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The Issues That Matter |
Family ValuesIf you had told me in 1975 that I would some day be arguing for family values, I would have scratched my head and said, "What?" I was one of those very tolerant sorts who didn't see why anyone cared, or should care, about sexual morality, or marriage, or divorce, or whether children were being born out of wedlock. DivorceMy, what a long strange trip it's been. When I was in elementary school, I had one or two friends who were from divorced homes--it was really unusual. There was still a little shame to divorce--even though divorce, as rare as it was, usually came about for good reasons, such as repeated adultery, spousal abuse, child abuse, or alcoholism. Today, divorce is the norm. Maybe it was too difficult in the bad old days to get a divorce--but I am convinced that we have made it way too easy--and the losers are the children. There are "blended families" that work, but there are a lot of others where divorce and remarriage produces pain and confusion. I don't think very many Idahoans think of divorce as a good thing-- and many of those who have been through a divorce know that. There are those arguing that "no-fault" divorce laws were a mistake. I'm not sure exactly how to get that genie back into the bottle, but I do think that a fresh look at divorce laws is worthwhile. If divorce is too easy, it may encourage a couple that is having problems to give up too quickly, instead of spending a few more months trying to work through their differences. Especially when there are small children involved, divorce needs a better reason than, "I'm tired of my spouse." What can we do in the future to make divorce less necessary and less common? Perhaps a better approach is to look for ways to strengthen and encourage stable marriage. I've long been under the impression, from watching the disasters going on around me, that a lot of divorces are driven, at their core, by economic pressures. We need to find some way to make it possible to raise a family on one paycheck (as was pretty common when I was young). Idaho state government can only do so much about this, but certainly, the income tax structure should have the lowest possible taxes on families who aren't making much money. A family making $100,000 a year doesn't really need a tax break; a family making $30,000 a year really does. The bigger problem here is related to the need to fix Illegal Immigration. I also think that, as with several of the other issues, there are actions that Idaho government can take to encourage married couples to think about the consequences of divorce for their children. I would rather spend tax money on advertising campaigns designed to discourage unnecessary divorce, instead of enforcing child support agreements. Morality & Public PolicyBack in 1975, California repealed all of its laws that prohibited homosexuality. I can remember watching news coverage of a bunch of clergymen lecturing the state legislature about what a bad idea this was. I was utterly amazed. Why would anyone care what consenting adults do in private? Why was this the government's business? Yet within six years, a disease so rare that no one knew that it existed had started to sicken and kill not only large numbers of gay men, but soon spread into the IV drug abusing community as well. Because of blood transfusions, hemophiliacs, organ transplant recipients, and surgical patients, soon had AIDS. What happened? Before 1975, homosexual men were having sex, of course. They met in bars, at social events, and in public restrooms. (Public restrooms have been a part of the homosexual subculture for decades, and remains sufficiently important that a nationally prominent gay rights law firm has a publication telling homosexuals how to avoid getting arrested while they "cruise in parks, bathrooms or other spaces open to public view.") But because homosexual sex was illegal, and police department vice squads spent a bit of time looking for public acts of immorality, it kept a damper on the party. By the late 1970s, the situation had changed, especially in places like San Francisco. There were "bathhouses" where completely anonymous sex spread a variety of well-known venereal diseases like wildfire. As a gay activist from the period told me, the San Francisco Public Health Department's sexually transmitted disease clinic "was the best place to get dates" because everyone was already infected. The percentage of the population infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) increases with the square of the number of sexual partners per time. A person with an STD who doubles the number of unprotected sexual partners per month, quadruples the number of person who become infected--because each infected person can in turn infect others. Taking homosexuality out of the closet meant that what had been done discreetly was now done openly, flagrantly--and in short order, a disease that no one knew of became a major public health crisis. Federal funding alone for AIDS will be $18.9 billion for Fiscal Year 2007. The average AIDS patient's care will cost $25,200 per year for an average lifetime of 24 years--much of that cost picked up by health insurance companies. Those knuckle-dragging clergyman--what were they thinking? It turned out that there are consequences to sexual immorality--just as there is to immoral behavior with respect to lying, cheating, adultery, and a host of other behaviors that sophisticated sorts can justify. Homosexual promiscuity and AIDS is an especially obvious example, but a recent Centers for Disease Control study found that that 1/4 of American girls aged 14 to 19 had at least one STD. There is a real problem in figuring out what the proper role of government is. There are cases where there is a compelling governmental purpose in telling people what to do. I would prefer to err on the side of trusting consenting adults to make decisions on their own. I am also skeptical that 51% of the population should be imposing its moral values on the other 49%--simply because such laws are difficult to enforce. (How many prisons would it take it to lock up 49% of the population? And even if you could afford to do so, it would be pretty obviously absurd.) There does come a point where support for a law is so overwhelming that there must be a very compelling argument against passage of a law. S.1323I ordinarily wouldn't run against an incumbent Republican in the primary. When I saw that the incumbent was sponsoring a bill to add "sexual orientation and gender identity" to Idaho's law prohibiting employment discrimination, I said to myself, "He can't possibly understand what this means." And the more I look at his record, it seems that he is out of touch with the traditional values of the district. I agree that in the vast majority of jobs it doesn't matter what a person's sexual orientation is. What someone does after he or she gets off work is usually quite irrelevant to the workplace. But there are some jobs where I think there are some legitimate questions. For the same reason that most people wouldn't be comfortable having a male gym teacher in the girls' locker room (and most people wouldn't be much more comfortable with a female gym teacher in the boys' locker room), there's a reason not to have homosexual men in the boys' locker room, or lesbian gym teachers in the girls' locker room. Another problem is that "sexual orientation" doesn't just include homosexuality. Should a daycare center be allowed to refuse employment to a man known to be a member of the North American Man-Boy Love Association? (And yes, that organization does exist, and they used to regularly march in the gay pride parades in San Francisco, New York City, and Boston.) The "gender identity" clause opens an even larger can of worms. It certainly includes cross-dressers, and people that show up for work some days dressed as a man, and some days dressed as a woman, or those who decide that they need to have sex change surgery. (Many of whom, even after changing a couple of times, are still unhappy.) I've long been uncomfortable with the extent to which the government interferes in private matters. I can understand and agree with the arguments for banning discrimination against blacks, since both the federal and state governments, for many decades, either required private businesses to discriminate, or actively encouraged it. But there does come a point where you have to say that the government needs to back off. As far as I am concerned, what consenting adults do in private isn't properly the government's business, and it doesn't matter whether that is sex or employment. I have been philosophically uncomfortable with this increasing desire to intrude in private matters (such as employment) for a very long time; I am especially irritated when it requires employers to violate their own consciences. I wouldn't willingly hire a neo-Nazi, because I find their ideas abhorrent and sinful. I see no reason that any employer should be required to violate their own conscience by hiring someone who is engaged in a practice that the employer finds abhorrent and sinful. Over the last few years, we have seen a disturbing use of such antidiscrimination laws to destroy the right of conscience. The New Mexico Human Rights Commission is using a rather similar law against a photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex "commitment ceremony." In New Jersey, a lesbian couple is now suing a church for refusing to let them use their facilities for a civil union ceremony. Where does this stop? I say that it stops right now--by not opening the door to these absurd lawsuits. |