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by Anonymous User on Thursday June 28, @09:44AM EST (#2)
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Well, this whole thing is a real conflicting issue with one side's right to privacy the other side's right to know especially if they're footing the bill for the kid etc I saw a TV program on this (I'm in the UK right now) where a black couple got divorced and the woman said "she's not your daughter" to her Husband at the time, he took the test and found she was right, the kid wasn't his.
Never mind the fact that this is child abuse (but she won't get put in prison for it) he stopped seeing the kid after a few months, I guess the sense of violation was too much. But you see the issues here? Can we honestly say someone’s right to privacy is greater than somebody else’s right to know their Birthright?
Adam H
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And whose right to privacy are we talking about here? The mother's right to sleep with other men without her husband's knowledge? The child's right not to have a sample of his DNA taken? If we wait until the child is old enough to consent, then the statute of limitations expires and unwitting "fathers" end up paying the bils for someone elses foolishness and infidelity. Lawsuits to retieive the ill-gotten gains are nearly fruitless. I believe I have a right to know whether or not I am the father of a child whom my wife claims I am, and that is as important as the child's right to his DNA. My wife has NO right defraud me by leading me to believe, either actively by lying or misleading though silence, that I am the father of a child when I am not.
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It's true - I'd like to see men who might be victims of paternity fraud (being forced to pay child support for a child that isn't his) empowered by using DNA testing to prove their case (even though a lot of courts don't seem to care anyway). By the same token, allowing women to do this to men without their consent seems pretty shady. I definitely think there is a legitimate argument on both sides.
Scott
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I read Andrew's long post on natural law and its impact here with interest, but down in the dirty world of politics, I must disagree somewhat with Scott.
On the one hand we have the possibility for men to know if they are really fathers, or if someone else was stoking the fires while they were out working. On the other hand we have the unpleasant possibility of women proving paternity unbeknownst to the man involved.
I think that the benefit of the former far outweighs the latter, since I imagine that there are far more women lying about the paternity of children when they know than there are women who don't know the paternity of their children looking to find out. Besides, the former allows a man falsely accused to clear himself or know for sure; the latter prevents a man from escaping fatherhood. It's rather difficult to feel sorry for him in the latter case, except for the issue of the courts treating fathers unfairly. However, this is a problem for legal reform, not a reason to hide paternity.
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I think your point is well argued, BusterB, but as a privacy advocate, I tend to agree more with Scott's point of view. There's no question in my mind that making paternity tests easier to obtain is a GOOD thing, especially for the reasons you've mentioned ("duped dads"). However, I do think it should be the alleged father's decision as to whether he wants to donate his DNA to that end. Our bodies, our choices.
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On a philosophical level, I agree. However, on a practical level this sort of argument then leads to the inevitable question: who speaks for the child? In other words, if it is a man's (or woman's) right to veto a DNA test using his (or her) tissue, then the question arises as to who speaks for the third party in the dance, the baby? Unfortunately, if that question were ever to go to court (which it would if we pressed our case for protecting men's tissue from unwanted DNA analysis) then the courts would--if not by rule then at least by convention--give the baby's right to veto to the mother. Meaning that, in the end, the mother would have the right to veto any DNA paternity testing by anyone, and we would be right back where we were before DNA testing became accessible.
If, on the other hand, we choose not to fight the "unwanted DNA test" battle, then we leave men open to unwanted DNA testing by their girlfriends, but we also make it much tougher to argue that the baby's "rights" are being violated by taking a swab from its gums for a DNA test. That is, if men don't press for their right to privacy, it would be harder to argue that babies have that same right and thus give mothers a de facto veto over the whole thing.
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Again, a good argument... but... what good are we doing ourselves if we achieve one goal by abandoning our privacy rights? Also, if we choose to abandon those rights by your logic, we are reacting to a ruling we think our current court system would hand down. It could come down to which do we fight first: the perception our court systems have that mothers are more important than fathers, or our privacy rights regarding DNA and paternity testing.
Let's say we forget about privacy rights for now, not make it a legal issue, not challenge mothers secretly testing potential fathers for paternity. We should then focus our attention on the perceptions of fatherhood in the courts. Get the courts to open up to fathers, and recognizes paternal rights equally to maternal ones (a battle so many of us are already fighting). Perhaps then, when the tides of those battles have turned in our favor, we challenge the invasion of privacy.
Now, of course, we still have the question of who speaks for the child, but the answer becomes not so clear cut in the eyes of the law. And remember, also, that U.S. law in many cases doesn't consider the opinion of one not old enough to reason or express himself. Who speaks for the fetus about to be aborted?
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Yes, genetic testing without consent is a violation of the right of privacy. However, in this case I don't think this principle exactly applies, as in fact the right of privacy has already been waived.
Due to the efforts of socialists, feminists and their ilk, people today generally have a very unclear understanding of the concept of "rights." This concept first appeared, so far as I know (I'm not well-educated on the history), in the writings of 16th- and 17th-century European thinkers, and is most famously familiar from Thomas Jefferson's immortal words in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The rights enumerated by Jefferson are all corollaries of the fundamental right of self-ownership, which was in fact the real revolutionary idea behind the establishment of the American Republic. By stating that every human being, simply by virtue of being born, owned himself and was not owned by anyone else, Jefferson challenged the whole course of human history theretofore.
Jefferson and his intellectual compatriots understood that the concept of "rights" was both very powerful - it could overturn the greatest empire the world had ever seen - and very dangerous, for if misunderstood/misapplied it can destroy any hope of sane, functional human society. Due to the difficulty most people seem to have in thinking clearly about such matters, and the perennial presence of those who would take advantage of human foolishness to enslave us, this is exactly what has happened.
Thus, in our time the term "right" has been attached to any number of things which the Founders would not call "rights," for to do so would destroy the very concept itself. Take, for instance, the much-discussed "right to health care." If you have a "right" to something that must be supplied as a commodity, and you are not willing to work to get it (if you were, you wouldn't be claiming it as a "right"), then that thing must be taken from someone else's property or labor, which is a violation of that person's fundamental rights. There cannot be a "right" which violates another right; q.e.d. Thus there cannot be a "right" to "health care," or "housing," or "a job," or any of the myriad other "rights" that are so much touted these days.
The right to self-ownership is essentially the right to be left alone, not to be forced against ones will to do or render anything, whether property, or time, or services. No one has any right to do anything which would violate another's fundamental right of self-ownership.
It is important to understand that among our rights is the right to compromise or waive our rights. Paraodoxical though it may seem, if I do not have the right to waive my rights, then in fact I do not have any rights. The test of ownership is: Who has the right to dispose of the thing owned? (This is why, in fact, almost no one in America today "owns" his/her home: if you don't pay taxes on "your" property, it will be taken from you; thus, since you do not actually have the right of disposal, you don't own it - you only pay rent on it, to the State, and the banks that own the State.)
In fact we do this all the time, every time we make an agreement or contract, every time we engage in relationship of any kind. If I agree with you to exchange "a" for "b," I simultaneously compromise/waive my absolute right to give "a" to whomever I please. A good example of such an agreement, wherein absolute rights are compromised or waived, is marriage (as traditionally understood; this is another term which has been much abused and thus lost most of its real meaning).
It can be very educational to study the law, especially the real or "common" law (as opposed to the statutory legal structure by which lawyers et al. make their parasitic livings). The common law, like natural law and what is often called "God's law," is very simple; it can be summed up completely in "Keep your word, and do no harm." In law, there can be no vague "sort-of's" or undecided questions; there has to be a bottom line, a resolution. In real life, someone is responsible for the results of human behavior; an uncompromising effort to think the way through to a real conclusion is very helpful for disciplining the mind.
One of the interesting principles in common law is that of "implied consent." It is assumed that if you are (or claim to be) an adult, you understand that by engaging in certain actions, you waive certain of your rights. For instance, if you kill someone, you waive your own right to life. If you steal, you waive your own absolute right to property, or liberty. If you enter another's property without permission, you waive your own rights (I have no argument in principle with a trespasser being killed - though I'd do it myself only as a last resort). A society where these principles are not clearly understood will collapse into chaos and die. Look around.
How do these ideas apply to the present case? I assume that if a woman is looking for genetic testing to determine who is the father of her child, she would submit samples only from men who have had sex with her. There would be no point in her submitting a sample from a man with whom she had not had sex, as there would be no chance he could be the father. Unless the men who had sex with her were forced to do so, it can be assumed that they did so of their own free will. "Seduction" doesn't count, as no force is involved. No man is "seduced" against his will.
Sex makes babies. Throughout human history, regardless of all the clever tricks and devices people have come up with, sex has always made babies, often when those involved didn't exactly "intend" that outcome. Anyone who doesn't have their head in an anatomically impossible position knows this. Thus, from the point of view of the law (the real Law) it must be assumed that anyone who has sex has given his/her implied consent to any compromise or waiver of his/her rights that might result from the act of producing a child.
As any responsible person knows, "privacy" is only one of the "rights" that will be severely compromised if you cause another human being to come into the world. The solution, if you don't wish your rights to be compromised, is simple: either don't have sex, or have sex only in the context of an agreement with the other party that is serious and comprehensive enough to responsibly handle the possible outcome (it's called "marriage"). For starters, if you don't want to be subjected to the humiliating experience of being placed in a laboratory lineup to figure out which of you studs fathered this child, I'd suggest not having sex with a woman who can't (or won't) keep her panties on.
It's that simple. Life is not a party. Life is about birth and death. One birth = one death, with, usually (so far as I know, always), a lot of suffering between. Whether or not we take it seriously, the consequences will always be serious. We can spend our whole life trying to catch up with the consequences of our actions, or we can take charge of our choices, and our life.
This, I believe, is what any real "men's movement" must be about: turning our attention again to the eternal verities of human life, the difficult truths which feminism fondly imagines can be evaded merely by screaming "Patriarchy!" and booting Daddy out of the family. This is why the "men's movement" I've seen doesn't interest me: it's really a "mama's boy movement," intent on grabbing a "fair share" of the goodies (e.g. "free sex" - ohboyohboy!) which women seem to have "won" by creating an artificial affirmative-action society wherein no one must ultimately be responsible for her behavior. Such a society cannot, will not, last, and its collapse will be no more beneficial for women than for men. Feminism is fundamentally insanity.
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While I understand how one gives up one's right to life when committing murder, I fail to see how I give up my right to privacy by having sex with a woman, even if that sex produces a child. I believe if I were potentially the father of a child that I would, indeed, submit to a paternity test (I would, in fact, demand one simply because I want to be absolutely certain for my own peace of mind that I am the father).
BUT, if for some reason completely unknown I decided that I did NOT want to submit to that test, then my DNA is my DNA and you have no right to take it from me and use it without my permission.
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I understand Andrew's line of reasoning. I believe that in a nutshell he is saying that DNA testing a man who had had sex with a woman who then had a baby is an acceptable invasion of privacy because:
1) The man performed an act that might reasonably lead to the situation that required DNA testing.
2) It's not a fishing expedition. That is, simply DNA testing anyone and everyone until the child's father is found is a clear violation of human rights because most of the men tested will have done nothing that might reasonably have led to the need for the test.
Andrew, correct me if I have it wrong.
I'm not sure that the argument holds up, though. I would use the analogy of a dinner party. You throw a dinner party and invite 10 of your friends. After dinner, you discover that someone has been in your stamp collection and your prized half-penny black is missing.
Do you have the right to search your ten dinner guests looking for your property? Any one of them might have stolen it, and all of the committed an act (coming to the party) that might reasonably have put them in a situation of suspicion. Every time you go to someone else's house there is the possibility that something may go missing and you would be blamed. Is it reasonable (according to common law) to search ten people when only one is guilty of theft? I believe that the law, even common law, would say no.
However, I maintain that if we press this point in the current climate, we will lose the benefits for men of DNA testing. I believe that we can have privacy, or we can have DNA paternity testing. Politically speaking, we can't have our cake and eat it too.
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Nightmist, I must disagree: if you have fathered a child, then your DNA is no longer only your DNA; it is now also the child's DNA. That is exactly why DNA testing can determine paternity. If you wish to dispute that you ever had sex with the mother, you can try to make that case; but if you agree that you did have sex with her (and the time fits), then you could be the father, and your "right to privacy" is no longer yours alone. The child is now inside your line of privacy, as a result of your own free-will act. Your decision to do sex has had, or may have had, life-and-death consequences for another person (the child), and you must face that responsibility.
BusterB: I admit, your analogy did give me some pause. Of course my impulse is to agree that in the case you outline, searching all the dinner guests to find the missing stamp would be excessive, and could not be justified in what I would call the common law (which one of my teachers characterized as "common sense and substance").
So it would seem that you have called my argument seriously into question ... if your analogy is exact. But it is not.
First, with apologies to our Beloved Great Helmsman, sex is not a dinner party. It is precisely because so many people have come to regard it so lightly that these kinds of problems arise. There would be no need for paternity tests if those who indulge in sex were behaving as adults. (I've always found it amusing that the term "adult" is most commonly applied to things - "adult film," "adult bookstore" - that a real adult would have nothing to do with. Truly, we live in a topsy-turvy world.)
Sex differs from a dinner party in that: (a) Birth inevitably results from a certain percentage of sexual encounters, and, due to the peculiarities of human sexual function and behavior, it is difficult (impossible, actually) for human beings to be 100% certain which sexual encounters will result in birth and which will not; thus a human who engages in sex can be assumed to have consented to deal responsibly with the possible consequences, including the necessity (or desire of any of the parties) to establish paternity. While (b) theft is not the inevitable result of a certain percentage of dinner parties - there is no a priori causal relationship between dinner parties and theft - thus someone who attends a dinner party in response to an invitation cannot be assumed to have given prior consent to be searched in the event that a theft (which could have been done by a cat burglar not associated with the dinner party) occurs during the event.
In other words, your analogy doesn't work because it doesn't fit point (1) of your distilled analysis of my argument (with which I would agree). Sex is not a dinner party; sex is birth-and-death.
As a couple of commenters have noted, in the case of birth resulting from sex there is a third party involved as well: the child. The child's interest must rule; i.e. if the child wishes to know who es father is, the child has a right to know, regardless of the wishes of either other party. This is not only some arbitrary human idea; it is natural law. A sane mother must place her child's welfare before her own; a sane father places both mother's and child's welfare before his own. A culture not based on these principles will perish.
As you say, "I believe that we can have privacy, or we can have DNA paternity testing. Politically speaking, we can't have our cake and eat it too." This last is an important principle of common sense, which is the basis of common law. It is not a political matter; even if Congress were to pass a "law" saying you could have your cake and eat it too (I wouldn't be surprised), you still couldn't. This is the difference between Common Law and most of what goes on these days in most legislatures.
Again, the solution is simple:If you wish to retain your privacy inviolate, you are free to not place yourself in a position where it will be endangered. If, by your free will act, you do place yourself in such a position, you cannot claim to be a "victim." Like they say in the joint, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. (Which is not to say that sex per se is a crime; but irresponsible sex can easily become a crime.)
And again, my point is that if we are ever to get out of this mess, someone has to start acting like an adult around here: that is, speaking the truth, and making it stick. Traditionally, that was man's/father's job. If we do not do it, it won't get done. If we do not do it, then we really are, as the feminists like to say, redundant.
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Actually... yes, a child a is made up of half his father's DNA and half his mother's DNA. The science of child creation tells us that when these two DNA combine, a brand new UNIQUE DNA strand is created, which means that the child is an individual, and neither a DNA clone of the father nor the mother. And if the child is an individual, then the father is also an individual and retains his privacy rights as such. That's my view on it.
Also, "if you wish to retain your privacy inviolate, you are free to not place yourself in a position where it will be endangered" is true. HOWEVER, you could also say "if you don't want to get killed by a drunk driver at some point in your life then you are free to stay off the highways."
I determine what happens to my body, and if I ever were in a situation where my privacy were violated by a woman's surreptitiously stealing my DNA for testing (even if that DNA testing benefitted me by either proving I am the father or proving I'm not), I would be filing an invasion of privacy suit against the child's mother.
The invasion of privacy argument is not about men trying to get out of fatherhood, my friends. It's about men trying to protect one of the few rights we have left in this country.
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Wow, I never would have guessed that this post would have generated as much discussion as it has. Just goes to show you that this is certainly an issue that society is going to have to work out.
I guess my main concern when I spoke of informed consent was the fact that this test could be done without the man's knowledge. I think that if a woman has a reasonable question as to whether a particular man is the father of one of her children then she (and the child) have a right to determine this. However I think the appropriate approach for her would be to 1) ask him, maybe he'll agree or 2) if he doesn't agree then go to court and get an order for one.
I guess it wasn't so much informed consent as rather people have a right to know when their DNA is being tested. This sort of transparency is critical to prevent corruption.
As for the situation of a 'father' who doubts his paternity, DNA could be ethically taken from the child since a parent has a right to make decisions on behalf of the child. However if the mother has custodial rights as well, then she has a right to be informed of the fact that DNA is being taken from the child and for what purposes since she too is responsible for the child.
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Sorry, Nightmist, neither your reasoning nor your analogy holds water. It's not about some hair-splitting argument over the nature of a child's DNA; the point is that your actions (assuming that you are the putative father in this case) have had life-and-death consequences for another human being. You are no longer an island, totally independent of all other beings (you never really were, but that's another essay). Time to grow up.
As for the drunk driver analogy, it misses the mark. True, you have no control over whether another driver on the road is drunk, just as you have no control over the sexual behavior of a woman with whom you have no agreements. But you do have control over whether you get in a car with a drunk driver, and you do have control over whether you copulate with a promiscuous woman; in either case, the consequences are your responsibility.
Being a man is fundamentally a matter of responsibility. That is the difference between a child and an adult: responsibility. Being a feminist is about not being responsible: it's all the patriarchy's fault. You can be a child or a man, but not both. Maintaining a habit of looking for ways to evade responsibility is not an effective path to manhood.
Should such a suit ever be filed, I would hope it would be dismissed; if it were not, that would be another sad sign of the degeneration of our society. The reason we are losing so many rights is precisely because so few people understand that rights entail responsibilities. It is not by accident we have all been taught, by women in government-run schools, that "rights" are something we "deserve" regardless of our behavior. This is a lie, designed to prevent our growing up.
I am all for defending the right to privacy, but only on solid ground. Mounting an ignorant, untenable defense only weakens it further. The way to protect and maintain the rights we have left, and regain those we've lost, is to start a Responsibility Revolution. It begins in our own lives, each one of us.
Matthew: Certainly people have a right, in human society, to know when their DNA is being tested. However, once one has made a decision to live like a chimpanzee (female chimps are indiscriminately promiscuous when in heat; male chimps "get lucky" whenever they can and show no concern about paternity), it is a little incongruous to become incensed over fine points of etiquette which would never arise in chimpanzee society. Among chimpanzees, there are no "rights."
Expecting the woman in this story to be so solicitous of a man's rights is nonsensical; she's already demonstrated that she's fundamentally irresponsible. Get down with the mud people, don't be surprised when you get muddy. There just ain't no free nooky.
If we want to have a society where concepts such as "rights" are understood and honored, it must be a fully human society. Being fully human requires effort; if one is unwilling to make that effort, it is pointless to claim a right to its rewards. You pays yo' money and you takes yo' choice.
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Excuse me, Andrew, but I do believe that people deserve rights and that your rights as a human being are not dependent upon your ability to act responsibly. Using your logic, we could deny an accused man his right to due process because we've already convicted him in our minds, decided he was not acting responsibly, and therefore has no rights.
Yes, it would be nice if everyone could act responsibly. However, the facts are that many people do not. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
You see, responsibility has nothing to do with whether or not I am granted basic human rights. Responsibility has everything to do with whether I am allowed certain priveleges, like driving. And we all know that there's a big difference between right and privelege.
As for hair-splitting DNA arguments, Andrew, you brought up the DNA. I was merely responding with scientific fact.
Here's my case: I agree with you that if a man fathers a child he is responsible for that child, but responsibility and right to privacy are not mutually exclusive. If a mother wants to invade a man's privacy to prove he is the father of her child, it should be done through court ordered testing, not shady privacy violating shenanigans.
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Nightmist,
I think that what Matthew is arguing (and I agree with him) is that we do not all know that there is a big difference between right and privilege. In particular, feminism latterly has been about turning priveleges into rights or, if you wish, watering down the word "rights" so that it includes almost anything.
I have heard countless people banging on about their "rights" when in fact they're talking about anything but: privileges, rewards, desires, fears, ... the list goes on and on. Matthew is right: as a society, we've lost sight of what are "rights" and what are merely things we want (and don't want to work for).
Certainly, to deny a man a job because of the colour of his skin is a violation of his rights, but does this mean that a man has a "right" to a job? Has he a "right" to be promoted? Does a woman have a "right" to be president of a company? Recently the UN signed a declaration saying that children had a "right" to an education; in a dirt-poor country that can't even afford to feed its population, what does this "right" mean? Anything at all? Is it anything more than a goal or a vision?
I have a right to security of my person. I have a right to my privacy, but at the same time this right is not absolute: it's situational. That right is swept aside if the police arrest me for a crime, even if I'm innocent. My right to privacy and security of person is superceded by society's (i.e. everyone else's) right to security: the right to reasonable measures that are sufficiently effective to catch criminals. Almost every one of those measures violates my rights, but I tolerate that because if I didn't, the police would be impotent and the civilized society in which I live would collapse.
However, there are many who would argue that individuals' rights should never be superceded by those of the society in which they live. (And most of them are lawyers, which is one reason we have such disdain for lawyers.) In an nutshell, the concept of what is a "right", what is not a "right", and how far our "rights" extend is not obvious and not cast in stone, which is what makes this discussion so interesting.
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And most of them are lawyers, which is one reason we have such disdain for lawyers.) In an nutshell, the concept of what is a "right", what is not a "right", and how far our "rights" extend is not obvious and not cast in stone, which is what makes this discussion so interesting.
Actually, those who argue for the rights of individuals over society are--in the U.S.--generally labeled either conservatives or libertarians. Those who argue for society over individual rights are labeled liberals.
I am no lawyer, but I most definitely believe that the rights of an individual are more important than our liberally skewed society likes to believe. Yes, there are times when a balance must be struck, but the group should not (nor does it) always prevail.
And in this case, in my opinion, my right to privacy is more important than a woman's conniving attempts to deprive me of it.
Consider this: what if a woman decides she wants a particular man (because of his net worth or whatever) to be the father of her child, but she's slept with two men, either of whom could be the father. She surreptitiously gathers DNA from both men, then two samples from the child, and sends them off to be tested, unbeknownst to either potential father.
Now, let's say the DNA tests come back and the man she doesn't want turns out to be the father... what's to stop her from simply applying the name of the father she wants to the wrong DNA? There's one more good reason that DNA testing should be consensual or court ordered. THAT's the shady side I've been talking about. If the test is done with my DNA without my consent, then I cannot possibly believe it is factual.
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