Father's rights group coming to the US....

A British group is coming to the US...

Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) -- a pressure group that originated in Britain to crusade for father's rights, especially child custody and access rights in divorce -- has just landed on American shores with the creation of F4J-US. What happens next may tell us as much about society's post-9/11 attitude toward social reform as it does about father's rights.

What do F4J and its international chapters demand? F4J essentially seeks the removal of any anti-male bias from the family court system. The specifics include a wide range of measures, including the court enforcement of visitation orders and the linking of child support payments to visitation rights.

Why would the repetition of well-aired demands tell us anything new about society's post-9/11 attitudes? Because the strategy F4J favors hasn't been really tested here since then.

Father's rights advocates and their opponents have waged a public strategy war, to be sure. But their weapons of choice have generally been a flood of contradictory studies, re-interpreted data, personal tales of injustice, accusations, and blasts of fury.

F4J advocates "peaceful non-violent direct action based on the Greenpeace model with a dash of humour thrown in for good measure." In Britain, the group is famous for high-profile stunts that taunt and disrupt authority. For example, last September a F4Jer dressed as Batman scaled Buckingham Palace. Standing for over 5-hours on a ledge next to the Palace's main balcony, he unfurled a huge banner reading "Super Dads of Fathers 4 Justice". Batman was arrested "for suspicion of causing criminal damage."

Plans for similar but unspecified "guerrilla" acts in the United States have been announced. It is not clear how aggressive the Stateside actions will be.

We need this group in Canada too.