Letters to the Editor

Change Virginia Law To Promote Fathers
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Regarding Del. Bill Janis' recent Commentary column, "Success Requires Thousands of Fathers": Janis is correct about the importance of fathers, but more is needed than marriage education. Virginia's family law system incentivizes family breakup, fatherlessness, and marriage avoidance.

Decisions to marry and divorce are not only about love but are also about financial considerations and children. With the elimination of fault-based divorce 40 years ago, there is no longer any moral basis for deciding where the kids reside and who receives property, child support, or alimony payments after divorce.

Child custody is particularly hard on fathers. Standard judicial practice is to allow children only every other weekend and two weeks in the summer with their fathers. Fathers are actually penalized in child custody hearings for being in more traditional families, while a mother's adultery, addiction, or mental illness is often dismissed or prohibited from being considered.

Tied directly to child custody is child support. Financial incentives limit a child's time with his or her father because as child custody time goes down, child support goes up. Child support policy in the middle class is the same failed policy that devastated low-income families prior to welfare reform -- financially rewarding mothers to reduce children's time with their fathers.

Men increasingly realize that even if they are responsible, in an unwanted divorce, they are likely to lose significant time with their children and face high rates of child support. Facing these incentives, they are increasingly reluctant to marry.

If real progress is to be made not only in reducing poverty, but also with the increasing problem of fatherlessness in the middle class, then the perverse incentives of family law can and must be addressed.

Ron Grignol.
Alexandria.

As a health care provider, I never though I would say this, but it's time for a new system. The No. 1 rule should be that insurance companies be barred by law from playing any role whatsoever. Insurance companies save no lives and provide no direct patient care, yet they take a large chunk of every health care dollar. That chunk could be used to finance universal health care right now.

The problem with government is that when it fixes health care, it just tinkers with the old system. That doesn't work -- it never will. It's time for a single-payer system, just like every other Western society has. Yes, it will cause discomfort, especially for those of us who now have excellent health benefits, but for the broad spectrum of Americans from top to bottom, it can't be worse than the system we now have.

Mark A. Corbelli.
Richmond.

In terms of the Gospel message, that focus is also spiritual. The issue of personal property rights is a temporary, materialistic matter distinctly separate from core Christian beliefs -- love for others and love for God. Goddard's attempt at rewriting both America's founding and the Bible's cumulative message to resolve her political thought with her religious tradition does no service to either religious tolerance or the individual liberty she purports to espouse.

It is the freedom of religion that has attracted people of all kinds to the United States to pursue happiness. While individual freedom, in general, is central to our successful economic model (despite the recent downturn), no one religious belief system can claim credit.

Jeffrey S. Fowler.
Richmond.

Simply rewrite Virginia history so that it begins when Tim Kaine became governor. Our children would be relieved of the burden of learning the extensive unpleasantness of our past. This solution has the further advantage of emphasizing the modern concepts of thinking in terms of the multicultural collective. At the same time, it minimizes the obsolete ideas of individual excellence and achievement.

Virginia history would become so easy that testing costs would be trivial. This is a win-win situation which our governor should embrace. How about it, tovarishch?

Thomas J. Kunsitis.
Richmond.