From: ceb@dbrus.Unify.Com (Caroline E. Bryan)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: Family Values
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:55:42 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organization

In article <Sep.2.11.28.27.1992.15202@gandalf.rutgers.edu> shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu (Susan Hagan) writes:
>steve@celia.UUCP (Steve Tyree) writes:
>
>> ... Eventually the family becomes economically secure and might free it-
>> self from the bondage of labor. They still will have to pay taxes though.
>> At least for now.
>
>So everyone's goal is to be filthy rich?  I don't think so....
>Bush/Quayle seem to be making up the definition as they go along.  However, 
>even though you don't seem to see this, one message rings loud and clear:
>the only families that are acceptable are 2 parent, heterosexual, families.
>Every other type of family has been denounced by Bush/Quayle.

The following is from the August 19 Sacramento Bee (p. B6), reproduced with-
out permission, for which I hope the author forgives me:

Devaluing Values: Commentary by Peter Schrag, Associate Editor

When an all-purpose phrase is repeated as often as "family values" has been in
recent weeks, the words begin to stink of hypocrisy just from repetition.  But
the record of the Bush and Reagan administrations and the right-wing fringe
that captured them on the "values issue" makes the odor even stronger.

How does "family values" square with a policy that so adamantly opposes a law
requiring family leave for workers facing emergencies at home -- the birth of
a child, the illness of an aging parent -- that it vetoes even the most modest
effort to provide some help to those torn between their jobs and their family
obligations?

What sort of family values underlie the policies of a government that cannot
bring itself to provide decent health care or nutrition for a fifth of the
nation's children?  What sort of values can look with indifference at a soci-
ety where there is such a huge and growing gap between rich and poor and in
which one child in five is officially classified as living in poverty?

What sort of family values are they that deny the legitimacy, not to mention
the struggle, of the millions of American families, most of them headed by
single women -- whether single, divorced, abandoned, or widowed -- in which
there is no married couple?

What sort of family values justify laws and regulations to keep physicians
and nurses from even discussing all family planning options with poor women?
Whose values underlie the view of the administration's director of family
planning, who says the states should have the power to prohibit the sale of
contraceptives? ...

There is nothing new in having the rich and comfortable lecture others on
their lack of character, but rarely has than been amplified to the level of
political formality to which the Republicans are taking it in this election,
the same Republicans who presided over one of the most corrupt and scandal-
ridden administrations in this century.

Of course there ought to be concern with values; of course there is a deep
and troubling strain in our society that mocks those values.  Personal and
family responsibility and community concern have been dangerously neglected
in too many quarters of our society.

But does the country really need instruction on this subject from the leaders
of a party that so incessantly preaches rampant individualism, self-aggran-
dizement and high indifference to the pain and hardships of its fellow citi-
zens?  What idea of family values informs United States senators like Alan
Simpson when they sit in public conclave smirking through a hearing concerning
the abuse of women in government departments?

There are untruths and hypocrisy on all sides in political campaigns.  What
makes this hypocrisy so offensive is its insistent and aggressive posture of
moral superiority.  These people are not just exculpating themselves by fudg-
ing the story of how they smoked marijuana when they were young of the details
of an extramarital affair.  What singles them out is their insistence that
they are of such high character that they may legitimately impose their be-
liefs and codes on everyone else.

Which is of course why they feel so free to retail sleaze about their oppo-
nents while being so righteously indignant when anyone has the temerity to
ask about their own alleged transgressions.  How could that NBC reporter have
the gall to ask him that vile bimbo question, asked George Bush, "to say
nothing of asking it in the Oval office"?  If he had a sense of humor, even
Richard Nixon (expletive deleted) would have a good laugh over that one.
Moral values would do a lot better without so much hectoring from hypocrites.

------end of article---------


Carrie		ceb@rechenau.unify.com	x6244
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