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Having arrived back in Berkeley after four years
on a small Pacific island, I almost instantly found
myself observing a drama that has also proven a
volatile cultural war—the battle over gay
marriage. As nearly everyone knows by now, the
mayor of near-by San Francisco elected to authorize
same-sex matrimony despite the California ballot
proposition which the people of my very politically
mixed state passed a few years ago specifically
banning such unions. As other scattered towns in
the US such as the village of New Paltz, New York
followed suit, traditionalists armed themselves to
the teeth for what promises to be an extended,
pitched battle between forces of the future and the
past, conservatives and liberals, lovers and
opponents of same-sex unions. With Canada having
instituted immigration benefits for partners in
same-sex marriage back in 2002, the US is behind
the times, but at least the Massachusetts Supreme
Court ruling (on my son Eli’s second birthday,
February 4, 2004!) clears the way for gay weddings
there through at minimum November 2006, the
earliest date by which a constitutional amendment
can possibly be instituted to stop the
ceremonies.
To my mind, what we are seeing is a lot of
people acting in their own interests while
purporting to be acting from principles. San
Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, exceeded in his
profound affinity with downtown interests only by
his immediate predecessor--the notoriously
developer-addicted Willie Brown, can be relied on
always to test the wind before tossing his kite up
in the air. I can only applaud the San Jose City
Council’s somewhat surprising decision to
offer identical benefits to all married city
employees, whether gay or straight, though again,
so close to San Francisco, one can assume they also
realize that they have a large gay and lesbian
taxpayer base. Meanwhile, religious leaders and
conservative do what they consider correspondingly
necessary to pander to their own constituents, and
Republican politicians adopt “San
Francisco” as a euphemism for non-conformists
of all stripes. To paraphrase, P.T. Barnum, no one
ever went broke underestimating Americans’
tolerance for fellow citizens who dare to step
outside the norm. Maybe I’m just an overly
cynical middle-aged ex-hippie.
One of the issues I had with becoming a father
is it turns out to be so demanding simply to do the
musts that I find myself running out of time to
meditate on where my life is going and certainly to
keep up with issues in others’ lives. There is
always the next thing that must be done—buy
groceries, keep gas in the car, hold onto a job or
in my case search for one, keep your children
entertained and healthy, occasionally toss a word
or two to your partner as you frantically rush by
each other on your way to the next tasks. Of
course, especially living as I do in one of the
most hectic of areas, it’s not all that
different before you have a child, but the addition
to one’s family does tend to further crimp
your time and further sap your energy. So in
principle I feel outraged about the resistance to
gay marriage. And in practice I just have a hard
time sustaining the same level of focused,
vociferous adrenalin I used to run with ease when I
was younger.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love
being a father and there is nothing on earth that
could induce me to trade it for my previous life.
Right now we are in particular crunch time as we
are buying a house in Berkeley (the prices are
unbelievable), I am frustrated and feeling a bit
vulnerable about my problem landing employment, we
are trying to produce a companion for Eli, and many
other things too mundane to bore all of you
with.
I have served as a warrior in a variety of ways
in my life, devoting substantial amounts of life
energy to the struggles to advance men’s
rights and to protect boys’ and men’s
bodily integrity by stopping circumcision. I spent
half a year doing human rights work in rural
Guatemala with the peasants, visiting morgues,
confronting Army officers in their bases over
murders they had helped orchestrate, and the like.
Could have easily lost my life somewhere in there,
but I lucked out. Also worked as an immigration
lawyer for several years, struggling to earn
political asylum for immigrants, which amounts to
roughly the supply end of the work I was doing in
Central America. Slept on the steps of the
administration building at UC Berkeley for a month
to help stop apartheid. And so on.
One of my biggest struggles was the one I found
myself embroiled in to avoid a literal
battle—draft registration. I was born in 1960
and so was required to register for the draft and
yet was unwilling to do so. I was also receiving
financial aid on which I depended since my parents
were unable or unwilling to fund my college
education. So what did I do? I pulled off a tricky
little end-around with the certifications you were
required to file stating that you had registered or
were exempt from registering. I hand-wrote an
explanation regarding my failure to register into
the card I received ever year, and never once did
the university notice my unusual notation on the
card and ask for further information. My financial
aid continued to faithfully arrive until I left
Harvard Law School in 1991.
Kudos again go out to what is currently perhaps
our strongest and greatest fighting team, Fathers 4
Justice (F4J) of the United Kingdom. In December
2003, five F4J activists dressed up as Santa Claus
and held a three-hour protest on a walkway above
The Strand in Liverpool. Some 300 protesters
participated in a similar event in central London,
marching to the High Courts and the Houses of
Parliament while 21-year-old drama student Darryl
Westell—also dressed as Santa--spent his third
day on a crane 140 feet above the offices of
Children’s Minister Margaret Hodge. Ms. Hodge
was later presented with a giant turkey and branded
“Turkey of the Year” for refusing to
change old child access laws which favor
mothers.
In late January, registered childcare worker
Jolly Stanesby braved cold weather for a full week
sitting 20 feet above the ground on the Tamar
Bridge that connects Devon to Cornwall. Mr.
Stanesby carried with him only seven army surplus
ration packs (how appropriate for this issue’s
theme!), a flask of soup, some brandy and a
sleeping bag. He then successfully clambered down
and escaped without drawing police attention to
himself. Then in the early hours of February 2,
2004, four F4J members took over the Clifton
Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England. Dressed up
as Batman, Robin, Superman, and Spiderman, these
fine folks held up a banner that read,
“Superhero Fathers 4 Justice—Fighting for
Your Right to See Your Kids.” This act of
civil disobedience eventually led to denial of
public access to the bridge for part of the day
and, combined with simultaneous actions by five
members in London and four on Newcastle’s Tyne
Bridge, drew national attention to F4J’s
important and impressively successful campaign for
fathers’ rights to access to their children
and children’s rights to access to their
fathers. Then early the next day, F4J members waged
a successful graffiti attack on a Yorkshire law
firm notorious for its father-hostile legal
services to mothers, scrawling such messages as
“F4J here to stay,” “child
thieves,” and “parasites” in large
purple letters on the building. Police have
responded to some of these events with raids at
addresses in London and other parts of England.
Sounds like war to me!
Possibly inspired by F4J’s stunning string
of successes, protests have been breaking out all
over the place. A group of 15 to 20 angry Dutch
fathers involved in custody battles for their
children peacefully occupied an office of the Dutch
child protection agency on November 20, 2003, the
International Day of the Child. Refusing to allow
anyone into or out of the building, they hung
banners from the office windows demanding fair
treatment and justice and also a meeting with the
Justice Minister and the child protection agency
director. On December 22, 2003, a group of fathers
calling for changes in Nebraska’s custody laws
set up a picket line to call attention to their
grievances, protesting outside the Douglas County
Hall of Justice. On Christmas Day, a group of
fourteen Vancouver dads erected a Christmas tree
and pickets outside the Supreme Court of British
Columbia to remind people that Christmas is a
lonely time when you can’t see your children.
The group faulted outdated family laws and biased
judges for their problems with custody and access
to their children.
Perhaps F4J’s impact is extending even
further than we realize, as one safe house for
battered men has reportedly already opened at a
secret location in southwest England, with a second
slated to open soon in northwest England. At the
same time, I am very sorry to have to report that
in early December, the British Home Secretary
announced an extensive set of changes in domestic
violence laws, further extending the potential for
bad faith use of restraining orders by allowing
them to be imposed even on men who have been
acquitted of domestic violence accusations due to a
lack of evidence! The reason I say “men”
rather than “domestic violence
defendants” is because the British
government’s official announcement similarly
discriminates against men despite the wealth of
evidence of women’s at least equal involvement
in spouse-bashing. (Elsewhere in this issue, you
can read my review of lawyer Thomas James’ new
book on this subject.) Furthermore, the government
came right out and said, “Just because there
isn’t enough criminal evidence to secure a
conviction doesn’t mean the victim
doesn’t need protecting.” Come again?
What happened to the rule of law? Melanie Phillips
notes in the Daily Mail, “This measure will
destroy the very concept of innocence
itself.”
As if that weren’t enough, on January 28,
virtually on the eve of these major F4J events, the
UK Court of Appeal handed down a judgment in the
case of “Re: S” confirming that British
courts will allow a mother to maliciously destroy
the relationship between child and father and even
though the child would be better off having contact
with Dad, will bar the child from reuniting with
Dad. The reasoning? Where Mom is so opposed, it
will be even worse for the child if the court
forces her to let the Dad back into the kid’s
life.
Compliments to Pittsburgh police for arresting
and charging a 38-year-old woman with falsely
claiming rape by members of the St. John’s
University basketball team. Turns out the gal
willingly had sex with the athletes and then
threatened them with rape accusations when they
weren’t in the mood to meet her subsequent
demands for money! Similar recognition is due a
British Columbia Court of Appeal that upheld an
award of custody to a father after the mother
falsely accused the father of sexually abusing his
young sons.
Further raves are due the American Civil
Liberties Union, of which I was a member until
resigning several years ago due to their neglect of
men’s rights. I may have to reactivate my
membership given their recent involvement in
facilitating the release of 100 men in Montgomery
County, Pennsylvania whom, according to the
ACLU’s notice to the court, had been jailed
for alleged nonpayment of alimony/support without
being told they had a right to an attorney, thereby
violating due process. The court has since agreed
to provide adequate notice of impending proceedings
and also to ensure the presence of legal counsel to
assist all similarly situated people in the future.
This success comes a year after the ACLU sued state
court officials in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania
for improperly jailing non-custodial parents.
Sometimes the news reads like satire. A Gender
Recognition Bill has been proposed in the UK which
will allow transsexuals to register for a new birth
certificate in their adopted sex, and to marry in
that sex. An eight-year-old boy was forced to
enroll in a sex offender program after he pinned at
least one female classmate and touched her breasts
and genital areas while they were both at school.
Equally absurdly, Staten Island has joined the
growing ranks of jurisdictions opening
“integrated domestic violence courts.”
These tribunals permit “ex parte”
testimony without being required to hear the
defendant’s side of the story. Such courts
will circumvent the protections of criminal law by
reducing or removing the burden of proof and
tossing out the previously sacrosanct presumption
of innocence until proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt.
As I settle into middle age, I definitely still
have some fight in me. These sorts of battles still
attract me and in fact I am preparing to wage war
on a new frontier—working to form a Men’s
Law Center with Marc Angelucci of the Los Angeles
chapter of the National Coalition of Free Men
©2005 Steven
Svoboda
* * *
J.
Steven Svoboda is founder and Executive Director of
Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. He graduated
summa cum laude from the University of California
at Los Angeles in 1983, received a Master's Degree
in physics from the University of California at
Berkeley in 1985, and then graduated cum laude from
Harvard Law School in 1991. He practices human
rights law in Berkeley, California. His recent
publications include "Prophylactic Interventions on
Children: Balancing Human Rights with Public
Health" in the February 2002 issue of the Journal
of Medical Ethics (co-authored with F. Hodges and
R. Van Howe) and "The Limits of the Law:
Comparative Analysis of Legal and Extralegal
Methods to Control Child Body Mutilation
Practices," in Understanding Circumcision, edited
by G. C. Denniston et al. and published by
Plenum/Kluwer in 2001. He was invited by the United
Nations to participate in the Human Rights
Sub-Commission’s meeting in Geneva in August
2001, where he gave an oral presentation before the
committee of experts whose written version became
the UN’s first official document entirely
devoted to the subject of male circumcision as a
human rights violation. He was married in 2001 and
has a son born in 2002. See www.arclaw.org
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