State's registry for potential fathers is odd but means well

Virginia is a state of illusions. Politicians who run Virginia are astigmatic old people whose vision is blurred with the stigma of past bias and secrets hidden behind church going fervor.
Religious fervor undermines the imposition of creative forward looking ideas beneficial to Virginia's growth as a modern state.
The main growth product in Virginia appear to be churches and prisons. Faith based laws permeate the General Assembly while back room deals suck tax payer monies out of the treasury.
Religious people seek to force others to their thinking. Daddy law is one way to peek into the homelife of others ensuring they toe the line-so to speak.

We now have a website where a man can claim he slept with a woman...doesn't have to prove it, mind...and it becomes a government record?

Did anyone ask if it violates womens' right to provide a government sponsored billboard where men can tell everyone the names of women who've slept with them? I wouldn't want my boyfriend to advertise and anyway, who's to say people who sign up are even telling the truth? Couldn't a group of teenage boys trying to slander a classmate simply all log on and say they've slept with her? What about a nut who wants his ex girlfriend back and finds out she's pregnant, so he signs up and says he recently slept with her? Is he then granted the right to keep her from giving up the child for adoption or having the baby's real father on the birth certificate? Could the freak get visitation for claiming to have slept with her?

If they cannot find the fleet-footed father, then just make the sponsors of this bill the default daddies.

This is closely akin to the muslim thing of making the women slaves of the man and making them walk around like third class citizens. Not allowed to even show their face in public. Welcome to the real world. I will not have a man dictate to me that I will have to spend nine months of agony and then be forced to be tied down with his baby while he skips out on paying child support or even visiting with the kid from time to time. Fact is Social Services doesn't have the ability to force an ex-husband and bio-dad to pay child support. Now you want to give them the authority to keep a list of who is having sex with who and then forcing a woman to have a child she doesn't want while they can't seem to force the man to pay support.

So, my girlfriend and I have been living together for three years. She just became pregnant. We planned the pregnancy. We also plan to get married, but she does not want a ceremony with a "belly." Does that mean I must register online with the possibility that we have some destructive break up and she does not list me as the father on the birth certificate? Does this new law automatically take away my rights just because I didn't go to some website that I may never have known existed?

"Father's Rights" that is the biggest joke I have ever heard... The only "right" an unmarried father has is to pay child support. Fathers will have rights the same day white men have a television channel created "just for them". And that is not meant as a racial put down in anyway. That's just how this society works. The more "privileged" individuals loss certain rights and are expected to just deal with it... You all know what I'm talking about and I doubt few will admit it but I could care less what people think about me. We kid ourselves to think we are all treated as equals.

Does anyone else thinks it's a little less than fair that women have all the rights, receiving child support, the right to choose whether or not to have a baby (abortion), adoption, etc, and men have none? I'm not saying I want men to be able to tell a woman she can't have her baby, but I can't help thinking if she can decide she isn't ready for whatever reason, maturity, money, or anything else, why does he have no choice in what his role will be? We all know it takes two to tango so she isn't some "innocent victim" of pregnancy. Often times though, the father becomes a victim. With condoms, birth control, and abortion rights for women, I think it's about time men get equal rights on this front.

Why don't they put the money they are spending on this stupid idea towards our transportation fund? No wonder they can't find enough money for our roads.

I'm with you Kerry; our General Assembly needs to develop ways to castigate the dawdling daddies - how ridiculous, or better yet, cockeyed !

Here is a scenerio, a woman wants an abortion and doesn't tell the father she is pregnant. Can this "registry" be used to protect the father's rights in this case? Can he choose to be a father and block the abortion? My guess... No way in heck... Is this the feable attempt to allow fathers to have a choice in a childs life when so many seem not have choices? How about making women responsible for knowing the potential father as well. Is this really giving men rights to be fathers? All we have is the right not to be a father by being abstinent. Whats next? Mandatory DNA samples from all male newborns so they can be identified in the future as potential fathers? Regardless of it's purpose, this is just a bad idea...

Here is a scenerio, a woman wants an abortion and doesn't tell the father she is pregnant. Can this "registry" be used to protect the father's rights in this case? Can he choose to be a father and block the abortion? My guess... No way in heck... Is this the feable attempt to allow fathers to have a choice in a childs life when so many seem not have choices? How about making women responsible for knowing the potential father as well. Is this really giving men rights to be fathers? All we have is the right NOT to be a father by being abstinent. Whats next? Mandatory DNA samples from all male newborns so they can be identified in the future as potential fathers? Regardless of it's purpose, this is just a bad idea...

Kerry, you call it odd, but I call it ridiculous. If a man has had sex either once or multiple times with a woman and fathers a child, the inescapable biological fact is that the child born of this union has known maternity but unknown paternity unless the man admits. Now if a man has sex with a woman and she leaves him--no, he may not know whether he has fathered a child but he is also off the hook for any potential child support. I work in "the system" and I think the real reason for the registry is to collect child support via paternity testing. If a man puts his name on the registry and his partner was on welfare, you can bet Child Support Enforcement will be calling him. Pretty weird legislative session we had last time, huh?

Sounds like you'd like to eliminate the word "fornication" from the dictionary and pretend babies get dropped off by storks in the middle of the night. Rather than fixate on the fornication-is-a-misdemeanor issue, maybe you ought to realize there are some fathers who want to be involved in their child's life. You ought to re-examine some of your bass-ackward male hang-ups, Kerry. Be an advocate for kids knowing who their fathers are, especially if those fathers want to be positive influences in their lives. Labeling fathers as "fornicators" and "criminals" only suggests you're living in a dream world. Many kids aren't created on 500 thread sheets in five star hotels. That doesn't mean their father's parental rights should be waived.

Must be summer time blues. Sounds like something that old fruitcake John Ashcroft would have dreamed up. Maybe they can tie this into the Patriotic Act. How about a registry of easy women. Now you could really sell that. Call it the state's "Little Black Book".
Oh God! I just had a flashback of Ashcroft singing "America the beautiful".

We have a registry for lost golf balls or socks? That would really help.

"If they know a baby's on the way and then disappear, they aren't fathers, they're what's known as sperm donors."

And the women who allowed these men to "donate" sperm, what would you call them, Kerry? Sperm receptacles? Tramps?

A woman who has sex with a man under those circumstances, without a long-term, monogamous commitment, why not a registry for them, too? We could call it "tramp-net"

Kerry makes a good point that a law that encourages others to admit a crime without warning even if the crime in not enforced is silly. But why don't women have to register? Doesn't the law violate women's privacy rights? Is a false registration slander? As a divorce/custody attorney, I can tell you that women leave just as often as men. A lot of women don't want the father to know he is a father. Abortions are done without the father ever knowing his unborn child was killed. I can see the state granting an adoption without notifying the father even when he is known, simply because they checked the registration and didn't see his name. Also, does Kerry imply that one-nighters are ok for women but not men?

... of stupidity.

VA Department of Social Services can't seem to even attempt to make an effort to find deadbeat dads yet they are going to waste time and funds on this foolishness? My wife's ex-husband is over $60,000 in the rears. Repeated phone calls and efforts to get the Department of Social Services to enforce the court order yeilds no positive results. As much as I love the kids, it really ticks me off knowing I'm doing without to cover for a deadbeat who shuns his responsibility. To add insult to injury, when it comes time for them to try and get student aid for college, my income is figured into the equation. I'd love to see you do an article on that one Kerry. Thanks for keeping us informed of the knuckleheaded moves of our govt. Great job.

"Frankly, I think we're being too kind to these men. Guys who don't stick around long enough to find out whether they've caused a pregnancy have terminated their paternal rights." Kerry - Why assume that it's the guys that don't stick around? Only men can have 'innapropriate' relations? Frankly, I think that most guys would want to know if they fathered a child. Sure, there are guys that run when a woman gets pregnant. But what if two people have gone their separate ways before she finds out she's pregnant? I think the registry is a joke - it's going to make it easier for a woman to put a child up for adoption without attempting to contact the father. Fathers have responsibilities, but they should also have rights.

I believe the courts struck down Virginia's fornication law. But still, what is a proud papa going to do if he has had a close encounter with a minor? Or a gal who was drunk? Conceivably, a lot of fathers could unwittingly set themselves up for some double trouble. --Sorry about the choice of words! :)

First of all, a correction. Two weeks ago you directly compared the dangerous dog registry and sex offender registry and put them in the same useless category. Twice since, you've pretended to say that you think the sex offender registry is a good thing. That being said, what I want to know is why aren't they asking women to register as a cross check? What does this mean anyway? That women have sex with so many men that they can't keep up with who they are, so they have to have the state compile a list? But, this is not about that blocking adoption, it's about future tracking for child support, we all know that. Not saying that's wrong, but let's call it for what it really is.

Not sure how many guys are gonna jump on this bad boy.Ill say this. Fathers and mother need to be held more accountable when it comes to raising their offspring. Im tired of people having all the fun of sex,without the responsibilities of what happens next while taxpayers pay for their kids and the adoption process. Adoption should be a last resort. I dont care if your "down on your luck " , living in poverty or just regretful and lazy.