By Evelyn Nieves
New York Times
July 01, 2002
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/news/articles/0701pledgedad01.html
SACRAMENTO - There is much about society that Mike Newdow would like to change.
He does not understand, for example, why the English language allows itself
anything so cumbersome and awkward as masculine and feminine pronouns. The Mike
Newdow dictionary would replace "he" and "she" with "re,"
"his" and "hers" with "rees" and "him"
and "her" with "erm."
"Come on," he says. "Try it out: 'Re went to the store.' It's easy."
Of course, it was another one-syllable word, God, that gave Newdow, a 49-year-old emergency room doctor and a lawyer, his moment in the national spotlight. He argued that the phrase "one nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the separation of church and state. He won, at least temporarily, with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco.
However, Circuit Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who wrote the 2-1 opinion that said the phrase "under God" violates the separation of church and state, stayed his ruling a day later until other members of the 9th Circuit decide whether to reconsider the case. He gave no reason. The court can rehear the case with the same three judges or an 11-judge panel.
But Newdow said he is not stopping with the pledge.
Other objections
Despite the outpouring of outrage from politicians and pundits over the pledge ruling - not to mention the death threats on his answering machine - Newdow said he still plans to challenge the use of "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. He said he would like to see an end to prayers at presidential inaugurations. ("At President Bush's, it just went on and on," he says, clearly annoyed. "I said, 'Holy smokes, they can't do that!' ")
Describing himself as an atheist, Newdow said he plans to ferret out all uses of religion in daily life: "Why should I be made to feel like an outsider?"
Yet, the First Amendment is hardly Newdow's only preoccupation, even if he calls himself the founding minister of the First Amendment Church of True Science, or FACTS. More than anything, Newdow, a father in the throes of a custody dispute, said he would like to change family law.
Even more than the phrase "one nation, under God," Newdow said the term "in the best interests of the child" infuriates him no end. It raises his blood pressure, he said, turns his words into an angry jumble and makes him late for appointments. Television reporters still looking for sound bites on the pledge case from Newdow would be well advised to steer clear of asking about his real obsession. As he himself warns, "I could go on about family law for days."
Partly because he was successful in arguing the unconstitutionality of the pledge, and partly because he is quite the overachiever - he is working on a master's degree in public health and recently passed the bar exam - when he says he is "planning on changing family law" people might want to take him seriously.
He said his 8-year-old daughter, whom he followed when her mother moved to Sacramento from Florida two years ago, is the light of his life, but the courts will not let him prove it. The stay-at-home parent, he complains, gets the benefit of the doubt in court.
'Worst system'
Newdow shares custody, but not his goal of half the time. He said he is also miffed that because he is the primary wage earner, the court keeps ordering him to pay for his daughter's mother's legal fees every time he and she land in court.
"It's the worst system in the entire nation," he said of California Family Court. "You want to do a real story? Do it on the family courts. They steal people's children based on absolutely nothing. They take the most important people in a child's life and make them go away. You challenge them and it's impossible to win because most family court judges were family court lawyers for 20 years and they don't want you challenging things they spent their careers endorsing, and getting rich from. Do I sound passionate?"
Newdow, who grew up in Teaneck, N.J., graduated from Brown University, the University of Michigan Law School and the UCLA medical school. Although he began challenging the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance in 1997, he never took a state bar exam until he decided to take on family law. He took the California test in February, 14 years after he graduated from law school, and passed without studying.
Newdow's custody fights are the reason he cut back on his work as an emergency room doctor, he said. Now, he spends just two days a month as an attending physician in the emergency room at the UCLA. Medical Center. "Now family law takes up all of my time," he said.
He recently filed a brief, he said, challenging the court's demand that he pay his daughter's mother's lawyer fees based on a legal fight over whether he could have custody of his daughter on a certain day.
"Completely unproven assumptions are accepted to achieve a goal - 'the best interests of the child' - that itself is arbitrary and indefinable, and for which there are no valid measurements," he said.
Newdow, who is still fielding requests for interviews on the pledge case, said he never tires of discussing issues important to him.
No one should doubt his dedication. Just before the interview was over, he reminded the reporter to remember his ideas for reforming the English language. "Don't forget the re, rees, erm thing," he said. "Just make it a little aside. Our language would be so much richer."