Phyllis Schafly's He-Man Woman Haters' Club

Phyllis Schafly proves that women are liars ... by making shit up.

Actually, I can't prove that, because I don't have access to the materials/quotes Schafly almost certainly mischaracterizes. But it seems clear from this unhinged screed that Schafly is misrepresenting quotes to prove a premise for which she offers no evidence, namely, a feminist conspiracy to deprive children of fit and loving fathers. Here's a sample:

The Final Report of the Child Custody and Visitation Focus Group of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges admitted that "usually judges are not required to make a finding of domestic violence in civil protection order cases." In other words, judges saddle fathers with restraining orders on the wife's say-so without any investigation as to whether it is true or false.

The report says one thing, and Schafly interprets it to say something entirely different. First, the sentence quoted says nothing about the gender of the complainants. More significantly, the quoted sentence says that judges aren't required to making a finding of domestic violence; it doesn't say what judges must find in order to issue a restraining order. The sentence certainly doesn't say that judges don't assess the credibility of the parties. (People get saddled with all sorts of things -- restraining orders, evictions, money judgments, criminal sentences -- every court day based on the say-so of someone. It's called evidence.)

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., a big advocate of VAWA, admitted, "Up to 75 percent of all domestic assaults reported to law enforcement agencies were inflicted after the separation of the couple." Most allegations of domestic violence are made for the purpose of taking the custody of children away from their fathers.

Again, even assuming Schafly is accurately quoting Wellstone, Wellstone is talking about when complaints were made, not the motivation for the complaints (or even whether the couples had children) . He certainly doesn't say that most (or any) of allegations of domestic abuse are made up.

The June issue of the Illinois Bar Journal explains how women use court-issued restraining orders, which Illinois calls Orders of Protection, as a tool for the mother to get sole child custody and even bar the father from visitation. In big type, the magazine proclaims: "Orders of Protection are designed to prevent domestic violence, but they can also become part of the gamesmanship of divorce."

A cover headline stating that something "can become part of" something else is hardly an "explanation" of anything, and the headline is gender neutral. (The article is here, but only available to bar members.) Schafly continues:

The "game" is that mothers can assert falsehoods or trivial marital complaints and thereby get sole custody orders that deprive children of their fathers. This "game" is based on the presumption, popularized by VAWA and the domestic-violence lobby, that fathers are inherently guilty and dangerous.

Of course, mothers can lie to get sole custody of children just as fathers can lie to deny mothers' attempts to get sole custody, or to get joint custody, or to get sole custody themselves. Schafly doesn't cite any law which presumes that fathers are guilty or dangerous or unfit parents.

If Schafly has any proof of any of her claims, she doesn't cite it. She doesn't even cite anecdotal evidence. But she's not about to let the absence of facts get in the way of her deranged hatred of women in general and feminists in particular.