantage
Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia’s so-called impartial statistical body released its Gender Indicators report: “a summary of gender specific data in six domains representing Economic security, Education, Health, Work and family balance, Safety and justice, and Democracy, governance and citizenship”.
The ABS produced a media release about the publication. This release could have noted that:
- Across the board males fare much worse than females in the education system – most notably being 24% less likely to be enrolled in a bachelor degree or above
- Across the board males fare much worse than females in the health arena – most notably suffering death rates from cancer, heart disease, suicide, motor vehicle accidents and drug abuse between 1.6 and 3.4 times higher
New Bill to add Non-Discrimination Provision to Child Custody Law
SALT LAKE CITY-USA — Julie Anderson gulped back tears to explain to state lawmakers why they need to amend Utah’s child custody statute.
The Andersons believe had their son, Jared, had been awarded custody of his 3-year-old daughter Aubree Jo, the child would not have died in a car accident with her impaired mother behind the wheel. Toxicology tests found Oxycontin and marijuana in Brandi Stilke’s system when the single-car accident occurred on Feb. 23, 2011, in Harrisville.
“If we had been a bit more diligent, perhaps, it wouldn’t have happened,” Anderson told members of House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee Tuesday afternoon.
Anderson testified on behalf of HB88, which would add to Utah’s divorce statute a statement that the court may not discriminate against a parent based on age, race, color, national origin, religious preference or gender.
