Richard Bennett

— In the California Legislature, bill passage from committees and the floor requires a certain fixed number of votes: 41 on the Assembly floor, 21 in the Senate, and a majority of all members of a committee. So the best way to hurt a bill a member doesn’t like without going on record in opposition is to abstain from voting. Like a ‘no’ vote, an abstention doesn’t count toward the total needed for passage. Feminist Democrats opposed to AB 2240, the bill by Rod Wright that relieved men falsely charged with paternity from the obligation to support another man’s child, drew an extremely large number of abstentions in the Assembly, one by the bill’s most vocal critic, lesbian Jackie Goldberg. This article from
The Stockton Record explains:

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, argued against the bill but withheld her vote rather than voting “no.”

She said a man whose only relationship with a child has been as sender of monthly court-ordered checks should be let off the hook if a DNA test shows he is not the biological father. But she doesn’t like the idea that someone learning the truth during a divorce might decide he no longer wants to support a child whom for years he has taken as his own.

“If you say that DNA is the only determinant of fatherhood, you narrow the whole scope of what fatherhood is,” Goldberg said. “You reduce the father to a sperm donor, and if we do that, then why do we need you at all?

“Fatherhood,” she said, “is a relationship.”
And, she said, letting judges sort out those finer points may not solve the problem, since “the bench is still predominately male.”

“I know how these things end,” said Goldberg, who represents urban Los Angeles. “They end with a woman and a child in poverty.”

She said she wasn’t surprised so many Democratic women “stayed off” the bill. And many other women around the Capitol also understood.

The sole determinant of “motherhood” in such cases is biology, of course, which creates problems for lesbians who’ve raised a sperm-donor child together. The mother has custody rights, but the partner doesn’t unless she formally adopts the child. This is a background issue for Goldberg, but not the only reason for her vote.

A list of the 21 abstainers can be found here. Some of the notables include:

Goldberg
Dion Aroner, Goldberg’s college roommate.
Manny Diaz, smeared by an opponent as a deadbeat dad.
Carole Migden, San Francisco lesbian
Tim Leslie, ultra-conservative
Joe Simitian, Santa Clara Assemblyman

San Diego lesbian Christine Kehoe voted for the bill, so it wasn’t so much a question of a lesbian position on paternity driving the opposition as a callous disregard for justice.

— Dan Walters, the dean of Capitol reporters in Sacramento, reports that Assemblyman Wright’s DNA bill has cleared the Assembly (Men gain a rare victory in political gender war as DNA bill passes)

The election of more women to the Legislature — itself largely a product of term limits — and the major influence that women’s rights advocates have achieved within the dominant Democratic Party have tilted the political balance in the war between the sexes toward women in recent years.

A landmark domestic relations policy change occurred when the Legislature imposed tougher standards on child support — so tough, in fact, that it sparked creation of men’s rights groups. They complained that divorced dads, even conscientious ones, are being treated like criminals, subject to having their wages seized arbitrarily and having visitation rights ignored.

In 1996, the men won one, after a fashion, when the Legislature passed and then-Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation declaring alimony to be temporary support aimed at making recipients become self-supporting “within a reasonable period of time.” And it would allow their alimony to be terminated if they failed to move toward self-support. Women’s rights groups didn’t like it, saying it could allow ex-spouses — women overwhelmingly — to be hauled into court and threatened with cutoff of their support payments if they didn’t return to school or get jobs.

The groups that opposed the new alimony law tried to have it repealed, but could not win as long as Wilson remained governor.

“The only collection of women who oppose this bill are second wives,” then-Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl said as she urged a repeal.

In 1999, after Gray Davis succeeded Wilson as governor and Democrats had achieved larger legislative majorities, Kuehl and other women’s rights champions in the Legislature pushed through a repeal, which Davis signed.

Last year, Davis and other Democrats delivered another victory to the distaff side of the gender war when they enacted a Kuehl-carried bill that would void any prenuptial agreements unless the spouses were represented by attorneys or waived that right.

The measure was sparked by a state Supreme Court decision upholding the prenuptial agreement signed by the former wife of baseball star Barry Bonds, even though she was not represented by an attorney.

The men won a rare skirmish in the state Assembly on Tuesday when it voted 51-3 to make it easier for men to challenge child-support orders when DNA tests prove that they are not the biological fathers of the children involved.

The measure is backed by men’s rights groups, and advocates, including its author, Assemblyman Rod Wright, D-Los Angeles, said it was a matter of fundamental fairness, likening it to DNA tests that free wrongly convicted prisoners. But critics said it would plunge more children into poverty, and Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said it would resurrect the “age-old double standard.”

The Wright bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, and even if it clears that hurdle, an uncertain fate in Davis’ hands. He’s quite aware that he needs female voters to win re-election.

This bill says that men who’ve been falsely claimed to have fathered children that they did not in fact father can be released from their child support obligation after undergoing DNA testing. While this should be completely non-controversial — you can’t be a deadbeat dad if you aren’t a dad — the lawmakers quoted have held it up for three years, and it’s still a long way from becoming a law.

For bonus points, guess what the sexual orientation of lawmakers Sheila Kuehl and Jackie Goldberg is, and why they care about child support; for extra-bonus points, guess which side the National Center for Lesbian Rights took. Go to the bill analysis and scroll to the bottom.

But seriously, folks, how is this a victory for men over women? Since when does the right of children, both male and female, to know who their father is have to take a back seat to the right of their mothers to collect money from some random guy who had nothing to do with their being brought into this world? It’s sad that fundamental justice and equity has to be cast in terms of gender war. That’s Sacramento for you.

Historical footnote: the last time Wright tried to pass this bill, 1999, one of his chief witnesses in support was former Berkeley radical Art Goldberg, Jackie’s brother.