By Dr. Leon R. Koziol of the Parenting Rights Institute
I am proposing an extraordinary writ from the Supreme Court to hear its first ever shared parenting case mandated by the Constitution and proper accountability for the routine violations of basic rights in our nation’s divorce and family courts.
Unlike the standard petitions for writ under Rule 14 of the Supreme Court, I will be filing under Rule 2o. It is a rarely used form of petition “in aid of the court’s jurisdiction.”
You will join as a separate petitioner and not as a party represented by me. I am not acting as a legal advisor. This is a bold and timely petition seeking greater access for parents before our high court.I will ask that a Special Master be appointed to investigate an epidemic in these courts with hearings held around the country should the Court accept this petition.
If a sufficient number of parents or court victims join, I will prepare the petition for viewing. You can retain counsel if you like and a period will be set aside from the time of publication here for you to withdraw your participation in the event you disapprove of any aspect of that completed petition. You can also offer input or modifications but keep in mind that I have little assistance and resources. My time is better spent here and your time can be ideally applied to viral assistance, recruitment and donations.
FEDS ABANDON ‘EQUAL RIGHTS‘ CLAIM TO RAISE YOUR KIDS
‘Much work to be done before decades of federal overreach is reversed’
Federal officials have reversed their claim that they have “equal rights” to children to raise them, a claim that stirred outrage in many quarters of America when it was first made a few months back.
The claim originally was included in a draft policy by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education and generously allowed that parents, too, should be allowed to help raise their own children along with the government, through various programs.
The document, the “Draft Policy Statement on Family Engagement From the Early Years to the Early Grades,” stated at the time: “It is the position of the departments that all early childhood programs and schools recognize families as equal partners in improving children’s development, learning and wellness across all settings, and over the course of their children’s developmental and educational experiences.”
The newest release of the statement, however, now provides that, “Families are children’s first and most important teachers, advocates, and nurturers. Strong family engagement in early childhood systems and programs is central – not supplemental – to promoting children’s healthy intellectual, physical, and social-emotional development; preparing children for school; and supporting academic achievement in elementary school and beyond. Research indicates that families’ involvement in children’s learning and development impacts lifelong health, developmental, and academic outcomes.”
The HSLDA had blasted the earlier statement, in fact, dispatching Estrada to meet with senior officials from the U.S. Department of Education and “personally” explaining the significant issues with the draft statement, including opposition from parents to the “bureaucratic arrogance.”
The change is a very mich improved version, the HSLDA pointed out, making clear that “families have strong and sustained effects on children’s learning, development, and wellness.”
“Despite this victory,” the group explained. “there are other problems with the document that remain. The document’s working definition of ‘family’ still includes not only a child’s parents or legal guardians, but ‘all adults who interact with early childhood systems in support of their child, to include biological, adoptive, and foster parents; grandparents; legal and infromal guardians; and adult siblings.’”
HSLDA exlained, “In situations where conflict may exist between a child’s parents and other family members regarding educational choices, this still quite broad definition of family is not hepful for clarity regarding parental rights in education.”
The organization explained, “There is much work to be done before decades of federal overreach in K-12 education is reversed.”
The document does still include a suggestion that families and institutions “partner” to give children better results in school.
WND reported the original plan by the government was to “systematically” engage families about their own children.
“At HSLDA, we believe that these statements reveal these agencies’ true beliefs: that a child’s God-given family does not matter. Family is whomever or whatever the government says it is,” Estrada wrote at the time.
He cited other government agendas, such as pushing the political correctness in Common Core, “dangerous U.N. treaties,” as well as suggestions for universal preschool.
Federal officials have reversed their claim that they have “equal rights” to children to raise them, a claim that stirred outrage in many quarters of America when it was first made a few months back. The claim originally was included in a draft policy by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the […]
The equality4men campaign is concerned with the inequalities that impact men and boys of all backgrounds at every stage of life. The years when boys first enter adulthood are the most vulnerable years of most men’s lives.
The following list of 10 reasons we need equality for young men is drawn from our eBook Equality For Men which you can buy today.
1. Life Expectancy ~ In England and Wales, boys and young men aged 15 to 24 are two and a half times more likely to die than women and girls of the same age.
2. Premature Death ~ Compared with women of the same age, young men are four times more likely to die in an accident, four times more likely to kill themselves and three times more likely to be murdered. On average, five young men die prematurely every single day and most of these deaths are avoidable.
3. Murder ~ Young men are three times more likely to be murdered than young women with 3 young men being murdered every week in England & Wales.
A multi-partisan commission of many of the nation’s leading experts have articulated five components to the boy crisis, and suggested solutions, including the coordination of a White House Council on Boys and Men. See the right sidebar for the full proposal. Click here for a video explaining the crisis.
Sign up for our new monthly newsletter, The Proposal, which features an article on each of the five components of the boy crisis. The sign up is here.
Who and What.A multi-partisan Commission of thirty-four nationally-known scholars and practitioners request that President Obama create a White House Council on Boys to Men.
Why. A nationwide crisis of boys and men already exists. The Commission identifies five components: • Education. Boys are behind girls in almost every subject, especially reading and writing. Yet boy-friendly programs (e.g., recess and vocational education) are being curtailed. • Jobs. Our sons are not being prepared for jobs where the jobs will be. Yet women rarely marry men in unemployment lines. • Fatherlessness. A third of boys are raised in father-absent homes; yet boys and girls with significant father involvement do better in more than 25 areas. • Physical health. Life expectancy has gone from one to five years less for males than for females, yet federal offices of boys and men’s health are non-existent. • Emotional health. Boys’ suicide rate goes from equal to girls to five times girls’ between ages 13 and 20, as boys feel the pressures of the male role.
Each of the five crisis components is potentially handled by a different department of the government; therefore coordination and prioritization is best handled at the White House level.
Short-Term Investment. One million dollars. Long-Term Savings. Many billions of dollars. (For example, boys who are cared for become men who care for–men who pay taxes for schools rather than drain taxes for prisons.) Quality-of-Life Savings. Priceless.
Timing. The mere presidential announcement of a White House Council on Boys to Men makes visible an invisible crisis. A White House Conference on Boys to Men to present “best practices” within one year after the Council is created.
Prominent Women Championing a White House Council on Boys and Men
The following women leaders, both conservative and liberal, either serve on the commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men–to work with the already-formed White House Council on Women and Girls–or are taking a leadership role in petitioning President Obama to create a White House Council on Boys and Men.
Jennifer M. Granholm was the two-term governor of Michigan from 2003-2011. She currently teaches law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and is a regular contributor to “Meet the Press.” Jennifer is co-author (with husband Dan Mulhern) of A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future. She is an advisor to the Pew Charitable Trust and is a director for The Dow Chemical Company.
Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Before joining AEI she was a professor of philosophy at Clark University where she specialized in moral theory. Her academic articles have appeared in publications such as The Journal of Philosophy and The New England Journal of Medicine, Sommers is the author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys—the latter was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.”
“the single biggest social problem in our society may be the growing absence of fathers from their children’s homes, because it contributes to so many other social problems.”
~ President Bill Clinton
In 1997, Congress created task forces to promote fatherhood, and in 1998 the governors’ and mayors’ conferences followed. President George W. Bush recently unveiled a $315 million dollar package for “responsible fatherhood.” Nonprofit organizations such as the National Fatherhood Initiative were formed in the mid-1990s. Fatherhood was seen as the most serious social problem by almost 80% of respondents to a 1996 Gallup poll (NFI 19961 ).
Fatherhood advocates insist that the crisis of fatherless children is “the most destructive trend of our generation” (Blankenhorn 19951 ). Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherlessness: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, teen pregnancy, suicide — all correlate more strongly to fatherlessness than to any other single factor. The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists all come from fatherless homes (Daniels 1998; NFI 1996). The connection is so strong that controlling for fatherlessness erases the relationships between race and crime and between low income and crime (Kamarck and Galston 1990).
Yet despite its salience in public policy debates and within psychology, sociology, and law, fatherhood has received little attention from political scientists.
This neglect is not a minor omission. Arguably it is what has left the phenomenon unexplained. For despite a decade of attention, little attempt has been made to account for where the fatherhood crisis comes from in the first place. While it doubtless has a number of contributing social and economic causes that stretch back decades, there is evidence that the critical dimensions it has assumed in the last decade proceed at least in part from public policy, and that the problem should be seen less as sociological or psychological and more as political.
Men are being denied their rights as fathers, workers and human beings by the courts and other institutions that have simply gone too far.
Feminist movements while promoting equality seem to be replacing the good old boys’ club with a good old girls’ one. Some in the country think it is time for men to take a stand and work with visioned women for REAL equality.
This show will feature Harry Croutch of the National Coalition for Men and Men’s Legal Center in San Diego along with RK Hendrick, Esq, an attorney and author of the book “How To Avoid Getting Screwed When Getting Laid”. Eric Von Sydow will be commenting on his books and role in helping men cope in today’s society. Join us for what is sure to be a provocative discussion.
Here we are starting another year in the same position as last year and the year before that and the year before that. Three years now since I saw my two children and three more to go if the situation remains the same. My son Scott will be sixteen in three years time and he will instantly have the freedom to choose to find me. Which is why I keep my blog running. I have said this over and over again during the last three years, all we want is equality. Not too much to ask in 2014. A fathers right to see his children and a child’s right to see his or her father. Men are often accused of being controlling, but when a mother denies a father access to his children and a child access to his or father then that is the extreme of controlling behavior. But that seems to go unrecognised. Balanced? I don’t think so. Fair? I don’t think so. Equal? I don’t think so. Children are not tools to be used as a punishment against a father.
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
I will file for this writ as a parent and victim of retributions by our divorce and family courts but only if a sufficient number join.
This show will feature Harry Croutch of the 
Americans for Equal Rights for Fathers 