Tag Archives: Family

Why are sentences for domestic violence committed by women so lenient?

ECM sent me this article by Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

I feel terrible about how unfairly men are treated when they are victims of domestic violence. I think that a lot of men are going to be put off of marriage  when stories like the ones in the article become widely known.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Mothers who kill their children often serve little jail time. Gender stereotypes lead people to believe that any woman who kills her kid must have done so as a result of duress or insanity. Andrea Yates ultimately escaped punishment after methodically drowning her five children one by one in a bathtub. A Prince William County woman guilty of stabbing her five daughters received less than three years in jail (after her lawyer ridiculously claimed the children should not be deprived of their mother!).

A woman who used poison to paralyze her daughter, enabling her husband to then kick her conscious-but-immobilized daughter to death, escaped penalty by pleading “battered woman syndrome.”

[…]Battered woman syndrome has become an excuse to kill not only children, but also innocent non-relatives. A California woman got her lover to kill an innocent man by falsely telling him that the man was her paramour. She then had her murder conviction overturned by the California Court of Appeal. How? She claimed that “battered women’s syndrome” made her do it.

[…]According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ study of large urban counties, wives who kill their husbands without provocation get only seven years in prison, on average, compared to a more reasonable 17 years in prison for husbands who kill their wives without provocation.

[…]For a glaring example of gender bias in the courts (and the media), you need look no further than The Washington Post story by Tamara Jones, in which she commiserates with convicted felon Teressa Turner-Schaefer, who spent a mere 11 months in jail for killing her husband after an argument.

Now Turner-Schaefer gets to collect $400,000 in life insurance for killing her husband. In a plea bargain, she pleaded guilty to the crime of involuntary manslaughter, which, amazingly enough, doesn’t bar you from collecting life insurance taken out on the person you killed.

There are many more horrible stories in the article about children and men being assaulted and murdered by women. The crimes are not being punished fairly. It discourages me greatly that most women don’t seem to be up in arms defending men when injustices like this happen. Actually, the man is usually blamed for the violence committed against him by the woman.

I think it is particularly shocking how Christians have nothing to say about this.

British tax and benefit system favors single parents over married couples

ECM found this article by Carolyn Moynihan on MercatorNet.

Excerpt:

An analysis of 98 couples with different earnings and numbers of children carried out by the charity Care showed that 76 of the couples would be better off if they split up and claimed welfare benefits that average £8007. Increasingly it is middle-income families where both parents work that suffer this “couple penalty”.

[…]Many do stay single — but they have children anyway, which entitles them to tax credits that take account of only one working adult per household.

Last year Labour MP Frank Field calculated that a single mother on the minimum wage with two children under eleven would get a weekly income of £487 if she worked 16 hours a week. A two-parent family with one earner would have to put in 116 hours of work on the same pay to get the same money.

It would be a poor sort of marriage that could break under the “pressure” of the partners receiving less in the way of tax breaks than the solo mum down the road (who has other disadvantages, to be sure) — as the Daily Mail suggests — but the messages being sent out are certainly not supportive of marriage as the best environment for children growing up.

The Conservative Party has promised to give back tax breaks to married couples.

This is how big government discourages marriage. The left-wing parties get elected by promising to help the poor. They help the poor by confiscating the wealth from married couples and giving it to single mothers. People see this wealth redistribution, and they stop marrying in order to get more money for doing less work. The children suffer from being raised without a father. This is called “compassion”.

Christians! Stop being ignorant! If you want to do some good in the world, do it with your own money. Don’t give it to a secular government who will try to solve the problem without any awareness of the moral law or human nature. Secular-left elites can’t solve social problems because they have no wisdom. Solve the problem yourself!

MUST-LISTEN: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse in her greatest podcast EVER!

UPDATE: You can listen to Dr. J’s new podcast on basic economics as well.

This one is the best podcast she has ever done, in my opinion.

The MP3 file is here. (31 minutes, 14 megs)

Listen closely to avoid missing anything!

Topics:

  • same-sex marriage in California and recent court decisions
  • the purpose of marriage
  • is marriage child-centered or adult-centered?
  • family courts awarding parental rights to non-parents
  • why the secular left wants to break down the connections between sex, reproduction, marriage and parenting
  • how the destruction of family leads to the marginalization of the male roles of husband and father
  • why fathers matter in the family
  • how no-fault divorce and unfair family courts destroy families
  • making your case on to university students
  • how the breakdown of the family necessarily expands the power of the state into our private lives

I’ve listened to this three times already! I love it! This podcast is for men and women. Men will love this podcast.

Best line: “This actually is the social worker and family court full employment act”.

The Father’s Day page she mentions is here.

I refuse to get married to anyone who isn’t as passionate about all of these social issues as Jennifer Roback Morse. How do single women expect to be able to attract a husband when they don’t know anything about these issues and vote Democrat? That just drives men away from marriage! Women need to speak and write passionately about these issues. Abortion is not the only social issue that matters.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST. REPEAT.

The Ruth Institute accepts donations. I sent her TWO already this year. She does on-campus events, just like William Lane Craig. If you want to have an impact on the university, she should be considered for funding.