Yesterday I traveled over to the University of North Dakota Law School to attend an event that was being billed on the school’s website as an “informational session” about shared parenting:

We’d been told that former ND Supreme Court Justice and current Executive Director of the ND Bar Association Bill Neuman would be there.  Given that the ND Bar Association has been actively opposing our measure, even going so far as to donate $16,748.00 to the group putting up those “Where Will I Sleep Tonight” ads and billboards in the state, we thought it would be a good time to engage the opposition in some open debate that would hopefully inform the students and other attendees about this issue.

Unfortunately, the folks who put on the event (some womens lawyers group or something, I didn’t get the name) weren’t interested in an “information session.” They were interested in a propaganda session where their side of the issue was told and our side wasn’t.

Which is fine, I guess.  Their event, their rules.  I think it’s a little tacky and misleading to bill it as an “information session” when it was, in reality, a one-sided forum though.  But whatever.

Mr. Neuman did give a pretty interesting speech.  He made his points well.  I don’t agree with him, but he is obviously a very talented lawyer and orator and it was fun to listen to him speak none-the-less.  Until he started taking cheap shots at Shared Parenting supporters, that is.

At one point, Mr. Neuman alleged that a shared parenting supporter had written somewhere that domestic violence is a “myth” and a “conspiracy” created by social services workers to keep men down.  I wanted to ask Mr. Neuman were he had read such a thing and who was responsible for writing it, but unfortunately the only way to ask him questions at this forum was to submit them on paper to the moderators...and they didn’t ask any of my questions.  Even if Mr. Neuman did read what he claims to have read from some shared parenting supporter (something I have my doubts about), I don’t think it’s fair to judge our entire movement by the off-the-wall rantings of just one of our members.  Certainly I wouldn’t judge the entire Bar Association by some of the off-the-wall comments left on this website by people claiming to be lawyers in North Dakota.  What Neuman did was pretty unfair.  A cheap shot, and it wasn’t called for.

Frankly, I expected better from someone who used to sit on this state’s high court.

Neuman got in another cheap shot when he claimed that shared parenting supporters would “threaten” the state’s legislators if our measure were to pass and the legislators tried to overturn it by a 2/3’s vote in each house.  Now I have little doubt that a few shared parenting supporters probably have threatened legislators, but “threaten” is something of a loaded term.  We’ve threatened to not vote for, and actively campaign against, legislators who don’t represent their districts and constituents as we think they should.  What’s wrong with that?  That’s democracy at work.  Coming out of Mr. Neuman’s mouth, though, it sounded as though there would be angry dads in the halls of the legislature in Bismarck with baseball bats or something.

Again, a totally uncalled for remark.

I think it’s telling that shared parenting opponents aren’t interested in engaging shared parenting supporters in open debate.  They’ve done so when they’ve had to in the past on radio shows, etc., but I’d point out that shared parenting supporters have been open to discuss our ballot initiative in any forum, anywhere, any time.  We want to inform the public and contrast our ideas and the merits of our arguments against our opponents.  Our opponents would, apparently, rather gathering in “information sessions” to indoctrinate the public without allowing equal time for fair debate.