Donald Hank's Jesus-Based Therapy Isn't Working Out...

It sucks when life sucks, and let's face it, lots of times, life sucks. This is no news. Whether you are being ripped apart by the Bacchae or can't remember where in the hell you parked your car, life might easily be defined as what happens to an individual between bummers.

I hate to skimp on the writing on any given night, but because I probably have a bummer to prepare for, I need to speed things up and can afford to quote myself with a clear conscience. So here's my prefab intro to Donald Hank, Worldview Weekend contributor:

I take absolutely no pleasure in Don Hank's loss of custody of his child(ren?) . None of my business, really, and he has my sympathy. Sort of. Must suck. This is why I rent my children (as an uncle), so I don't get overly attached to them (yeah, right!).

Don Hank apparently has some opinions that, well, if they were written on toilet paper, I wouldn't bother lining the litter boxes with them. Don Hank is the person who wrote against "saying something nice" and seems to think that the Southern Baptists are "liberals." So, yeah, there's that. Also, he attaches himself to some idiotic causes. For instance, there was this delightful little petition I saw his name attached to. Well, petition is a little weak. It's a DEMAND!

DEMAND

1. The first amendment right to free exercise of religion has not been repealed.
2. My religion is Christianity.
3. It is a fundamental principle of Christianity that children belong to fathers--not the state nor any other body nor individual.
4. I DEMAND that my children be returned to my care immediately.
5. PERIOD.

He really did sign this:

Donald Hank - 02/28/99 21:07:58
EMAIL WITHHELD
Do you hereby sign the DEMAND?: Yes
Comments: 1999-02-25 20:22:27 I am the founder of a noncustodial parents group. Our group incl one man who was run over by his ex and left for dead. SHE got custody. Another man was shot at by his wife.

It occurs to me as I look back on this intro, I think that I would very much like to keep him away from all children now and forever, because, damn there is some evil shit in there, even if he was wronged (and really, who could ever turn down custody for a level-headed person like D?). The worst thing that I think that anyone could say is that "It is a fundamental principle of Christianity and that children belong to fathers--not the state nor any other body nor individual." It's just insane. Children belong to themselves, and you are a guardian. Guardianship is neither a right nor a permanent state. It is temporary and revocable, like any other job. And don't you ever, ever forget it. (I have my serious face on, but you'll have to take my word for it.)

This week's Hankishness is called "HRES 590: Government as head of household" and its Donald's latest screed against, well, women. When I can, I'm going to skip the parts where he is completely off his nut (take heed that he is not really ever on his nut, and perhaps only has a vague idea of where his nut is).

The radical feminist movement tanked in the early 90s after domineering women’s belief system for 30 odd years. People finally saw the hypocrisy. When the N.O.W took no position on the Lewinsky case, it was obvious they only stood for leftist man haters, not traditional women struggling to keep their families together.

Illuminating the relationships between thoughts, apparently, is only something that Commies do, eh, Don? And I think he just called Hillary a "traditional woman."

But the elitists in government (both parties), whose single-minded purpose is re-election at all costs, didn't seem to notice. They kept propping up the failed radfem ideology, which, as I showed in an earlier column, is one of the pillars of Maoism.

Yeah, you thought that when I brought up commies that I was ironically not illuminating a relationship between thoughts, didn't you. ADMIT IT!

Hank sees commie conspiracy perhaps only slightly more often than McCarthy ever claimed to (McCarthy could not have possibly have believed a fraction of what he ever said, by the way). He apparently thinks that it is the mid-fifties. And his idea of the familial structure has not evolved past that era's ideal either.

The radical feminists hate the "patriarchy," which is their code word for marriage.

No, dipshit. Patriarchy is not a code word for marriage. It is any system that limits a woman's freedoms on the basis of gender. Doesn't matter if it's in the workplace, or if it is in the home. For instance: "It is a fundamental principle of Christianity that children belong to fathers--not the state nor any other body nor individual." So, yes, you are probably right to assume that radical feminists would not like you if you were of any significance whatsoever to anyone other than yourself (it is a characteristic of pathological paranoia that most of the world relates to you personally). At the same time however, one need not be a furry-kneed lesbo to be appalled by your attitude toward women. Fuck, the Taliban seem like bra-burners compared to you.

But since most American women are for marriage, they have been scheming to show that marriage is poison to women. To do this, they stoutly maintain, at variance with serious studies on the subject, that men are typically violent and women are their perennial victims.

Here's a Christian telling me about fucking research again. God damn. Are most women "for marriage?" I mean, I think that most people are pro-happy ending. But pro-marriage? Personally, I'm pro-person. The institution itself can go hang--people are more important. And I suspect that a good feminist would be more than pleased to allow the woman to choose marriage if they preferred, and they would be every bit as eager to see that women leave their Neanderthal husbands (ahem), or even leave for no reason, because it is their right. And you don't get to own your wife either, Don.

There's a lot at stake, namely, child custody, which translates into child support for the winner of custody cases—almost invariably mothers.

Oh, as they say, dear. Radical feminism is a vast conspiracy designed to take a slice of whatever you are making at Burger Doodle, isn't it? Sweet. Lords. A-Leaping.

Important scientific studies, like Dr. Warren Farrell's book Father and Child Reunion, which I mentioned in an earlier column, show that children fare best in intact marriages, followed by father custody, followed lastly by mother custody.

Fuck. I have a dissertation to write, but I'm going to have to look up some masculinist up on the web just to prove that if you want good studies, that you should go directly to peer-reviewed journals and not to the self-help section, aren't I? I would like to say for the record that "good science" for the ideologue is whatever can be used to support his dipshit ideas. But this we know. Damn it, Hanky.

Well, turns out a lot of sociologists like Farrell. Way to go, dude, even if his dissertation title needs footnotes: "The Political Potential of Women's Liberation Groups as Indicated by their Ability to Effect a Change in Men's Attitudes Independent of a Fundamental Change in Capitalism." Fuck, I fell asleep twice while typing it! And Don here really seems to overreach in his assertion that kids do better in 2-parent families, then in the dad's custody, and lastly in mom's. He doesn't define "better," for one. He gives only one source. He ignores, apparently, socioeconomic realities that might leave women more impoverished (low pay, sole custody of several children, etc.). And also, I may have mentioned this, he's off his nut.

To keep these devastating findings from affecting legislative and jurisprudential reality, the radical feminists can always count on their numerous henchpersons in the legislature to introduce legislation based on grotesquely distorted study results fed to them by feminists.

Remember, the feminists are out to get him personally. Through the federal government. (Imagine the sound of a cuckoo clock.)

House resolution 590 starts out: "whereas one in four women will experience domestic violence some time in their life...," suggesting that men do not experience domestic violence. Yet the most complete-ever review on the subject shows women are as physically aggressive or more aggressive than men in their male-female relationships.

I have no idea what he is talking about. The problem that you have when you provide a link is that someone is going to follow it. This is an analysis of HR 590, not a study of male-female violence rates! You have to do better than this, Don.

But more devastating than these figures is an analysis of PA child abuse statistics I conducted for Lancaster-New York Non-Custodial Parents in 2000 showing that mothers plus the men they brought into their children's lives after their relationship with the fathers are terminated perpetrated 4,021 child abuses in 1999 versus 2,263 perpetrated by fathers plus the women they brought into their children's lives.

Am I going to have to really make you look extremely stupid? I mean, truly unfathomably retarded and dull? Well, fine, but only if I get to use your statistics against you.

At the above link, Donald reports that 90% of the time in Pennsylvania, women are awarded custody of children. Even though only 10% of fathers are awarded custody, fathers are responsible, by your own statistics, Don, for 36% of the abuse. I'm not a betting man (I'm poor), but, uh, if your numbers are anything to go by, fathers are several times more violent than mothers.

In other words, as many as 1,758 excess child abuses may have been added to the system in Pennsylvania as a result of the tenacious policy of awarding child custody automatically to mothers.

I'm going to try to do math here (for this alone I should despise you). If men and women were just as likely to abuse children, you would expect mothers to commit about 5655 instances of abuse, while fathers would be responsible for around 628 instances. But the actual rate is 3.6 times as high as that. In a population where 10% of men are awarded custody and commit 2263 crimes against their children, by extrapolation, wouldn't you have 10 times that many on average if the abuse rate is constant for all men and they all get custody? By your numbers, if I'm figuring them right, as many as 18,609 instances of abuse were prevented by not giving custody to the fathers more often. (I do not think that this is actually true, because all things are not equal. And I suck at math. More than most well trained goats, even.) The reason that the women's number is higher is because they get such a higher percentage of the kids.

And I don't think you know what "tenacious" means.

This isn't to say that fathers are necessarily better parents in a hypothetical state devoid of government interference.

NO FUCKING SHIT!

But in a system where welfare and monetary "child" support incentives encourage women to have children, even those women who do not like—or even hate—children, our entire child support/custody system needs to be scrapped and replaced with one that truly takes the child's best interests into account.

I think that you have shown that the system is doing a bang-up job at protecting kids, dipshit. Way to go. I think that they should name HR 590 the Donald Hank Protecting Children Act. This is just me, however.

The other thing that stuns me is that it, if you have ever watched Maury, you know that it is far easier to tell who is the mother of a baby than the father. Just saying.

HJ