P is for Picketing

Saw this the other day on the web: Men’s groups picketing ‘family’ lawyers’ homes in Auckland, NZ.

According to Simon Maude, the Law Society's family law section chairman, the protests ‘intimidated the lawyers, their families and neighbors’.

Jim Bailey, of the Hands On Equal Parent Trust said: “I think it's good -- that's the whole idea. They've destroyed so many families, and intimidated us."

From the article:

Mr Maude said although the protest might appear to be "harmless fun", the reality for the lawyers on the receiving end was different. "They've been subjected to insulting and abusive attacks, much of which has been amplified through a loudspeaker system," Mr Maude said. The protests had shaken the lawyers involved, he told NZPA, and had been intimidating for their families and neighbours. "Their children have, in some cases, been frightened and quite disturbed by the experience."
[…]
He said the protesters seemed to have misunderstood the role of lawyers in the Family Court, particularly the role of lawyers appointed to represent children. "They may have assumed that lawyers for the children have much greater power and influence than is in fact the case. "Children's lawyers don't make the decisions about the children, the court does."

Mr Maude is both right, and wrong. Almost any man who has been through a divorce can testify as to the destructive nature of the legal community, and it’s unfortunate influence on the nature of divorce and child custody. For a lawyer to claim that he is not responsible for his actions in the court, is kind of like a killer-bee claiming that he is not himself to blame, but instead the Queen of the hive (the judges) is at fault. And the judges blame the legislators, and so on, and so on.

I am an advocate of putting blame where it belongs, and not shifting it about. Certainly greedy spouses, mostly (by a vast majority) women, are the first party to blame in the fiasco of child-theft and slavery that is the family court. It is their choice to kidnap the children and enslave the man. -But picketing a woman who is divorcing her husband is targeting an individual and taking a position in a particular case, the facts of which are probably not public. Picketing the lawyers who perpetrate this evil, and who live off of it seems entirely legitimate to me. I am sorry that the lawyers’ children and family are disturbed.

Imagine how much more disturbing it is to have your father ripped away from you, and have him rendered penniless and homeless –turned into a slave by a gender-biased court.

The lawyers’ children are lucky to merely have the discomfort of picketers, rather than live the hell that their parents create for other children.

Is this an idea for the USA? For New Jersey? Worth considering, I think.

My best to you in your struggles.

M

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