The DadsNow Mission

While America complains loudly about human rights violations all around the world, it fails to attend to the fact that over half the fathers and husbands in America, and many other "western" countries, have been denied the fundamental right to be in the family.

The right to be in the family is a fundamental human social right, for this is what determines whether or not an individual has equal status in society. When one is a father and husband, he has property rights and social status, and participates equally alongside women in society. When this right is arbitrarily denied, to so many individuals, a human rights violation exists.

Work and family are two equally important, interwoven social structures. Work is what makes a good economy possible, which in turn, provides economic support for families. But "working" does not give anyone status in society -- it just pays the bills. Marriage is what provides both men and women with status in society -- moreso for men than for women.

"Family" and "marriage" is the other half of life. It is where men can be an esteemed part of society. Whether or not we see a man as being a part of society depends decisively on whether or not he is a father or husband. Most men want this esteem, so most men do marry. Unfortunately, after 6.3 years of marriage, the average wife files for divorce (about 80% of the time), and another good husband is driven from his family.

Divorce automatically translates into severe social and economic discrimination against fathers and husbands. The average husband is divorced against his will. He has most of his property taken away, most marital debt is assigned to him, and his social status is revoked. One-third of his future pretax earnings taken away for the luxury of being thrown out of his family on the rationalization that the "children need it".

This arrangement is enforced by the "child support system", which has been granted machiavellian powers to seize property and income, and to incarcerate people. The IRS never came close to having the powers that HHS does -- and we found it necessary to reform the IRS a few years ago in a hail of public condemnation. At least our taxes have always been based on actual earnings. Child support is still not even based on actual earnings of a father -- it is based on "imputed earnings" invented by some bureaucrat.

Nobody could complain if we only denied family rights to the few men who are truly abusive, or who have serious problems with drugs or alcohol. No one can condone the fact that we have done this to about half the fathers and husbands in America.

"We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace" is our calling and our human rights mission.

We must end the instutionalize idea that "divorce" and "women's choice" should customarily de-legimitize men's fundamental right to be a part of society and family, and to have property rights and social rights that are immutably tied to participation in marriage. This is no less credible than the legal concept of women having a fundamental right to be in the workplace, and have property rights tied immutably to participaton in the workplace.

We need to expand sexual harassment laws to protect men in the family from misandry. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call them "social harassment" laws.

Sexual harassment (as relates women) protects women from being forced into giving unwanted sex to a man who is in a position of power or control. The counterpart to this, with regard to men, is protecting them from harassment in the home.

Social harassment of men is defined here to mean: 1. False, unfounded, or incredulous allegations of spousal or child abuse for the purpose of gaining control of family or marital assets in a divorce proceeding. 2. The use of vicarious reasons for a unilateral violation of the marriage contract for the purposes of gaining control of family or marital assets in a divorce proceeding. If there is no substantial fault on the part of the husband forming a solid foundation for a divorce, then elective divorce should never penalize the husband either socially or economically.

Everyone stands to gain by actively supporting this mission. The institutions of divorce,welfare and child support have left more women and children in poverty than any war in America's history. America would never had a problem with the national deficit were it not for the welfare burden.

Since 1960, we have spent more money on welfare than the federal deficit. In light of this fact, it is not unreasonable to call the federal deficit the "family deficit". All taxpayers continue to be hurt by this problem, even after welfare reforms of 1994 and 1996. With those reforms, we simply re-named "welfare" as "child support", while permitting the federal government to pay "child support advances".

There is no chance that these "child support advances" will ever be collected. Few fathers can support two households. An average middle-class family requires 1.4 median incomes (in 1995 dollars) to be a "middle-class" family. No middle-class family can remain in the middle-class when it has to support two households and pay large legal fees on the same amount of income.

The concept of maintaining the prior standard of living for the child in divorce, as adopted by the federal government and most states, is like pretending we can defy the simple law of gravity. Profamily reforms are uquestionably the most productive answer to the welfare problem

Few mothers can "do it all", working a full-time job with primary childrearing responsibilities and no husband or father to help out. Many women remarry, and now actively support profamily reforms after witnessing their second husband being torn to pieces by a system that cares about nothing but money.

In the next millenium, we must value marriage above anything else. We should work for policies that are supportive of the intact two-parent family. We envision a day when folks will not care who works and who stays home, or in what combination, so long as the family is intact.

Those who care about public safety have much to gain by supporting our mission. The majority of school shootings were committed by confused young boys living in divorced or separated families. When fathers have no property or social rights, their existence is limited to participation in the various underground economies of the "street hustle" -- which include all sorts of criminal activities that tend to drive families and business out of the urban cores. This socioeconomic "tailspin" can only be broken by making marriage more important than anything else, and by public policy planning that provides economic incentives to corporations to return to the urban cores.

There is no greater "affirmative action" program that is better than marriage. It erases all social, economic, and physical disparities as between men and women, and provides the best futures for children and society. Let us stop complaining about all the downstream problems and live life in the answer by tearing down sexist images about men and marriage.

The DadsNow mission is much more than believing something. It is a call to action, to change society for the better, by applying social and economic sanctions against any organization, company, or political candidate who practices gender McCarthyism.

We invite you to join with us in taking the DadsNow pledge:

• I will not purchase products or services from any company that holds sexist positions about men in society or family.

• I will not advertise in, or purchase any newspaper or magazine that censors fathers issues or holds sexist positions.

• I will strongly oppose any political candidate who holds sexist positions about men in society or family.

• I will not make charitable contributions to any organization that holds sexist positions about men in society or family.

• I will not make charitable contributions to any organization that provides funding to organizations that hold sexist positions about men in society or family.

• I will educate myself about sexism, and oppose it as deeply as I oppose racism.

• I will support organizations and political candidates who oppose sexism and who are working to institute pro-family reforms.