The Case of Matt Dubay: Why All Leading Conservatives Got It Wrong

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/04/02/...-got-it-wrong/

The Case of Matt Dubay: Why All Leading Conservatives Got It Wrong
April 02, 2006
by David R. Usher
In retrospect, perhaps it was unfair to single-out Ramesh Ponnuru, senior
editor for the National Review, in my previous article for briskly doffing
Matt Dubay as a "deadbeat dad" on the Bill Maher's March 10th show.

As it turns out, Mona Charen, Bill O'Reilly, Dr. Dobson, Jeff Jacoby, and
Ken Connor also got it wrong. In fact, I have been unable to find one that
got it right.

The case involves Matt Dubay, whose girlfriend got pregnant out-of-wedlock
by lying about her use of birth control. Matt subsequently filed a lawsuit,
euphemistically dubbed the "Roe v. Wade for Men", essentially asserting that
he should not be held responsible for supporting a child that is the product
of an act of reproductive fraud.

This case attracted tirades from conservatives and radical feminists alike.
In principle, these wildly divergent camps share the same essential
philosophy on Dubay: The devine prerogatives of motherhood negate the rights
of fathers to have any say in childbearing - and by extension, childrearing.
For both radical feminists and chivalrist conservatives, the final (and
perhaps best) solution for fathers is a quiet role as indentured servant.

We do know this: when conservatives strongly embrace the policies of the
National Organization for Women, everybody is wrong.

Dubay is an excellent opportunity for change in conservative thinking and
policy because it is particularly rich with moral and policy issues that
conservatives often mis-prioritize or ignore. I will now set it right.

A brief history of Republican social policy mistakes

To understand the critical relevance of Dubay, and why it will bring about a
conservative result, a brief historical summary of Republican social policy
mistakes is necessary.

By 1964, President Johnson launched the Great Society with the idea that
government welfare checks could solve poverty for single mothers. Instead,
illegitimacy boomed. By 1968, the problem became so expensive that
government could no longer afford it.

Changes were made to welfare in 1968. Whenever government gave a dollar to a
single mother, it could collect it back from the father, so long as he was
not in the home.

In 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce law into
existence. Today, no-fault means that no one cares why divorces are filed,
whether or not they are responsible acts, or who is drinking, gambling, or
cheating. We just turn the family over to mothers, kick the husband out, and
charge him for everything.

Between 1964 and 1996, Republicans did not do anything to discourage
illegitimate childbearing by women. They were quick to support liberal
federal programs (advocated by the National Organization for Women) designed
to establish maximum amounts of child support and to collect it.

Illegitimacy rates soared. Policies that destroyed the marriage market began
dissolving middle-class marriages in the 1980's. Most importantly: three
quarters of relationships are emotionally ended by the woman, and about
three quarters of divorces are filed by women.

In 1994, Republicans took control of federal government, promising welfare
reform and better lives for all Americans. They bought David Blankenhorn's
dual communist messages: "father-absence is the greatest social problem we
face" and "Today, the principle cause of fatherlessness is paternal choice".

The result: Republicans blamed husbands for America's problems of divorce
and illegitimacy - when in fact they did not either advocate or cause it.

In 1996, welfare was simply renamed "an advance on child support" in federal
accounting records. The political problem of "welfare" instantly became a
giant "deadbeat dad" problem. Unrecoverable welfare collections magically
became unrecoverable child support, without changing the associated deficit
spending.

In the past decade of Republican control, social data has not improved.
Divorce and illegitimacy are still rampant. In St. Louis, illegitimacy has
increased: 70% of black children are now born out of wedlock. Republican
policy has turned a welfare problem into a social pandemic of historic
proportion.

Recently, conservative scholars finally discovered that feminism has been
the problem all along. This is a good start, but perhaps forty years too
late.

Conservatives still do not have good answers. Most are still living in the
problem, bemoaning the state of marriage or pontificating about it without
taking any effective policy action to correct the problem.

The compound effects of Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade

Griswold v. Connecticut made contraception an absolute right for women.
Pharmaceutical companies quickly responded by introducing the pill and other
invisible forms of birth control. Overnight, young women became "easy". The
feminist sexual revolution contained the agitprop and tools enabling women
to behave like men while deeply reinforcing Victorian attitudes holding
women entirely innocent for what they do. Women became sexually aggressive
and often as promiscuous as men, and claimed victim status for everything
that came of it.

Invisible contraception also made it easy for women to lie about their
purpose in having sex with a man. In assuming the power of God, over nature
and culture, to be invisibly barren or fertile at will, the door was thrown
open for reproductive predation and fraud.

Advertising the Dubay case as "the Roe v. Wade for Men" is an antipodal
representation of the issues involved. This motto was apparently selected on
the basis of the astonishing positive impact it could have on marriage if it
is won. Dubay has nothing to do with abortion of babies. It has everything
to do with abortion of marriage, and reducing it.

Roe v. Wade capitalized on the sexual and social liberation of women. It not
only made killing unborn humans legal - it also established a secondary
tenet that children are chattel of the mother. The principles set forth in
Roe also extend to womens' childbearing and marital decisions, which cannot
be questioned because it is a matter of "women's rights".

America under secular feminism is a far cry from biblical days of
patriarchal connection to civilization. Men were indeed responsible for
survival and protection of women and children, marriage was an extremely
important institution that guaranteed survival of the human race in a
relatively moral society, and sex could not be easily disconnected from the
act of procreation. Some men abused their roles as leaders of church,
culture and marriage; but most did not.

Conservative pro-life advocates have been falling for left sucker punches
ever since. Pro-life Christians are terrified that women will abort
accidental babies if welfare and child support are not around. They allied
with the National Organization for Women in calling for every sort of child
support maximization policy imaginable.

This position is the antithesis of moral principle in several ways. It
multiplies the number of women who want abortion in the first place. More
entitlements stimulates a culture of easy sex and more out-of-wedlock
pregnancies - which are often aborted after women change their minds about
becoming single mothers a few weeks or months later.

Destruction of the Marriage Market

Feminists crafted an evil mechanism that uses the beliefs of conservatives
against their moral goals. Many conservatives feel that women should raise
children and men should provide sustenance to the family. Indeed, this is
what most men and women choose naturally in the context of marriage.

When conservatives blindly adopt the feminist mandate for entitled single
motherhood, they abdicate their moral duty to stand up for marriage and to
unwind whatever is destroying it. If welfare or child support was not an
entitlement, women would not be sleeping around in record numbers while
either "forgetting" to use birth control or lying about it, as we see in
Dubay. Since child support orders also apply to divorce, women started
dumping husbands in record numbers, as Betty Friedan told them to do in the
Feminine Mystique.

With endless entitlements available, women have been churning out accidental
babies in tremendous numbers for forty years. In their minds, the way out of
poverty or becoming "liberated" has something to do with marrying the
nearest child support office.

This is not to lay blame at the feet of women. What they are doing is an
entirely legal, entitled activity. Judgment goes against legislators and
politicians (of both sexes) who went into business with feminists assuming
the role of men as protector and provider of the family. This Cabal has made
the world a lot worse by covetously tempting women out of the safe haven of
marriage with large amounts of money, false promises of liberation, and
bearing false witness against millions of good men to do so. [2 Timothy
3:1-6].

Pro life advocates did the right thing opposing funding of abortion clinics,
because abortion clinics abort babies. They made a gargantuan mistake
supporting expansive child support policies, because as we now know, this
funds spiraling abortions of families. Today we suffer from a continuing
plague of illegitimacy, father-absence, and burgeoning amounts of
uncollectible child support amounts.

Entitled welfare and child support is still the driver of divorce and
out-of-wedlock childbearing. We must therefore change our thinking, short
circuit the Beast, and call for changes that move culture towards a more
moral society.

The Big Kahuna: Explosive growth of expensive self-entitling social problems
predicted by husband-absence has today culminated in Congress being forced
to increase the federal debt ceiling to nine-trillion dollars.

Marriage is, in fact, a market

The marriage market behaves the same as any other market. If unfettered,
most men and women trade needs and resources happily within a valuable moral
institution: marriage.

We have spent more on welfare and undermining the marriage market since 1964
than the national debt. This does not even include hundreds of billions in
child support transfers. Yet, record numbers of women and children still
live in poverty.

Child support is unquestionably the leading anti-family entitlement
undermining marriage. It creates an invalid perception that women can do as
well absent marriage. Women either have children out of wedlock or divorce,
but later find the economics of the single-parent family do not work and
that it is not possible for one person to "do it all".

1.4 median incomes are required to be a middle-class family. The broken
family cannot support two households and a bevy of lawyers without coming up
short.

The result: entitled divorce and illegitimacy has left more women and
children in poverty, and at risk for their personal safety, than any other
event in American history.

Stopping at the first moral error: casual sex

Most conservatives rushes to declare final judgment at Matt Dubay's first
moral error: he and his girlfriend had casual sex. The conclusion: She
should be an entitled single mother and he should shut up and pay child
support.

By this standard, conservatives ignore the fact that abortion of marriage is
a highly immoral entitled activity that must be vigorously opposed.

Is it not a sin to intentionally bring a child into the world absent
marriage, and for government to entitle this activity to a rigid standard of
support greater than what we expect of married men? Is it not a greater sin
to trick men into it by lying about use of birth control?

Where conservatives are dearly passionate about ending abortion of babies
(which women are entitled to do after having casual sex), conservatives must
be just as resolute about ending abortion of marriage (which women are also
entitled to do after having "casual sex" that isn't so casual).

Stopping at the second moral error: birth control

Conservatives legitimately oppose birth control. But this must not block
moral vision about what to do when women pretend they are using birth
control, or when birth control fails and a pregnancy ensues out of wedlock.

To use birth control for casual sex is a sin. Is it not a much greater sin
to lie about it for the purpose of having a child out of wedlock, thus
defrauding a man of marriage, the fruit of his loin and the work of his
hands; and denying the child the right to have two married parents?

The greatest moral issue: the feminist state of Ba'al

Dubay presents a rich opportunity to grasp the moral wisdom of turning
entitled feminism against itself. The first step towards accomplishing this
goal is to prioritize the moral issues, placing the highest emphasis on
those that drive the decline of morals and marriage.

Certainly, casual sex, birth control, and illegitimacy are moral sins of the
children of God. It is our duty to lead them out of these sins, not to make
the sins more attractive by funding them to the ends of the earth.

Is it not a vast collective sin to pre-declare a family divided and finance
the kingdom of Ba'al Zebûb, only to increase his power, because individuals
on the edges of his kingdom fell into temptation?

The only way to shrink the kingdom of Ba'al is to stop funding it. This can
and will be accomplished by a denying child support when divorce or
non-marriage is an immoral choice of the woman, and by giving the husband
the first right to take custody or elect adoption immediately upon birth,
particularly where the husband's marriage offer has been denied or where the
mother lied about birth control. These are the only two moral options that
will take control of family, marriage, and reproduction back from radical
feminism.

Men can handle single fatherhood without a perverse covetous relationship
developing with the State. A young single man with a child is still very
attractive marriage material. It is my experience that most men do not want
child support from a former spouse, except perhaps in situations of great
economic disparity. Historically, government has been want to order or
collect it on behalf of men.

Moral consistency requires that conservatives must oppose child support
entitlements with the same diligence that they oppose birth control. Both
stimulate casual sex, and both stimulate out-of-wedlock births.

A call to action

The Bible is a call to action. Over the past decade, thousands of books and
articles have been written bemoaning the decline of marriage, or calling for
return to a marriage culture, without calling for specific policy changes
that would take us there.

This only drives our angst and settles nothing. Uttering complaints and
platitudes will avail us nothing unless the pathway to the answer is
brightly demonstrated in each and every article. All conservatives have the
moral duty to rise to the task actively leading our children out of Hell.
This battle cannot be won on ecclesiastical terms alone. It must take place
on secular grounds, the same way the struggle against abortion has been
fought.

In the secular sense, the goal is this: "We must now grant to fathers the
same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace".
Every policy that weakens or substitutes for living paternal connection to
marriage, family, and children must be questioned and reformed.

When we accomplish this, marriage will naturally grow on formerly barren
soil. Most women will choose to be the primary parent, and most men will
choose to be the primary breadwinner.

Is this not the end-state we all so deeply desire? If so, conservatives have
no alternative but to substantially change their thinking on Dubay.

David R. Usher is President of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition