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 espite
feminist wails, National Fatherhood Initiative founder Wade Horn
sailed through his confirmation hearing yesterday for assistant
secretary of health and human services for family support. The campaign
against him by the National Organization for Women, including a
last-minute call-to-arms from activists, only proved to show how
out of touch the feminist groups are with reality.
As Stanley
Kurtz reported earlier this month, NOW's case against Horn is
simple: They don't like him because he's a fan of marriage. Outgoing
NOW president Patricia Ireland stopped short on Hardball
of admitting the real feminist beef with him, which is that fathers
aren't essential. That's Pat for you though, perhaps thinking about
her marketability, post-NOW. Possible
Ireland replacement Kim Gandy (NOW's current executive vice
president) , on the other hand, has said, "I think promoting
marriage as a goal in and of itself is misguided."
NOW's case
against Horn, in fact, is firmly established. His alleged offenses
include:
Horn believes
that mothers and fathers are innately different, and therefore
do and should parent differently.
Horn asserts
that boys and girls have innate differences, that due to these
differences they should be reared differently, and that the recent
trend toward rearing boys and girls the same has led to an epidemic
of elementary school misconduct.
Horn believes
that "fathers ought to be the primary providers for their
families."
Horn opposes
pre-marital sex.
Horn opposes
cohabitation.
Horn characterized
Jane Fonda as an "idiot".
Imagine the
nerve of Horn! Shocking!
Curiously,
reaction on the Left has been placid. Even the Jane Fonda attack
didn't faze any committee members. NOW's talking points fell on
deaf ears, even in a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Monday morning,
on NOW's womenenews.org
website, writer Sarah Stewart Taylor had to concede as much:
There did
not appear to be any vocal opponents of Horn's nomination in the
audience at the hearing, though women's groups have been asking
those who have concerns about his record to contact their Senators
and ask them to vote against the nomination.
Still, NOW
worries that Horn's "beliefs" "might interfere with
his ability to run the vast agency fairly." To please NOW,
it seems, Horn would have needed to pass more than a mere litmus
test; he would have required an intellectual lobotomy. NOW wants
to make sure nominees have no opinions whatsoever.
The Horn nomination,
likely to pass through the full Senate without much of a hitch,
ought to serve as a lesson for the post-Ireland feminists: Girls,
when you've positioned yourselves to the left of the Daschle Senate,
you've become irrelevant.
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