Lary Holland: Official Blog, Links, and Resources

The National Fatherhood Summit in Grand Rapids was a two day event January 3rd and January 4th, 2008. Here are some pictures and just a few comments for you all. The event was an overwhelming success that drew a crowd from all over the nation.

October 19, 2007

This mammoth luxury bus will be at the Lansing State Capitol Building from 8:30am to 11:30am on September 26, 2007 to support equal parenting! Will You?

CRISPE, Dads and Moms of Michigan, the Family Rights Coalition, A Child’s Right, Children Need Both Parents, Fathers for Equal Rights, Fathers-4-Justice, Parents for Children, Children’s Rights Council invite you to join us in defense of the traditional American family at this historic rally at our State Capitol during Equal Parents Week. Over 40% of Michigan’s population is being micro-managed by the family court system with disastrous consequences to our children, families and the state economy. Help transform Michigan from a wasteland of broken families into a promised land of healthy families and community renewal.

House Bill 4564, a bill to ensure equal parental responsibility, will result in a presumption of joint custody for fit parents and equal access for children to both their mother and father. Hearings on this bill are expected this fall. Your attendance at this rally will send a strong message in support of HB 4564 and serve as a demonstration of our will to be equal parents to our children.

The Equal Parents Week Rally has been organized to bring to the attention of our legislature, our executive branch, our judiciary and the general public that Equal Parenting is a civil rights issue whose time has come. America’s success was built on strong family bonds and the recognition that both a mother and a father are essential to raising healthy, moral and well adjusted children.

The Equal Parenting Symposium was a success and will be airing on local public access television in the coming week around the metro Detroit area. The most recent symposium was in the City of Pontiac, in Oakland County. Politicians, Professionals, and interested citizens from all over the state appeared for presentations by Jim Semerad (Dads and Moms of Michigan), Dr. Michael Ross (Family Rights Coalition), Lary Holland (Family Court Problems), Jay Fedewa (Family Rights Coalition) and Minister Ronald Smith (Children Need Both Parents, Inc.).

As video becomes available, it will be uploaded and shared here! Also an audio podcast will be available later this week of the speeches that were given and available for sharing and download. This event was a success and even more people are now educated about the funding mechanisms of our Friend of the Court systems, the steep rewards that are provided for the creation of absent parent households, and the devastating effects of family court on our economy.

Thanks for the Family Rights Coalition, and the other members of the symposium for helping make this event such a success!

My Open Response to Dr. Stephen Baskerville that is published here and at http://www.mensnewsdaily.com

Stephen and friends,

I am proud to call some of you my friends and others I am proud to say that you are not. Even if you are not my friends, I would support you and the goals within the realm of our shared desire to be with our children and to assure that our children will not experience what many of us hardened family court veterans have regretfully experienced.

I received Dr. Stephen Baskerville's Open letter and read through it completely. I was compelled immediately to check my now meager checking account. I had a mere $115.00 left over, after I paid some of my bills, that was to last until the upcoming Friday. Remembering again how I had tens of thousands of dollars in that same account before I met the family court system. Now, I have been in and out of work because of a serious accident in June that has resulted in some lingering effects to my head and body. My hospital bills and finances are catastrophic, and I am barely hanging onto my own home. I went to the ACFC website and immediately signed up for an Associate Level ($65.00) Membership Account.

Why did I sign up for an organization that is having problems? Because Stephen asked me to with his letter. HE has my support, because I believe that he fully understands many of the issues that we have struggled on a local and regional footprint to bring to the forefront. I may not agree with everything and may have some personal differences to Dr. Baskerville's ideologies but I would assist Dr. Baskerville whether an organization was behind him or not. I would do so with my last dollar and every bit of my other resources and expertise because of the things that we do agree on.

I don't fully believe that the problems we are faced with are limited to just the family court system. I believe that the problems that we are faced with are systemic of a constituency that loses sight of what our country was founded upon. We need to again stand together and rise above the apathy and personal issues that we have for or against one another and look to the issues that we can work together on. The system thrives on division, and we are often times the best ones at supporting the very thing that tears us down simply by not rising above the personal issues that keep us apart in our "demands for change."

I have always stayed away from other organizations because I could not fully agree with any single one of them. So today, I join the ACFC and hope that others will follow. I stand with Dr. Baskerville and with other parents that want to help shape the world into a better place for our children and subsequent generations. I love my children, and I don't want them to have to endure the feeling of their children not being able to be with them. It's bad enough that they already feel the pain of not being with one of their parents.

Dr. Stephen Baskerville has my support, and together we will all help change the course of society for our children.

Lary Holland
http://www.laryholland.com
800-319-4955 x3

The Kalamazoo Gazette, August 27, 2007, published a letter to the editor from Darrick Scott-Farnsworth. Darrick Scott-Farnsworth is the Executive Director of A Child's Right, an organization that supports the concept of equal custody and equal parenting.

I have personally met Mr. Farnsworth and value his opinions. He poses an interesting argument, and his argument is certainly well-supported by the facts regarding Michigan's, and this Nation's, various policies over the family. Most of the policies regarding family in America are focused on failing welfare services and creative schemes for states to acquire more federal funding.

Michigan fails children, fails parents, and essentially cannibalizes its' population for the survival of various bureaucracies.

The funding mechanisms behind state programs largely contribute to longterm negative consequences, like single-parent households and multiple-generations of welfare participants living off the tax rolls, instead of positive outcomes and participant productivity contributing to the tax rolls. We need to reshape this Nation's welfare policies to become entirely gender neutral and eliminate the rolls associated with the sexes. Making rolls equal will certainly be a step in the right direction that will force self-accountability and productivity on both sides of the "great divide."

Custody changes could help women

Some feminists and politicians complain about there being a pay gap between men and women, but fight tooth and nail against actually promoting any legislation that would truly do anything about it. It has been common knowledge for years that women, on average, do not make the same amount as men doing the same type of work because women tend to take more time off to raise children.

It is also common knowledge that children are denied equal time with both of their fit parents when it comes to custody disputes, with the majority of cases and custody time being awarded to mothers.

This denying of parenting time to fathers exacerbates the continuing pay gap between sexes because fathers are being coerced into maintaining full-time employment to make ends meet and pay bloated child support.

Furthermore, the government has fostered the overall belief that it is more important for men to work and earn then it is for women.

We must get the laws changed to recognize parents are equal and that children need both of their parents to develop and thrive. We must raise the importance of the father in the home by having a presumption of equal child custody law.

Darrick Scott-Farnsworth

When the regular court officials happen across this website today, I hope they can stomach to press the play button and sit through the whole video so they can get a glimpse of the life that my children are missing out on because of their integral part in using children and feuds to fund their judicial bureaucracy. My case is just one of many where children are being deprived of a fit, willing, and caring parent. Children deserve both sides of their family tree. I know right from wrong, why don't our judges and their employees?

You may remember recently that Brian Downs and myself both spoke to the Flint City Council asking support for Michigan House Bill 4564, Michigan's presumption of equal custody bill. I ventured back in July to speak further to the Flint City Council. See below the presentation that I provided again to the Flint City Council. Also, Council Member Jackie Foster Poplar spoke in support of the bill and indicated that she issued a letter to Lansing about supporting House Bill 4564. She also told her side of the story in the below video which I encourage all of you to view. You can also send letters/emails of support directly to Jackie Poplar at jpoplar@cityofflint.com thanking her for supporting this critical issue.