Category Archives: News

In Canada, fathers who disagree with the transing of their children are arrested and jailed

Since we have an election coming up, and I’ve already blogged a lot about the abuse of power in the FBI and DOJ, I thought it might be a good idea for people to consider what will happen to their rights as parents if the Democrats win in the 2022 mid-term elections. In order to see what Democrats will do, we look north to Canada, to see what the secular left has already done there.

Here’s a story from City Journal:

At this moment, a Vancouver postman named Rob Hoogland is sitting in a jail cell in British Columbia. He will be there until at least April 12, when he’s scheduled for a court date. At that time, he may be ordered to remain behind bars for a period yet to be determined.

Has Hoogland killed or robbed somebody? Is he an arsonist? A rapist? No. What did he do, then? Short answer: he tried to save his emotionally unstable daughter from self-destruction.

Social transitioning is the first stage:

It turned out that the school had been feeding her transgender ideology, and that she’d already begun “socially transitioning” to a male identity under the direction of a psychologist, Wallace Wong, who was encouraging her “to take testosterone.” To this end, Wong referred her to an endocrinologist at the Gender Clinic and Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.

Then comes the puberty blockers and/or hormone injections, despite the lack of consent from the child’s father:

At the beginning of ninth grade, A.B. had her first appointment with G.H., an endocrinologist at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, to receive testosterone injections.

[…]G.H. told Hoogland that her treatment would go forward, that Hoogland had no say in the matter, and that he’d no longer have access to her medical records.

Judge sides with the mother, the school counselor, and the hospital:

Instead of recognizing that very few, if any, 14-year-olds are in a position to understand the grave implications of sex-change therapy, the judge, Gregory Bowden, ruled that A.B. was a “mature minor” and that her consent, by itself, was thus “sufficient for the treatment to proceed.”

This part is important. In a society that has been completely taken over by “compassion” and “non-judgement”, fathers are the enemy. Fathers are no longer trusted to lead on moral and spiritual issues. Fathers have no right to lead their children:

Bowden placed remarkable restrictions on Hoogland. He was forbidden to try to persuade A.B. to stop treatment. He was forbidden to address her by her birth name. He was forbidden, in any conversation with anyone, to refer to her as a girl or to use female pronouns to describe her. If he were to do any of these things, ordered Bowden, it would be “considered to be family violence”—yes, violence—under the Family Law Act.

And if fathers try to tell their story in public, another judge will threaten them with arrest. Because transitioning children against the will of the father has to be done in a way that the people responsible cannot be named or shamed for what they are doing:

Soon after Bowden’s ruling, A.B. began gender-transition treatment, but Hoogland persevered with his legal fight. In violation of Bowden’s order, he also spoke in public and gave interviews about the case. In April 2019, in response to an application by A.B., Judge Francesca Marzari… ordered Hoogland to… stop communicating with others—including media outlets, and A.B. herself… about A.B.’s decision to receive hormone therapy.

[…]Marzari also seconded Bowden’s description of Hoogland’s “rejection of A.B.’s gender identity” as “family violence.”

Since the father didn’t quit on trying to save his child, he had to be imprisoned:

And then, on March 19 of this year, British Columbia supreme court justice Michael Tammen ordered Hoogland—who had never before been in trouble with the law—to be sent to prison. By speaking out publicly about his case, and by publicly calling A.B. his “daughter” and saying “she” and “her,” maintained Tammen, Hoogland had violated “a publication ban designed to protect the privacy and dignity of a young and vulnerable person.” Not the slightest concern, of course, about protecting that young person’s long-term medical health, physical intactness, and psychiatric well-being.

Tammen further said that Hoogland’s public statements could cause “psychological harm” to A.B. Once more, the judiciary flat-out rejected evidence that the treatments to which A.B. had been subjected could cause her a lifetime of psychological harm. Tammen warned that Hoogland, whose next court appearance is scheduled for April 12, would “definitely” face charges of criminal contempt at that time. Under a ruling issued last July, Hoogland, because of an appearance on YouTube, could remain in prison for five years.

This is the key – they have to imprison him to keep people from finding out what they are doing:

Most outrageous of all was Tammen’s assertion that Hoogland’s “detention is necessary to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.”

The case files are also closed to the public. Unprecedented in the history of Canada. But necessary to cover up what the secular leftists are doing to the father.

Keep in mind that all of these actors – the teachers, the school counselors, the hospital workers, the lawyers, the judges, etc. – are all taxpayer-funded. The father is paying all of their salaries though his taxes. He is competent enough to earn the money, but not competent enough to make decisions about how to run his home. And this is fine with the “compassion” crowd. Since fathers want to lead on moral and spiritual issues, they have to be stopped by the government. Fathers are bad for children. They make children feel bad, and so they need to be overruled by the compassionate people in the government.

Should men marry?

What message does this story send to men who are considering marriage? Marriage-minded men already have to consider no-fault divorce laws, high tax rates to pay for the social programs that support single mothers, etc. Now they have to worry about having the leadership of their own homes stolen from them by the “compassionate” people in government. How did those compassionate people in government get into government? Why by being voted in by the compassionate voters. Many of those compassionate voters are now complaining that there are no good men to marry. “Where are all the good men?” they cry. Let me answer, on behalf of good men everywhere: we have no interest in becoming slaves or prisoners of the secular left state.

Judge rules that man must pay $50,000 a month to ex-girlfriend for 10 years

When I was younger, I used to think that having definite views on morality and theology was a bad thing. I had my share of rejections by Christian women who didn’t like that I rejected universalism and annihilationism. Others didn’t like that I was pro-life. And today, most Christian women tell me that supporting gay rights is a non-negotiable for them. But maybe being alone was not all bad.

The news story is from one of Canada’s national newspapers, the National Post:

A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.

Under Ontario law, an unmarried couple are considered common-law spouses if they have cohabited — lived together in a conjugal relationship — continuously for at least three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean living in the same home, the court found.

[…]When their 14-year relationship finally broke down in May 2015, Climans asked the courts to recognize her as Latner’s spouse and order him to pay her support. He argued she had been a travel companion and girlfriend, nothing more. As such, he said, they were never legally spouses and he owed no support. An eight-day trial ensued.

In her decision in February 2019, Superior Court Justice Sharon Shore sided with Climans. She ruled they were in fact long-time spouses, finding that despite their separate home, they lived under one roof at Latner’s cottage for part of the summer, and during winter vacations in Florida. Shore ordered him to pay her $53,077 monthly indefinitely.

Superior Court Justice Sharon Shore didn’t care that the man never married this woman, or lived with her, or had children with her. He had money, and she wanted it, so the judge gave it to her.

Elsewhere in the article, we learn that he had asked her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement many times, and each time she refused. (Those are not even enforced in divorce courts) It’s like her plan all along was to demand that a judge awarded her all of this man’s money.

Some people will say “well, these are Ontario family courts, this is normal. Haven’t you heard about what happened to Dave Foley?” I think every man knows the story of what the Ontario divorce courts did to Dave Foley.

Here is a story about it from the far-left Toronto Star, otherwise known as the Toronto Red Star.

It says:

Dave Foley of beloved Toronto sketch troupe the Kids in the Hall is starting a new career in standup comedy, but not in Toronto — he suspects he’ll be arrested if he returns to Canada.

The 48-year-old faces a back child-support bill in Ontario of more than half a million dollars: the accumulation of a debt that accrues steadily at more than $17,000 per month. On the set of Servitude, a film shot in Toronto last year, “I told the production guys, I have a court appearance on Monday and there’s a good chance I’ll be in jail on Monday afternoon,’” Foley said in an interview with the Star.

During an appearance on comic Marc Maron’s WTF podcast last month, Foley explained that his marriage to Toronto writer Tabatha Southey ended during his run on NBC’s five-year hit comedy NewsRadio, and he has failed in his efforts to adjust his child support downward to reflect his new life after sitcom stardom.

“My income has dropped in the last 10 years, as anyone can tell from the number of s—ty movies I’ve been in,” says Foley. “I’m not exactly picking and choosing my projects.” However, four years ago, Superior Justice Nancy Backhouse denied his motion to vary his support payments.

[…]Foley says that Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office now has an enforcement order and last year sought a six-month jail sentence for him, which was to extend indefinitely, until the overdue support was paid.

Ontario family courts are notoriously anti-male, and men know this. Unfortunately, the female judges who make these rulings don’t seem to understand that men know what they are doing, and then opt out of marriage. It must be so wonderful for these judges to punish the men who appear before them. But they can’t punish the men who respond to what they are doing by declining to marry women, and then declining to date women, and then declining to even speak to women.

I looked up Superior Justice Nancy Backhouse, and found another article about her decisions, entitled “Judge rejects pre-nup, awards ex-wife $5.3-million”. So, pre-nuptial agreements are also thrown out in Ontario divorce courts.

But it’s not just Ontario. I have two Christian friends here in America who married their Christian wives as virgins, and then their wives divorced them. I heard what happened to them in divorce court. They lost custody of their kids, and they are forced to pay alimony and child support even though their ex-wives poison the children against them, and deny them communication rights and visitation rights. And men know that this is happening to other men. How can women expect men to marry when the financial risks are so high?

Forbes magazine explains:

Of the 400,000 people in the United States receiving post-divorce spousal maintenance, just 3 percent were men, according to Census figures. Yet 40 percent of households are headed by female breadwinners — suggesting that hundreds of thousands of men are eligible for alimony, yet don’t receive it.

The divorced courts are biased against men, and men are getting the message. They look at these cases, and they understand that marriage is not worth the financial risks. They don’t want to have their possessions stolen by radical feminist judges.

Further reading

An excellent book to read about this issue is Dr. Stephen Baskerville’s book “Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family“. You can read what the book is about here. Dr. Baskerville is a Christian and a conservative. He has a PhD from London School of Economics, and teaches at Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian college.

Knight and Rose Show – Episode 28: A Marriage Proposal: The Case for Traditional Marriage

Welcome to episode 28 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss the definition of marriage, and why marriage matters. This episode contains mature subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode 28:

Episode  Summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss the definition of marriage. We talk about why government is interested in marriage. We discuss two different re-definitions of marriage. We explain how each re-definition of marriage affected society, culture and children. We answer objections to traditional marriage. We end the episode by talking about Jesus’ definition of marriage. This episode contains mature subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker biographies

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

References:

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You can use this to subscribe to the podcast from your phone or tablet. I use the open-source AntennaPod app on my Android phone.

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Music attribution:

Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license