Catherine Ross, a family law professor at George Washington University, drops her professorial mien long enough to call Newdow "a litigious idiot." But she too wonders if the court, in its desire to find an "exit strategy" to an explosive case, "thought through the possible implications" of finding that parental rights depend on custody.

"What does it mean," asks Ross, "if you are a biological parent who pays support, has a relationship with the child, not someone who ran off? Does this mean you still have nothing to say about the values, the choices and the manner of raising your child? Does it mean you can't turn to the courts?"

If a father like Newdow, who lives with his daughter 10 days a month, has no standing, says Ross, "it sends a message that if you are getting divorced or have a child out of marriage, you better fight for joint custody."

The culturally approved ideal of unattached but equally attentive parents produces as much conflict as compromise.

All parents--absent a finding of true harm--should have an absolute right to 50 percent custody of their children. Such a system--stripped of incentives to battle for more--would largely eliminate the harms just noted. Sure, there will be some inconvenience to the children. But children are inconvenienced all the time in intact families, and they survive just fine without the State butting in. Some kids have to get up early to milk the cows. Some have to bicycle miles to high school. Some are put in daycare. We don't make huge issues of those "difficulties" when the parents are together ... why should we do so when the parents are apart? Life comes with good and bad times--that's part of growing up.

A national advertising offensive sponsored by a group known as the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) is drawing fire from those who think it insults black fathers -- especially those prevented by court order from playing a role in their children's lives. The ad campaign is heating up as we draw closer to Father's Day. NPR's Tavis Smiley speaks with the head of the NFI and a man who leads a father's rights group.

Based on computer calculations, Dr. Henri Leridon found that if women postpone trying to conceive for the first time from age 30 to age 35, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) will make up for only half of the fertility they lose over the course of those 5 years.

And for women who decide to postpone conception from 35 to 40 years, ART will make up for less than 30 percent of her lost fertility, the investigator notes in the journal Human Reproduction.

"Increasing both parents' economic capacities, reducing conflict and violence, addressing substance abuse problems, encouraging positive views of marriage-and especially promoting supportive behaviors between partners-could help keep unmarried couples together and encourage marriage," according to the researchers.

The controversy over how many people are gay in Canada was stirred up again yesterday as the 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey showed that 1 per cent of the population identified themselves as homosexual. The gay community says the number is actually somewhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent.

When a number is attached to a gay community, ideological battles emerge, said Michael Botnick, a lecturer on sociology at the University of British Columbia.

"Clearly, from a right-wing perspective, they'd like to see the numbers lower," he said. "From the more libertarian perspective, they'd like to see the numbers more accurate, or higher. So nobody's going to be satisfied."

He reports his findings in a new book, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands. According to his analysis, evangelical Protestant men are more likely to expect their school-age children to tell them where they are at all times and more likely to hug and be affectionate toward their kids than religiously unaffiliated men. They also spend more time in youth activities with their kids.
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"Religious congregations give young families social support and enforce certain norms about what it means to be a good father," Wilcox says.

"I see that there are multiple pathways to involved fatherhood," he says. "The key is whether a family is child-centered, and whether (the parents) show the love and control that makes for a good family.

"Any family can do that, whether they are religious or agnostic."

The Virginia Department of Health is launching a campaign in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Roanoke to stop men from engaging in sex with underage girls. Health officials say they hope their program will reduce the number of pregnancies that result from such illegal conduct.
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Virginia health officials said they became alarmed when they reviewed state studies showing that in 1999 and 2000, 219 babies born to 13- and 14-year-old girls were fathered by men over age 18. They also cited nationwide statistics that show that men older than 21 are three times as likely to father children with junior high school girls than are junior high school boys.

Ask a divorced or unmarried parent with primary custody of a child what was at stake in this case, and you'll get an answer that differs profoundly from the headlines: The lawyer's trick here came from Michael Newdow, who wanted to override the religious decisions made by his daughter's mother. (The two never married.) Allocating the duties and obligations of custodial and noncustodial parents has always been the province of state courts. It's a hideous job, and no one should have to do it. But the simple fact is that judges decide on a primary parent, and the other parent can either try to change that arrangement or learn to live with it.
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The court's decision this morning does not reflect judicial gutlessness. It would have been more gutless to throw millions of custody arrangements into question, turning what were once considered final divorce decrees across the country into open-ended suggestions. Safeguarding the idea that custody decrees are final may not be a sexy constitutional issue. But I'd wager that it'll be better for the health and sanity of more American children than cajoling them into saying good morning to God every day.

The Senate Republican leadership is aiming for a mid-July vote on a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, forcing Democrats to take a stand on the controversial topic just before the party heads to Boston for its presidential nominating convention.

[T]his dialogue needs to be a dialogue worthy of a nation and worthy of a debate over a constitutional amendment. ... And it's one that should not be politicized. It should be debated in a very profound way. Politicized means, put it in a context of a real process which to me will change the debate from where it needs to be. You don't want people making up their mind whether or not this benefits a candidate or not. You want people making up their mind on this issue about whether it benefits America -- in the long term for America, I think is the best way to put it.

As you decide your vote for President of the United States, which of the following would be important to you?

15.4% Hearing a candidate's position on gay marriage

78.0% Hearing a candidate's plan for fighting poverty

6.6% DK/Refused

Despite years of research suggesting that men profit from marriage, it now appears that husbands may not be better off financially than bachelors or men who live with their girlfriends, claims Ohio State University economist Audrey Light.

And if women want to skip the walk down the aisle, Light's research gives them a financial incentive to just say no. Contrary to those previous studies, women who live with their boyfriends do just as well on the economic front as married women do, though both do better than their unmarried and unattached counterparts, Light asserts in the latest issue of Demography.

The notion that marriage gives a financial boost to men goes back three decades. It became so well-established that economists and social scientists even gave it a name: "the marriage premium."

Light is well aware that her findings seem to fly in the face of both earlier research and the theories that those studies spawned. Her view: Her predecessors went awry because they were too limited in how they measured household income.

Married men do earn more than single or cohabiting men[, Light found]. But she also found that this extra income was often offset by a drop in their wives' earnings. The paychecks of many married women declined -- or stopped altogether -- after they became brides or mothers, something earlier researchers had not taken fully into account.

[Though a longitudinal analysis,] she was able to examine the effect of marriage and cohabitation on the overall financial status of a household, and not merely on men's earnings.

When she did that and factored in family size, Light found that the bump up in men's pay due to the marriage premium was easily matched by increased family spending and a drop in their wives' earnings. The more modest financial advantage of cohabitation also disappeared. "Single men have the same total family income [per family member], regardless of whether they are single, cohabiting or married," she wrote....

The court said atheist Michael Newdow could not sue to ban the pledge from his daughter's school and others because he did not have legal authority to speak for her.

Newdow is in a protracted custody fight with the girl's mother. He does not have sufficient custody of the child to qualify as her legal representative, the court said. Eight justices voted to reverse a lower court ruling in Newdow's favor.
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"I may be the best father in the world," Newdow said shortly after the ruling was announced. "She spends 10 days a month with me. The suggestion that I don't have sufficient custody is just incredible. This is such a blow for parental rights."

Welfare reforms enacted during the 1990s were designed to end needy parents' dependency on government benefits in part by promoting marriage. But researchers find that these reforms did not deter women from becoming single mothers. The new emphasis on work may have actually given women greater financial independence, thereby decreasing their incentives to marry, according to two articles published in the latest issue of the journal Demography.

Same-sex marriage may be controversial, but allowing people in domestic partnerships to have health insurance shouldn't be. Even those who have qualms with same-sex marriage can find reason to support such benefits - if only to get more people covered by private health insurance. Truly progressive employers offer health benefits to domestic partners whether they are the same sex or not. Why force couples to marry in order to obtain health insurance? The social benefit of such coercion is dubious.

What possible justification is there in treating a domestic partner differently in the tax law? Either health care premiums are deductible or they aren't. There's no reason to treat unmarried partners and their children like social outcasts.