Mass. Family "Justice"

MASSACHUSETTS' FAMILY 'JUSTICE'

By Professor Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.

June 6, 2004

NewsWithViews.com

For all the furor sparked by the Massachusetts ruling on homosexual
marriage, the full picture has yet to emerge. Strange to say, even
opponents of same-sex marriage have seriously underestimated what is
being done by Margaret Marshall and the Massachusetts courts.

The ruling on gay marriage is only the tip of an iceberg. For all
their professed concern about "privacy" and "rights," Marshall and
her colleagues are staging nothing less than a political coup that
dramatically extends judicial and all governmental power into private
life. Mandating homosexual marriages is minor endeavor compared with
the more serious business of destroying heterosexual ones.

Family destruction is not some unfortunate by-product of a well-
intentioned quest for ever-expanding definitions of equality. It
results from a deliberate attack on families by judicial ideologues
who practice not justice but gender justice: an extremist ideology
which demands that heterosexual men be separated from their wives
and children and punished for their alleged crimes against women,
children, and gays.

To glimpse this we must look behind the headline cases to the
hidden underworld of family law. Advocates on both sides of the gay
marriage debate have pointed out, in the words of Mike McManus,
that "divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today's
challenge by gays." They are right in ways they may not realize. In
divorce court, the forcible destruction of the family is not some
theoretical prognostication; it is already the daily reality for
millions of citizens.

Marshall presides over a judiciary where families are forcibly
separated by government agents, where children are torn from their
parents with no justification given, and where parents are
railroaded into jail with no semblance of due process of law. In
Marshall's court system, litigants find their hearing tapes doctored,
their case files falsified, and themselves framed -- all with the
full knowledge of judges. Mothers are ordered to divorce their
husbands or lose their children. Fathers are forced to confess to
crimes they have not committed. Attorneys who speak out are
disbarred. Citizens who are minding their own business are summoned
to court and ordered to pay the inflated fees of attorneys they
have not hired and jailed when they are unable.

This is not all the work of Marshall alone, but her ruling is the
culmination of not simply judicial "activism" but a combination of
ideological extremism and judicial corruption that has transformed
the Massachusetts judiciary into a Soviet-like system of kangaroo
courts. In McLarnon v. Jokisch, Marshall invoked environmental law
(and applied it to divorce!) to grant immunity to government
officials and witnesses who use perjury, false allegations, and
falsified documents to remove children from their parents and
criminalize the parents. In a divorce case, the "defendant" - a
parent who is being involuntarily divorced - is now the only
party in the courtroom without immunity.

The defendant in that case, Edward McLarnon, is a forensic audio-
visual investigator whose independently corroborated evidence of
doctored hearing tapes was published in December 2000 by the
Massachusetts News. His attorney Gregory Hession says the court
removed documents from his file, falsified the docket, and withheld
the case file for months. When McLarnon complained, he was
assessed $3,500 in attorneys' fees and jailed by the same judges
whose tapes were allegedly edited. Hession says he could find no
interest in the tampering from the Middlesex Probate Court and
Probate Court Register's office, the Middlesex District Attorney,
the Massachusetts Attorney General and Inspector General, the
Judicial Conduct Commission, or Marshall's Supreme Judicial
Court. In fact, Marshall herself later assessed McLarnon an
additional $16,400 in attorneys' fees (attorneys he had not hired),
for which the state moved to seize his house and car.

The Massachusetts News also broke the story of Heidi Howard, who
was told by the state Department of Social Services (DSS) to take
out a restraining order against her husband and divorce him. When
she refused, DSS seized her children and threatened to put them up
for adoption, for which the state receives federal funds. Neither
parent was ever charged with any wrongdoing. News reporter Nev Moore
says similar cases abound.

There is reason to believe her. Financial incentives and quotas
created by the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997, championed
by the Clinton administration, have resulted in a "child protection
racket" rife with "baby stealing and baby selling," according to
Hession. "I am appalled by how many times this pattern is repeated."
In family court recently the hallway was clogged with parents and
children being adopted. "You could hardly walk. You had never
seen such mass adoptions before." Forty percent of Massachusetts
children adopted have gone to gay and lesbian couples, according to
Democratic state Senator Therese Murray, who supports gay marriage.
It is not difficult to see who will supply the children of gay
"parents."

Harry Stewart is another victim of Massachusetts family justice, a
lay preacher who was jailed for six months for refusing to confess
to domestic violence. Stewart was never accused of any violence and
may have been a victim himself. Forced confessions and self-
denunciation are a standard requirement of "batterers'" programs.

These cases typify "the new Orwellian [judicial] system, which has
no protection for certain categories of unfavored perpetrators of
'crimes' against the state, such as parents," says Hession. "It is a
system skewed by political agendas, not truth...where government [is]
intruding into family autonomy, paternal authority, child raising,
and even minor family conflicts." Hession is risking his livelihood.
Barbara Johnson, an attorney and whistleblower who ran for governor
on a platform of court reform, is now being disbarred. Such experiences
"are depressingly common in Massachusetts," says attorney David
Grossack. "There seem to be networks of feminists tied in with every
courthouse in Massachusetts who can create a media storm if a
decision is unfavorable to them. Inexplicable decisions, nonsensical
restraining orders, and gender bias in the extreme are the rule, not
the exception."

Marshall claimed in her gay marriage ruling that the state
constitution "forbids the creation of second-class citizens."

Yet that is precisely what she has created in married heterosexual
parents, especially fathers. "The hue and cry about civil rights for
lesbians and gays is particularly galling for Massachusetts'
fathers," reads a letter just published in several Massachusetts
newspapers. "Our civil and human rights have been ruthlessly violated
by these same judges for decades.... Margaret Marshall is always
found on the same side of the issue: ...against fathers and
their inalienable right to the custody, care, and protection of
their children."

If opponents of same-sex unions truly wish to save marriage -- and
liberty -- they must wake up soon to the fact that homosexual
marriage will not destroy the institution of heterosexual marriage.
It is already rising from the ashes.

This article first appeared in the Human Events 4-13-04. Printed with
Permission.

© 2004 Stephen Baskerville Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved
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Stephen Baskerville holds a PhD from the London School of Economics
and teaches political science at Howard University in Washington, DC.
In January 2004 he became President of the American Coalition for
Fathers and Children.

He has appeared on national radio and television programs, including
The O' Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Court TV with
Fred Graham and Katherine Crier, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg,
Endangered Liberties with Paul Weyrich, Legal Notebook with Tom
Jipping, the Armstrong Williams Show, Take Action America, and others.
He is a regular radio commentator for the Free Congress Foundation.

Web Site: www.stephenbaskerville.net

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My definition of the ultimate form of
"Fascism" is a society where everything
which is not required is prohibited and
everything which is not prohibited is required -
in other words complete totalitarian control
over every aspect of existence. - Zenpriest
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--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.