Subject: Men's Issues Newsbriefs #53

From: [email-masked] (Dave Gross)
Date: 28 Sep 92 20:56:24 GMT

~Subject:  Men's Issues Newsbriefs #53

	* A proposed ballot initiative would outlaw infant
	  circumcision in Washington state.
	* Kentucky may make denial of visitation rights by the
	  custodial parent a misdemeanor.
	* Divorced fathers who don't live with their kids struggle
	  to be fathers.

     Source: Olympia Washington Olympian, 27 May 1992
     Original Article by Mike Oakland
     PROPOSED INITIATIVE WOULD OUTLAW CIRCUMCISION
     ------------------------------------------------
A Freeland, Washington man has filed an initiative with the state to outlaw
circumcision of infants and children, calling the operation "surgical,
genital mutilation without consent."

"When it comes to initiatives, I thought I had seen it all, until today,"
confessed Secretary of State Ralph Munro after Ted Pong filed his proposal to
make circumcision of infants a felony and to allow circumcised children to
collect damages later in life.

Pong said medical ethics dictate that patients give their consent to
"unnecessary elective surgery."  Newborn children are not able to give that
consent when it comes to circumcision, he said.  He argues that a person
should be able to make a decision about circumcision as an adult.

Pong said the medical procedure is extremely painful and that it has "many
extremely harmful short- and long-term physical and psychologcal effects."
He said many adults who were circumcised at a young age "have endured extreme
emotional pain and hardship as a direct result."

In Washington state, residents have the right to write new laws on any
subject through the initiative process.  Once a ballot title is drafted by
the state attorney general's office for the initiative, the measure can be
circulated for signatures.  If Pong collects the signatures of 150,001
registered voters, the initiative would be put to a vote in the Nov. 3
general election.

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     Source:  Lexington Kentucky Herald-Leader, 10 March 1992
     Original article by Bob Geiger
     DENYING VISITATION MAY BE A CRIME IN KENTUCKY
     --------------------------------------------------------
Men would be able to swear out criminal complaints againts their ex-wives if
they think they have been denied proper child visitation, under a bill the
Senate passed yesterday.  The bill woul make it a misdemeanor for a parent
who has custody of a child to intentionally violate a court-approved
agreement on child visitation.  Women would be more likely to face charges
because most children of divorce are in the custody of their mothers.

The debate on the Senate floor prompted passionate speeches on both sides of
the issue.  Republican Sen. Tim Philpot said, "this body, by passing this
bill, is abusing children, and I'm not stating that too strong."  Philpot
said he has handled dvorce cases for 15 years and has seen the type of
situations where the bill would do more harm than good.

He said the bill "has the potential to give abusing husbands another weapon
... to abuse their ex-spouse, another weapon to drag their children into the
turmoil."  Philpot said many divorce cases simply require "reasonable"
visitation.  He said judges can find spouses in contempt of court if they
disobey visitation orders.

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Dan Seum, D-Louisville.  Senate President Pro
Tem John A. "Eck" Rose, D-Winchester, in a rare floor speech, said Seum's
situation has often been repeated because judges have not properly used their
powers.  "We need to send a message to judges across the state that violation
of visitation rights is a serious offense."

Another member of the Senate leadership, majority caucus chairman David Karem
of Louisville, also spoke in favor of the bill.  "One of the worst things
that occurs in child custody cases is the constant use of children as a
football between the parents."

The bill passed 25-13.  All eleven Republicans and two of the Senate's 27
Democrats voted against the bill.  One of the two Democrats who broke ranks
was Sen. Susan Johns of Louisville, the only woman in the Senate.

She said later that the bill could become just a way "for people who do not
have custody to get back at the people who do have custody."  Johns said she
could imagine situations where an ex-husband comes to the door drunk, looking
to visit his children and the ex-wife turns him away.  She said it would be
difficult to prove he was drunk.

But even if the woman won in court, the bill would still make her go through
a lot of grief by hiring an attorney and going to court, Johns said.  Sen.
Walter Baker, R-Glasgow, said the bill would overwhelm district courts with
cases that they were not experienced in handling.

The Kentucky Council of Churches and the Attorney General's Task Force on
Domestic Violence opposed the legislation.  The bill now goes to the House.

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     Source: Austin Texas American-Statesman, 8 March 1992
     Original article by Julie Bonnin
     DIVORCED FATHERS FIND OBSTACLES
     -----------------------------------------------------
One man says he feels like an inconvenience, a visitor to his own children.
Another describes himself as a father stripped of his identity.  And for many
of the other participants in a University of Texasat Austin study of
divorced men who do not have primary custody of their children, a near
constant anger roils beneath the surface of their lives.

"I can't even look at a little girl at about the same age as my little girl
without thinking about her and feeling the stress," said one.  "It's almost
an anger that you have to supress.  It is a constant.  Not a day goes by that
you don't, two or three times during the day, go in and suppress those
feelings, which can't be healthy for you."

The UT sociologists behind the study, Debra Umberson and Christine Williams,
came up with much the same conclusion after interviewing 45 Austin men and
analyzing a national sample of nearly 1,000 non-custodial fathers:  Divorced
fathers who don't live with their kids exhibit high levels of poor mental
health, which may be linked to their tendency to withdraw from and repress
feelings about their children.

The revelation is worth noting, and not simply because of the number of men
whose lives are affected (roughlyone-half of all fathers in the United
States become non-custodial parents), the researchers say.  If some non-
custodial fathers work hard to avoid thoughts and emotions concerning their
children, the behavior eventually may lead them to not pay child support or
visit their children.

"Repressing their feelings doesn't help the men, but it also doesn't help
women or children," Umberson says.  "The more a father remains in contact,
the greater he's likely to pay child support."

And, the researchers say, a host of barriers works to prevent even the best-
intentioned of non-custodial fathers from having positive and sustained
involvement with their kids:  time, distance and financial constraints, bias
in the legal system, a lack of support networks and the demands of new
relationships.

The two researchers (who are both divorced, but not parents), say they were
drawn to the project because no one else was.  Sociologists looking at the
issue of divorce have traditionally focused on womn and children, but until
now researchers have failed to examine how divorced fathers are affected, say
Williams and Umberson, who hope to publish a book based on their study.

The little that is known provides a damning profile of "deadbeat dads" who
dodge child-support payments and shun their sons and daughters.  More than
half of all men who are court-ordered to pay child-support fail to pay the
full amount; 43% of divorced fathers rarely or never visit their children,
according to a 1987 study.

"The stereotype is that men aren't involved in a parenting role, especially
after divorce," Williams says.  "A lot of people assume that parenting
doesn't matter to men after divorce."  In interview after interview, the UT
researchers found that to be untrue.

Again and again, the researchers found men repressing the emotions that arose
in the wake of divorce.  Frequently, the most vivid feeling was one of trying
to keep things from spinning out of control.  "There were so many men who
would say 'I almost just didn't come (to the interview), because I knew all
these feelings would resurface,'" Williams says.

"We teach young boys not to cry, not to feel when they're distressed.  So
what's the solution?  To run away, to make yourself scarce."  Another way to
avoid the pain is to remarry; other studies have shown that 83% of divorced
men remarry -- most within three years after a breakup.

Divorced men have been shown to be more prone to suicide, accidental death
and to substance abuse.  athers who live apart from their children are more
likely to engage in risky behavior than those living with kids.

Exacerbating the problems of non-custodial fathers are negative
characterizations they say plague them.  "The system assumes that the woman
is a fair-minded, relatively sane individual I think," said one man.  "They
assume about me that I'm a drunken, pickup-driving, beer-can-littering,
child-abusing wife-beater."

"The point," says Bob Curry of Texas Fathers for Equal Rights, "is not that
the situation is totally backward because there are men like that.  But you
read the newspapers and women are always the victims and men are the
perpetrators."

"You don't have anything to say about where your children go to school, what
doctors they see, what sports they play, but you have to have a smile on your
face, pretend to everyone at home, at work and at church that everything's
OK.  Because if you don't meet your responsibilities, you're just another
uncaring, unfeeling father."

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-- 
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   73% of the college students classified as rape victims by new standards 
   did not think they had been raped.  More than 40% of these women
   reported having sex again with the men who had supposedly raped them.