http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=764669
Canada felt the pain of gays denied a gold ring, yet remains oblivious
to fathers denied their own flesh and blood
Barbara Kay, National Post
Published: Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Les Bazso, Canwest News Service
If you live in the Chatham, Ont., region, be warned that today you may
happen upon a purple Barney Mobile full of scary characters like
Batman, The Incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman.
Kidding. The Barney Mobile characters aren't the least bit scary.
They're just ordinary dads and moms from the Fathers 4 Justice
movement (F4J), presently touring Canada in sup****t of MP Maurice
Vellacott's private member's motion (PMM 483) that seeks to enshrine
the principle of equal parenting (absent extraordinary cir***stances)
as the default legal option in the event of divorce.
Spider-Man on a roof, The Incredible Hulk atop a construction crane,
Batman and Robin scaling a bridge: The F4J objective is to attract
maximum publicity with an ironic touch and minimal public
inconvenience. F4J has staged over a hundred superhero "protests,"
none of which have caused physical harm to people or property.
Walter Fox is the go-to Toronto criminal lawyer for F4J dads in legal
trouble. He is presently defending several activists on charges laid
after two non-violent August superhero actions. "Toronto's version of
a terrorist is a middle-aged man in a Batman outfit," Fox scoffs,
referring to Toronto's dispro****tionate reaction -- Emergency Task
Force swarmings, streets being cordoned off, jailings and association
bans -- a stark contrast to the bemused, non-confrontational reactions
to F4J stunts by security forces in other Canadian cities such as
Regina, Vancouver and St John.
York University sociology professor Rob Kenedy -- Canada's only
academic with expertise in the fathers' rights movement --has
interviewed 200 activists in the field for a book he is writing on the
subject of equal parenting. He deplores Toronto's spirit-breaking,
"villainizing" tactics.
F4J's instantly recognizable comic-book icons were chosen, Kenedy
adds, precisely because they remind the world that Superman and Spider-
Man are fictional guardians of society's most vulnerable. The
symbolism is apt because in real life loving fathers are superheroes
to their children.
The Barney Mobile tour, which ends in Ottawa on Oct. 7, promotes a
simple message: Fathers have the natural and moral right to love and
be loved by their children. As credible studies show, that can only
happen by spending equal, or near-equal, time with them.
In our outmoded adversarial family-law system, women win sole custody
in over 85% of contested cases. To believe this is a fair outcome that
truly addresses "the best interests of the child" (once a worthy
ideal, but over the years hollowed out into a meaningless mantra,
cynically deployed to defend mothers' entitlements), you would also
have to believe that mothers are more valuable to children than
fathers, or that fathers are inherently inferior at parenting, or that
women are morally superior to men.
As it happens, many ideologues do profess and promote all these
beliefs. Because these ideologues are overrepresented in the legal and
academic communities from which policy advisors are dispro****tionately
drawn -- and because they are politically aggressive -- they have
successfully chilled rational public discourse that would inevitably
lead to long overdue reform.
Polls indicate that 80% of Canadians approve of equal parenting. Study
after study points to the deleterious social effects on children in
households where the father is mostly or completely absent.
Our family court system is "a national shame," according to University
of British Columbia sociology professor Edward Kruk, Canada's foremost
authority on custody and its outcomes. "It is a form of child abuse,"
Kruk says, "to have a fit and loving parent forcefully removed by a
court in the absence of any child protection concerns."
After children's infancy, men can parent as capably and responsibly as
women. Almost three million North American men are raising children
solo, and the sun still rises in the east. In a growing number of U.
S. states, such as Maine and Iowa, equal parenting is now the rule. In
Australia, a country not unlike Canada in demography and socioeconomic
indicators, the law stipulates that joint custody will prevail if
parents can't agree to custody arrangements.
Why, then, does socially enlightened Canada have one of the highest
father-removal rates in the world? Why were we so ahead of the curve
in feeling the pain of homo***ual lovers denied a band of gold, but
remain so far behind the curve in feeling the pain of hetero***ual
fathers denied their own flesh and blood?
Politicians of all parties must get on board the Barney Mobile and
lend their sup****t to PMM 483. The time for custody justice is now.
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