The Fathers Rights Movement

Why is the Father’s Rights Movement is a Civil Rights Movement

The Father’s Rights Movement is a civil rights movement asserting that fathers have just as much right to be parents to their children as mothers do and that biological differences between fathers and mothers cannot be applied post-birth to deprive the child of every parental association and privacy right with its father that it enjoys with its mother. We seek to take nothing away from mothers and support mother’s rights 100%. We seek only our rightful place as full and equal parent to our children with all the rights and parental responsibilities all other parents enjoy regardless of our marital status related to our child’s other parent and regardless of changes in that marital status.

This goal is absolutely legitimate because the rights of parents and of children to their parents are “individual” rights that do not depend upon marriage in any way and cannot lawfully be denied because we choose not to marry or because we choose to divorce. Each family relationship is individually protected by the United States Constitution as both an intimate and an expressive association. As such the martial relationship and the parent-child relationship can have zero dependence upon one another. This has been the law in this country since the mid 1970’s when the United States Supreme Court overturned the bastardy laws holding that parental right and a child’s rights to a parent are independent of any marriage between the child’s parents and that it is unconstitutional to punish the child with loss of rights as a consequence of the parents’ perceived sins.

Equal Protection for Fathers and Children

The Father’s Rights Movement is a movement to protect the civil rights of children to have fathers in their lives as parents  with full and equal standing to their mothers. The courts claim there can be only one. The courts are wrong.

Where States presume or permit anything less than full protection for the fundamental parental rights of each parent, the State is engaging in impermissible gender bias. The “broad” discretion, given to judges to violate the fundamental rights of children and their fathers upon the exercise of marital choices the State disfavors, is nothing less than a license to arbitrarily punish those choices granted to a sole government official to impose as his or her own personal viewpoint on matters of conscience in child-rearing dictates. The best interest of the child public policy is nothing less than a license to practice viewpoint discrimination that is overwhelmingly used to punish fathers and is always used to punish the child who looses a full parent every single time. Viewpoint discrimination is the most disfavored type of arbitrary discrimination by our constitution.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds with the Supreme Court that the Equal Protection Clause protects individuals from arbitrary discrimination.

Discriminating between parents upon the viewpoint of a sole government official regarding what is “best” in matters of conscience regarding child-rearing is arbitrary discrimination. It matters not that the government official bears no malice towards mothers or fathers, the official bears malice towards mothers and fathers who make marital choices the State disfavors. The government official punishes both parents equally by presuming away their individual and fundamental parental rights as a starting point.

The government official then compels those parents to engage in a legal battle royal where the government official presides as Cesar Augustus waiting to give a thumbs up or a thumb down when either parent displeases his Honor. Win the favor of Cesar and you receive the Royal “Grant” of parental rights, never mind that these individual rights were already yours by natural right.

What the gladiators in this contest are fighting for is favor from Cesar in finding that they are in Cesar’s viewpoint the “best” parent to whom go the spoils. Rules make little difference as Cesar changes the rules at his whim. The only thing that matters is Cesar’s favor.

This truth is plainly evident in the preparation almost every family law attorney gives their client, don’t piss off the judge. If the judge were bound by law, pissing off the judge could NOT result in loss of fundamental rights. Family law attorneys do NOT advise their clients of their rights because they know the judge has absolute power and that no court is willing to protect their client’s rights just as no court protected the rights of Black People, and no court protected the rights of Women, and just as no court protected the rights of Gays. That is until they joined together in common cause to fight for their equal rights under the law.

The Father’s Rights Movement is an assembly of individual fathers and some women who are standing up and demanding that their rights be protected equally with the rights of mothers and equally with the rights of all other civil litigants generally.

Fathers have First Amendment Rights

The Father’s Rights Movement stands for the proposition that fathers and their children have First Amendment protected rights to establish, maintain, and enhance their intimate and expressive close family association so that the father can fulfil his duty to educate the child in his own values and beliefs and the child will have access to the full range of parental influence on their lives during their formative years.

Study after study demonstrates that children who are deprived of their fathers suffer great disadvantage in their lives and often turn to crime and other self-destructive behaviors as adults. It cannot now be doubted that it is NOT in any child’s best interest to have a fit willing father taken from them simply because of a sole government official’s personal viewpoint regarding what is “best” in child-rearing.

A Final End to the Bastardy Laws

The Father’s Rights Movement seeks a final and complete end to the bastardy laws that the Supreme Court overturned in the 1970’s. While States cannot openly enforce a bastardy law, States are exercising the exact same discriminatory practices in their family law and child custody courts that they exercised under the bastardy laws by tying parental rights to a marriage between a child’s parents, by openly discriminating against parents who divorce, and by openly punishing the children of divorce for their parents’ choice to divorce. The bastardy codes of old are alive and well in the states’ family codes successfully rebranded as “the best interests of the child.”

It can never be in any child’s best interest for a sole government official to deprive the child of a fit parent simply because in that sole government official’s viewpoint, punishing the child with loss of a parent is in the child’s best interest.

Depriving a child of First Amendment protected rights without due process is considered an irreparable injury by the United States Supreme Court and it can never be in any child’s best interests for a judge to irreparably injure them.

The bastardy codes held that, if a child’s parents were not married to each other, the child had no right of privacy against the state. All 50 family law codes hold today that the child has no right of privacy against the state if the child’s parents are unmarried or if the child’s parents divorce exactly as the bastardy codes held. All 50, state family codes blatantly punish children whose parents make marital choices the states disfavor and that is the definition of a bastardy code.

The State’s bastardy codes rebranded as the child’s best interest in a family code punish children for the perceived sins of their parents and this is an unmitigated evil that must end.

Children Have First Amendment Rights to their Fathers

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that children have fully vested First Amendment protected rights to be free from unwarranted government interference in their private lives and that it is the full and equal parental rights of each parent that stands as a shield between overzealous state action and the child’s private life. Consequently, an attack on either parent’s parental rights is a direct attack on the child’s right to privacy. Where a parent’s rights are a source of protection for the child against overzealous state officials, a parent who fights for their parental rights is a parent who is fighting to protect their child from state tyranny.

The Minimum Basic Rights of Fathers

The Father’s Rights Movement agrees with the United States Supreme Court where the Court holds that fitness of a parent is determined by the parent meeting minimum reasonable standards of child care and where the Court holds that the laws of every state must be applied equally against individual rights. Where parental rights and duties are individual rights and duties, there cannot be two different standards of fitness between married and unmarried parents nor two different standards of child care.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the right and duty to care for one’s child is a direct and personal right and duty that the State cannot convey to another individual without first proving the father to be unfit. Depriving a father of the ability to directly carefor his child while compelling the father to pay another person to provide the care he so desperately seeks to provide is manifestly unjust.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the Supremacy Clause applies in family law cases to limit the authority of the state through the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment when the State seeks to regulate intimate and expressive close family parent-child associations for any purpose.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the right to directly care for one’s child is an individually protected core fundamental right and that any limitation on this core fundamental right must be subjected to the highest degree of constitutional review.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the right to custody over one’s child is an individually protected core fundamental right and that any limitation on this core fundamental right must be subjected to the highest degree of constitutional review.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the right to control over one’s child is an individually protected core fundamental right and that any limitation on this core fundamental right must be subjected to the highest degree of constitutional review.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that the right to companionship with one’s child is an individually protected core fundamental right of intimate and expressive close family association and that any limitation on this core fundamental right must be subjected to the highest degree of constitutional review.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that State imposed parenting plans are prior restraints on the times, the places, and the manner in which parent and child may speak with one another, may associate with one another, may worship together as a family with one another, and may enjoy privacy as a family with one another.

The term “prior restraint” is used to describe administrative and judicial orders forbidding certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur… Temporary restraining orders and permanent injunctions… are classic examples of prior restraints. -Supreme Court 1993.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that any judicial determination that one intimate and expressive close family parent-child association is “best” while the other is “less than best” is a content-based justification for the prior restraints imposed through the parenting plan.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that where “best” is merely the opinion of a judge, as the Court held in Troxel, parenting plans supported by a best interest determination constitute viewpoint-based prior restraints on First Amendment protected speech.

The Father’s Rights Movement holds that parents seeking protection of their federal fundamental parental rights are entitled to an adjudication of their federal rights under the state court’s federal jurisdiction under the terms of federal substantive law where the court properly performs its constitutional duty under the terms of the Supremacy Clause “to proceed in such manner that all the substantial rights of the parties under controlling federal law are protected.”

The State court agreeing to act as the State’s agent in depriving litigants of fundamental rights under the State’s best interests of the child public policy is fundamentally incompatible with this federal duty. The State’s best interest of the child public policy must either comply with the terms of federal due process and equal protection or the State’s best interests of the child public policy must fall. This is the command of the Supremacy Clause, “anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Conclusion to The Father’s Rights Movement is a Civil Rights Movement

The Father’s Rights Movement is a civil rights movement seeking not just equal protection with the rights of mothers but equal protection with the rights that all other civil litigants receive generally. That means that Fathers are seeking a fundamentally fair adjudication of their federal rights before a neutral and independent court that has NOT predetermined to act as the State’s agent in pursuing and vindicating the State’s best interests of the child public policy.

The State’s best interest of the child public policy establishes a federal conflict of fundamental right between the parents and the state and between the child and the state. The parents and the child are entitled to access a state court that stands independent of this state public policy and neutral as to its legitimacy.

Any state judge who has predetermined that they will provide relief in the interests of a third-party, non-litigant, who lacks standing to challenge the federal rights at issue is a biased judge who is unfit to preside of over a constitutionally compliant court and a judge who lacks jurisdiction to form a court which can make a federal due process holding regarding the federal rights at issue. Agreeing to always act in the best interest of the child is a premeditated determination to violate the terms of the judge’s Article VI oath to be bound by the terms of the Supremacy Clause which require the court to be neutral and independent of state policy.

The Father’s Rights Movement is an assembly of fathers drawing a line in the sand asserting that on this side is right and justice and on that side is tyranny and abuse, either the rules of individual rights apply to everyone equally or the rules are invalid.