Dan Scott writes, "If you are a Maryland voter be warned that a serious threat to your basic civil rights has been offered for your approval this election year in November 2002. The referendum is asking to you amend the State of Maryland’s Constitution to allow District Commissioners after normal business hours to remove people from
"their homes" under the guise of domestic violence accusations." See the Read More section below for the rest of Dan's submission.

Continuing the Men's Health America campaign to end the neglect of men in new heart disease programs by the NIH, a sample letter to Claude L'Enfant, medical director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, should be used as a model to help bring attention to this injustice. A letter by David Burroughs of Maryland has also been posted to the MHA mailing list. It only takes a few minutes to write, so please do so. Our tax dollars are paying for this biased program, and we have a right to take issue with this.

Scott Haltzman writes "This article reviews an Austrailian study. Bottom line: men count."

"[T]he extent of a father's involvement in caring for a child between birth to five years old was found to be more influential on a child's ability to cooperate and obey instructions when they started school."

"She said policy debates about child care had placed too much emphasis on a mother's role in parenting at the father's expense."

The latest article by Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson is out.

"California Governor Gray Davis had the chance to free thousands of falsely condemned men last week. He chose federal funds instead."

Since I went away this weekend on a trip, the web and mail server of course had to have problems. The hard drive filled up with irrelevant log messages sometime Saturday and ground the system to a halt. Mail has been delayed, but should get through eventually within the next 24 hours. The web site is running cleanly again, so hopefully things are back to normal. Thanks everyone for your patience...

SJones writes "A new study on the effects of marriage by researchers in Australia has found that the 1972 claim (that men benefit from marriage at the expense of women) was false. In fact, both men and women reap similar mental health benefits." This story may be found at yahoo.

Mitchell Smith writes in pointing out this story focusing on paternity laws at ABCNews.com.

"The paternity debate is heating up in the courts, too. Two men recently attempted and failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their cases after lower courts ruled they must continue paying support for children who turned out not to be theirs. One, Carnell Smith of Decatur, Ga., is trying to recoup more than $40,000 from his ex-girlfriend after learning three years ago that her 13-year-old daughter is not his."

The Men's Health America list has three recent criticisms of the National Institutes of Health and bias in their heart disease programs. Despite the fact that men have approx. 50% higher risk of death from heart disease, the NIH has underrepresented men in heart disease studies, has more sex-specific publications for women than for men about heart disease, and is currently readying a special heart disease awareness campaign targeted at women, but not men. This is about men dying, folks. We all need to make some noise over this injustice, and physicians and others in the medical field have a deep obligation to speak out and demand more attention to heart disease in men. Educate yourself with these three MHA postings - one, two, three. And then take a moment and write.

chicago joe writes "This is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper has given us a golden opportunity to be heard. To raise awareness and education about domestic violence, the newspaper is running an essay contest to hear men and women discuss personal stories concerning DV, and more importantly, present ideas on how to diminish it. The winners of the essay contest must be from Illinios and will be honored at a women's forum at the end of the month. While I know we are not interested in winning any contest, the opportunity to e-mail a major newspaper and flood them with statistics and research concerning abused men is an opportunity that should not be passed up." See the Read More section for some strategic tips chicago joe suggests, as well as where to e-mail your essay/information.

Kristin Prolux of the Concord Monitor wrote an outstanding article on the current status of the NH Commission on the Status of Men. She informs readers of the controversial nomination of Scott Hampton, and the most recent nomination of Neal Boutin, who I understand works directly in child support enforcement and is trying to enact significant reform in this area to improve fairness to non-custodial parents. Update: The Union Leader, NH's largest newspaper, also printed a story today on the NHCSM. I've been wondering when they'd finally give it some attention.

SJones writes "A Nashville woman used her fingernails to rip off the testicle of her sleeping boyfriend in a case of blatant sexual battery which was only prosecuted as domestic violence and only resulted in an arrest due to outstanding warrants against the violent female sexual predator. This is a case of blatant sex discrimination by the attorney general's office in that the attack is clearly sexual battery and has not been prosecuted as such. The article, buried in the back pages of the Tennessean, is found here. Contact the Governor of Tennessee and complain about the failure of the prosecutor and police to charge this sex offender with sexual battery. This exact crime, the ripping off of men's testicles by women using only their hands, is becoming more and more frequent as no prosecutor has ever filed appropriate charges. In fact, this is the only case I have found in which the woman served any jail time at all, and that was only because of mandatory domestic violence arrest laws and her outstanding warrants. She got away with committing a crime of sexual violence and will not be forced to register as a sex offender as she should be." Could anyone dig up the contact info for the TN Governor, and perhaps the AG who has jurisdiction in this case?

Due to the generosity of several individuals, Mensactivism.org has received the full $200 in donations which were matched with another $200 from Richard Cann. I'm in the process of getting permission to name the donors who contributed during this time, but felt it was important to announce that the matching fund drive is over so people were aware of this fact. I'm humbled that people completed this drive so quickly, and cannot thank you all enough. Update: The following people are to be thanked as generous supporters of Mensactivism.org: Marc Angelucci, Steve Imparl, Thomas Parker, Luke Brackett, Christopher Fritz, David H, K.S, Anonymous1, Anonymous2 (member of NCFM-LA), and of course, Richard Cann.

Steve writes "Scott Haltzman and I will host this week's MANN chat, Wednesday night (10/2), starting at 9:30 PM Eastern Time, at the usual location. The topic for this chat will be "War with Iraq: A Men's Activism Issue." They're in the news daily: war, Iraq, the draft, weapons of mass destruction, inspections, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. All of these points ignore--or at least understate--the simple reality. If the United States (and its allies) go to war, it will be men dying, and men killing men. We can debate foreign policy and national security until we are blue in the face, but a war with Iraq still means a lot of dead men. Join us at this week's MANN chat to discuss why the prospect of war in Iraq is an important men's issue. Invite some friends to the chat, too!"

Men's Health America has released a special report called Heart Disease: Why Are Men Still at Higher Risk of Death. This informative posting includes some statistics on heart disease, factors that have affected the rates of heart disease, and most importantly, why men are at such higher risk for death from heart disease. It will serve as good material to draw on for an upcoming activism project that MHA is doing.

Dan Lynch writes "Joe Manthey has come out with an article that coincides with every thing I have been saying for a while now. I really like the way he puts this piece together and shows up Michael Moore for what Michael is really doing "Curing Sexism with Sexism"?!. Duh! Anyways I want people to look at this piece objectively. Try to not see the points about racial hate crimes as a tit for tat but to see how misconceptions create hostility; hence, more crime and division."