The On-Going Debate

With special presenters:

• Ian Purdie and
• Ray Lenton.

With most of the crew away during the Easter break, Ian Purdie and Ray Lenton decided to engage in a lively fashion and discuss some of the many difficulties faced by separating families. The debate ranged from Child Support issues to that of Parenting in separate households and how the Education system deals with separated parents.

While the unnecessary problems created for separated parents and their children, remains firmly embedded in the form of demonstrably flawed Family Law legislation, the debate will continue to rage. The fact that the delivery of Family Justice has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry, ensures the nation’s families will continue to be torn apart and stripped of their family bonds and emotional well-being.

The only hope of reprieve for Australian families from these legislative attacks on their dignity and inhumane treatment at the hands of this despicable “Industry”, is that a future more enlightened and empathetic Parliamentary representation will eventually emerge. Only then will the sheer stupidity of what we are presently engage in surface, and the many horror stories be listened to.

The more than one million Australian children, who have been forcibly prevented from enjoying the protection a loving relationship with their other parent could have offered, and who were denied the support of extended family members, will speak out and condemn the appalling apathy and disinterest shown by our current crop of self-interest filled parliamentary leadership and bureaucracy.

Sooner or later our nation will bow its collective head in shame, as it ponders how on earth it failed to recognize the atrocities it was inflicting on our innocent children, and how we failed to speak out in order to protect them from so much unnecessary suffering.

Unlike the problems that a lack of documented evidence produced for our Indigenous population, there is a mountain of documented evidence and written accounts of the horrors inflicted on our children and their parents, at the hands of this “Industry”, which has been allowed to decimate the lives of so many.

This evidence will show the world, that while we liked to bath in the glory of our proud achievements on foreign battle fields, we thought nothing of removing our children from the arms of loving parents at home.

It will clearly show that while we were quite prepared to send our young men off to die for the freedom of others in foreign lands, we were happily engaged in denying our own children the freedom to love and be loved by both of their parents back in our own country.

But sooner or later these  children will tell their stories and people will begin to listen. It is then, that we will triumph over tyranny “Lest We Forget”

Editor

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White House Council on Boys to Men

With special guests:

• Tom Golden and
• Jack Kammer.

This week on Dads on the Air we talk to two members of the recently established “Proposal for a White House Council on Boys to Men”, Tom Golden and Jack Kammer from the USA. They are two leading members of a multi-partisan Commission of thirty-four nationally-known scholars and practitioners, who have submitted a proposal that President Obama create a White House Council on Boys to Men.  

The mere presidential announcement of a White House Council on Boys to Men makes visible an invisible crisis. A White House Conference on Boys to Men to present “best practices” within one year after the Council is created, will prove invaluable to the future well- being of our Men.

Designed to tackle a nationwide crisis of boys and men, the Commission identifies the following five main components:

• Education. Boys are behind girls in almost every subject, especially reading and writing. Yet boy-friendly programs (e.g., recess and vocational education) are being curtailed.      

• Jobs. Our sons are not being prepared for jobs where the jobs will be. Yet women rarely marry men in unemployment lines.    

• Fatherlessness. A third of boys are raised in father-absent homes; yet boys and girls with significant father involvement do better in more than 25 areas.    

•   Physical health. Life expectancy has gone from one to five years less for males than for females, yet federal offices of boys and men’s health are non-existent.  

• Emotional health. Boys’ suicide rate goes from equal to girls to five times girls’ between ages 13 and 20, as boys feel the pressures of the male role.  

Each of the five crisis components is potentially handled by a different department of the government; therefore coordination and prioritisation is best handled at the White House level.

With a Short-Term Investment of One million dollars, the Long-Term Savings will add up to Many billions of dollars. (For example, boys who are cared for become men who care for–men who pay taxes for schools rather than drain taxes for prisons.) The quality-of-Life Savings will be Priceless.

Tom Golden, LCSW is the author of two books about men’s unique paths to healing. The first is titled Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing and the second is called A Man You Know is Grieving: 12 Ideas for Helping Him Heal From Loss. Tom has given workshops on this topic in the U.S.,  Australia, Canada and Europe. His work has been featured in the NY Times, the Washington Post, on CNN, CBS Evening News, ESPN, the NFL Channel and others. Tom serves on the Maryland Commission for Men’s Health and lives outside Washington DC.

Jack Kammer, MSW, MBA returned to school at the age of fifty-four to earn Masters degrees in Social Work and Business Administration. He did so to document, highlight and take action on male gender issues and the social problems that arise when those issues are ignored and mishandled. He specialises in the Race and Gender effect on marginalized African-American men and boys in urban settings. He is also the author of If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules: and other radical thoughts for men who want more fairness from women and Good Will Toward Men: Women Talk Candidly About the Balance of Power Between the Sexes. He has a new book (2009) for boys and young men, titled Heroes of the Blue Sky Rebellion: How You and Other Young Men Can Claim All the Happiness in the World.

Editor

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In Support of Men

With special guests:

• Paul Elam and

• Mark Brooks.
  

On today’s show, as we cross from one continent to another, we witness the widespread, humiliating, emasculation of men and boys, which is now deeply embedded in the way we view equality and social justice in the western democracies.   

The manipulated silent majority which makes up our communities, blindly accepts the incredible debasement of the male of the human species, and laughs at their demise and discomfort, as they struggle with the constant attacks on their dignity and persona.   

As happened with other human rights abuses of the past, an ignorant community led by weak leadership, unquestioningly accepts the demonizing, stereotyping and marginalizing of members of a particular societal group, and fails to recognize this bigoted behaviour as an abuse of fundamental human rights.    

First up we speak to American social commentator Paul Elam, former Editor-in-Chief of Men’s News Daily and founder of A Voice for Men, who speaks about his new AVfM Radio program and issues around marriage and chivalry in modern times. Paul makes the following observations: 

“We live in an age where men are open targets.  Family law has developed into a dystopian system of government tyranny against men, on the supposed behalf of women, that represents the biggest roll back of civil rights since  the age of Jim Crow.  False accusations against men for all manner vileness including rape, child molestation, domestic abuse and the like have become epidemic and the perpetrators remain largely unpunished”. 

“This is just a part of a modern system of feminist governance that has gone to such extremes that we now have women who are murdering their husbands, often shooting them in their sleep, and walking away because they claim it was an act of defense from domestic abuse”.

“Our sons presence in institutions of higher education is dwindling rapidly, as is there performance in grades K-12. With 40% representation in college compared to women, and falling, there is also expected to be 18 million American men between the ages of 25 and 54 in the near future that will be unemployed and unemployable”. 

We then speak with Mark Brooks in the UK, who is chairman of the ManKind Initiative (UK).  In an article written by Mark on the 14th October 2010, he  draws attention to the gender divide and how comfortable the establishment is to engage in the bigoted denigration of men.    

“When Judge John Milford was sentencing Dennis Long, who stabbed his partner of 30 years to death, he said “You are a placid, unassertive, rather weak man”, as well as stating that as the bread-winner he should have permanently moved out of the family home”.

“The key litmus test is whether the judge would have made the same comments if the genders had been reversed. Rightly, I cannot see any possibility where a judge would say or even feel comfortable in stating that a woman who had been a victim of domestic abuse for 30 years was “a rather weak woman”, but the judge felt comfortable in saying this to a male victim”. 

“The same applies when Long was told he should have left because he was the ‘breadwinner’ - an irrelevant issue. Would a judge say that if Long was female. I think not. What is so appalling about these out-of-date, out-of-touch and sexist comments is that at its heart it places the responsibility on the victim not on the person carrying out the domestic abuse”.  

“Male victims, like female victims, are not weak, and it sends out the wrong message to say they are. No wonder twice as many men as women choose not to tell anyone about the domestic abuse they are suffering when this is the attitude of the judiciary. No victim of domestic abuse, whether female or male, should ever be described in this way and the judge obviously needs a better understanding of the power and control that perpetrators hold over their victim”.  

Editor

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Family Law and Feminism

With special guests:

• Wayne Butler and
• Suzanne Venker.

Hot on the heels of the Pink Bats fiasco, the Gillard Government in Australia, is now rushing headlong into another policy debacle, that of the proposed Family Law Amendments [Family Violence] Bill 2010, which will cause many thousands of Australian men, women and children, to lose contact with their families. It will also result in an increased associated loss of life, as a growing number of desperate parents and children see no alternative, but to put an end to the extreme emotional pain they are experiencing as a result of appalling legislation, forced upon them against their will.  

Under the guise of needing to protect children from ‘alleged’ abuse while on contact visits with their non-custodial parents, the proposed [Family Violence] amendments will provide a perfect platform, from which toxic custodial parents will be able to launch their perjurious, child-kidnapping raids, safe in the knowledge that they will be able to do so successfully with absolute impunity.   

In a further act of Political arrogance, the Attorney General, the Hon Robert McClelland MP, has refused to publish any of the publicly invited submissions from organisations and affected members of the public. There is widespread community dismay at this contemptuous, secretive behaviour, which many believe to be because publication of the submissions would expose the glaring flaws in the proposed amendments.  

Once again we witness an example of a bungling Government, happy to engage in a deliberate attempt to keep the electorate in the dark for Political expediency. It has been suggested that perhaps this is the Gillard example of what’s  ‘In the Best Interest of Children’?    

Our first guest this week is Wayne Butler, Executive Secretary, Shared Parenting Council of Australia (SPCA), who will speak in detail about the issues involved with the proposed Family Law Amendments [Family Violence] Bill 2010, and discuss the contents of the combined media release of a number of like minded, concerned parenting organisations.   

Wayne was a foundation member of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia which was formed by Geoffrey Greene in 2002, and was appointed as the Executive Secretary role in 2003 and has retained the post since.  

Wayne has been involved in preparing extensive submissions and representations to Government since 2000 in relation to Family Law and Child Support Legislation changes. In particular the HORISP report, Child Support Taskforce and submissions / attendances to various Senate committees, review work on the SRL project in the Family Court and other legislative reform submissions including works on relocation cases, and Change of Circumstance submission. 

Our second guest is American Author and Freelance Writer Suzanne Venker, who will discuss her insightful new book ‘The FLIPSIDE of FEMINISM: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say’  

Suzanne’s writing tends toward the provocative — as evidenced by her first book, 7 Myths of Working Mothers, which argues that young children and demanding careers are incompatible. Her book is a Main Selection of Bookspan’s American Compass Book Club and is listed on Jeff Rubin’s Guide to Best Conservative Books.

Suzanne has appeared on ABC, CNN, FOX, C-Span, PAX, EWTN — as well as hundreds of radio shows throughout the country. Suzanne’s work has also appeared in Human Events, National Review, World Net Daily, and the New York Post.  

“Since the 1960s, American feminists have set themselves up as the arbiters of all things female. Their policies have dominated the social and political landscape. The “spin sisters” in the media (aptly named by Myrna Blyth in her book of the same name) and their cohorts in academia are committed feminists. Consequently, everything Americans know — or think they know — about marriage, kids, education, politics, gender roles, and work/family balance, has been filtered through a left-wing lens.  

But what if conservative women are in the best position to empower American women?   Forty years have passed since the so-called women’s movement claimed to liberate women from preconceived notions of what it means to be female – and the results are in. The latest statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research show that “as women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy.”  

Enough, say Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly. It’s time to liberate America from feminism’s dead-end road. Cast off the ideology that preaches faux empowerment and liberation from men and marriage. While modern women enjoy unprecedented freedom and opportunities, Venker and Schlafly argue that this progress is not the result of feminism.  

Women’s progress has been a natural evolution – due in large part to men’s contributions. American men are not a patriarchal bunch, as feminists claim. They have, in fact, aided women’s progress. And like women, they have been just as harmed by the feminist movement”.

Editor

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