This picture depicts the only proper feminist way to celebrate F-Day. One girl covers dad’s eyes while the other steals his present! Ha, ha! More for them! Less for him! Stupid man.
This post was guest-written by NWOslave.*
—
*Just kidding.
Happy Father's Day!
Interesting case indeed.
Everything else
The women’s groups were in favor of changing how the law views fathers:
As discussed below, these distinctions appear to be based on and perpetuate outdated stereotypes of fathers and mothers: namely, that unmarried fathers will not form lasting relationships with their children and that unmarried mothers will bear all responsibility for the care of their children.
Oh yeah, Cat … I’ve been waiting for the manosphere’s take on that opinion — but I’ve been (ahem!) distracted and haven’t been prowling around the dark underbelly of the gender-focused internet. My guess is that they won’t care about it much because there has been such a heavy feminist presence surrounding the fathers’ rights side. Or they could ignore or explain away the NWLC amicus brief, I guess.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look around tonight and find something from WTF Price that will make me eat my words. It would actually be a pleasant surprise, for the Spearhead not to always live down to my meager expectations.
Bee, it wasn’t just the NWLC.. it was INTERNATIONAL FEMINISM, which was on his side.
I’d have to say (but no surprise, on this court, for a substantive due process claim) I think the court was wrong.
So … I looked at at least a handful of the bigger MRM/father’s rights site, and the only one to mention Flores-Vilar was Fathers and Families. So, good for Glenn Sacks’ crew, I guess. Of course, the post trod familiar territory as regards any unwanted feminist intrusion in the case…
“All of that was fine, but some wanted us to believe that the feminist organizaions (such as the National Women’s Law Center) filing briefs argued for treating fathers and mothers equally. They trotted out those briefs as evidence for the proposition that feminist organizations really do believe in gender-equality.
“To be blunt, that’s not what the briefs said. In fact, their argument was that fathers and mothers should be treated differently, with fathers getting the short end of the stick. They did that by arguing that,
” ‘[T]hat stereotype (of the uninvolved father) cannot justify treating fathers who have taken steps to establish a relationship with their children differently from mothers.’
“In short, theirs is the old, outworn and misandric one we find throughout family law – that mothers rights are established by their biological relationship to their children, but fathers must ”have taken certain steps” to have parental rights. For them, biology is not enough; dads must do more.”
I guess the fact that the NWLC’s brief repeatedly described the above stereotype that so perturbed the F&F writer as “outdated” … well, them’s just words.
Just for kicks: The sentence before the sentence that F&F bunny picked for inclusion in its blog post? “If the stereotype that unmarried fathers are always absent and uninvolved were ever true, it is not true today.” Shut up, femilawyers! You and your words!
So, there’s the MRM contingent that even cares enough to give the topic some space.
And I realize that I didn’t really say exactly why F&F’s reading of the brief was incorrect. Basically, it’s incorrect because the brief does argue that similarly situated single fathers and mothers should be treated the same by courts. While it’s true that the brief does mention a few times fathers who have done X or Y for their children, I would chalk that up to a rhetorical device rather than a requirement they wish to establish for fathers to get the kinds of rights they argue all fathers should receive.
@Bee, damn, every time an MRA opens their mouth about the law, they shove their foot in it. You think they could at least read the earlier case upon which the lower court decided Flores-Villar, Nguyen v. INS. It contains a brilliant and thourough dissent written by Justice O’Connor (Ginsberg joined it as well, meaning that both of the women were for removing the legal inequality). If one reads the dissent in Nguyen, one will find that the argument given by the majority about interest served by the birth distinction is one about standards of proof of biological relationship. O’Connor blows that excuse out of the water:
” Indeed, whether one conceives the majority’s asserted interest as assuring the existence of a biological parent-child relationship, ante, at 7, or as ensuring acceptable documentation of that relationship, ante, at 8, a number of sex-neutral arrangements–including the one that the majority offers–would better serve that end. As the majority seems implicitly to acknowledge at one point, ante, at 7, a mother will not always have formal legal documentation of birth because a birth certificate may not issue or may subsequently be lost. Conversely, a father’s name may well appear on a birth certificate. While it is doubtless true that a mother’s blood relation to a child is uniquely “verifiable from the birth itself” to those present at birth, ante, at 7, the majority has not shown that a mother’s birth relation is uniquely verifiable by the INS, much less that any greater verifiability warrants a sex-based, rather than a sex-neutral, statute.”
Really, O’Connor dissent in Nguyen is just a wonderful piece of legal argument. It is available free online here http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-2071.ZD.html (the majority opinion and concurring opinion can be found via links at the top of the page).
Upon reflection, I have figure out why the MRAs have not read the Nguyen dissent. It was written by a woman and is therefore chick lit and unworthy of reading.
This MRA *ahem* father’s logic on how to buck the system: http://wimminz.wordpress.com/