Fathers 4 Justice Planned to Kidnap Blair’s Son

23 thoughts on Fathers 4 Justice Planned to Kidnap Blair’s Son

1. If they actually attempted this, it would result in each of them being shot by the SAS.

   Can we now call FRAs either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers? Will the NSA and the DOD be investigating FRA-affiliated groups in the U.S.? Or do they only investigate left-of-center groups that pose a political threat to the administration?

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3. While the group’s politics are undoubtedly asinine, the boldness of their scheme is quite impressive and laudatory. Let’s hope this marks a period of recrudescence for Patty Hearst-style kidnappings. It calls to mind Russell Crowe’s allegations of an attempted abduction by Al Qaeda operatives as part of a ‘cultural destabilization’ project — which I mention only because I think it’s important to learn from our enemies. I envision the children of our nation’s power elite being snatched from their beds in the middle of the night and held hostage in revolutionary “black sites” across the globe. The conditions for their release being, of course: an end to war, free health care for all, a redistribution of wealth, etc., etc.. Who’s with me?
   — —————————————————-

   Bill here. HOLY SHIT, I didn’t write that, someone just swooped in and typed that up. If there are any G-men reading this, let it be known that I am not the author of such nonsense and I reject it categorically. I hope you find that asshole and send his ass to Guantanamo. GOD BLESS PRESIDENT BUSH

4. Ooooh, I just got a rush of schadenfreude right up my spine.

   Mmm, schadenfreude.

5. I seem to recall F4J dumping purple flour on politicians during the anthrax panic. I fail to see how that or kidnapping a child makes one look like a good parent. I’m all for kids and dads spending time together, but F4J have a track record of stupidity.

   –IP

6. If they actually attempted this, it would result in each of them being shot by the SAS.

   But then they wouldn’t have to pay child support anymore!

7. Zuzu, I think you’re on to their nefarious plan. Since quitting your job no longer works, the real men of the FRA movement are going to stop those pesky exes from ever, ever getting anything out of them again.

8. Matt O’Conner had to condemn that proposed stunt. Fathers 4 Justice has had “problems” like that for ages. It imploded during the summer. I wrote more about this story, and what F4J is really about on my blog.

9. Amusingly, I saw an MRA’s site today which claims the female editor of the Sun is deliberately releasing anti-male propoganda (by featuring this story) because she’s a man-hater.

   The Sun! A feminist publication! Who would have thought!

10. These guys are nuts and there’s no way to spin it otherwise. Their sense of perspective is lost because they’ve been consumed by the injustice they feel is institutionally directed at them.

    Would you think I was nuts, unfair, insensitive if I advocated that women shouldn’t call the police to arrest an abusing partner because the criminal outcome would be unfair to the kids? I certainly think that that’s a crazy argument.

    But when the situation is flipped, and a man has a court order to pay child support for a child he didn’t father, well the interests of the children come before the innocent victim who did nothing wrong.

    But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call “paternity fraud.”

    In almost a dozen states, men have won the right to use conclusive genetic tests to end their financial obligations to children they didn’t father. But women’s groups and many public officials responsible for enforcing child support are battling the movement, which they say imperils children.

    I’ve generally found that intellectual integrity garners respect, but out-and-out self-interested advocacy without prinicples is quite easy to attack. The women’s group who are advocating against these actions would never use the “interests of the child” strategem when the innocent victim is the battered woman.

    So I can see what drives these types of guys batshit insane. The position that it is better to continue to vicitmize the innocent man because it’s not the State’s obligation to support the children is completely devoid of justice. For these guys the fraud and betrayal is quite a bitter experience, because it was personal, rather unlike simple financial fraud by a business.

    How about this as a parallel – a woman who is raped should not abort the fetus because it’s not the fetus’ fault that it was conceived. Victimize the woman and make her confront the outcome of the crime and her trauma. Now, I’m quite willing to believe that women in this situation would be driven just as crazy as these guys if the interests of the child took precedence over their interests as victims of crime.

11. I wanted to add this link to a NewScientist article to address any claims that innocent men need to pay child support because it is near impossible to track down the real fathers in many cases.

    An industrious teenager who was born with the aid of anonymous sperm donation, has used the internet to track down his heretofore anonymous father.

    The teenager tracked down his father from his Y chromosome. The Y is passed from father to son virtually unchanged, like a surname. So the pattern of gene variants it carries can help identify which paternal line an individual has descended from and can also be linked to a man’s surname.

    The boy paid FamilyTreeDNA.com $289 for the service. His genetic father had never supplied his DNA to the site, but all that was needed was for someone in the same paternal line to be on file. After nine months of waiting and having agreed to have his contact details available to other clients, the boy was contacted by two men with Y chromosomes closely matching his own. The two did not know each other, but the similarity between their Y chromosomes suggested there was a 50 per cent chance that all three had the same father, grandfather or great-grandfather.

    If you read the article you’ll see that the sperm donor himself didn’t have to have his DNA on record because anyone from his paternal line would suffice. The genetic similarity can go back for generations, though it is diluted, so we’re talking about cousins, 2nd cousins, etc.

    Just like the recent news about personal cell phone records being available to the public, the same applies to DNA. These privately controlled databases can be used to find genetic matches, either to the father, or to those who can give a clue to the investigators looking for the father as they seek to extract child support payments.

12. I agree that as our science grows, the case-law needs to expand to keep up.

    However, if a man has accepted a child as his own and formed an emotional bond with that child, biology does not trump family obligations. A limit to the supposition of paternity should apply so that if the man discovers within a few years of birth that he is not the father, he is not liable for child support: otherwise, if a child’s been calling you Daddy and winning a smile from you every time for 8 years, you don’t get to abandon that child just on the say of DNA.

    In the case of a man never admitting paternity, never forming a father-bond with the child, and having DNA evidence to prove his case, that man should definitely not be liable for child support, whether married to the mother or not.

13. Er – “whether married to the mother at the time of conception or not.”

14. you don’t get to abandon that child just on the say of DNA.

    I think we can model an axis of paternal reaction here. On one end are the men who, while feeling betrayed, can put those feelings aside and not equate the evidence of betrayel in the face of the children with their feeling toward the children. On the other end are the men who can’t avoid reliving the betrayal every time they see the children.

    How is it just to mandate that the men who don’t want to maintain involvement with these children must maintain a parental role? What kind of fathers are they likely to be, coerced into the role, and held hostage to it and bitterly having to relive the fraud and betrayel perpetrated upon them?

    I’m having some trouble coming up with a flipside argument, so help me out here. There’s the outlandish, child of rape example, but that’s too hypothetical (for the moment at least.)

15. The founder of F4J has responded by disbanding the organisation, stating (among much else), that ‘

    fathers just aren’t as mature as mothers’.

    Which, given the men he must have associated with, would certainly be accurate for him. Still, small mercies & all that.

16. I saw that, too, Andrea. The last time the guys got caught concocting one of their plots while drunk in a pub, they blamed the reporter who overheard them. I’ve read comments on a men’s rights site where they are blaming everyone under the sun, even a reporter, for what has happened. Yeah, they called the reporter a man-hater. These guys take no responsibility for their actions, they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, and they get the support of other fathers’ rights activists. There is much backpedaling and face-saving going on amongst fathers’ rights activists now because of the threat to kidnap Blair’s son.

    Tangoman, lots of people feel injustice, but they don’t go around dressing in costume and climbing buildings; they don’t threaten to kidnap a child; they don’t handcuff themselves to goverment officials, they don’t erect banners calling government officials “child abusers”; they don’t harass judges at their homes; they don’t harass their ex-wives and children; they don’t engage in excessive and malicious litigation because they feel their “rights” have been violated, they don’t throw powder bombs at government officials during an anthrax scare … I could go on. There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

    By the way, being a father is about more than DNA. I agree with what Tigtog wrote. Dads have a limited amount of time to contest paternity. If they don’t contest within that time period, they have to continue to pay support. Plus, fatherhood is also determined by the relationship the father had with the child. That father is the only father that child knows. That’s why guys who try to get out of paying child support by getting DNA tests sometimes fail. Sperm does not equal fatherhood. Besdies that, DNA and fatherhood is not the subject of Lauren’s post. It’s about Fathers 4 Justice finally crashing and burning.

17. The Countess,

    lots of people feel injustice, but they don’t go around dressing in costume

    First off, where did you get the impression that I was supporting their crazy tactics? I outright called them nuts.

    Now, pretty much the whole list of unacceptable tactics you’ve laid out are the wellworn practices of leftist agitators.

    – Dressing in customs – lots of animal rights and greenpeace freaks do this;
    – Climbing buildings – Again, Greepeace with their banners;
    – Kidnapping kids – Terrorist tactic favored by oldtime socialist groups.
    – Handcuffing – Anti-logging protests, anti-nuclear power protests.
    – Harassing judges – judges targeted during civil rights era,
    – Malicious litigation – environmental impact lawsuits
    -Throwing objects at people – see animal rights activists throwing paint at women wearing fur coats.

    There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

    Terrific. I look forward to your future condemnations of these tactics from groups whose ideologies you may favor. I think that if we all condemn these types of tactics then we will live in a more pleasant and polite society.

18. Tangoman, you called them nuts, then you went on completely unrelated tangents about women calling the cops on abusive partners and dads and DNA. You’re trying to change the subject.

    You’re still trying to change the subject with your other examples of protest. The topic is Fathers 4 Justice, not animal rights activists and anti-logging protesters. Fathers 4 Justice has always been bad news, and I have documented it.

    Go to my “Fathers 4 Justice” category on my blog to see what that group and it’s members are really about. They do not represent decent dads.

19. TAngoman, you’re being disingenuous in the extreme.

    Dressing in customs – lots of animal rights and greenpeace freaks do this;
    – Climbing buildings – Again, Greepeace with their banners;
    – Kidnapping kids – Terrorist tactic favored by oldtime socialist groups.
    – Handcuffing – Anti-logging protests, anti-nuclear power protests.
    – Harassing judges – judges targeted during civil rights era,
    – Malicious litigation – environmental impact lawsuits
    -Throwing objects at people – see animal rights activists throwing paint at women wearing fur coats

    You’re comparing f4J to groups that fight on behalf of the helpless, the downtrodden and the scapegoated.

    1. There’s a substantial difference between a bunch of guys who’ve profited from and use a sexist world’s sexism and a bunch of people trying to fight for the protection of animals. Also, Greenpeace and groups like PETA represent opposite ends of the spectrum. PETA is much closer to F4J than is Greenpeace. In any event, there’s a huge difference between the peaceful protests of Greenpeace and the attempts to intimidate and propagandize.

    2. Yeah, peaceful protest is EXACTLY like a bunch of abusive men trying to intimidate women and others.

    3. Old time being the important phrase. Who now does this except for abusive fathers?

    4. Again, there’s no intent to intimidate, just persuade.

    5. People harassing judges were harassing them because they were ruling on the rights of a people who have historically been disenfranchised. Those poeple, my dear, are conservatives.As a matter of fact, if you want to discuss nasty tactics, you have to discuss both the dishonorable agenda of conservatives, and the bankrupt motivations of their intimidation attempts.

    6. Yeah, becuase wanting to breathe clean air and drink clean water is SO abusive.

    7. As a woman I’m not especially impressed with this. How come they never do this to men?

    In any event, who cares? You’re tapdancing all over in your attempts to minimize what they do and bang the drum for poor abused conservative causes—and men.

20. You’re trying to change the subject.

    Not at all. What I did was raise the question of why are they doing these nutty things. My conclusion is that they’re in large part motivated by systemic injustice and bad rationalizations, which if the tables were turned wouldn’t be accepted by woman.

    Look, I’m fully pro-choice, but if RvW gets overturned, I expect to see crazy tactics from NARAL and other groups. Women will be subject to systemic injustice and those injustices will be backed by badly formed rationalizations.

21. Tangoman, there’s no systemic injustice against men. The system IS men. Go blame other men if you want to fix that.

22. Amusingly, I saw an MRA’s site today which claims the female editor of the Sun is deliberately releasing anti-male propoganda (by featuring this story) because she’s a man-hater.

    The Sun! A feminist publication! Who would have thought!

    For the American readers, that’s the British newspaper with a photo of a naked woman on every issue’s third page, right?

23. I think that describes all British papers, doesn’t it?

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