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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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May 14, 2001
by Eugene Narrett, Ph.D.
Supreme Court Justice Thomas established his credentials as a New Age guy May 11 by weeping during a speech to the Savannah Bar Association. Given the venue, one thinks of crocodile tears among sharks, or of Lewis Carroll's Walrus weeping over the juicy little shrimp he just can't help consuming. But no, the grief of Thomas seemed real enough. The problems were hypocrisy and a failure of empathy. Thomas spoke of his 1997 effort (successful, naturally, given his status) to gain custody of the then six-year old grandson of his sister from a mother whose lifestyle was par for the course among women in certain demographic groups. Often enough, there never is a husband in the first place. When it is a divorce case, courts routinely grant such women custody of children. Bolstering this facet of the current matriarchy was the subtext of a Supreme Court ruling last June 05 in which Thomas wrote a concurring opinion. Nominally, the 5-4 majority vote protected parental rights against the State. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "there will normally be no reason for the state to inject itself into the private realm of the family." This claim is completely dishonest. The modern norm is that the state directs the education of children, their medication (including "reproductive health" and distribution of contraceptives) and most egregiously, separates children from their fathers in "family [divorce] courts." In those torture chambers, "hearsay [by women] is admitted" and "the rules of evidence shall not apply," as Judge Sydny Hanlon of Massachusetts wrote for a panel of robe-wearing terrorists in 1994. Back in June 2000, custodial father-great Uncle Thomas added his hypocritical rumblings to those of O'Connor. "The Court's recognition of the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children resolves this case," he claimed. As noted above, everyday that fundamental right is violated in tens of millions of cases. For fathers and children separated from each other by Divorce Courts (and the blue-uniformed zombies behind them), the violation is State terror of the most heinous and intimate kind, and it compounds the other interventions. Professor Stephen Baskerville of Howard University writes eloquently and informatively about this abuse in his book, Taken into Custody. The actual context of the June 2000 case was a situation common in the aftermath of divorce or the nearly as common maternal abduction of children cases that invariably receive after the fact validation by the Courts. A grandmother and grandfather in Washington State had brought suit so they and their grandchild could enjoy what they never should have had to plead for in the first place: the right to regularly have the benefit of each other's company. For the child, this includes a sense that he has an extended family of people closely connected to him and who care deeply about him. In this case, mother had divorced/discarded the father, as is common. And as happens, without ever being reported in mainstream media, the judicial kidnapping of his children and loss of his home had driven the father into an early grave. Mother decided the boy should lose his paternal grandparents, too. The Supreme Court led by Justices O'Connor and Thomas agreed. In the guise and with the rhetoric of protecting parents' rights against the State, they actually further expanded the slave-owner type power that single custody mothers have over their children. 'Proud' black man Thomas further strengthened a system that, like abortion, makes children into the property of their mothers. Whereas abortion destroys bodies, the maternal slave mill of divorce and maternal sole custody cripples children's souls. Moreover, and as all lawyers and judges know, under the iron hand of allegations of "abuse" that without evidence render an accused man guilty, a father's contact with his children is made a criminal offense. The jails are filled with men and children are destroyed. Despite his public tears, like many that prosper in the New Age, Justice Thomas has major problems with the contemporary shibboleth, empathy. A few years ago he scorned white men that complain about the "reverse discrimination" of preferential hiring and promotion for women and "minorities." It was worse last Friday night in Savannah. There a powerful man pitied himself, even as he proudly described how he got his way. "Suffice it to say, it [his securing of custody] had to be done very quickly, very quietly, very sensitively, very thoroughly. It had to be done over the weekend because the Court was sitting and I didn't have a lot of time" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 12, 2001, page 1A). My, my; Mr. Justice Thomas had quite an ordeal. It took him a whole weekend to get custody of his grandnephew when loving, competent, involved and even "rare and astounding" fathers (to cite one court document) spend five, ten or more excruciating years striving to raise or even maintain contact with their beloved children. Such men are battered again and again by the Courts even as their ex-wives or girlfriend break every explicit stipulation of the divorce or separation document and are rewarded with more perks by the Court for every act of contempt. The men on the receiving end of this torture bear their agony in almost complete silence, and it is greater because not a single public institution and virtually no public figures even recognize, much less help them. (The worst offenders may be putative "fatherhood" activists like feminist apologists and father-bashers David Blankenhorn and Wade Horn). But Clarence Thomas had to spend a whole weekend to get his way. "And it had to be done very sensitively because the Court was sitting and I didn't have a lot of time." Such are the mainstream 'conservative' heroes of our day. While Thomas praised and pitied himself, dabbing his eyes with a cocktail napkin to the sound of applause, millions of fathers and tens of millions of children in America lay their heads on their pillows in grief and pain, vilified and unheard. And as the prophet Malachi warned, God strikes the land with plague and destruction. Dr. Eugene Narrett is a writer and teacher in Massachusetts and is the author of Gathered Against Jerusalem: Essays on a False Peace (Dec. 2000). His new book, Israel Awakened: A Chronicle of the Oslo War, is currently available at www.1stbooks.com/bookview/7421.
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