COLUMN: What about family values?
To me the term “family values” brings to mind the image of a home where the parents (or grandparents or somebody else as the case may be) teach the children about love, respect and personal responsibility.
But it was rudely suggested to me Monday that traditional family values might include bigotry, intolerance and fear. The suggestion came in the form of a flyer on campus proposing a second Blue Jeans Day in opposition to the Gay Pride Alliance’s campaign for National Freedom to Marry Day. The bottom of the flyer promised that those who opposed same-sex marriages would be supporting traditional family values.
The word “traditional” must be the distinction between the family value of wasting energy on hating people and the “real” family value of learning to tolerate diversity in the context of your own strong personal beliefs.
Gay people have little to do with what many perceive is the breakdown of “family values.” What exactly those values are continues to elude me, but I have a hunch they include the things I mentioned before: love, respect and personal responsibility. Those values do seem to be evasive in American society, but the gay community has never set out to destroy them. I would actually argue that most gay people place value in those same concepts.
Any person who wants to support family values (straight or gay) should recognize that there are far greater blockades to tear down.
How about a disturbing divorce rate? In 1993, the U.S. Bureau of the Census estimated that four out of 10 first marriages will end in divorce. That divorce rate leaves hundreds of thousands of children affected by divorce each year. Not only are children disturbed emotionally by divorce, but some are left economically devastated as their single parents struggle to keep the family above the poverty line.
Speaking of economic struggles, how does the current minimum wage support family values in any way? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has declared the poverty line for a family of four at $17,050 per year. In order to hit that line an adult must earn at least $8.20 and work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. But minimum wage earners make $3 less than that, and so are forced to have at least two jobs in a household. That means less time spent in the home and less time put into family values.
And if families are forced to have two jobs, it’s likely that the mother will have to enter the workplace. It almost goes without saying that most families’ working situations do not support “traditional” family values. Working moms are forced to use expensive day care and after-school care. New moms must make due with the insufficient 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave that the government has graciously bestowed upon them. It is another issue of less time available for family values.
Confronted with these issues, it’s hard to understand why anyone who professes to support traditional family values would waste his or her time opposing National Freedom to Marry Day. Most gays have the same morals that family values supporters have.
If arguing against gay rights helps someone to define his or her own beliefs, that’s an understandable activity. But it’s useless to continue to prevent gays from enjoying the same freedoms that heterosexual people enjoy in the name of “family values.”
Especially if that prevention comes because the defenders of family values are unwilling to tackle the real issues that challenge them.
Jessica Whatcott is a news writer for the Statesman.