Gallant Americans are risking life and limb in Iraq to defend home and country. But they never dreamed they might lose their children, too.

When Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly of Grand Ledge, Mich., came home after 15 months in Iraq, he found that a family court "referee" had taken away his joint custody of his 10-year-old son and given full custody and control to the boy's mother.

For five years, McNeilly had had a 50-50 no-problem custody arrangement with his ex-girlfriend Holly Erb. When called up to go to Iraq, he gave her temporary full custody while he was overseas.

While he was gone, Erb persuaded a family court to make her full custody permanent. When McNeilly protested, he was told that his year-long absence constituted abandonment and produced custody "points" against him.

"You want to make a soldier cry, you take his son away," McNeilly said. "It's devastating."

Devastating indeed, on many levels. When you consider some of the evidence that Schlafly claims was used to demonstrate McNeilly's "poor parenting skills", it's clear that the courts have done a serious disservice to a man who fought honorably for his country. 

Since McNeilly's case was reported in the press, Erb's lawyer and the court's representative are trying to claim that depriving him of his father's rights wasn't because he was serving in Iraq, but because of his poor parenting skills.

The proof? McNeilly sent a couple of postcards to his son that showed soldiers training with a gun. Horrors! How un-politically correct to tell a son that soldiers in Iraq carry guns.

Erb's lawyer asserted that the postcards frightened the boy and showed that McNeilly is not a fit parent. But surely the boy had a right to know about his father's career and that soldiers who use guns are pursuing an honorable vocation.

The referee's report also justified deciding for mother custody because she was the "day-to-day caretaker and decision maker in the child's life" while McNeilly was deployed. But that's what mothers have always done when their men go off to war and it's no argument for taking the child away from his father upon return.

Schlafly reminds us that there is a certain "fatherphobia" present in our family courts. Are we now going to see a "warriorphobia" mindset take hold?   

The large number of fathers who have been the victims of family-court fatherphobia is no doubt the reason that one of the most popular songs on country music stations this year is Tim McGraw's "Do You Want Fries with That?" The lyrics are the cry of a father who is working a minimum-wage second job in a fast-food restaurant, living alone in a tent, after being ordered by a judge to support his children living in his house with his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

The father laments, "You took my wife, and you took my kids, and you stole the life that I used to live; my pride, the pool, the boat, my tools, my dreams, the dog, the cat."

In this letter to the editor (click link and scroll down), SFC Lloyd A. Conway sounds off.

How ironic that the Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly, whose loss of custody of his son was the subject of an Aug. 21 LSJ article, will take his fight for his rights to the Veterans Memorial Courthouse to ask Judge Janelle Lawless to overrule the lawless act of a rear-echelon bureaucrat.

That such a hearing is necessary is reason enough to support Rep. Rick Jones' bill to end the practice of preying on deployed service members, so they don't have to dodge subpoenaes and bullets at the same time.

If dad lost joint custody because, while he was in Iraq, the mother had day-to-day custody, then he lost custody due to military service.

I hope every veteran reading this takes the time to register a protest because an attack on one should be viewed as an attack on all of us.

On August 24th, Michigan state representative Rick Jones introduced legislation to combat this type of outrage against our veterans.

Specifically, the bill would bar courts from:

• Making a "best interest determination" based on the parent's separation from his or her child due to military service.

• Using military service as proper cause to alter a previous custody order or judgment.

• Allowing a permanent custodial environment to be established while a parent is on active duty.

Other states are now poised to take action.

I haven't researched this topic, so I'm unsure as to the number of veterans who have had experiences similar to that of Spc. Joe McNeilly. However, I wouldn't be surprised to find judges who are willing to wreck lives based on their personal views of the war and the warrior. How very sad.

Click here for the Army Times coverage of this story.