It may be too late to post this, and if it is, James, please accept my heartfelt apology. I don’t check my gmail account as often as I should.
I had a conversation over lunch last week with a dear friend. She and I often disagree with one another and, because of our differing views, we often have deeply passionate discussions. But even if we still disagree at the end of the conversation we walk away knowing we love each other. We’ve been friends for too long to let political views or other highly charged subjects get in the way. And I adore having those kinds of conversations with her. Iron sharpens iron, you know.
Anyway, we had a long conversation about James’ ordeal, and I’d like to share the way the discussion went, because I think it illustrates exactly why James is in this situation.
When I brought up the comments James posted last week, and asked her thoughts on them (because she reads the blog), her immediate response was, “He should just leave the poor kid alone until he turns 18. Then if he (the child) decides he wants to pursue a relationship with James, so be it.”
I was immediately taken aback. Really, truly taken aback. Mostly because I hadn’t expected this argument from her. I honestly thought we’d be on the same page. I asked her why she thought what she had just expressed. She explained.
“Well, the child is in a nuclear family. He has a Mom, a Dad, siblings. It’s a stable environment. I think that’s what is best for him.”
“How do you know?” I responded. “How do you know that it’s a stable environment? How do you know that they’re not child molesters, or abusers, that they don’t fight all the time, that they have a healthy marriage, that the child is even having his needs met? How do you know that James wouldn’t be the better parent in this situation? Just because he’s not married and doesn’t have a nuclear family?”
She thought about that for a minute, then said, “I don’t. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t really think about it that way.”
I went on to tell her that Family Court was in place specifically to answer those questions. I explained that the child’s mother, her husband, and her husband’s father, had successfully legally stonewalled James for quite some time, that although DNA testing proved that James was the child’s father, this ancient law on the Kentucky books was allowing the mother to keep James and the child from each other. I asked her to consider what might happen if the roles were reversed.
Let’s say that James was married and the mother was not. Let’s say that shortly after the child was born, James went to the hospital and took the child. Because he’s the father, you know, he would be allowed to do that. Let’s say that he and his wife reconciled, or agreed to stay together for the sake of their existing children, and the mother was unmarried. Let’s say he spent the next year of that child’s life denying the mother access. Let’s say that he passed his wife off as the child’s “real” mother because it was best for that child to stay in a nuclear family.
There would be outrage the likes of which we have never seen! How dare he keep that child from his mother! Barbaric! Awful. The public outcry would be massive. The courts would have no choice but to intervene. James would be villified for using the legal system to keep them apart. His reputation would be sullied. His name would be slandered. How dare he?
And yet, that’s exactly what the courts have allowed. Only in this case the child is being kept from his father instead. Is it somehow less impactful to the child? Since it’s only his father?
I then went a little further to examine James’ options here. Because the child’s mother wants James out of the picture, she is, of course, not asking for child support. But if she wanted him in the picture, if she wanted his money, she would have the right to ask that James pay it. She would have the right to request the DNA test, if James denied that the child was his, and pursue him for the money, garnish his wages, have him put in jail for non-payment if he could elude the garnishment, whatever other punishment the court might see fit. If she wanted him in the picture.
Because she doesn’t want him in the picture, because she wants to pretend that she can continue her life as it was before she met James and they conceived this child, she can legally keep him from the child. Does that make sense to you? That fathers, biological fathers, have no control over their own destiny as it relates to their children? That this man could either be fully responsible for this child, or could be kept from ever seeing this child until the child turns 18, at the whim of the mother? That seems like an awful lot of power to grant one parent over the other.
Under normal circumstances, they would have gone to Family Court, and likely James would have been granted liberal visitation unless she could prove that he was somehow unfit. In this case, the mother, because of the legal pull her family has, has acted as his judge, jury, and executioner. She has made the decision that James will not see his son, and his son will not see him.
That decision, and the fact that the court system is continuing to allow her to keep his child from him, is frightening to me. It is frightening to me that a biological parent could be stripped of his rights by the other biological parent. It is more frightening to me that this is happening to a father, because we would never stand for it if James were instead the child’s mother. I have two boys and I don’t want to see them grow up and face this kind of pain. Should they marry, or not marry, and be 50% of conceiving a child, I would never want them to go through the unimaginable pain of not seeing that child, not being able to be a part of that child’s life. I wouldn’t want that for my boys. I wouldn’t want that for anyone’s boys.
More than that, stripping a biological parent of his/her rights without cause seems to be a horrifying slippery slope. What will be next?
My last point was that, if the child grows up and discovers that his stepfather is not his biological father, he will have questions. And what will he think if James gives up? Will he believe that James did it for his own good? Or will he feel like he missed a huge piece of his life? Would he be glad that James just “let him be”? I don’t think so. I think it would mean the world to him that James fought to see him, to be a part of his life.
On the face of this situation, it seems natural to assume that the child is in the best situation, right? It does. Nuclear family. Mom, Dad, family dog, siblings, whatever. But it’s important to note that the only person who has decided it truly is best is the mother. The courts have not decided. There has been no child and family investigator appointed. James and his son have had no chance whatsoever to even explore a relationship with each other.
James is his biological father… of that there is no question.
The only remaining question, then, is how much power do we give mothers over fathers? In this case, she has the ultimate power. Why? Because she has a uterus? Again, if the roles were reversed, we would be outraged at a father keeping a child away from his mother. Why do we not feel the same here?
Please, urge the courts to give James his due process. Urge the courts to give James and his son the chance to know each other. Because that boy needs his Daddy, whether his mother thinks so or not. And lies have a way of being found out eventually. He will know eventually that his mother lied to him and he will be damaged by that.
In the greater picture, urge the courts to treat fathers equally. Don’t let them grant this kind of power to mothers, because all of our children will suffer.
An excerpt from an e-mail that James sent to me:
The Kentucky House just passed a bill that would allow me to re-petition for custody and visitation with my son. So I need your help. If the Kentucky Senate does not push the house bill thru before April 1st it will be dead.
Please call 1-800-372-7181
And ask the Kentucky Senate, Senate Committee on Committess, and Senate Judiciary Committee to push and pass HOUSE BILL 685 before the end of this session. Tell them you are in support of HB 685 and you support equal parental rights.
They will ask your name and address, and it does not matter that you don’t live in Kentucky. Please, please, please help me, for I love my son and want to see him. They take calls until 11pm eastern.
Please do.
And please check out his blog. All of the information is there–the good, the bad, and the ugly.
James needs our support.
Fathers and children everywhere need our support.
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