Okay, give me a break. I gave them joint responsibility for conception all the other times I said it. How handy that he’s only responsible for the fun part. Sex is for two people, but personal responsibility is all hers. Gotta tell you, your stick story just doesn’t inspire me.
Well, if the man did not know about, nor approve of, the publishing agreements, then I would hazard a guess that under the law, he might not be liable, since it was never intended to be published, of course, IANAL. But if they had planned on getting it published, that’s another story. Which roughly corresponds to my stance as it relates to this thread.
And what if the man thought there was only a very small chance that the book would be published? That is, he knew it was a possibility and helped write it given that knowledge. But he assumed that the woman would not be able to get it published. So, he agreed to give her the legal right to publish it in order to enjoy the act of writing it.
in re: the safe haven laws and father identification, as far as i know, potential fathers have an option. in my state at least, we have a voluntary “putative father registry” where men can volunteer their identifying information if they think there is a chance they may have fathered a child. guys who want rights to their kids who may or may not be surrendered under a safe haven type arrangement, can put themselves out there, stating the potential mother(s) in the situation. i don’t know the particulars of adoptions resulting from safe haven surrenders, but in my field (foster care), prior to an adoption taking place, a reasonable search is made for fathers, which includes consulting the putative father registry.
may i venture to say, that i imagine (especially considering some of the opinions i’ve seen on this thread! geezh!) men may avoid the putative father registry, not because they don’t want rights, but because they don’t want to deal with the responsibilities.
“If”…?? The subject at hand is not a statute imposing an obligation on all biological parents, is it? No, it’s about Texas divorce law extending the duty of support beyond the dissolution of a marriage, and the mother of an illegitimate child cashing in on the benefits of the institution of marriage. In this case, “child support” can most certainly be said to originate from divorce law.
Hey, this forum is a venue of opinion and debate. The protocols of courtroom proceedure are not mandatory.
It is absolutely mind-boggling as to how some desperately cling to the notion that the legislature and judiciary is sacrosanct.
Look, you can cite legal precedent after legal precedent, but when “the law” violates the foundations of the American system of jurisprudence, then “the law” is wrong.
When the early founders came to this land, one of the things they were leaving was the tyranny of the monarch’s “rule by decree”. The Founding Fathers envisioned and created a justice system founded on the principle of fairness and equal justice through the unique concept of the “rule of law”, which has its foundations in the “common law”.
America’s comtemporary justice system has been infected with an orthodoxy based on emotional feel-good-ism that can only be attained through arbitrary law.
For instance, twenty-six states have already enacted laws designed to protect a fetus from criminal acts. The House of Representatives has even gotten into the act with H.R. 1997, The the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. This “law” would make it a separate offense to kill or injure an unborn child in the comission of a federal crime.
In my local area, there is a young man charged with homicide for accidentally causing the demise of a fetus. Yes, the young man’s actions were careless, stupid and even idiotic. Yes, he was acting in complete disregard for the safety and welfare of others and a severe punishment is certainly warranted, but to charge this man with homicide is to abandon the primary tenet on which our system of jurisprudence was founded.
Any dictionary one refers to will define “homicide” as the killing of one human being by another. Contemporary legal precedents have determined that fetuses do not enjoy the legal status of human beings. Fetuses are destroyed, killed or terminated on a daily basis out of mere convenience. To sanction the willful destroying of a fetus in one instance and label it “freedom of choice” and punish the accidental destroying of a fetus in another instance and label it “homicide” is repugnant to the rule of law and is more closely akin to the tyranny of rule by decree.
But, to you, that’s just fine because they passed a “law”, right?
Bullshit! I don’t have to cite you some “legal authority” to declare a court decree as being arbitrary and a violation of “the rule of law”. And the same arbitrariness is found in the notion of a child’s so-called “right” to support from it’s biological father. So, if you think you are making your case by citing “legal authority”, think again. This ain’t no courtroom.
Neither you, nor I know that for certain. The difference is that I only say that there is an appearance of conspiracy, whereas you make a proclaimation that there definitely was not.
I am reminded of Shakespeare. “Thou dost protest too much”.
Razorsharp.
You keep missing a point made time and again herein.
To receive support is the right of a child. It isn’t punishment for a parent. The mere fact that the a woman didn’t abort her child is no reason to hold her (or the child) hostage.
You are attempting to create a new class of victim with your cause. The seduced Male, the innocent victim of seduction, and a conspiracy so large it taints the very foundation of America jurisprudence, the Supreme Court. From the smallest corners of Anytown, America buxom bombshells hide unseen in the shadows, waiting their next victims arrival. They will then force the themselves upon these innocent victims, seduce them without their concent. As soon as the victim leaves, they take the shuttle (courtsey of the local office of child support enforcement) the local office of child support enfocenment. There they finger the victim, and he is forced to pay a small portion of what it cost to raise the child. Now, the plan complete, these new mothers are allowed to share in the proceeds of this conspiracy, become wealthy, and living happily everafter.
DtC said it best. Use protection.
Razorsharp, thankyou for your excellent and thoughtful presentation of an issue that gets very little press attention yet cries out to me as the most discriminatory situation against a segment of the population perpetrated by a government.
It baffles me that the same arguments used against Roe vs Wade are used today to support the status quo, i.e. “He should have thought about that before he had sex”.
Wheras at one time a parent would fear that their daughter’s life could be irrevocably diminished in quality by the onset of pregnancy, with no legal recourse to make the problem disappear, they now have to worry about their sons every time they go out on a date.
I really believe that the reason the law sits as it does at the moment has to do with money. Activists for and against the status quo might not have consciously considered it, but the lawmakers sure as hell must have considered it. Think about it
Prior to Roe vs Wade, enormous sums must have been paid out of the taxpayers purse to support single moms. The welfare system had actually encouraged some women to bear children in order to seek independance from parents. Very little attention was paid to pursuing fathers for child support which often wasn’t enough anyway. With a stroke of the pen, every aborted fetus would save the taxpayer a lot of money.
Now what do they do about those women who don’t cooperate and foster the little liabilities. Well, go after the semen dispensers of course. Call it product liability. Aparrently they didn’t come with warning labels. The point is the government reduced the tax burden for indigent children by assessing indiscriminantly a responsibility to all male parents for a decision taken by the female parent.
Just because we the taxpayer have arrived at the cheapest solution to the dilemna of unwanted or indigent children, and improved the prospects for the lives of both mother and child we should not ignore the sorry plight and unfairness that has occurred against particularly young immature men in our society.
To be fair, I would propose that the father of fetus have a one time opportunity to say yea or nay to taking responsibility for a fetus, thus allowing the woman to assess the impacts on her decision whether to abort or not. It should be assumed of course that the answer is yea for the legal husband of a mother to be.
Or the lovely mommy never bothered to tell him that it was his kid. Or she abandons it there directly after it’s born without even telling him that she’s given birth first.
Why do you try so damned hard to see everything as the evil man’s fault?
I disagree with that opinion.
The right to not have to pay for something that’s not your fault* is everyone’s right.
*No one mention taxes. We live in a democracy, so it is our fault.
Thank you robert. I had not even thought of that example. Since I never voted for a single tax ever. And since all you would have had to do was not vote for them either, I hereby claim that I have no obligation to pay taxes. Sure, I participate in the country, and I participated in elections where taxes were on the ballot. But I never really thought there was a chance for them to pass. And I certainly never expected to pay for them. Therefore it is most unfair that I have to pay taxes when it is clearly everyone else’s fault that we have them.
No, it is not incorrect. You are confusing a father’s failure to exercise his parental rights and subsequent relenquishment of them, which can happen, with a mother’s unilateral termination of the father’s rights, which can’t happen. If a mother abandons a child at a hospital, child protective services will determine if there is a family member that can be located that the child can be placed with, i.e. if someone is looking for the child. If the father has reported the child as kidnapped, the state doesn’t say “Sorry, when she abandoned the child, your rights got terminated, too. See ya.” Neither the mother nor the state has any responsibility to place the father on notice that he is a father or to exercise his rights for him (he is understood to have been placed on notice that he could be a father at the time of conception), but he nevertheless has those rights until they are judicially terminated. Even an unknown father must be afforded due process in termination proceedings. Abandonment is the grounds for termination of the mother’s rights, and if the faher doesn’t turn up looking for the child pretty soon, his parental rights and duties will be terminated on the grounds of abandonment as well.
It’s not an opinion, it’s a statement of law. Children by law have a right of support from both parents, and both parents have a certain rights and duties regarding the child. You can say that in your opinion the law is misguided and incorrect, but you can’t characterize the law as an opinion any more than you can say “I disagree with the opinion that homicide is a felony.” It’s not an opinion, it’s a statement of fact.
Yeah well, I think that law is a bunch of bullshit because it allows women a way out but not men.
And whatever the law says, I believe that the idea of anyone having a ‘right’ to the money of someone else, no matter who that person is, is also bullshit. It’s quite too bad that the government has adopted this ‘from each according to his means to each according to his needs’ policy. And what’s worse is that there are women who have never considered that there’s anything wrong with forcing someone else to finance their choices.
Cite me some legal authority that says that the centuries old common law rule extending child support only to children born within a marriage was due to the nature of the marriage contract, and not to, say, the impossibility of determining parentage prior to modern paternity testing.
That’s fine if you’re merely expressing your opinion or making a moral “that’s wrong!” argument, but you’re making a legal argument and statements of fact. Legal argument requires reference to authority. There’s just no way around it.
Well, I try imploring God to reveal to me what the law is, but until I get a divine answer I have to content myself with law books. It’s perfectly acceptable to say “I think this is a bullshit decision that should have gone the other way”, but if you’re making a legal argument that it was an incorrect decision, or that it was in conflict with another decision, you have to be prepared to demonstrate why.
Absolutely. Cite me some legal precedent that demonstrates why this violates the American system of jurisprudence (which relies on citing to legal authority in making an argument, by the way) and I’ll be on my merry way.
No, and fetal homicide laws are being challenged for the exact reason you describe. How is that germane to this conversation?
Being arbitrary, no. That’s your opinion and that’s perfectly fine. Being a violation of the “rule of law”, yeah, you pretty much do. If it’s a violation of the law you have to cite the law that it violates.
But again, you’re claiming to make a legal argument. Re: the changing of the docket:
I don’t know for certain that the current U.S. President is not a black woman, either, but I feel comfortable saying that it’s far beyond extremely unlikely. If a conspiracy existed why weren’t the majority and dissenting justices the same in both cases? Why didn’t the dissent blow the whistle on such underhanded tactics? Why manipulate the docket when the cases are not in conflict, which pretty much every legal thinker looking at the issue except you seems in agreement on? If there is a conflict, how has it slipped past every judge, attorney, and law review article author for the last thirty years? You can say that you think both decisions went the wrong way or are indicative of the moral decay evident in modern America, but as far as being in actual legal conflict or that the justices manipulated the docket, man, let it go. It’s just not there.
I have little opinion about the merits of either case, but gross mistatements and misunderstandings of the law get me going, and you’re giving me plenty of ammunition.
For the last time, the inequality is one of biology, not law. Your argument is with mother nature. Please take it to the nearest surf pounded cliff and yell it there.*
This communist slogan is not the source of a parents obligations to his or her child. The source has to do with who created the need in the first place. If you steal someone’s food will you stick to the ridiculous idea that “he is another person. I shouldn’t have to feed him”? Of course not. I’d venture to suggest that you may in fact support the governments attempts to get the victims food back for him. A child’s needs are similar (althoug, certainly not identical) in that they are not a result of it individual actions. The child does not need support because it doesn’t try hard enough, it needs support because that is the natural state through which all humans must pass before they become full individual adults. IF I am not mistaken, most child support stops at some “age of majority”. Again, it seems that your argument is with mother nature.
And what’s just as bad is that there are men who have never considered that there’s anything wrong with forcing someone else to finance (monetarily and physically) their choices. Say hi to the mirror for me.
*For the record, I am not trying to be insulting here. I heard once that one of the great Greek orators used to practice by yelling into the raging surf. It seemed an apt image to suggest.
That’s perfectly, 100% fine. I have zero problem with someone thinking that this law or that law is bullshit. I may disagree and argue about it, but so long as it’s an ideological disagreement I’m not going to get my panties in a wad about it. It’s only when someone mistakenly and repeatedly says “this law violates that law” or advances a legal position while defiantly refusing to provide any authority to back it up that I want to bang my head against the keyboard.
And for the record, I do disagree with you. The law favors the best interest of the child over what may be “fair” to the parents, and I think that that’s a better situation than trying do determine which parent is more culpable in giving birth to the child and assigning responsibility accordingly. But I nevertheless thank you for not saying the law is invalid because it violates the Declaration of Independence or something like that.
The issue is purely legislative and not biological at all. It is law forcing people to pay for children that they were not given a decent choice in having. (People who claim that not having sex is a choice will be reminded that so is not having food for the children. Hey, it’s not nice, but letting children whose parents won’t support them does solve the problem.)
And has been pointed out, that person is soley the woman. Conception does not create a child. Gestation does. The person responsible for the gestation therefore created the need, and gets the responsibility. Since the man has no power over the gestation, it’s silly to claim that it’s right to make him responsible for it, unless you posit a greater need for children than adults.
Yes. We agree that there’s something wrong with forcing someone to finance someone else’s choices.
I’m sorry, I have to laugh. I really though we had seen the hight of insanity in this thread. But this tops them all.
I commend you, robert. You have ressurected and given a different kind of reality to the myth of Hera creating a child without male input.
Personally, I thought such myths were not in vogue around here. I admire your bravery in so honestly admitting to it.
OK, in some seriousness. I can’t be completely serious after that, but I can approach it. Gestation is required to create a child. But so is fertalization. If 2 persons must act to cause a particular outcome, they do so willingly, then those persons are, to some degree, jointly responsible for the outcome. If you want to argue that the woman has more responsibility (at least during pregnancy or something) that’s one thing. But if you are going to suggest that the man has 0 responsibility, you will really need to suggest some way that the child could have arrived without him.
Partheogenesis.
Okay, that was a joke. But you can only carry the chain of whose-fault back so far. You could make the case that the grandparents are responsible for the child, since they acted to cause a particular outcome. The “cooperation” of 6 persons (4 grandparents, 2 parents) is technically necessary, but reasonable people generally assume that since the parents made the decision to have sex, they should get the responsibility. Similarly, although two people may consent to sex, the woman is the one who makes the decision to keep the child, and thus should get full responsibility.
[SIZE=3][SIZE=2]Well, I would say that it is you that is missing the point.
How do you reconcile that supposed “right” with the fact that a birth mother, when no sustained relationship exists with the biological father, does have the option to raise “her” child by herself.
The state doesn’t care. There is no mandatory requirement that the birth mother name the biological father upon giving birth to a child.
If the mother wishes to relieve herself of the parental obligations of parenthood, there are options, provided by the state, available to her.
It is only when the birth mother wants financial assistance with the private choice that she made out of concern for her own desires, that the state recognizes a “right” to support from a biological father.
And while we’re reconciling things, how do reconcile that, by holding someone soley responsible for the private choice they make, is holding them hostage?[/SIZE][/SIZE]