Issue Position: Family Values

Issue Position

As the Father of five wonderful children and having been married to my high school sweetheart for almost 24 years, I can tell you that family values are of utmost importance to me. As a school administrator and teacher for the past 24 years, I see on a daily basis how important the family is to our society. I have seen so many children who were achieving and flourishing suddenly begin to flounder when their families began to fall apart. While we all know of children who overcome poor home lives to do great things, for the most part we know that a child needs a mother and a father in a stable home in order to succeed.

When it comes to family values, it is our government's obligation to support the institution of the family. When our Founding Fathers wrote about "promoting the general welfare", family values and the institution of the family were precisely the kinds of things they were speaking of. They did not mean to support the creation of a welfare state for our families. Rather, they intended to promote a philosophy that would ensure the well being of all of the institutions in our society. The family, as an institution in our society needs help. Our government must help create an environment in which the family structure can flourish. That includes protecting the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.

I believe that one of the most important things government can do is to promote economic development. Creating good jobs to provide sufficient income to support a family while allowing for a sense of self worth goes a long way toward establishing a stable family environment. We need to hold fathers responsible for supporting their children when marriages end and we must make sure that we provide whatever services are necessary to help keep families together before they split up.

There are some signs that recent marriages are lasting longer, and this generation is attempting to make families more stable. We must support this trend. Let's promote family togetherness and encourage our children to only enter into relationships after they have made a true commitment to the other person. We cannot have a government that sends mixed messages about the structure and sanctity of the family unit by legalizing such things as same sex marriage. We have to have the courage to say some things are WRONG and not part of God's plan for us. We need to stop worrying about what is "politically correct" and be concerned about what is "family correct". Let's run our ideas through the right filter. We are sending the wrong message when our government supports alternative lifestyles that eat away at the foundation of the family unit

Another family value that we must promote is honesty and justice. The institutions of our society each depend upon the others being strong. When one falters, another weakens. We must have courage to act upon injustice. We cannot let procedure be more important than substance. I am not saying that we should not protect the rights and freedoms of those accused of crimes. What I am saying is that we must all be more concerned about truth, justice and honesty than formalities.

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