**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // November 2013 **
The word Village is the progressives’ metaphor for the theory that the government, speaking through judges, psychologists, school personnel, and social workers, should supervise child rearing rather than parents. These government busybodies have coopted the centuries-old meaning of “the best interest of the child” to justify a judge, rather than parents, making all decisions about children. Millions of divorced dads have discovered that a judge on his own can decide that fathers have no right to see their kids, but must pay child support anyway. Many of our social ills are attributable to children being cut off from a relationship with their dads. Feminists don’t want fathers to have custody of their own children; feminists think child care should be paid for by the taxpayers, so feminists constantly lobby for government daycare.
You might think that the court intervenes only when there is a nasty divorce conflict, or when a parent has some serious fault such as being a drug addict, but that is not true. No family is safe from a judge’s personal decision. When the popularly elected San Francisco sheriff had an argument with his wife, the authorities decided to bust up his marriage. Neither husband nor wife complained, and both wondered why it was anybody’s business. The city liberals all said that his family was everyone’s business, so he was hit with a one-year restraining order preventing him from seeing his wife and child. He had to call on all his political friends to avoid losing his job.
Even if you are a libertarian who believes in writing your own marriage contract, the law makes it impossible to make a binding agreement for joint custody of your own children. Any such contract can be voided and replaced with the biased opinion of some judge.
