Letter to Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels on March 19, 2004

 

 

 

            I read your op-ed in the Seattle Times explaining your decision to issue an executive order requiring City agencies to recognize marriages between same gender couples.

            I agree.

            I am gratified that you understand it as a measure of the equal protection of the laws our Constitution commands.

            But of course, homosexual people are not the only people denied equal protection of the laws in family law.

            Parents who have been deprived of custody of our children are not only deprived the normal recognitions of the law, but we are the target of a massive government sponsored hate campaign that would be unprecedented were it not for the Nazi hate campaign against the Jews.  True, we are not torturing and killing people in death camps just yet, but that is not the first thing the Nazis did.  The first thing the Nazis did was to arbitrarily strip all people with two or more Jewish grandparents of their citizenship of Germany.  Because this restriction was based on ancestry, an unchangeable fact, those so targeted could not escape the prohibition by converting to other religions.  The consequence of this was the non-renewal of numerous licenses that required citizenship, of Germany or its neighbors.  Being German, these Jews were not citizens of the neighboring states, who, out of a desire to get along with the Nazi regime, would be very reluctant to naturalize any German Jews.

            I bring this up because earlier today, I argued before Judge Richard A. Jones, a black man who happens to be a younger brother of the famous musician Quincy Jones, who perhaps had his law school education paid for at least in part by that wealthy musician, my challenge to license suspension solely for not being able to comply with an unreasonable child support order.  The briefs that I filed can be found at www.antipeonage.0catch.com/586746.htm

            At oral argument I read the following quote from Justice Louis Brandeis' famous dissent in the Olmstead case:

 

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."

 

And that is the entire problem with the Child Support Crusade as it presently exists.  We have the Antipeonage Act.  Either the phrase in 42 U.S.C. §1994 "debt or obligation, or otherwise" includes child support or the criminal provision, 18 U.S.C. §1581, is void for vagueness. But it is not just a matter of such slavery and involuntary servitude.  Molotov Pauling was judged by our state Supreme Court to be guilty of the crime of extortion.  There was a $5,000 judgment entered against his former girlfriend.  A court actually found that she owed him that amount.  To collect, he threatened to publish on the Internet pictures of her engaged in various and sundry activities and that this would embarrass her.

            This was found to be adequate proof of the crime of extortion.

            I would submit that license suspension prohibiting the operation of motor vehicles and imprisonment for contempt, contrary to the imprisonment for debt provision of the state constitution that we throw aside if it is child support, backed up by the enforcement power of all of the police officers in the state, is a far more serious coercive threat.

            Yet when Lloyd Corgan of the King County Prosecutor's Office does it, we give him a paycheck drawn off the public treasury.  Molotov Pauling can draw a paycheck off the public treasury if he works in the license plate shop.

            And that is the rub.  Say that the judgment for five grand against Pauling's girlfriend was for child support and all other facts are the same.  Wouldn't he still be guilty of the crime of extortion?

            And if he is, then why are we allowing the government to do that which is a crime when Pauling or I or any private citizen does it?

            If Molotov Pauling told his girlfriend, "I tell you what.  You go get a job, any job I don't care where, who you work for, or what you do, and pay me half of your paycheck until the $5000 is paid, I will not post those pictures on the Net" he not only would be subject to prosecution for extortion, but he could be prosecuted for peonage.

            That is the problem with the way we enforce child support, it is the government committing a crime.

            Mr. Nickels, if you show the same consideration for the constitutional rights of noncustodial parents and the rule of law that you have shown for gay people, then I would become your biggest supporter.  All I ask is an executive order declaring that: "License suspensions based solely on child support are not legitimate and are completely unconstitutional, no better than the Nazi Hate campaign against the Jews, and therefore I order the Seattle Police Department and every other employee of the City to not interfere in the operation of motor vehicles by noncustodial parents unless the DOL can confirm that their licenses were suspended for reasons OTHER than child support.  I further order the payroll department to cease co-operating with the Division of Child Support and to cease honoring support garnishments against City employees.  If such City employees wish to continue paying support, they are, of course, free to do so.  I further order the Seattle Police Department and all other City employees to not co-operate in any way with the King County Sheriff's Department when they endeavor to execute an arrest warrant issued on the basis of child support, for such arrest is the crime defined by 18 U.S.C. §1581 and is contrary to Article I Section 17 of the Washington Constitution.  A call for back-up from such deputies so engaged shall not be granted, other than to protect the citizen from such a patently illegal arrest."

            You do that Mayor Nickels, and we will be able to say that you are not a hypocrite!  Indeed, you will have actually EARNED the title United States Citizen, a far greater honor than Mayor of Seattle.

            You are absolutely right, a leader leads, he does not make excuses and he does not wait for others to lead.

 

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