Monday, August 19, 2002

A story released today by CNSNews.com reports that a small band of Australian men who feel betrayed by their wives, government and legal system are taking to the streets with a controversial campaign they say aims to protect marriage and family.

The organization known as the Blackshirts regards itself as an embryonic political movement seeking to overturn injustices suffered by Australian parents - usually men - denied custody of their children after their marriages break down.

Its immediate targets are men and women held responsible for breaking up a family - adulterous spouses and their lovers, both heterosexual or homosexual - especially where the parent who had the affair wins custody of the children.

The Blackshirts' activities typically include small demonstrations in which uniformed members hand out pamphlets and use a megaphone to draw attention to "those in the neighborhood who are committing these unsavory acts." The hope is to intimidate the third-party "intruders" to leave.

"We're not here to win a popularity contest, we're here to carry out a duty," said Blackshirts leader John Abbot, a 56-year old music producer.

That duty, as he saw it, was to fight back on behalf of parents - usually, but not always, fathers - who had been let down by the Family Court, "one of the most evil institutions in history."

He said judges overwhelmingly decide in favor of the mother keeping the children, irrespective of her behavior or role in the marriage breakdown.

Furthermore, it was not uncommon for women to accuse their husbands falsely of violence or even child abuse in order to win custody or deny the father visitation rights, he said.

"In Australia, and elsewhere too, marriage has come to have less value than any other legal contract, when it should be the most important of all of them."

Abbott said the system was responsible for corrupting children by destroying the concepts of family, adult responsibilities and adult morality.

The Blackshirts have inevitably been likened to the Italian and British fascist groups of that name in the 1920s and 1930s. Some critics have gone so far as call its logo - which features two boomerangs against the stars on the Australian flag - "swastika-like."

"It looks like a fascist organization [and] it acts like one," a Melbourne magistrate said last week as he heard a request by two women - Abbott called them lesbians - to order the Blackshirts to stay away from them.

Abbott shrugged off the "fascist" epithet. He said the uniforms were intended to show the group was "fighting" and determined, and black symbolized the mourning for the institutions of marriage and family.

He favors a historical antecedent that goes back a lot further than the 1920s and 1930s - to 480 BC, when 300 Spartans heroically defended a narrow pass in northern Greece against a vast Persian army. The small band died to the last man.

"They were prepared to lay down their lives for their homes and families, and so are we."