A Rebuttal to the "Contract With the American Family"

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
first posted to infidels.org in 1995, where it still is
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/epp_jamieson/rebuttal.html
08/02/02
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Religion/contract.htm

I still trip over the relative permanence of the web. I'm a computer net relic from the earliest days of BBSing, when a message lasted a week, or until the "room" the message was posted in reached its maximum new messages (usually 50) and it scrolled out, lost forever.

I got email commenting in some copyright remarks I had made in an essay on Infidels.org. That puzzled me for a few moments, until I remembered that I had written a piece and sent it to them years ago. Was it still on line?

I went and looked, and sure enough, there it was. From 1995, seven years ago. I remember that I was still getting used to the web at that point and wrote this piece rebutting the religious "Contract with the American Family" that the religious right was passing around as a kind of addendum to Newt Gingrich's yet-to-fail "Contract with America". I submitted it to the folks at Infidel.org, and got a dry "very funny" as a reply. To my horror, I discovered that I had sent a copy of the original contract that I was using for reference, rather than my reply to it!

We got it straightened out, and I was tickled by the fact that I was published in such a big and respected outfit. I'm delighted to see that I'm still there, even though at some point the "Z" appears to have fallen off my name.

The "Contract with the American Family" went exactly nowhere, and the religious right, while still a grave danger to the rights and freedoms of all Americans, isn't the implacable force it seemed in 1995. But even if the subject is a fairly dead issue, the essay itself held up surprisingly well, and I'm happy with it.

One lurking suspicion of mine was confirmed. I had heard the term "school choice" referred to as "the latest wrinkle" in pushing for vouchers. But here, in this seven year old essay, I refer to that phrase as "that old wheeze." There is nothing new under the sun; plus ca change, le plus ca meme chose.

The following is a rebuttal to elements of the Christian Coalition's soi-disant Contract With the American Family." In a curious maneuver, the Coalition copyrighted their text, so rather than use it in its entirety to form the framework for the rebuttal, I'll use excerpts in accordance with "Fair Use" provisions of Copyright law.

The "Contract" is a masterwork of inference, innuendo, misstatement, and complete untruths. For example, it repeats the oft-stated lie that the Supreme Court "has the Ten Commandments engraved on the walls of the chambers." It attempts, in a clumsy manner, to associate distinctly different subjects through the use of juxtaposition, usually to try to infer that subject A somehow caused subject B. A sloppy reader would gain the impression that the Coalition believes that lack of prayer in classes and the violent crime rate are somehow linked. Finally, it takes the position that it is un-American and a distortion of history to prevent any one group of people from imposing their beliefs on the rest of the population, as opposed to the simple right to express those beliefs.

Nor are the stated objectives clear – presumably from design. It is stated in the full text of the contract on a couple of occasions that all of the ten "suggestions" enjoy the support of 60-90% of the American people, and to a certain extent, that is true. Most Americans support such genial generalities as "supporting religious freedom," "protecting our children," and "improving the quality of education." Only when the "solutions" become more specific, and more obviously the exclusionary and narrow province of the Coalition, does support for these "suggestions" drop precipitously, often to below 15%.

Americans historically have turned to religious faith to deal with their personal troubles, and to their elected government for their social problems. Even before the number of different religious beliefs abroad in the land exploded, Americans recognized the wisdom of Jefferson's "wall of separation." The Founding Fathers, some of them devout churchgoers, remembered well the hard lessons their immediate forebears learned in England and Holland: the anger, the blood, the bigotry and the violence that came from any one religion purporting to be "the" religion for those cultures.

The words of the Contract are reasonable and soothing. The intent behind it is not. Read on.

(1) Restoring Religious Equality

A constitutional amendment to protect the religious liberties of Americans in public places.

Americans have religious liberty already, and always have. No religious belief is banned, and no religious belief is promoted by the government at the expense of others. Of all this nation's accomplishments, this perhaps is the greatest, since it flies in the face of unrelenting pressure from those convinced that their own narrow opinions constitute the natural laws of the universe, and that all of us are subject to those "laws."

The Coalition makes the argument that in being denied permission to force those prayers on others, they are subject to "state hostility toward religion." If this inversion of reality reminds the reader of Hitler's protestations that he moved against Czechoslovakia only to protect innocent Germans from those murderous Czechs, then it's probably because both use the same disingenuous story that the aggressors are in fact the innocent and helpless victims. No American has the right to force another American to his or her own beliefs. This, however, is what the Coalition calls "state hostility toward religion."

Pursuant to this approach, they make the claim that the civil rights of school children (to pray) are being violated. There is a long string of court decisions denying full civil rights to minors, decisions often supported by the religious right. (The Coalition itself will go on to destroy this piteous plaint that children have civil rights by article four of this "contract.") Children have the right to pray in school. They do not have the right to have the teacher lead the other children in prayer on behalf of their church, and the kids at large have the right not to be prayed over by adults. They also have the right not to have to go and sit out in the hallway while other kids have organized prayer.

The key words in this provision are "public places." If one inquires if this means having a prayer session at an NFL stadium at game time, one will receive a polite cough and a vaguely amused "no" for an answer. They aren't after non-consenting adults.

They aren't ready to try to force public prayer on private audiences at least, not yet.

They are after a more impressionable, captive audience. They want your children. By "public places," they mean the schools, specifically the public schools. They want the right to lead classes in prayer, as often and coercively as they see fit.

Why a constitutional amendment? They know that despite their allegations that the founding fathers never intended separation of church and state, that is exactly what the fathers intended, and they know that the constitution has always been used with increasing success to defend the right of people to raise their children by their own beliefs, and not those of the majority in the community. If 99% of a hypothetical community are Methodist, the remaining 1% have as much right to not be Methodist as the majority have to be members. If the majority don't wish their children subject to other religions, they must extend the same respect to that 1% minority.

With a constitutional amendment permitting (state-led) "prayer in public places," they can not only suborn children of other faiths, but drop the pretense that the views of pagans need to be respected.

(2) Returning Education Control to the Local Level

Transfer funding of the federal Department of Education to families and local school boards.

The Coalition states, "Parental involvement and local control is the most pressing need in education today." This is half true. Few would dispute the need for parental involvement in education. But "local control"? How long will this nation last as a nation if we have a situation where some school districts teach evolution while others decry it as a "humanist lie"? Or where racial superiority not only is considered a fit subject for public education, but is subject to plebiscite and taught according to which race happens to be most numerous in any given school district? Would school teachers in a town dominated by a chemical plant be allowed to discuss the dangers inherent in such plants? Would teachers in timber-dependent regions be permitted to discuss deforestation in South America? Are schools improved by making them potential puppets of local special interests, who have far more clout in their own communities than any group has in Washington, DC?

(3) Promoting School Choice

Enactment of legislation that will enhance parents' choice of schools for their children.

This is the same tired old wheeze that the taxpayers should support non-secular education. This approach is usually followed by a demand that secularism be treated as being just another religion – literally, that the act of not being religious is, in itself, religious – a demand that lasts exactly as long as it takes to submit religious belief to any of the same forms of scrutiny and rigor to which scientific theory is subject.

The right of people to teach their children at home or in parochial church-run schools should be supported. But the taxpayers should not be expected to subsidize such endeavors.

The Coalition would then ask why they should be expected to subsidize a school system they don't support, a question that seems fair and reasonable. The only problem is that they don't have to. Most church run schools get funding from their mother churches, who in turn depend on congregational donations. These donations, under separation of church and state, are tax- deductible. Tithing exempts considerably more money than the share of tax going to state-run schools would be.

(4) Protecting Parental Rights

Enactment of a Parental Rights Act and defeat of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Did you like that? The Coalition spent the first two articles sobbing all over the place about how the rights of students were being trampled by the evil humanists, and now whip around and insist that children should have no rights. Children's rights exist only long enough for the Coalition to use them as junior salesmen, and then vanish like the morning mist when it comes to their right to expressing their own views instead of Bible-thumping propaganda.

The Coalition includes a short litany of alleged abuses against parents of children by state and county child abuse people, and go on to insist that this shows the need for something called the "Parental Rights Act." This act "will ensure that parental rights are not violated and ensure that parents have the foremost duty and responsibility to direct the upbringing of their children."

This sounds fine, except that it allows parents to dictate to school districts this "overseeing their children's education, health care, discipline, and religious training." In other words, any given parent can overrule teachers and administrators on subjects where a wide variety of valid opinions and options exist, thus creating a totally impossible situation. How, for example, does one teach a child that sexuality is both evil and normal?

Moreover, it requires that any governmental interference in the parent-child relationship be justified by "clear and convincing evidence" that it "is essential to accomplish a compelling governmental interest" and that it is applied in "the least restrictive means" possible." While horror stories abound of kids being taken at least temporarily from their homes because of overreaction by social workers, there are plenty of dead and injured kids from where either the state couldn't react in time, or returned the kid because of reluctance to interfere with parental rights. There probably is no satisfactory balance, but the Coalition's "answer," particularly when combined with their proposed restrictions against abortion, could result in thousands more of child deaths.

In a burst of the usual right-wing nuttiness and xenophobic paranoia that accompanies any mention of the UN, or the rest of the world, they speak of "the threat to the rights of America's parents" brought about by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a 1989 treaty that the US has not yet ratified. (One variant on the stories circulating about this is one where the US -has- ratified this treaty, officially signed by the dread Hillary Clinton – who, of course, has no official standing in government and may not sign treaties.)

The Coalition, in their own words, "Oppose the treaty because it interferes with the parent-child relationship, threatens the sovereignty of U.S. law, and elevates as 'rights' such dubious provisions as access to television and mass media."

Oddly enough, in the quotes from the treaty that the Coalition uses to bolster this claim, none refer specifically to parental rights. The Coalition settles for juxtaposing the examples in the hope that the casual reader will infer such a connection.

• "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence - The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. "40

• "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice. "41

• With respect to the right of the child to freedom of association or peaceful assembly, "[n]o restrictions may be placed on the exercise of these rights other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. "42

Incidentally, these same laws exist, essentially as written, in the United States today. The intent is not to disbar parents from control of the children, but to protect them from unwarranted interference from such agencies as the Government, or dare we say it? the Coalition.

(5) Family-Friendly Tax Relief

Reduce the tax burden on the American family, eliminate the marriage penalty, and pass the Mothers and Homemakers' Rights Act to remedy the unequal treatment that homemakers receive under the Internal Revenue Service Code with respect to saving for retirement.

Alone among the ten suggestions in the Contract, this one seems unobjectionable. Given their track record, and their need to cover their intent, this "Mother's and Homemakers' Rights Act" bears close examination. However, the Coalition wheezes at length about how terribly the tax burden on the average family has increased since 1950, while failing to note that the Government, in proportion to the population and the size of the economy, has not grown much nor become more expensive. In fact, the government tax burden, per capita and allowing for inflation, was LARGER in 1960 than it is in 1995! It's just that in 1950, the wealthy and the corporations paid a lot more than they have to now. Please be sure to pay your taxes, so the rich don't have to.

(6) Restoring Respect for Human Life

Protecting the rights of states that do not fund abortion, protecting innocent human life by placing real limits on late-term abortions, and ending funds to organizations that promote and perform abortions.

Abortion foes, finally realizing that the large majority of American citizens don't accept their particular beliefs on this subject, have decided to push for a meaningless law "restricting" late term abortion, and, as usual, to punish the poor. No physician will casually terminate a pregnancy after the sixth month (and in fact, the AMA reports that such abortions make up less than 1/25 of one percent of abortions, and in the vast majority of such procedures, the baby is already dead or dying), yet the Coalition regales the reader with a horrendous description of late-term abortions, and, inexplicably, a dissertation on birth control measures in China. (China has policies that most Americans find reprehensible. Yet the Coalition consistently supports maintaining China's Most Favored Nation status. In short, they reward the Chinese, and punish Americans).

Similarly, they've decided that abortion is immoral for those who can't afford it. That's what it has boiled down to: Since they cannot force Americans at large to comply with their agenda, they have settled for bringing pressure to bear on public agencies in order to disenfranchise the poor, society's weakest segment. In their world of pocketbook morality, it's better to steal half a loaf than it is to earn an entire loaf.

(7) Encouraging Support of Private Charities

Enactment of legislation to enhance contributions to private charities as a first step toward transforming the bureaucratic welfare state into a system of private and faith-based compassion.

Nearly every private charity in the United States has reacted with horrified disbelief to this one. Christian or non-Christian, and regardless of political orientation, they unanimously declare that there is no way private charities could take over from the state welfare system. Not now, and not over a period of X number of years. People would quite literally starve to death, and American cities would become charnel houses. This is a curious stance for a pro-life group to take, and seems very distant from the approach to caring for the poor espoused by Jesus.

The reason the welfare state began, in case it has slipped anyone's mind, is because private charity could not possibly keep up with the needs of a nation where "one third is ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed." Few realize that if welfare vanishes, we will face that same horrible situation yet again.

In the literature that accompanies the Contract, the Coalition depends their argument from the fact that private disaster relief concerns, such as Red Cross, often respond to catastrophe faster than FEMA. They also state that 94% of all homeless shelters are run by private concerns, while failing to note that in virtually all parts of the country, such shelters are swamped and not nearly adequate to the task of sheltering the hundreds of thousands yet out on the streets. As for Red Cross, they were among the first to state emphatically that they were unprepared, and had no hope of being prepared, to take over from the Feds.

They state, without support, that "many [citizens] would prefer to designate the money to a private charity of their choice" instead of paying taxes. Is it too much to ask to have them prove this before risking the lives and health of millions?

(8) Restricting Pornography

Protecting children from exposure to pornography on the Internet and cable television, and from the sexual exploitation of child pornographers.

1. Enactment of legislation to protect children from being exposed to pornography on the Internet. As this is being written, the United States Senate has passed the Telecommunications Act, which, among other things, provides stiffer penalties for "kiddy porn," and enables the technology that will allow parents to restrict what their children might access on the net. This is all well and good, and as it should be.

That being said, the corollary should be proposed: That no competent American adult not incarcerated through due process shall have access to any part of the Internet abridged because of measures taken to "protect children."

The Senate's effort fails miserably in this regard, partially because the Coalition think we are all children to begin with. Pornography is available on the 'Net, but not without conscious effort to access same. Let adults be adults, and participate or avoid as they see fit.

The Internet is absolutely International, with nodes from Greenland to Antarctica, and the definition of what is pornography varies even more wildly than it does in America. In Thailand, sexual explicit pictures of children as young as ten are legal. A picture of a child innocently playing with a dog would be regarded as pornographic in some Moslem countries, where dogs are regarded as "unclean animals." Should people who read the Old Testament with such uncritical bliss be allowed to decide for the rest of us what "pornographic" might be?

However, expect the animosity of the Coalition toward the net to increase. Never before in human history has so much information and knowledge been made so available to so many, and there are many elements in the Coalition that depend heavily on the ignorance and parochialism of people, and will subsequently hate and fear the 'Net. Already, a report issued by the California State GOP has come up with the ludicrous suggestion that many unnamed "scientific sources" feel that computer use destroys the ability to "reason metaphorically." Right. And reading is bad for the eyes. . .

2. Enactment of legislation to require cable television companies to completely block the video and audio on pornography channels to non-subscribers.

This has been addressed already, in the same recent Senate legislation, which mandates a control panel which allows parents to block certain channels, either on an on-going basis, or at certain times.

3. Amending the federal child pornography law to make illegal the possession of any child pornography.

See the objections to Net control. Better to go after domestic producers of child pornography.

(9) Privatizing the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Legal Services Corporation should become voluntary organizations funded through private contributions.

This is a tempting one, since most folks are heartily sick and tired of listening to Jesse Helms and the Senators from South Dakota embarrass themselves and the American people with their purblind ignorance.

However, the relatively tiny amounts that go into the arts and humanities through our government plays a surprisingly big role in how we see ourselves as a people. For all the propaganda about the photography of the late Robert Mapplethorpe and disgusting descriptions of "performance art" that the Coalition has subjected the broader public to, the fact is Americans take a fair amount of pride in their national artistic endeavours and productions. Government-promoted art is a shared experience. The public can look at something beautiful and magnificent – which most publicly funded art is – and think "We had a role in this."

The Coalition, however, is unrelentingly critical of our secular culture, and of human nature. They will remain critical, fairly or unfairly, honestly or dishonestly, as long as we remain secular. When all is said and done, to the Coalition the existence of secularism is unhealthy, and secular art of any kind pornographic.

The Coalition concludes this section with the following: "Lastly, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a federally chartered corporation established to provide legal assistance to the poor. It received an appropriation of $415 million for FY 1995. What many Americans don't realize is that divorce proceedings are a high priority for many legal services grantees. 70 The LSC alone paid for 210,000 divorces in 1990, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $50 million. Yet, as study after study has revealed, divorce is not helping our nation's poor break out of poverty. Rather, as historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has pointed out: "Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two-parent families. "71 Therefore, an agency that was established to help ameliorate poverty is instead fostering it through its financing of divorce actions."

It's not clear what the LSC has to do with Government funding of the Arts. It is clear, however, that the Coalition is hoping to control through pocketbook morality again. They can't control what people who aren't in their congregation do, so they settle for shafting the poor. Reprehensible.

(10) Crime Victim Restitution

Funds given to states to build prisons should encourage work, study, and drug testing requirements for prisoners in state correctional facilities, as well as requiring restitution to victims subsequent to release.

The Coalition, after telling the Feds they have no right to tell schools how Federal funds should be spent, now want the Feds to mandate how federal prison funds provided to the states should be spent.

Programs to allow inmates to work or study are laudable, as are programs to help ease the suffering of victims. Combining the two, however, shows an abysmal lack of knowledge of human nature. Imagine being an inmate, perhaps serving a life sentence for stealing a pizza. How much effort would you put into work or study if any proceeds you made from the same were taken from you? The inmates won't work, the victims won't get a dime, and the only change from the existing system that will be seen is that loud Coalition complaints that the penal system doesn't work will change to equally loud assurances that it does.

Conclusion

The Contract with the American Family is presented as suggestions. Nothing more. Something they would like to see Congressmen consider at their leisure. Of course, translated from Coalition-speak, that means "Pass this or forget about our support in 1996."

The Coalition is neither Christian (Jesus would not have approved of school prayer, certainly), nor American. Constitutional rights are an impediment to their program. Cleaning up American society involves controlling anyone who, in their eyes, are not "clean." That is the majority of Americans who don't hold with the idea that the Church should control society, and the state.

Don't be fooled. The innocent-sounding suggestions of this group are neither fair, nor just, nor humane, or even Christian. Reject the Contract, and work on making America a better place by being a better American.