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Donate Online | July 29, 2010 | Printer-Friendly Version |
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Court: "Get Married, Stay Married"The Idaho Affiliate of the American Family Association
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Bryan Fischer, Executive Director
THE KIND OF JUDICIAL ACTIVISM WE CAN BELIEVE IN
A dozen billboards around the state of Georgia urge citizens of the Peach State to “Get Married, Stay Married.”
The sponsor of the billboards is not a pro-family organization, a church, or even a coalition of churches.
The sponsor? The Georgia Supreme Court.
The billboards, 48 feet wide and 14 feet tall, add the slogans “Children do
 better with parents together” or “For Children’s Sake.”The cost of $50,000 was picked up by the Georgia State Bar, and an outdoor advertising association donated the billboard space.
The billboards were posted in connection with a two-day conference, sponsored by the high court, designed to explore ways of strengthening marriage.
Georgia’s chief justice correctly observed that, “If we can’t do something about family dysfunction, we can’t do much about crime,” and added that the state faces a “crisis with families, divorce and crime.”
And Georgia’s governor reinforced the idea that strengthening the institution of marriage is not just a private matter but has enormous public policy implications as well. He noted that cases involving broken families “clog the courts of our state,” and the breakdown of the nuclear family is adding enormously to the state’s overburdened penal system.
An astonishing 72% of Georgia’s incarcerated juveniles are from fragmented families, and 65% of trial cases now concern families and children. Sixty percent of poor families are led by single mothers and 25,000 Georgia youths a year – 25,000!! – are admitted to detention centers.
“Children of divorced families,” said the governor, “are 12 times more likely to wind up in prison.”
The chief justice agrees, arguing that marriage is the best crime and poverty prevention program that exists, and laments the fact that “we are growing up in a culture where there is no shame or expectation or understanding” of the problems of divorce and absentee fathers.
Significantly, the chief justice acknowledged that it may be time for states such as Georgia to replace no-fault divorce dissolutions that are now the norm in 49 states, including Idaho.
The IVA believes it’s long past time to reform Idaho’s divorce code, and replace its unilateral divorce provision with mutual consent when children are
 involved.This will strengthen the institution of marriage itself, making it more stable while reducing the rate at which Idaho families tragically fragment. Marriage can only be entered into by mutual consent, and should only be dissolved by mutual consent.
Georgia’s chief justice laments the rise of cohabitation, which once was a fringe phenomenon but now has become common, because it creates fundamentally unstable family arrangements which are bad for children. Cohabitating couples break up at twice the rate married couples do, and have much higher divorce rates if they eventually marry.
She adds, “Society’s health, and our children’s health, is directly related to the health of our families. Our social science data shows that if marriage can be made more stable, if more fathers would stay involved, the benefits would be enormous for society.”
She concluded, “It’s our job to say to the Legislature, and to the executive, ‘we see and notice this’ ... We see a lot of human devastation. It’s my job to speak out.”
Replacing unilateral divorce with mutual consent is an idea whose time has come. To naysayers who say it’s impossible, we quote the words of our president-elect: “Yes, we can. Yes, we can.”
POLITICALLY CORRECT VIEW OF SPANKING DEVASTATING FAMILIES
I have personal knowledge of several families in Idaho who have been devastated by the politically correct mania against the proper use of spanking. Spanking is legal in Idaho, and by legal definition is not a form of child abuse.
Yet zealous representatives of child protective services (CPS), many of them trained in social work programs which are fundamentally anti-parent, have shattered families through heavy-handed intervention.
In one case, a parent who spanked her young child was charged with criminal injury to a child. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, but not before CPS got involved. Without the mom ever having been found guilty in a court of law
 of anything, CPS took away her custody rights, forced her husband to move out of their home, and restricted her to a maximum of two hours a day of supervised visitation with her own children.In another case, a Dad who spanked his daughter was, before his case had even been adjudicated in court, forbidden to see his daughter for a year, had both of his children taken away from him and their mother and farmed out to foster care, and he was forced to move out of his home immediately. He wasn’t even allowed to re-enter his home to get a pair of socks even though neither of his children was living there any longer.
So this once-intact family of four was suddenly and catastrophically sundered with all four members of the family forced to live under different roofs.
Now word comes from England that two parents there have been denied the privilege of adopting the baby sister of their adopted son because the father spanked the adopted son one time for swearing. Mind you, spanking is still perfectly legal even in England.
A county council has denied the adoption, even though a court ruling calls its refusal “bizarre” and “unreasonable,” and even though a review panel described the couple as “strong, caring, sensitive, supportive and resourceful.”
The council remains obstinate, no matter what the law says, or what the courts have ruled. Nope, since social workers don’t like the father’s “attitude to corporal punishment,” these siblings will be denied the opportunity to grow up together in the same loving home.
TIME FOR PRESIDENTIAL PARDON FOR LYNN MOSES
I’ve written you before about the case of Lynn Moses, a developer in Driggs, Idaho, who was contractually obligated by Teton County to maintain an intermittent stream bed as a flood control channel.
 Since it is an intermittent stream bed, the federal government is specifically excluding from jurisdiction over the stream bed or over Mr. Moses’ activity.
But the fact that it had no legal justification to initiate legal action didn’t stop the EPA from suing Mr. Moses (right), and when a federal judge refused the let the jury hear evidence of his contractual obligations to the county, he was tossed in federal prison for 18 months, where he sits today.
Yesterday, Pres. Bush granted pardons to 14 individuals, among them people convicted of the unauthorized use of a pesticide, distribution of cocaine, the unauthorized acquisition of food stamps, income tax evasion, embezzlement, and the unlawful use of a telephone.
Surely there is room on such a list for a man who was just doing his job, fulfilling his legal duties, and protecting his community from potentially catastrophic flooding.
Pres. Bush has issued 171 pardons, and Mr. Moses should receive pardon number 172.
For more information:
IVA IN THE NEWS/BLOGOSPHERE
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