Let’s Get Something Straight about Family Values

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Thu Aug-30-07 11:12 PM
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Let’s Get Something Straight about Family Values

This morning there was a discussion on C-SPAN about why Senator Craig’s recent run in with the law has received so much press attention. The C-SPAN host proposed an explanation, the gist of which was that because of the Republican Party’s great concern with “family values”, when a high profile Republican deviates from those “values” it’s a big deal. On the other hand, since Democrats aren’t as concerned about “family values”, when they demonstrate a lack of “family values” it’s no great big deal.

I don’t impute any bad intentions to the C-SPAN host for saying what she did. But such mindless parroting of right wing talking points is difficult for me to bear. Let’s put aside the ridiculous implication that scandals involving Republicans are more publicized than scandals involving Democrats. Brief reflection on Bill Clinton’s or Gary Condit’s ordeals should put that myth to rest – and they weren’t even arrested for anything.

What really burns me up is the implication that “family values” are more important to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. As a Democrat and a liberal and a person whose whole adult life has largely revolved around my family, I deeply resent that implication and I feel it’s outrageous that it would even be considered plausible, let alone established fact. The Republicans have managed to position themselves as the Party of “family values” only through the repeated and cunning use of hypocritical rhetoric, with a gigantic assist from the U.S. corporate news media.

Larry Craig says that he’s not a gay man – and indeed he’s not if one goes by the assumption that a person is what his rhetoric says he is. In the same way, the Republican Party is indeed the Party of family values if we judge them solely on their rhetoric. On the other hand, if family values mean taking actions that show you care about families, then that’s quite another story. Let’s consider a few things:

Anti-gay rhetoric and action doesn’t strengthen families

One thing that many Republicans do to cultivate their “pro-family” credentials is use anti-gay rhetoric and legislative actions. They are generally against allowing gays to have sex in the privacy of their own home or adopt children, and in election years they have even tried to pass constitutional amendments against gay marriage.

Since estimates of the incidence of homosexuality in the United States range from 2% to 10%, that means that many U.S. families contain homosexual teenagers. Anti-gay rhetoric has a toxic influence on these families because it contributes to a culture where “It is difficult to imagine just how painful is the agony that young people experience as they deal with the reality of their own sexual orientation and the overt hostility they feel coming from a parent who is unwilling to accept the teenager’s homosexuality.”

But homosexuality poses no threat to families. The American Psychological association has even issued a policy statement saying that there is no evidence that homosexuals are any less effective as parents than heterosexuals, and therefore they oppose “any discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care, and reproductive health services.”

Health care

As of 2005, 43 million Americans lacked health insurance, and the still rising rate of uninsured Americans has resulted in our children becoming sicker. Yet Republicans continue to be hostile to measures to ensure more children. After 40 consecutive years of declining infant mortality rates in the United States, rates turned upwards under the Presidency of George W. Bush because of his anti-health care policies.

Since the end of World War II, plans for comprehensive national health care programs where the federal government would play a major role in increasing health care coverage have been proposed only by Democratic Presidents, including presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton. President Johnson steered our Medicare legislation through Congress, which passed despite bitter Republican opposition. Comprehensive plans to improve health care in our country have been proposed by several current Democratic presidential candidates, whereas all Republican candidates are ideologically opposed to government provision of health care, calling it “socialized medicine”.

The bankruptcy bill of 2005

In 2005 our Republican Congress passed what they called the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”, thereby making it much more difficult for poor and middle class families to obtain bankruptcy protection after losing all their money, while keeping protection for the ultra-wealthy in place. Two million American families declared bankruptcy in 2005, and the good majority of cases were caused by job loss or health care catastrophes. The bill was heavily lobbied for by the credit card industry. Approximately 60% of Democratic Congresspersons voted against the bill, whereas only 25% of Senate Republicans and 30% of House Republicans voted against it.

Embryonic stem cell research

Another ploy that Republicans have used to create a “pro-family” image is to speak and vote against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The federal funding of this research has the potential to result in the discovery of medical treatment for many currently untreatable diseases. Yet Republicans claim that their stance on this issue is motivated by their “pro-family” or “pro-life” values.

The truth of the matter is that the stem cells in question would generally be thrown away (i.e. destroyed) anyhow if they are not used for research. Thus they cannot be considered to be “potential life”. So what are Republicans “protecting” by prohibiting federal funding? All they’re doing is obstructing potentially life saving research in their attempt to create their “pro-life” image. Yet President Bush, in collaboration with most Republicans in Congress, continues to obstruct greater use of this potentially life saving research.

Treatment of U.S. detainees

One would think that people who care about families would have at least some concern for the families of non-Americans. Yet under George Bush’s “War on Terror”, thousands of men from around the world, including some U.S. citizens, are rounded up and thrown into prisons or dungeons without trial, without charges, without notification of their families, and without any legal rights whatsoever, for indefinite and unspecified periods of time. George Bush and Dick Cheney call them “terrorists”, and yet they disallow trials for the vast majority of these men. The only thing that their families know is that their loved one has “disappeared”. Yet it is a rare Republican who has voiced any objection to this barbaric kind of behavior.

Abortion

The Democratic position on abortion is that it be safe, legal and rare. This means providing family planning services which help women to avoid unwanted pregnancy and medical services for pregnant women to make their pregnancies safe. Because of this position, abortion rates in the United States declined substantially under Bill Clinton, but then leveled off or increased under George Bush, who has demonstrated great ideologically based hostility to family planning services.

Family values in perspective

Of course there are different kinds of family values, and the discussion I provided above constitutes only a sampling of the family values that could be discussed. Nevertheless, it is absurd to say that “family values” are more important to the Republicans than to Democrats. It would be much more accurate to say that the two parties favor different kinds of family values.

Democrats are more inclined to favor the kind of family values that actually help families to lead decent lives and to achieve the ideals expressed in our founding documents, in particular their inalienable right to the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In addition to the examples mentioned above: Democrats are much more favorably predisposed to increases in the minimum wage for workers, which had remained stagnant for almost ten years under Republican Congresses prior to the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2007; Republicans are much more likely to favor laws that are repressive to unions, thereby serving to stifle wages and worker protection laws; and under Republican rule the cost of a college education has become unaffordable to more and more Americans.

By contrast, the kind of so-called “family values” favored by republicans focuses primarily on repression of gay rights and the protection of unviable embryos (at the expense of potentially life saving research) and fetuses. For the most part, their desire to criminalize abortion appears to represent political posturing rather than a sincere desire to decrease abortions, as their anti-family planning policies serve to increase abortions rather than to decrease them.

Thus, much Republican ideology is anti-family because it is anti-people. Yet, our corporate news media continues to spew out the ridiculous myth that the Republican Party is the party of “family values”. That kind of reporting is very sloppy at best and flagrantly disingenuous at worst. They should be called out on it wherever and whenever they do it.