Exactly five years after an oppressed father protested discrimination by burning himself alive on the steps of Keene County Family Court, four victimized fathers calmly walked up the steps of the United States Supreme Court to file a writ for parental equality.

Media throughout the beltway were discussing it, news releases were confirmed everywhere, and these four made history outside the halls of our nation’s highest court. And it’s high time. Give dads their due. We sacrifice in the line of duty every day for our children.

Whether it be law enforcement in Orlando, firemen headed into the towers on 9-11, or our military in foreign wars, we are sick and tired of the abuses inflicted upon us in divorce and family courts. We are tired of returning to anything but “equal justice” as promised on the top of the Supreme Court edifice.

These four professionals, a doctor, lawyer, dentist and engineer made their case at a news conference on the eve of Fathers Day. They are Dr. Mario Jimenez, M.D., Dr. Leon Koziol, J.D., Dr. Dan Pestana, DDS and John Bautista, BSME, MBA, sacrificing their professional standings by taking up this cause. They need your help.

Yes it’s Fathers Day again with those worn out stereotypes about manning up. And that’s exactly what these professionals did from New York, California, Florida and Virginia. They asked our government to man up to its responsibilities for equal rights. Being born male does not give our courts a power to denigrate our authority as equal parents under supreme laws.

While other traditionally discriminated groups have made great strides in achieving reform, fathers continue to be remanded by our courts to lower class parent status with all the oppression which comes with it. Fathers remain 85% of all parents paying support, nearly 100% of those sent to a debtor prison for delinquencies and even shot dead in the back by a traffic cop while fleeing unarmed from a support warrant (Walter Scott).

After Fathers Day a group from New York City has committed itself to a protest march from the Oneida County Courthouse in Utica to a business on Broad Street. Its theme for Leon’s sake: Our children are not for sale. If you know of an organization which should join the equality writ at the Supreme Court, time is of the essence. Please call Leon, its author and presenter at (315) 796-4000.