Subj: Re: WND: “Federal Propaganda Machine”

Date: 2/2/05 11:20:14 PM Eastern Standard Time

From: walter@deltabravo. net (Walter H. Boelter)

To: AMOJ MAlN@Yahoogroups.com, sbaskerville@cox .net

Wade Horn founded the National Fatherhood Initiative (www.fatherhood.org) and has done a lot of great work on fatherhood issues. He is also a co-author of a book titled Father Facts. I have met with him and talked to him when he flew across the country to visit the office of one of the organizations that I work with (www.aboutdads.org). Not only did he make time for us in his busy schedule, but he made sure that local officials knew that our work was important to him. He spent hours with us, touring our facility and visiting with our staff and those who have benefited from our programs. I know that he is focused on the needs of the children and is not just following the feminist line on what those needs are.

If nothing else, the howls of protest we heard from NOW when Wade was appointed to this position would be enough of an endorsement for me.

Wade has made a lot of huge, behind-the-scenes changes that make things better for fathers. There is more grant money for fatherhood programs than ever before. Social service agencies nationwide have been ordered to be more father-friendly, and to consider the needs of men as well of those of women. Head start programs and schools are specifically instructed to try to involve more fathers in their programs. They have appointed father-involvement specialists who advocate for fathers and help them to change practices that hay traditionally excluded fathers. They hold training on the importance of father involvement and how to be more father-friendly. I had the opportunity a while back to do a presentation at the National Head Start Institute on Fatherhood (www.deltabravo.net/files/headstart.pdf). Wade was the keynote speaker there.

The marriage initiative is supported by popular demand. There is a huge constituency and groundswell support for programs that support marriage. I work with Families Northwest (www.familiesnorthwest.org) and follow the work of the World Congress of Families (www.worldcongress.org). These groups are very active politically and socially and apply pressure to government agencies to put families first and end practices that tend to destroy families. Under Wade’s leadership, the government is finally starting to respond to these organizations. Previous administrations accepted input from NOW and similar liberal feminist organizations as gospel, that what was good for women was good for the family, but what they really advocated was hatred and exclusion of men from families and social benefits. These organizations are quick to talk about Domestic Violence against women, but never mention that more children are abused by women than by men, or that single-mother households are the most dangerous for children. They pretend to be protecting children from domestic violence, but in fact they are ignoring their needs in order to promote their own anti-family agendas.

I commend Wade Horn for the work he is doing. The Maggie Gallagher issue may have been a mistake (I don’t know all the details of that), but he is actively working to tackle the huge and difficult job of changing the attitude of an entire bureaucracy that for far too long has excluded half of the population from its programs.

Walter H. Boelter