Judge Orders Sex-change for Boy

The Truth Fairy blog has a horror story about a dad who lost custody of his teenaged boy because he was reluctant to go along with bizarre sex-change treatments. The judge was biased, but so is the whole system.

“The problem is, when it’s a court-wide training, even if you file a motion to recuse that particular judge, you have no guarantee that you’ll be able to get in front of any judge that will give you impartial justice,” Broyles said.

Judge Hiramoto referred twice in the transcript to the things she had learned in “judicial college” and “family law classes for judges.” One thing she learned, it seems, was to refer to all adolescents whose gender identity is at issue as “they/them”—whether or not the gender identity was in dispute. Another thing Hiramoto learned, according to the transcript, was that gender, like sexual orientation, is immutable. Several times she pressed Ted, in several ways, on whether he could accept Drew if it turned out that Drew was “truly transgender.”

The judges, psychologists, and child advocates are demented beyond repair.

I have moved on. Probably no one sees this anymore.

Georgia upholds free speech for parents

I have quit posting, but here are a couple of things that came to my attention recently.

A family court judge ordered parents not to comment about the court on Facebook, as he took personal offense at some of the criticisms.

A Wash. Post blogger reports:

Georgia appellate court overturns custody order that barred both parents from commenting about the case

As the United States Supreme Court has stated,

[w]hatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs. Although it is assumed that judges will ignore the public clamor or media reports and editorials in reaching their decisions and by tradition will not respond to public commentary, the law gives judges as persons, or courts as institutions no greater immunity from criticism than other persons or institutions. The operations of the courts and the judicial conduct of judges are matters of utmost public concern.

Among other things, a parent was complaining that the court transcript did not match the official audio recording of a hearing, and the judge was relying on the inaccurate transcript.

Fathers’ rights campaigners in Israel have long complained about what is surely the most archaic and anti-child feature of Israeli law regarding child custody – its retention of the Tender Years Doctrine. In Israeli law, that’s called the “early childhood clause.” Under it, mothers receive custody of any child under the age of six. All considerations except the child’s age are off the table. Is the mother mentally unbalanced, abusive, a drunk, a drug addict? It makes no difference. Is Dad a paragon of virtue and paternal love? It makes no difference. Mom gets custody. Period.

People complain about the possibility of Sharia law creeping into the court, but they should also complain about Jewish law creeping in.

AP reportw:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — People who deliberately refuse to pay court-ordered child support can go to jail for consecutive six-month sentences for repeat violations, New York's highest court ruled Tuesday.

State law generally limits Family Court to imposing single six-month sentences.

The Court of Appeals, with six judges ruling unanimously, said Family Court can revisit jail sentences for willful violations that were previously suspended and order an offender jailed on all of them. Those sentences can run consecutively, extending the time an offender can be locked up.

These jail terms are without a jury trial or other due process protections that a criminal defendant is entitled to.

Agony of being a 50/50 mum

The London Daily Mail reports:

Agony of being a 50/50 mum: Women once held the upper hand in custody battles. Now fathers are winning EQUAL access... and mothers are struggling to cope

* Nicola Hewitt, 42, an office manager from Kenley, Surrey, faces the trauma of being without her children Devon, 10, and Sonny, eight, every weekend
* Veronica Sweeney-Bird, a 33-year-old bar worker from Tunbridge Wells, a week-on, week-off shared care arrangement for her two daughters
* Mothers are having to divide time with their children equally with their exes

Every mother lives for those small, joyful moments when her child masters something new - a book once too challenging, the telling of a joke previously stumbled over, a food devoured that had formerly been rejected.

For it's in the gentle minutiae of a little one's life that you really see their budding personality grow.

Imagine, then, the agonising pain of being privy to your child's life for only half the time. The milestones missed. The lost cuddles before bedtime. The long nights spent wondering if they are sleeping sweetly or crying out for Mummy.

This is the reality for Britain's growing legion of 50/50 mothers, who divide their time with the children equally with their exes. It's a growing phenomenon that - on the surface - might seem the fairest way for separated parents to organise their lives.

But it comes at an emotional price for the mothers involved - and the consequences for children are as yet untold.

Veronica Sweeney-Bird is one such mother who wishes more than anything that her two little girls were having a more relaxed, stable childhood. Instead, every other Thursday, she drops one off at nursery and one at primary school, full of foreboding as she kisses them goodbye.

A week-on, week-off shared care arrangement with her ex-husband is the high price Veronica has to pay for her broken marriage. And two years on from the split, she still struggles to cope with the moment she says goodbye to her girls for seven long days.

'I so hate being a 50/50 mother,' says the 33-year-old bar worker from Tunbridge Wells, who was married for seven years.

'When it's not my week to have the children, I have to try to switch off from being a mum and it's so very hard.

So what do they want? No-fault divorce, full child custody rights, alimony, child support, public respectability, and what else? Maybe some free government day care services as well?

Ken Perlmmutter is worse than I thought

Some angry dads and moms have contacted me about Psychologist Ken Perlmutter, as they found my complaint against him. Apparently he has done a lot of bad child custody evaluations.

I do not want to dox him, or attack him personally, but he needs to be held accountable for his official actions. He works as a public official for the county family courts of counties surrounding San Jose California, and makes $400 per hour. He continues to do harm in his official capacity, and his court victims need to know the truth about why he does what he does.

I have known for a long time that he had a son who died, but I did not post it because it did not seem relevant to me. But now I am told that it is key to understanding his work.

Perlmutter divorced his first therapist wife, and later married a younger woman and had a son Joey with her. Joey died at age four of a treatable illness, but was not getting medical care. Neither parent was charged with neglect, but some people hold him responsible.

I am not blaming him for that. He is innocent until proven guilty, as I always say.

The problem is that Perlmutter never got over this death. He never had another child, and he is wracked with guilt over what he could have done.

He is a bitter and broken man.

$800k a year of court money buys him and his wife a rich lifestyle and fancy vacations, but it is not enough. They have no child, and they lost their precious boy. He needs to make other parents suffer the loss of a child, as he has suffered.

Whenever possible, his evaluations do not recommend joint child custody. He likes to see one parent lose all custody, and he will do whatever he can to make that happen. Somehow inflicting pain on others makes his own pathetic life more bearable.

He will manipulate the facts to force good parents to endure the loss of a child.

Perlmutter is personally more psychologically disordered than the great majority of the parents he evaluates. He is more disordered that the typical mental asylum inmate.

If all of this is even half true, then Perlmutter is a sadistic monster. He is a modern Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I estimate that he has messed up the lives of 1000 kids. He should be locked up.

Update: I found this reply to a omplaint on another blog:

I would invite any person who has any questions about my practice or ethics to phone me and personally discuss them with me.
My phone number is 650.322.5011.
Thank you.
Ken Perlmutter

Another comment says "There is a special place in hell for animals like Perlmutter."

My gripe is not so much with him personally, but with a system that grants screwballs like him enormous power over people's lives. See also this Change petition, from someone Perlmutter evaluated.

O'Reilly and Thomas in the news

The trashy gossip site Gawker reports:

A New York appeals court held last week that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s school-age children don’t want to live with him anymore, and should live exclusively with their mother, O’Reilly’s ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy.

The lengthy decision affirms the holding of a Nassau County Supreme Court justice last year that the children, now aged 13 and 17, should live full-time with their mother (the former couple had been splitting residential custody). ...

The preference of McPhilmy and O’Reilly’s 17-year-old daughter is not particularly difficult to guess: As we noted last year, she told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she witnessed O’Reilly drag her mother down a staircase by the neck.

A lot of people hate O'Reilly for his abrasive style, so they will be celebrating this.

I did not follow this. Apparently she left him 5 years ago to marry a cop.

It would be amusing if he took the red pill.

The NY Times reports:

WASHINGTON — Breaking a decade-long silence, Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday suddenly started asking questions from the Supreme Court bench. ...

Justice Thomas’s questions came in a minor case on domestic violence convictions and gun rights. He made a series of inquiries about whether misdemeanor convictions can permanently suspend a constitutional right.

With Justice Scalia dead (and having died under mysterious circumstances), Thomas is the only one left who clearly understands that a man should not lose his constitutional rights just because he is accused of misdemeanor domestic violence.

Parents cannot settle support issues

According to USA law, a women has the unilateral right to opt out of parenthood by having an abortion at any time. A man has no such right, and can be forced into fatherhood. Furthermore, he can be forced into continuing involvement with the child, even if both parents agree to a financial settlement.

And when both parents agree to a settlement, both the judge and the press will blame the man.

The NY Post reports:

An Ivy League Lothario’s bid to get out of child support by giving his baby mama a one-time $150,000 payment was spanked by a Manhattan judge Thursday.

The 2013 Dartmouth grad offered the woman the pile of cash to “irrevocably terminate [his] parental rights” — because he was mad she refused to get an abortion and didn’t want to support the kid until he was 18.

The man, identified in court papers only as Avery G., 24, actually convinced the woman to take the lottery-style reduced-sum payout — which would be a lot of money up front but less than she would get from taking a monthly support check. ...

Avery G. will pay $832 a month for support, ...

Goldstein calls Avery’s bid both “unusual” and “extraordinary” and says there is no similar precedent for voluntarily signing away parental rights.

The mom, an $85,000-a-year marketing director, has sole legal and physical custody of the baby.

This anti-man, but it is also anti-woman, as the mom did not get the deal she wanted either.

I do not know how parents will ever get their rights back. Here both parents went to court with a settlement agreement, and the judge rejected the deal and insisted on supervising the child's upbringing for the next 18 years. And the newspaper agrees with the judge.

I don't know why the judge says that voluntarily signing away parental rights is so unusual. I have seen it in the local family court lots of times. Sometimes it happens just because a parent misses a couple of court appearances.

The same newspaper says Bernie Sanders is a communist.

In another attack on parental rights, the NY Times reports:

But anti-abortion groups argue that such cases should be decided according to the best interests of the embryos, the same legal standard used in child-custody disputes. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed last month in the Missouri dispute, they say an embryo’s most fundamental interest is to be born: “No other right is of any avail if a human being is not around to invoke it.”

The BIOTCh is called a legal standard, but it is not. Saying "best interests of the embryos" sounds like satire.

What would they do, appoint a court psychologist to evalate the embryo? That is not much more ridiculous than the family court does already.

Colorado terminates dad's rights

The Colorado supreme court just ruled against a dad:

1. This appeal is about two little boys and the question of who will be their parents.M.C. was unaware that he had become a father to twin boys because the children’s biological mother, J.Z., had previously told him that she had suffered a miscarriage. Subsequently, J.Z. relinquished her parental rights and in doing so provided false information about the identity of the biological father. As a result, the trial court terminated M.C.’s parental rights and the children were placed for adoption. T.W. and A.W., who were unaware of J.Z.’s deception, then adopted the children. After M.C. learned that he was the children’s father and that the children had been adopted, he petitioned the court to void the termination of his parental rights based on J.Z.’s fraudulent statements. The court reinstated M.C.’s parental rights, and he sought to gain custody of the children. Because the birth mother had relinquished her rights and consented to the twins’ adoption, the case proceeded to trial to determine if termination of M.C.’s parental rights under section 19-5-105, C.R.S. (2015), was appropriate.

2. After a two-day bench trial, the trial court found, pursuant to section 19-5-105(3.1)(c), that M.C. had failed to promptly take substantial responsibility for the children and that termination was in the best interests of the children. Therefore, the trial court terminated M.C.’s parental rights and awarded custody of the children to the adoptive parents. ...

JUSTICE EID, dissenting.

60. Today the majority affirms the trial court’s termination of M.C.’s parental rights based on the insufficiency of his $250 payment to the adoptive parents during the three months following the restoration of his rights. If this seems like an exceedingly slim reed upon which to base a termination of parental rights order, that is because it is. The reed becomes even slimmer considering the trial court “informally” raised the issue of child support but never settled a dispute over whether the adoptive parents were required to disclose financial information to set the amount of child support; in other words, the issue was never formally settled.

Robert Franklin has posted rants against this decision here, here, and here.

No need to read the details. The mom gave up her rights, and this was the dad against two strangers who had taken advantage of dishonesty to take possession of his kids.

So what was the dad's fault? He only paid $250 to the two strangers! He should not have paid them anything.

He spent money on the kids when he was permitted to visit them, and he had to spend money on travel and legal expenses. He just didn't voluntarily hand a lot of cash to the couple that had effectively kidnapped his kids.

There is also some justification in terms of the Best Interest of the Child (BIOTCh). The court said that the dad is black, and that he and his fiancee did not have a psychological plan for the kids moving to live in a black family. I guess the adoptive parents are white and the kids are half-black. The kids are 3 years old now, as the case has been going on for 3 years.

40 years ago, psychologists were arguing that white couples should not be adopting black kids.

I cannot stand this crap anymore. Read Franklin if you need an explanation of what is wrong in this case.

Update: Franklin has another rant on this today. More proof that an anti-father ideology controls the courts.

Actress loses final decision

I previously reported, in 2012, 2014, and 2015, on this actress whose scorched-earth sole custody tactics backfired. The dad won a final decision:

Kelly Rutherford has lost custody of her two children with a Monaco judge making a final decision on the lengthy legal case that has seen her locked in litigation with her ex-husband for more than six years. ...

As per the ruling, Rutherford will also receive $3,281 a month from Giersch in maintenance.

“I think like any parent would feel, you know”.

As she exited the Monacan court, Rutherford, who founded the Children’s Justice Campaign to help families with similar legal issues, told the waiting paparazzi that she “had no words”.

She stole the kids, got him deported, and got the American media on her side. I don't know why she is getting support payments, if he has the kids and she is a successful Hollywood actress.

The news article might have been machine-translated. It is getting harder to tell.

Most readers blame the parents, but the fault is really with the legal system for creating a 6-year process for a high-stakes winner-take-all battle for proving who is the better parent. But I have given up making this point. I only post this because I previously followed the case.

Update: (Dec. 30) Dad sues Vanity Fair in Germany for libel, as it took the mom's side.

Gay rights v Best interest

The NY Times reports:

Under fire from critics including gay rights activists and the state’s Republican governor, a judge in Utah on Friday reversed, at least temporarily, his order that a foster child be taken away from a lesbian couple because it was “not in the best interest of children to be raised by same-sex couples.”

While the child may remain with the couple for the moment, Judge Scott N. Johansen signaled that the matter might not be settled. He continued to question the placement of children with same-sex parents, a matter that will be taken up at a Dec. 4 hearing on what is in the best interests of this child, a 9-month-old girl. ...

Gay rights activists say the case at the heart of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, should have put such questions to rest, arguing that the right to marry plainly confers the same rights as other married couples have.

Keep in mind that these are not biological parents, or even adoptive parents. They are just foster parents, and they have no right to some baby in the foster care system. They might be many other better-suited foster parents.

Fathers have a right to marry. If a dad can lose his own kid at the judge's discretion about the BIOTCh, then surely a lesbian parent can.

“It’s not fair and it’s not right,” Ms. Hoagland told a television station, KUTV. “And it just hurts me really badly, because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Join the club. Lots of parents have lost their genuine kids without any finding of any wrongdoing.

A gay site says:

While the judge removed the scientifically inaccurate claim that "it is not in the best interest of children to be raised by same-sex couples," his new order still notes the court's "concern that research has shown that children are more emotionally and mentally stable when raised by a mother and father in the same home."

Yes, research does show that same-sex couples are not good for kids. But whether they are or not, the judge can just remove those remarks from his written opinion, and just say that he thinks that some other couple would be better for this baby. He could just look at the lesbians, and decide that they are too fat to be good parents. Or he can apply any other prejudice he wants, as long as he does not put something in writing that violates non-discrimination laws or supreme court rulings.

The Human Rights Campaign has called for an investigation into Judge Johansen's conduct, ... "It is unconscionable that any judge would let bias interfere with determining the true best interest of a child and we strongly encourage the commission to take appropriate action to hold this Judge accountable and to affirm that personal bias has no place in judicial decisions in Utah."

I thought that the LGBTQIA crowd would realize that the BIOTCh is there enemy, because straight judges will almost never consider them to be in the best interest. Bias always interferes in a best interest determination.

Republicans blame family without fixing incentives

I have quit posting this nonsense, but someone sent me this WSJ op-ed from behind a paywall:

The Poverty Cure: Get Married
Black children bear the brunt of single parenthood’s harms.

... Of the many barriers to equal opportunity for African-Americans, differences of family background may well be the most consequential — and the least likely to yield to public policy. ...

In fact, the researchers conclude, neighborhoods and schools are less important than the “direct effect of family structure itself.” ...

the advantages of marriage for child well-being are “hard to replicate through policy interventions other than those that bolster marriages themselves.” And as evaluations of the George W. Bush administration’s marriage-promotion efforts show, we don’t know how to do that.

Liberals just want to give black people more welfare, so that they will vote Democrat. The conservatives, like this author, make more of an attempt to address the problems, and correctly notice the breakdown of the family as a cause, but then they are stumped. They have no idea how to strengthen the family, except maybe to promote religion.

A letter to the WSJ editor correctly explains:

Federal and state laws have created incentives for mostly poor individuals to not marry and to throw fathers out of children’s lives. Federal laws such as Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, the Tax Code, the Bradley Amendment and the Violence Against Women Act have perverse incentives that help to throw biological fathers out of children’s lives and promote single-parent households. Until we create the incentives to bring back dads and bring back marriages, we can never help these children rise out of the poverty the government helped to create.

Peter G. Hill
Weston, Mass.

Another letter points out that the WSJ publish a 2014 op-ed by a Bush administration official blamely the family, just like the above op-ed:

Given how deep the problem of poverty is, taking even more money from one citizen and handing it to another will only diminish one while doing very little to help the other. A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children — in that order.

The Republicans may recognize the breakdown of the family as a problem, but they show no sign of attempting to reverse the bad incentives that killed the family.

Vanity Fair favors crazy actress mom

Spoiled selfish actress Kelly Rutherford got a favorable write-up of her child custody dispute in Vanity Fair.

I mentioned this case here and here. Robert Franklin explains what is wrong with the Vanity Fair article.

Needless to say, if the mom had been at all reasonable, she would have had 50-50 joint custody or better. Instead, she is locked into a death struggle for sole custody, and suffering the consequences. Eg, she kidnapped the kids because she did not think that a judge would order her to return them.

She probably thought that she could divorce her non-citizen husband before he can get a green card, and then he will not have any rights that a USA court will recognize.

She is pretty and has a lot of TV fans. Does that give her some special rights?

I cannot stand reading this junk anymore. If you believe that we should live in some sort of matriarchy, maybe you will side with her. Feminists have claimed for years that they want equal rights, not a matriarchy. The courts are a mess. There are simple fixes to most of the problems, but they will not be accepted as long as people sympathize with Vanity Fair articles like this.

Libertarian attacks on marriage

A common libertarian reaction to issues like same-sex marriage is to say that govt should get out of the marriage business, and let any consenting adults agree to whatever behavior and contracts they please. Religions could perform whatever ceremonies they please. This is standard libertarian doctrine, as they believe that just about any problem is better solved by private contracting than by govt.

A libertarian magazine, Reason, published an article attacking this view. The article seemed like heresy to many. Here is a video attacking the article.

The trouble with the libertarian argument is that you cannot make a binding legal contract for sexual services, or child custody, or child support. That is, American law will not uphold such a contract.

When the govt gives benefits like tax-free inheritance or joint tax returns or green cards, it is not going to do that for random groups of people writing their own contracts.

Maybe the libertarians would say that in their perfect world, there would be no taxes or green cards anyway. Let me know if that ever happens anywhere.

I have posted a libertarian definition, but I don't think I ever explained how family law is a huge blind spot for libertarians.

There are web sites for matching alternative parents. You can find your own match from people all over the world, and write your own contract to divvy up the parental rights and responsibilities however you please. It seems like a libertarian paradise until you learn that none of it works, and none of the contracts are enforceable. These web sites have very few people who even try, once they find out the complications.

Libertarians might say that such contracts should be enforceable, but as far as I know, there is no libertarian explanation of how that would ever work. Even hard-core libertarians seem to accept that in anything but a traditional two natural parent family, some family court judge gets to decide the BIOTCh (best interest of the child). Some of them even brag that this is the truly libertarian view, because it protects the rights of the child.

I happen to think that some contracts could be enforced with minimal government intervention, in my hypothetical libertarian society. But it does not matter. I cannot convince the libertarians, or Republicans or Democrats or anyone else.

I have occasionally praised the merits of the American nuclear family, as shown in the 1950s and 1960s TV shows like Leave it to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet. Some readers complain that this is antiquated, or unrealistic, or coupled with obsolete moral values, or not sufficiently respectful of feminists or LGBTQIA folks, or contrary to liberal political goals. Maybe so, but those families are the only free ones. All other arrangements are subject to micro-management by the family court.

I post these arguments because of the widespread view that if too much govt is the problem, as I have often argued on this blog, then the libertarians might have a solution. The libertarians do not have a solution. They either ignore the problem, or make proposals that will make it worse.

The best proposed solution is shared parenting, as advocated by the Fathers' rights movement, National Parents Organization, and this blog. Some states have passed laws in this direction, declared a presumption of shared parenting unless some judge finds it contrary to the BIOTCh.

But even with these laws, the parents still have no individual constitutional rights to their kids, and the family court judge is firmly in control of child custody issues, parenting plans, and finances.

Here is Rand Paul's libertarian response to the US Supreme Court mandating same-sex marriage:

While I disagree with Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract. ...

Do consenting adults have a right to contract with other consenting adults? ...

Perhaps the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea, for either party. ...

Perhaps the time has come to examine whether or not governmental recognition of marriage is a good idea, for either party.

He is disconnected from reality. The family court already ignores marriage for most questions about child custody, parenting, and support. Getting away from recognition of marriage has only increased govt control over private lives.

Paul has many other libertarian views, but is strangely silent on what is the biggest govt usurpation of our liberties.

A more libertarian approach view requires:

* Abolish forced child support.
* Give single or divorced parents constitutional rights to the care, custody, and upbringing of their kids, just as married parents have.
* Abolish BIOTCh, special masters, forensic psychologists doing anything but DMS-5 diagnosis, and guardians ad litem.
* Reduce family court jurisdiction to monetary remedies of contractual disputes, such as dissolving joint property after divorce.
* Establish paternity by marriage or DNA test.

These changes seem as far-fetched as other radical ideas, such as the anti-feminist TWRA (Traditional Women’s Rights Activist). They want to re-instate the husband as legal head of household, with an obligation to support his wife and kids, and re-instate the Tender Years Doctrine, so the mom is in charge of young kids. There is a certain logic to this, but most people would reject it as sexist.

Anyway, I post this to further explain the hopelessness of reforming the system. Fathers are slaves, and not even the libertarians recognize that or object to it.

History of child custody

I have wondered about the history of child custody in America and England, and gotten conflicting accounts. Some say that the fathers had all the rights, and the wives were chattel. But according to this, it usually did not work out that way.

When it was not rejected outright (as many courts did from the beginning), the supposed “paramount right of the father” to the custody of his children was subject to six major exceptions:

children born out-of-wedlock;
young children;
weak, disabled or unhealthy children;
daughters;
older male children who expressed a preference to live with their mothers; and
cases where the father was guilty of marital or moral misconduct, concepts which were defined very broadly in cases where a father sought custody of a child.

Except when a married mother was determined to be unfit to parent, there were not many situations to which a “paramount right of fathers to custody” actually applied. The exceptions nearly swallowed the rule, in those few states where such a rule was actually applied at all.

What this meant was that, in practice, the courts of every state – those that had openly rejected the “fathers’ rights” doctrine from the beginning, and those that had given it lip service while effectively nullifying it through the crafting of exceptions – decided custody on the basis of the best interests of the child, with a strong presumption that maternal custody was in a child’s best interests. As the Philadelphia Court of General Sessions concluded in 1840, after conducting a review of American custody decisions from the earliest reported decisions forward, “[t]he common law of the United States is in favour of the mother’s custody”1

The maternal preference was based on strongly held beliefs about the natural superiority of women and the inferiority of men with respect to child-rearing functions. For example, the Illinois Supreme Court, in 1849, issued this sweeping generalization:

The mother, from her natural endowments, her position in society, and her constant association with [children], can give them that care, attention and advice so indispensable to their welfare, which a father, if the same children were left to his supervision, would be compelled in a great degree to confide to strangers.2

Although the maternal preference was more ardently and eloquently expressed in cases involving younger children, it manifested itself in the rules courts applied to the custody of older children, too. For example, the near-absolute rights of mothers to custody of children born out-of-wedlock, and of daughters, and of weak, disabled or unhealthy children, applied to cases involving children of any age.

Back then, marriage was how a man took responsibility for his kids. Nowadays, the law has so confused the issue, that the legal arguments currently being given for marriage before the US Supreme Court do not even mention this view.

The custody rights of parents were never absolute. A mother, like a father, could lose custody if a judge determined that she was unfit to be a parent.3 The kinds of things that a court would accept as evidence of a mother’s unfitness varied considerably from what would suffice for a father, though. In general, it may be said that the grounds for declaring a mother unfit were more limited than what would suffice to declare a father unfit. And over the course of the century, this double standard became increasingly pronounced.

One clear example of the double standard was the obligation of child support. The law imposed support obligations exclusively on men.4 Women were not expected to be the breadwinners for a family. As a result, a mother’s inability to support her children financially normally was not held to be grounds for denying her custody of her children. By contrast, courts readily denied custody to fathers – and awarded custody to the other parent, or even to a third party — on the basis that the father either could not or did not adequately provide for his children financially.

Another clear example of the double standard was marital infidelity. Courts often treated a father’s commission of adultery as grounds for denying him custody of a child but, as we have seen, a mother’s commission of adultery did not necessarily preclude an award of custody to her, especially if the child in question was young.

Moreover, regardless of the age of the child, a mother’s commission of adultery was not a bar to custody if there was evidence that she had undergone a moral reformation. And courts typically would infer a woman’s complete moral reformation simply from her termination of an adulterous relationship.

Victorian mores were such that women were seen as innocent and asexual.

Now feminism has convinced everyone that women are naturally sluts.

Apparently English courts were also guilty of saying one thing and doing another:

Here’s an account of the situation in 19th century England by Ernest B. Bax:

CUSTODY OF CHILDREN

It has always in England been laid down as a fundamental law based on public policy, that the custody of children and their education is a duty incumbent on the father. It is said to be so fundamental that he is not permitted to waive his exercise of the right by pre-nuptial contract. (See the Agar v. Ellis Case.)

This rule of the Common Law of England is of course in harmony with the policy of all Europe and Christendom, as well as with the historic conditions of the European social organisation, if not with the primal instincts of the race.

Nevertheless, fundamental and necessary as the rule may be, the pro-feminist magistrates and judges of England are bent apparently on ignoring it with a light heart. They have not merely retained the old rule that the custody of infants of tender years remains with the mother until the child attains the age of seven. But they go much further than that. As a matter of course, and without considering in the least the interests of the child, or of society at large, they hand over the custody and education of all the children to the litigant wife, whenever she establishes –- an easy thing to do -– a flimsy and often farcical case of technical “cruelty.”

The victim husband has the privilege of maintaining the children as well as herself out of his property or earnings, and has the added consolation of knowing that they will brought up to detest him.

Even in the extreme case where a deserting wife takes with her the children of the marriage, there is practically no redress for the husband if in narrow circumstances. The police courts will not interfere. The divorce court, as already stated, is expensive to the point of prohibition. In any case the husband has to face a tribunal already prejudiced in favour of the female, and the attendant scandal of a process will probably have no other result than to injure his children and their future prospects in life.

I am not sure if we have made any progress or not.

France recognizes test-tube kids

The USA is not the only country with a supreme court redefining the family in order to appease the LGBTQIA activists. Time mag reports:

France’s highest court has granted legal recognition to surrogate children, in a major turnaround that will make their daily lives easier and could lead to greater acceptance of new forms of families.

The Cour de cassation ruled Friday that, while surrogacy will remain banned in France, children born abroad through this practice will now be legally tied to their parents and will be granted birth certificates and immediate means to prove their French citizenship.

Surrogacy can involve a woman carrying an embryo created by in vitro fertilization using another woman’s egg and her partner’s sperm. In some cases, such as those involving male gay couples, the surrogate mother is also the genetic mother of the child.

Until now, surrogate children were deprived of any legal connection to their parents, or any civil status in France. They were considered as children born from unknown legal parents, since their foreign birth certificates weren’t recognized. One lawyer has described them as “ghosts of the republic.”

Unlike other children born abroad to a French parent, these children couldn’t get automatic ID cards or passports, or register for state health care or other services.

This exposed them to frequent problems, because many basic tasks are impossible in France without an ID or authorization from a legal parent.

The previous French position was:

The latest missive comes from Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who argued a few days ago that "France is opposed to surrogacy because she is opposed, in the name of her values, in the name of progress and humanism, to all forms of commercialization of human beings and experimentation in this area." Surrogates are "slaves" with wombs for rent, they argue, exploited by the infertile. France's leadership hides the many happy U.S. surrogacy stories, featuring instead some of Asia's forced baby factories that ensnare poor women.

Children of surrogacy who are born in the U.S. attain U.S. citizenship but not that of their intended French parents. France insists that children conceived in this way should not be recognized as French because of how they came into life. However, in June 2014, a brave decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered France to reverse course and recognize children born of surrogacy despite the French ban.

In France, you are supposed to have a mistress to carry your illegitimate baby for you, and you are supposed to inseminate her the old-fashioned way.

France is no longer a sovreign nation, and takes orders on gay matters from European officials. If the European Convention on Human Rights says that gay men can rent wombs to make babies, then France has to accept it. The case was a couple of gay men who did their baby-making in Russia. The baby had a Russian birth certificate, but not a French one. France has about 1000 of these surrogate babies.

The Europeans are not necessarily accepting all reproductive technologies. They object to Britain's 3-parent babies. That means 3 genetic parents. There could still be the gestational mom, and the intended legal parents.

Defining Rule of Law

The NY Times reports:

It is relatively unsplashy, as these things go — not very long, not very elegantly written, just 3,500 or so words of Medieval Latin crammed illegibly onto a single page of parchment.

But Magna Carta, presented by 40 indignant English barons to their treacherous king in the 13th century, has endured ever since as perhaps the world’s first and best declaration of the rule of law, a thrilling instance of a people’s limiting a ruler’s power by demanding rights for themselves.

In the United States, Magna Carta — it means Great Charter in Latin — is treated with a reverence bordering on worship by many legislators, scholars and judges. It is considered the basis for many of the principles that form the Constitution and Bill of Rights. ...

On Monday, Magna Carta’s 800th birthday is to be observed

Earlier versions of the concept of Rule of Law go back to ancient Babylon, Greece, and Rome.

A law professor argues for rule of law:

The rule of law is a slippery term with a number of different possible meanings. ...

For example, the rule of law is often defined in contrast to “the rule of men.” Whereas the former is based on general, impersonal rules, the latter is subject to the vagaries of the bias and discretion of individual government officials. ...

Another common formulation of the rule of law is that it requires the enforcement of clear, predictable rules, as opposed to relatively vague standards (this viewpoint is often associated with Justice Antonin Scalia). ...

The rule of law might also be defined in terms of stability over time. A rule must have the same interpretation at Time B as at Time A.

While it may seem obvious that Rule of Law is good and necessary for any civilized nation, we do not have in the American family courts. Child custody and visitation is determined by BIOTCh, which means "subject to the vagaries of the bias and discretion of individual government officials."

Here is a Scottish story, illustrating rule of law:

A mother who duped her former lover into thinking she had an abortion so that she could give away his baby to a homosexual friend has been jailed for three years.

The 29-year-old and her accomplice got away with the elaborate scam for three years and were only caught after the biological father was told that he was the “spitting image” of the child.

The 35-year-old gay man who was bringing up the child as his own was also jailed for the same period.

The real father was initially told his ex-lover had aborted their child, and that the girl caught up in the case came from a fictional surrogate mother.

The pair were sentenced after earlier being found guilty of duping him into thinking there was an abortion after the child’s mother became pregnant in 2010, and denying him his parental rights for three years.

During the six-day trial, Perth Sheriff Court heard that they signed a birth certificate and claimed to be the child's natural parents, while DNA tests later proved this was not the case. ...

Police discovered that the supposed surrogate mother, called Clare Green, had been invented by the pair, who set up a fake Facebook account in her name.

Social workers were also taken in by the fraud, but immediately placed the girl on the child protection register when they discovered the homosexual man's father was a convicted paedophile.

The kid is his, and was taken wrongfully. So he should get the kid back. No inquiry into the BIOTCh should be necessary.

The one part that seems contrary to the rule of law is putting the kid on a register because the gay man's father was a pedophile. I doubt that they have any laws based on a presumption that pedophilia is hereditary.

The issue should be cut and dry. The DNA test showed that the mom fraudulently put some other man's name on the birth certificate. That should be the end of the story.

White woman pretends to be black

The Wash Post reports:

A controversy is raging over whether a prominent Washington state civil rights activist and Howard University graduate who claimed she was African American is actually white.

Rachel Dolezal, 37, is the president of the Spokane NAACP and has claimed to be the victim of a number of hate crimes. As questions were raised about the veracity of some of her reports this week, a white couple from Montana came forward to claim that Dolezal is their daughter.

This blew up because her white parents adopted some black kids, and he is suing her parents for custody of one of the black kids.

People are saying that if Bruce Jenner can change gender, then Dolezal can change race.

Okay, fine, but how does that make her the legal mom to her adopted black brother?

This case is weird. The authorities used to try to prevent white parents from adopting black kids. Maybe there were good reasons for that.

Sometimes I wonder if we are all being trolled by Jenner, trans-racialists, and others. Or as someone said in another context:

I now no longer know if I'm being trolled, if people are in on the joke, if it's causing genuine anger, or if society is simply doomed.

That context was a famous 77yo novelist posting a wisecrack about killing dinosaurs in the new Jurassic World movie:

So barbaric that this should still be allowed... No conservation laws in effect wherever this is?

This seems like an obvious joke to me. I am leaning towards our society being doomed.

I commented on another weird case of someone presenting as black female pro basketball player, but the case is weirder than I thought. Apparently she seems like a man to a lot of people.

A Democrat politician is trying to punish the USA women's soccer goalie over a very minor misdemeanor accusation:

Blumenthal called the federation’s approach to the Solo case “at best superficial and at worst dangerously neglectful and self-serving.”

Blumenthal urged U.S. Soccer to conduct a thorough investigation, including a comprehensive review of police reports and interviews of Solo’s half sister and nephew. He also said the federation should reconsider Solo’s place on the team, writing that it “sends exactly the wrong message” to start her in goal as boys and girls tune in to see their role models play in the World Cup.

Calling domestic violence a “horrific scourge,” Blumenthal wrote that it was “intolerable particularly for an athlete representing the United States of America on the global stage.”

She should be innocent until proven guilty. The case against Hope Solo was dismissed (but might be revived). It is just a misdemeanor. If the court finds her guilty, then she can be punished by whatever punishment the law allows. But I am pretty sure that the state penalties do not include being kicked off a soccer team.

British surrogacy gone bad

England is grappling with giving gay men rights to babies:

Forcing a surrogate mum to part with her child is an outrage.

Earlier this month, the English High Court forced a mother to hand her 15-month-old toddler, Baby M, over to the man who had commissioned the baby by surrogacy. In response to this ruling, there was muted criticism and little discussion of any need to change the law in favour of mothers. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the mother was forced to hand her child over to a man and his gay partner, it seems unlikely that the case would have been deemed newsworthy at all – the Daily Mail’s headline, ‘Judge takes toddler from “homophobic” mum to live with gay dad and his lover’, is a case in point. Yet the fact that our courts can force any mother to hand her baby over to any commissioning father should be the real point of concern. Something is seriously wrong with the moral compass of our policymakers.

Baby M was conceived artificially with the father’s sperm after the mother and commissioning father, H, entered into a surrogacy agreement. But by the time of Baby M’s birth, it was clear that the mother wanted the child to be hers. She made sure H was not at the hospital when the baby was born, she registered the birth without putting H on the birth certificate, and she chose the baby’s name.

Within a fortnight of the baby’s birth, H and his partner went to court. Fifteen months later they obtained a court order that said the toddler must live with them, while the mother’s contact with the child would be limited to visits supervised by an official. By court order, then, this toddler will not be allowed to live, or stay overnight, with her mother. To all intents and purposes, the normal mother-daughter relationship is at an end. H and his partner are now responsible for bringing up Baby M for the remainder of her childhood.

Some of those in the press directed their ire at the judge personally, after noting that she was the first judge to insist on being addressed as ‘Ms’ rather than ‘Mrs’, and that she did not have children of her own. These criticisms are misplaced. The judge reached her conclusion by applying the law, and it’s a law that required the judge to disregard the mother’s interests. Yes, you read that sentence correctly: if a surrogate mother changes her mind and reneges on an agreement to give her baby to the commissioning parents, then all parties may come to court with an equal right to have the baby. The Court of Appeal accepted in 2007 that ‘both sides start from the same position’. The fact that the mother has carried the baby for nine months and given birth to it gives her no right to resist a residence application from the commissioning father. The fact that the biological parents have never been in a relationship is also to be disregarded. The law on surrogacy now treats the birth mother as little more than a vessel – and that is inhumane.

In a surrogacy agreement the commissioning father will surely have made a considerable emotional investment and one can understand his disappointment if the woman who agreed to hand over her baby changes her mind, or, indeed, if she decides to abort the baby (as can happen). But the circumstances of the mother and father in a surrogacy agreement are not comparable, at least not in the eyes of anyone who values the right of a woman to have bodily autonomy and to determine the future of her offspring. Put simply, the mother should always have the right to change her mind. As Frank Furedi has pointed out, no woman who agrees to be a surrogate can be sure how she will feel about the child-to-be as it grows in her womb. These rights should also apply to women who never intended to hand over the baby (which is what the judge found to be the case with regard to Baby M). ...

While policymakers have flattened the moral landscape, judges have been given a free hand to intervene in disputed surrogacy agreements and to make judgements under the rubric of doing what is in the child’s best interests. Clearly, if the mother is a violent heroin addict, for example, then there would be a case for intervening and acting in the child’s best interests. But the Baby M case did not raise such issues and the judge noted that, under her mother’s care, the child ‘has come to no serious harm’.

This is messed up. I cannot agree with the judge throwing out contracts and deciding based on her own opinion of a baby being reared by gay men. Nor can I agree with saying that a woman can just change her mind about such an important matter whenever she pleases, after taking many 1000s of dollars.

It appears that the system is being rigged to give judges more power, and to promote various gay or feminist goals.

How family court judges can enforce contracts

I have mentioned high-profile legal disputes over frozen zygotes and circumcision, and both involve a family court judge being asked to enforce or negate a previous agreement on medical matters.

Here is a case from England:

A devout mother made a legally binding promise, backed up with the threat of criminal sanctions, never to talk to her son about her religion, take him to church or even say grace at meals in a doomed attempt to stop him being taken into care, amid claims that she was “indoctrinating” him, a judge has disclosed.

The seven-year-old boy, who cannot be named, has been placed with foster carers because of fears that his mother, a Jehovah’s Witness, was causing him emotional harm by “immersing” him in her beliefs.

The child, who teachers described as “troubled, angry and confused”, rejected his own father because he said he “could not be with people who didn’t believe in Jehovah”.

In the USA, I don't think a mom could be forced to keep quiet about her religion, but the dad could certainly have gotten custody for reason of alienation. (Putting the kid in foster case because the judge disapproves of a religious opinion is extreme.)

A reader asks what authority judges have to order performance under a contract? In regular civil court, judges rarely order specific performance to obey a contract. Instead, they just order someone to pay liquidated damages.

He also asks why any parents should be obligated to these contracts anyway. In the above cases, a woman changed her mind about having a baby, and another woman joined an anti-circumcision cult. Women change their minds all the time, on matters from hair color to walking out of a marriage. If women had written the Constitution, there would be a clause in there about an inalienable right to change her mind.

And judges force changes all the time. A judge with throw out a marriage or a parenting plan because of the supposed best interest of the child.

In family court, judges have almost unlimited discretion to award child custody based on his own personal prejudices about the BIOTCh. That is the mechanism that lets judges force whatever they please.

If the judge really wants the boy to get a circumcision, all he has to do is to grant temporary sole legal and physical child custody to the parent who wants the circumcision. Then that parents gets it done, and there can be no more dispute about it.

Nick Loeb has just figured out that's the trick to getting his frozen zygotes. He has now changed his legal complaint to a dispute over custody of the zygotes, as if they legal children. Now he just has to convince a judge that being thawed is in the best interest of a frozen zygote.

That may sound crazy, but not much crazier than what is done already. Los Angelos family court often requires appointment of an attorney to represent the interest of a developing embryo, because of the possibility that the embryo might have a different interest from the birth mom. This is not done in abortion cases, because the mom has a constitutional right to kill the embryo. But otherwise, there are sometimes family court cases involving embryos.

I have not heard that the embryo lawyer persuaded a judge against the interests of the adult parties, but I guess it is possible.

The odds are still stacked against Loeb, because winning would complicate matters for the IVF clinics. As it is, they have to get assurances that the legalities are in order for the procedures to be done. If a family court judge and change custody of a zygote, then the clinics would need additional assurance that the paperwork properly reflects the legal custody.

My personal opinion is that Rule of Law should apply to disputes like this. That is, the issues should not be up to the discretion of judges or psychologists. On a subject like circumcision, where there are valid arguments for and against, the law can simple require 1-parent or 2-parent approval. I would even be okay with the dad having the final say about male circumcision and the mom having the final say about female circumcision, but I think most forms of female circumcision are illegal in the USA. There is no need to have one set of rules for regular parents, and another set for parents under the jurisdiction of the family court. And no need for anyone to be bound to a decision made years previously.

The IVF industry is based on the concept of informed consent of competent adults. The clinics do not who controls the zygotes. They just want to paperwork to properly reflect the agreements and legal rights, so they do not get sued. Perhaps Loeb should have checked the box that says that either parent can have the zygote if the other does not want it. If the zygotes were really property like furniture, then Loeb and Vergara could each get one of the zygotes.

A dirty little secret of the IVF industry is that it has about a million human zygotes sitting in its freezers. Either they were extra, or saved for later use and not used, or the parents do not know what to do with them. Occasionally they get donated to infertile couples or to stem cell research, but that is awkward and requires legal papers. If you think of these as lives that have already been created, as Loeb says, then it is a little
spooky to think of all those million zygotes.

BTW, I am using the term "zygote" because I believe that is the correct term. A zygote become an embryo only have the cells start differentiating, and that is unlikely to have happened. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Florida parents fight over circumcision

Some people argue that joint child custody can never work, unless both parents agree on everything, or some legal authority micromanages their lives. I believe this is false, but I welcome difficult examples.

One of the biggest examples in the news is the decision to circumcise a boy. This is one of those issues that some people attach great importance to. Apparently there are women who feel very strongly about it, altho I don't know why any woman would care, just as I don't know why men would care about female circumcision.

Slate summarizes:

When Hironimus [mom] refused to allow the procedure to go forward, Nebus [dad] took her to court to enforce the contract she had signed. A state court sided with Nebus, noting that their parenting plan “clearly and unambiguously provides” that Chase would be circumcised. An appeals court unanimously affirmed the ruling, and a judge ordered Hironimus to turn Chase over to Nebus so he could schedule the procedure. Hironimus instead disappeared with her son. The judge then issued a warrant for her arrest for interfering with child custody. For weeks Hironimus escaped arrest by hiding with Chase in a domestic violence shelter. (Hironimus has not claimed that she was abused.) While hiding out, Hironimus filed a federal lawsuit against Nebus, asserting that, by having Chase circumcised, Nebus would violate his son’s constitutional rights. Eventually, the police discovered Hironimus’ whereabouts, took her into custody, and turned Chase over to Nebus.

A tenacious community of intactivists seized upon Hironimus’ plight as both a crusade and a publicity stunt.
From her jail cell, Hironimus filed an emergency motion in federal court to prevent Nebus from having Chase circumcised. When a federal judge essentially laughed Hironimus out of court, she withdrew her federal suit. A state judge ruled that Hironimus will remain in jail until she signs the consent form for Chase to be circumcised. On Friday a weeping Hironimus signed the form. She still faces criminal charges for absconding with Chase in violation of her custody agreement.

I do not even think that this should have anything to do with child custody. State law requires parental consent for a child medical operation. Some laws require one-parent consent. Some require two-parent consent. I have no idea about circumcision, but even if two-parent consent is required, the dad could argue that the mom has already given it.

There are some troubling aspects to this story, such as:

For a brief time early Friday, it appeared Hironimus had no intention of approving the circumcision, even if the refusal meant being kept behind bars indefinitely.

That is not consent. That is the opposite of consent. No one should be satisfied with such a signature. I would hope that the surgeon would refuse it, altho he might accept a judge's order that the earlier consent applies.

Sometimes family court apologists deny that judges micro-manage anyone, because usually everyone consents to the orders. They have a very funny idea of consent. Cases settle based on what is likely to be ordered, not what the parties want.

Also, there is no value to a shrink opinion:

In a telephone interview with Local10.com, attorney Thomas Hunker said he recently began representing Hironimus after her previous lawyer, Taryn Sinatra, withdrew.

Hunker said he filed a motion to have a court-appointed guardian ad litem for the boy and is seeking to have a mental health professional evaluate the boy's "emotional state" to determine if circumcision is "something that would be advisable." He said the goal is to make sure the child "has an independent voice" and isn't caught up in his parents' squabble.

"It's the boy who's really going to have to live the rest of his life with the decision," Hunker said.

There are pros and cons to circumcision, but having a psychologist talk to a 4-year-old is just family court silliness. There can be no objective evaluation of BIOTCh in a case like this. I think that the American Academy of Pediatrics has gone back and forth on this issue a couple of times.

A reader writes:

Since marriage contracts are not enforceable, but may be unilaterally broken by one party for any reason or no reason, it's unclear why an "agreed parenting plan" between unmarried partners is binding and enforceable against one party who changes her mind for whatever reason.

That is a good point, and it seems stupid that our law requires a court-approved parenting plan from unmarried parents, but not married parents.

All I can say is that a set of legal and cultural shifts have redefined marriage. When two people get married, they are not agreeing to a permanent relationship, or any binding obligations. They are agreeing to let a family court judge micro-manage their lives if one party requests it. Gay marriage is just a part of this shift.

I don't know why anyone agreed to this shift. It is destroying our society. I have documented the evils on this blog.

A legal site says:

What if I My Spouse and I Disagree on Consent?

This is a highly contentious area of the law, and your options vary from state to state. Most states only require the consent of a single parent to perform a circumcision. HOWEVER, although the law is not very established on this subject, a parent or guardian who feels that circumcision will not be in the best interests of the child may file an injunction to prevent the operation.

For the most part, very very few doctors will perform a circumcision if one parent objects to the procedure, usually out of fear of a lawsuit. You should make your objection very clear to all doctors involved, to prevent any misunderstandings (an attorney can also provide you with a "non-circumcision notification form" that will put the hospital on notice).

So the dad probably could have legally had the circumcision done on his own time, if the surgeon agreed to do it. So I doubt that the surgeon would be any more likely to do it, knowing that the mom only signed the form to get out of jail.

Here is a obgyn Newborn Circumcision Consent Form (Msft doc), and there is only one signature line. I am guessing that physicians normally accept the instructions of one parent.

Baby Veronica dad speaks out

I posted about Baby Veronica, and the London Daily Mail reports:

A father who lost custody of his biological daughter after a controversial Supreme Court ruling is speaking out for the first time since the incident.

Dusten Brown has remained silent since 2013 when he lost his fight to keep custody of Baby Veronica, the daughter his ex gave up for adoption without his knowledge while he was serving in Iraq.

Now he has come forward to talk about the need for adoption reform.

Brown, who recently welcomed a baby boy with his wife Robin, said in a statement; 'Nothing will ever replace her presence in our home. Veronica has a new little brother that we hope she will meet one day and have a relationship with.'

A Cherokee Nation citizen, Brown had used the Indian Child Welfare Act to try to regain custody of Veronica.

Brown also commented on a proposed federal regulation set to end adoption disputes like the one he went through with Veronica,

'Hopefully, these regulations keep other Indian children, families and tribes from suffering the heartbreak that we experienced over the last five and a half years,' said Brown according to Tulsa World.

Men are sometimes deluded into thinking that if they get a full airing of their case before a sufficiently high authority, then no one could endorse the system.

This guy got his case all the way to the US Supreme Court, but still had to give up his biological daughter to adoptive parents because of a twisted anti-parent reading of the law, and a peculiar BIOTCh analysis.

Some day that girl will learn that she was reared by child stealers.