look at the family values issue and I'm going to talk about it in terms of actually existing politics what are family values anyway this is The $64,000 political question it would be hard to find a person well a person outside this room who's against family values and it would be equally hard to find a person outside the ideologue of the Christian right and the community Aryans and the Democratic Leadership Council who could give you off the bat a concrete and detailed list of what those values specifically are in the political Arena Family Values is a Terrain in which many things are simultaneously and I can quite confusedly contested the roles of women in of man which includes just about everything having to do with sexuality from gay rights to birth control and abortion the relations of parents and children and a parents Visa V schools and Clinics and other institutions that care for their childrenbut family values also take takes and concerns that a first-class don't seem to have much to do with families the amount of secular power religion ought to have in Civic life and in politics what kind of all right if any are to receive Government funding and how high your taxes not to be when educated Urban Nation reading people which I know you all are think about family values they tend to see it through the lens of the religious right and the Republican party and they tend to get very scared without poo-pooing either the harmful nature of right-wing family values or its potential to make life worse in this talk I'm going to suggest that the real threat proposed by Family Values is much more diffuse and obsessing about fundamentalist and militiamen as we like to do over the nation is to focus too narrowly and in the wrong direction and after I persuaded you all about that I'm going to try to answer a question that doesn't get asked nearly enough what is the political purpose or by Family Values campaigns and why are we having them now when Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed talks about family values what exactly does he mean well he wants vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private and religious schools he wants prayers the teaching of creationism an abstinence-only sex education in public schools he wants abortion to be banned preferably through the passage of the Constitutional Amendment although he's given sides that he knows that it's even that goal is unlikely and he'll settle for something more moderate the wall so bad and he wants teenage girls to give birth who give birth to choose adoption he may well believe it why should be subject to and depending on their husbands because the Bible tells me so but he doesn't come out and say that I think that's interesting what he says is that he wants to see taxes lowered so that families can survive on one income and mothers can stay home if they want to he wants to keep gays and lesbians marginal by denying them the right to serve in the Army marry or be protected by civil rights laws and he wants to reform divorce laws to make divorce more difficult not to mention getting tougher on crime and drugs abolishing welfare and other social programs for poor families and so on what's quite a list and when Newt Gingrich and his fellow right-wing Republicans took both houses of Congress in 1994 a lot of people gulped hard and thought Oh this is it head for the hills and it's true that the Gingrich Republicans did a lot of damage sometimes over President Clinton Speedo but often as with the welfare bill with his cooperation the jobless poor the environment the schools and the consumer are all worse off the military health maintenance organizations and corporate interests of All Sorts are going fabulously well Family Values agenda however did not get anywhere near as far as it seemed it might in those creepy early days of the hundred and 4th Congress one reason for this is that the Christian Coalition and the radical right generally have a limited if considerable political constituency if you're not in the Christian Coalition you probably really hate the Christian Coalition and the more the religious right tries to inject itself into the mainstream the more people get to see them close up for the religious Fanatics they are most Americans including most politically conservative Americans do not think School breakfast program to undermine the family they do not want their children to be taught creation of science they do not want to be Bloom band from school libraries as pornography and they certainly don't think Halloween is a Satanist holiday moreover they and this is very important they don't want their school board spending meeting after meeting wrangling over these issues that the religious right advises its devotees to run for school boards and other offices as stealth candidates who package themselves as normal conservative shows that even they understand how out of set they are there tragedy if you can call if that is it in order to make real political games they have to make themselves acceptable to the mainstream but since they are as I've said religious Fanatics they can't actually do that something always gets in the way the head of the Southern Baptist calls for the conversion of the Jews or they decide they have to boycott Disney because Disney decides to offer spousal benefits for gay couples and can you imagine you know can you imagine the war between parents and children in the houses that you know an M between parents and pastors you know I mean my God without Disney how can you raise a child in contemporary America you can't do it or someone says something to silly even for American politics like Idaho's anti-environmental congresswoman Helen Chenoweth who believes in black helicopters and all the rest and when confronted with the fact that a species was becoming extinct every 5 minutes or so opined it if that was indeed so surely God was creating a new species every 5 minutes also now what about the rest of the radical right Family Values agenda it runs into similar trouble with basic political realities as Senator Dole has discovered the Hardline anti-choice position is an electoral loser even such anti-abortion stalwarts as Bill Bennett and Bill kristol if the Weekly Standard my favorite magazine my pornography they now talk about abandoning The Crusade for human life amendment in favor of working to limit access to abortion and changing the moral and social climate so that it becomes a less popular unless necessary choice this is the clintonian position they're just like him making divorce more difficult runs into the obvious problem that everyone's divorced in particular politicians have astronomical divorce rates and seem particularly prone to the least justifiable kind of divorce in the popular mind the man who leaves his loyal helpmate of his children for a younger last year woman and here I think those of us who understand how absolutely essential liberal divorce laws are two women's self-determination should all pause for a moment and thank our lucky stars the Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole behaved as badly as they did cuz that has made it impossible to mount for them to mount this particular barricade was Clinton as he often likes to point out he's still married you know the bad husband he's still there the political realities aren't the only obstacle there are economic realities too much of the right not just the religious right would like to see mothers out of the workplace David gelernter of Yale made the case in a recent issue of commentary magazine in the Weekly Standard William Tucker called for the restoration of the family wage which paid man enough to support a stay-at-home wife and several children in its Heyday now it's interesting to note that even in the leading reactionary journals of the moment writers have to head qualify their case gelernter allows that women have brought a wealth of talent to the workplace he claims that he prefers them to meal Kali he admits his thing home will be an act of self-sacrifice for many women toprak proposes a family wage uncoupled from sex offenses amazing but he does each family according to him could choose one spouse to be the primary earner kind of like a designated driver and this person of either sex could be the would be the beneficiary of favorable discrimination and pay and promotions the other officially registered as the secondary on her would be discriminated against and that would be okay or mildly can be judge from the fact that Phyllis Schlafly Road into the Weekly Standard letters page to say that she had had the same idea and 1977 you know I think that's interesting you can't really get very far if you say you know women are constitutionally unable to have a to hold down jobs in a serious way women should be officially the subject member of the relationship although the promise Keepers and the Million Man March to pretty much try to do that but I think has a limited constituency if you want to go mainstream you have to adopt the official ideology which is of some kind of gender officially labeled gender equality the main point about these and other schemes though is it they are absolutely no relation to economic reality in which far from a have Workforce making doubled salaries a doubled work for us is making less and less there are doubtless many women and many men to who would love to stay home or work only part-time will their children or young or who knows even when the kids are middle-aged much overrated we should talk about this the notion that employers will accommodate this Desire by racing pay for those people spouses out of sheer civic-mindedness is fairly fantastic it's akin to the widespread belief that we can bring back the 1950s by sheer force of Morrow will when by having the right pop music for example when in fact no amount of that particular economic and historical set of circumstances now I'm not urgent complacency about the radical right here and I'm not denying that their version of family values can cause actual harm for real people the attempt to defend legal services for the poor for instance and two bar Legal Services lawyers from taking divorce cases is a good example of the way in which the radical right is able to smuggle bits of its larger agenda into reality by wrapping them in cost-cutting measures and aiming them at the weakest members of society of course welfare reform is a very big example of that family values represents a much larger by partisan political phenomenon it took a hip modern saxophone-playing baby boomer president to end the federal entitlement to welfare for poor children you know Reagan didn't do that I mean he told a lot of jokes about Welfare Queen but in fact the key out the entire the safety net spend it while Reagan was in office that's why we have always think that so well that is giving all that money to rich people but anyway the family values is really to shape public policy it will be in the Bland and Centrist formulations of the community areas and Progressive policy Institute it will be clintonism in fact it is quotient what the religious right the communitarians and conservative Democrats of the DLC think what's wrong with America today is the people have the wrong ideas they are too selfish individualistic and hedonistic and isolated they don't respect authority they are unwilling to submerge their own interests in those of a larger identity the family the neighborhood the church congregation and the nation they Bowl alone they watch too much TV when they should be out there volunteering now I happen to think this criticism is not a fair assessment of the fact that Americans are let's not forget the most religious people in fact the only religious people in the industrialized West nobody goes to church in Europe more than half at least say they volunteer in a typical year and if Americans watch too much TV maybe the reason is that they're too tired from working two jobs and taking care of their children and maybe too depressed to do anything else the u.s. is truly the only country in which the ideologue Siri calling from more patriotism or national pride are the same people who have little good to say about the actually existing citizens of the supposedly wonderful Nation or I might add about its distinctive traditions of civil liberties separation of church and state freedom of speech protections for privacy Etc like the religious right the communitarian or clintonian family values aetiology conflicting various places with civil liberties with women's Liberation and with contemporary modes of sexuality in her book it takes a village Hillary Clinton herself says she thinks people should be virgins until they're 21 and that divorce should be made more difficult to obtain of course is easy for her because it's very hard to imagine the set of divorce reforms that would force her to remain married to her husband she's covered under the most rigid fault divorce system unlike the religious rights version it acknowledges the basic outlines of Modern Life at the end of the twentieth century that women are not going to stay home they need to work that strictly define gender roles are giving way to more flexible ones that America is not a Christian Nation it's a pluralistic and multi-ethnic nation and so on well the family values agenda of the radical right is both sweeping and out of touch with possibility that of the clintonian communitarians is when you get down to brass tacks so modest as to be practically invisible except of course we're defects the poor volunteer at your child's School seek marital counseling before breaking up your marriage know your neighbors disapprove of violet misogynistic rap lyrics it's hard to disagree with romines like that and although I would hate to see them enacted into law the truth is mostly they wouldn't make a whole lot of practical different let's say for instance the couple's did have to seek marital counseling or wait 6 months before divorcing these requirements might be a pain in the neck for some couples who knew what they wanted and a salve to some spouses who feel they are being hustled to quickly at the door by their Maids but they would not out alter the ultimate outcome very often and I have a divorce decree to prove it similarly the violence in raw sexuality Express expressed in one area of cultural production rap or Primetime TV will soon show up in another here again as with radical right I'm not denying that family values can and probably will make difficulties for many people but when you consider the scale of what family values Advocate Advocates themselves identify as vast social problems the breakdown of marriage the decline of neighborhood Vitality single parent families teen pregnancy run down and chaotic schools full of underperforming students you have to be struck by the lack of a commensurate response if the schools for example are indeed full of idle disrespective disrespectful thuggish semi-literate putting them all in uniforms isn't going to make much difference and neither will adding a few more school volunteer so that what what is it every every 3rd grader knows how to read I mean when what happened when we used to read in the first grade now on this is Clinton's big idea and you can see from these suggestions how much ground has been conceded already the reforms that would matter classes with no more than 15 students the restoration of our music Jim guidance counselors and all the houses and all those other Frills remember them they're not even on the table they cost too much money now if I can see this and you can see this you can be sure Bill Clinton can see it too so the interesting question is if right-wing Family Values proposals are too extreme to find mass acceptance and clintonian family values proposals are to minimal to have much effect even if everyone thought they were a fine idea what is family values really all about in my View Family Values is the idiot logical cover for our current economic situation flashing of the safety net and a public services of all kinds Global competition and downsizing Family Values says there are no classes there are only families and everyone is in a family so we are all equal it says that what determines a person's fate in life are individual qualities like responsibility and hard-working this and faith in God and the commitment to deferred gratification and this is this is Louis Farrakhan cydaea this is his vision that's what black people need to have more of the wonderful quote you know don't send don't send the jobs after the third world send them to the ghetto wheel wagon Subs at sub minimum wage labor and there is nothing about the economic circumstances that have created the current plight of Black America it says that the public service money has run out and you are on your own and since wages are stagnant you had better attach yourself to another wage-earner especially if you were female and therefore underpaid it says that the nanny state in the wonderful conservative phrase is finished so the real mommies must take up the slack whether or not they also hold down a job someone after all must take care of babies of children and after Social Security and Medicaid has been cut the elderly family values in a funny way you could almost size it is really about families which will continue to form and fragment and metamorphose as they have been doing for quite some time under the pressures of modernity which is not about to be repealed Family Values is really about rallying people to accept the ongoing decline in their standard of living and to accept a diminished public sphere school uniforms instead of smaller classes the v-chip for the home alone child instead of after school programs and a shortened workweeks so that parents could actually spend time with your children volunteers instead of professionals an unhappy relationship instead of even a brief time I'm shameful stigmatizing welfare and it's about drawing people together to celebrate their straitened circumstances as proof of their moral superiority it works at the national level we have to be top country yeah we feel we're not perhaps we should be more orderly enough the reptarium like Japan or Singapore and it works the class level even while denying class exist like predestination for Calvin and genetics for Charles Murray Family Values explains why the successful deserve what they have and why the poor deserve what they don't have that's it justifies transferring wealth awkward by increasing middle class tax deductions and credits for children adoption College tuition summer houses whatever while cutting welfare and scholarship Aid and benefits for the for it works at the individual level two is a kind of warning a false step and out of wedlock baby and a pulse of divorced and you could fall very very far down the social scale with no one but your family to pick you up call me of Alder Marxist well I caught myself but when I ask myself what family values are I answer in the immortal words of James Carville it's the economy stupid thank you thank you to all our panelists to my far left so to speak and to my far right are two microphones for you to come to an ask a question of any or all of our speakers I'll start in the absence of anybody standing at the microphone so is there any reason to vote for Bill Clinton giving all that you've all just said somebody very very large Marge there is no reason because even if everybody who is influenced by the kinds of arguments that I've been making did what I want them to do there are too few, you might as well use your vote instead of adding your little might your little Widow's Mite to the huge electoral horror that Clinton possesses you might as well use it to make another kind of like I don't like what this guy is doing to the floor and you could vote for Nader and I don't know why I might not be able to bring myself I'm mad at the way he's run his campaign you know that I might not be able to do that or you could not vote most people don't vote you know they're saying something to the idea that your vote is wasted if you don't go to the polls I think that's a mistake the political people who are in charge of the political system are very upset that people don't vote because they know it means they have less legitimacy so you might want to think about how much legitimacy you want to give them anybody listening and persuaded by the people who argue that we should have another category like it's none of the above available for election so we could do exactly that maybe not vote for Nader but vote for in a vote against Clinton and I agree I told Kathy she persuaded me not to vote for Clinton in her Nation editorial but I don't know if I feel the same way if I lived in Florida for example where it might be where the boat might not a moron right also the hedges you want something to be present that you just don't want to go for a severe appreciate appreciation on the Supreme Court and what that means and American society which is why it's marginally and make a difference the only thing I want to add to this because certainly ideologically I share cap is sentiment but I think when election day comes I will go into the voting booth and I will Bill Clinton because I do have some concerns about what it would mean to have a republican Congress and a Republican president and although I think he I mean clearly absolutely I don't think I have to say this I he did the wrong thing on welfare and I'm not convinced that some people are that he'll make it right later I'm not convinced of that I I still think that at least on something the whole the whole kit and caboodle has not totally a wrote it and it's only because in a few instances he he vetoed things and I think the other the other part of that messages that we have to continue to be actively engaged in the political process is not just in the voting process but really in commute I mean if if Bill Clinton is nothing else he is a he responds to public perception of him and that maybe the only thing we have going again sharing a lot of the ideological seven it's like the first time I've been stomach isn't in my job I have to like go around like getting people out there to vote you know so but my concern about saying don't vote for Bill Clinton is that the message that gets sent to a lot of people what they end up doing is not going to the polls at all and that's my biggest concern every one of the 211 members of the New York State Legislature are up for reelection again in 2 weeks we have major Congressional battles going on around the state and it is very important it is the state that will determine if this point where those welfare dollars and how does welfare dollars the few that there are going to be dispersed and how the structure is going to be put in place that will deal with this new reality it is the state that is that is going to deal with the issue of marriage and the issue of family relationships as they usually do it's been a total in a perversion of that process for the Congress to step in on that but that is where it happens so whether one who goes and wants to take that the conscientious objector approach to the presidential campaign is a personal choice but don't let that me and you don't go to the polls okay let me go over here states that has already moved to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages that have been consummated in other states ironically I think it is also state that is home to some portion of its citizens read that has sought to challenge bigamy laws seeking a family life based on polygamy polygamy can I think proposed some unique questions to feminist way of thinking how do we as we seek a multiculturalist and embracing definition of family address this challenge as feminist assuming that we stopped short of a radical proposition that we abolish marriage as a legal Institution don't start on that pole or if it's your last part that hooked me and it's like oh no well you know the thing about things like it bigamy and polygamy I can't say to be much of an expert on it but what I do understand or think I understand about it at least as it's been practiced is that has been primarily the practice of men with many wives now that should tell us something about what that is and so to all the sudden go down this kind of road that says we want to engage in a process by which marriage can be allowed to more than two people might have some validity to it I mean it would certainly in some ways begin to reflect some of the families that actually exist but I think we have to look at how that has practice so far with the law requires is that purely and simply is bad when a state does anything's in this area whatever that they show some reason for doing it and that's part of what we the chords to protect against these so-called tyranny of the majority that people can't just go around passing laws right and left and right with no meeting or no purpose to them and I think that certainly you know engaging in the question of whether a multiple marital partnership should be recognized it is one that I think is worth engaging and I think it's a little bit off the point though because I think it's still puts marriage at the centerpiece it still doesn't recognize that family relationships share of a lot of different kinds of of relationships I mean again those students I was talking to earlier this week at the new school one young woman that didn't talked about how her older brother is her brother who then became her father figure at a certain point in ONN so you know she has a very you know a multiple relationship with him in some ways I would rather that we see and seek a world in which we begin to recognize as I said that they did relationships that exist to destigmatize in the way that I think marriage does those that fall outside of whatever its purview is an end to just get away from marital all together and I know you said you know but short of banning marriage I think it's as Martha said is a legal institution I I think it's majorly flawed for women I'm feeling about polygamy was actually changed somewhat by meeting a Senegalese judge who was Judge who just become the third wife of senegalese business man and of course being a curious American and having nose restraints whatsoever I asked her about that and her response was kind of interesting cuz she told me how she she's in a society where is unusual for women to have that kind of career and the creature had a lot of demand made a lot of Demands on her and she thought being the third 1/3 having a third of a husband was just about right for her that I'm actually here but but but I did think about that because she wanted to reproduce she wanted to have children she wanted to have a quote normal life which means that she wanted to have a marriage of some sort and this was a way that you could accommodate both what you wanted to do on a professional level and her desire for a family I just want to say that about killing me I think that there's a way in which we view polygamy as inherently exploitive and which he taught me is that it need not be that way and put it but even beyond anything we think about marriage or inherent in the notion of exploitation in the context of polygamy is the what is it what is a certain set of assumptions about the way we view sexuality and male and female sexuality in the you know the notion of male sexuality as in need of of constraint by marriage or other institutions and now you can remove for me my radical solution about your marriage is legal institution but let me just say I really believe that that that is what we have to do to allow our Senegalese judge to reproduce even outside of the context of it on the family marriage in that kind of traditional family I think the advantages of doing that is once we no longer have a legal institution of marriage which means that marriage is not an economic ordering doesn't privilege certain kinds of transfers and and it's not the basis for certain kinds of social subsidies then the state has no interest in our sexuality if the state is not using marriage to perform State functions like hearing for dependents then it seems to me that all sexual affiliations are on equal ground none are privileged and none would be prohibited and that would include polygamy same-sex relationships and everything else that marriage no longer would stand as the state to find appropriate sexuality over here that's for Sherry Gorillaz I want to pick up on some of that crisis being the conjunction of danger and opportunity I wonder whether we might see this crisis of families as an opportunity in a weight Edelbrock mention the fact that when gays and lesbians pushed for domestic partnership it is it enlarged the range of possibility for straight people as well as for lesbians and gays it seems to me that we could take that further and say that health benefits have to be taken out of any kind of ties to the family or employment by having a national health system and the thanks the anxiety that comes from having to be related to an employed person or too worried about whether you lose your own unemployment or even gain any employment would be taken away by having that established by the state the other thing is that I think that some of this tremendous anxiety that is fed by the family values ideology is the fact as you several of you pointed out that families are dissolving and besides all those other reasons like domestic abuse etcetera it also has to do with the economy in that people lose jobs they have to find jobs by moving to a completely different region of the country so they're not near their Elders they're not near their extended family that it breaks up families Etc and I think this is something that we really have to address that is what are some of the economic forces that are breaking this down because I think that one of the sources of this anxiety is that people do feel that without a family member they are lost in a bureaucracy and any I'll just say one more thing anybody who has had the experience of having to take care of somebody within the hospital system or an aged parent knows that the fact that you are there for them makes the world total different so that's one of the things that we have to address as well not just care taking it in the abstract but caretaking in a way that people can develop Trust I'll just say briefly you you highlighted from you know what is I think the fundamental difference between equality and social change the domestic partner benefits issue was one in which with in the workplace context employees seeking to be treated equally a t i e equal pay for equal work you're going to give health care benefits to married employees you should give them two unmarried employees who have Partners but you're absolutely right and true social change Vision says it what are we doing giving health care benefits based on whether somebody's attached to somebody else to begin with everyone should have a fundamental right to healthcare it's my same view of marriage I can hardly refute those and you know of my colleagues who say well straight people are allowed to marry so we should be allowed to marry too well yes legally speaking that's a very you know important than them viable argument but that doesn't satisfy the question of why should marriage be the play the role it does in determining who guess these basic and important fundamental I mean economic benefits so that's and let you know the feminist contacts that the you know sameness difference issue to some extent of equality go to Marsha Hurst I thought that she was going to start off her introductory remarks when she said she was the focus of political tension by saying she was a soccer mom but that's the question that I'd like to ask and I guess it's a follow-up on the Electoral question earlier on this presumably a block or non block of female voters major parties are vying for and this is the soccer mom phenomenon which is interesting and that I believe it was Time Magazine recently featured a soccer mom who was unmarried may or may not go depending on whether she has time for I remember correctly cuz she's in a very busy earning a living and bring up a child and I'd like the panel to comment on whether this is a block if so what is the block of should it be mobilized can it be mobilized and what does it mean in terms of family values yeah I think that that was a very interesting article in Time Magazine because not only was this woman not married and she had a small child and she was living with her the father of the child that they weren't married and he was quite a bit younger than she was also but she didn't believe in God but she did Believe In The Ten Commandments and she was one of these it's like I know some of you might have read that book about a Renaissance mine called the worms and the cheese or something like that at all that's what a crazy stuff contradictory stuff that you would never find together in a book but that fact are together in people's minds people put the world together and all kinds of strange ways and she was doing that and so of course both parties hope that they can reach this prototypical person but the really interesting thing about this woman was it she wasn't paying attention to politics at all and she knew nothing that was why she didn't know who she was going to vote for she didn't read the newspaper maybe she looks a little Play the TV the whole thing she said the government has has no relation to my life you know and then she said well maybe you know press to think of a way in which the government affected her life she said well maybe I can get a small business loan because she and her boyfriend have you had started many should have failed little businesses out of their home and feel like selling Amway products or something like that selling herbal shampoo I think that was you not going to make it for tonight so it really did give you the what it really showed is not that here are that is a very politicized constituency that everybody wants but he was a very deep politicized fragmented constituencies that I think the people who run political campaigns are hoping to find the magic words that will appeal to them and they don't know what those magic words are maybe it would be Single Payer Health Insurance who knows but nobody's going to say that because that would cost a lot of money and all the rest of it so I always think you know I'm a skeptic I have to say I'm not that there isn't a gender gap but I don't see it as you know Wonderful women voting for more wonderful women and then everything gets to be more wonderful because actually if you look women voted white women voted voted Republican in 1992 they would Republican and independent they were not because you know Democrat they stayed home in 94 I don't know why because they weren't happy because they're a political too and when they do get a chance to vote for someone who is to be good for them that person turns out not to be so good for them for example Dianne Feinstein for example Barbara mikulski all these Democratic women who have been voting for cutbacks in the safety net and have been doing all the bad things we associate many of the bad things we associate with Republicans so I would say that you know we've it would be so lovely to think yes women will sort of pull the chestnuts south of the American fire but I don't think that that is going to happen so that's the gloomy View maybe someone else bluebee pal hello my name is Adriana shop on my Sarah Lawrence College student and I wanted to ask him question and I'd like mrs. Edelbrock especially to answer what do children require in order to discover gender or sexuality or identity in terms of Association or disassociation and to what extent do we need members of both sexes present to become fully realize people well there's a dissertation question I'm not sure exactly what you mean by your first question but I assume that part of it is when do people determine what their sexual identity is is that part of what your question is okay I don't know the the simple answer is I don't know the simple answer is there are many many factors that researchers have found that that help formulate sexual identity what we do know is that sexual identity in terms of sexual orientation is formulated a very very young age that it is not as mutable as people may think that it is and other words the whole recruiting aspect of around sexual orientation is absolutely ridiculous in that you cannot recruit somebody necessarily to change their fundamental sexual orientation the role that parents play in a child's developing sexual orientation is somewhat Limited in that many of us who are lesbian or gay have straight parents so it certainly can't necessarily be be tied to that but environmental factors perhaps some biological factors we don't know they're very early very very non conclusive studies on all of that what we do know is that if children are raised in homes that are accepting and there are open in that are caring about them they may in fact come out if they are gay at an earlier stage and perhaps at some of the fear that the right wing has so well then when they say they gay parenting will mean more gay children it doesn't mean that quantitatively it means that qualitatively it means that perhaps kids will not have to go through what I went through in the late sixties and early seventies of the tortured Suburban you know like there's nobody like me kind of life until he could come to terms with that in terms of parenting and end you know what's necessary for children I mean there are many many theories and probably more people expert in this in this room then I with regard to gender but for the most part I just have to believe that children who are raised with you know parents who care for them sort of have a pretty good shot at that life with regard to gender roles that mean my partner is now pregnant we will be having a baby in March and there are lots of wonderful decent men in our lives we don't need to have one living with us in fact it would be a problem another but you know if there are there are ways in which I think and somebody said this earlier that a lot of the gender old ways in which parenting is looked at stigmatizes a lot of women including lesbians you never have somebody question gay men raising children about where the female role model is younes or have that question there are other things that gay men face around their sexuality but is never whether there's a female role model for those children so you know the jury's out on many of these things around child-rearing and I was actually talking to a colleague recently about how I'm very anxious for the time in which a lot of the children of lesbian and gay couples who are raising children is out lesbian gay couples come of age many of them are but there's a whole group sort of coming up or just now entering college and what have you can't begin to tell us more information about what it means and in a free or Society to be raised by a lesbian or gay parent I don't know if that begins to answer your question graduations to he'll be a great soccer player it's always powerful to have Alternatives in front of us and I was thinking as I watched a little bit of the debate presidential debate on Wednesday how neither candidate ever shows there's nothing in the National debate that shows what's being done in other countries and I think each of the panelists was talking about a little give a little bit of a hint of what's going on in other industrialized countries that are dealing with some of the industrial post-industrial effects on the family and how many of the countries in Europe for example have National Healthcare they have systems in place to support families and don't expect families to take the full brunt I'm off work try to isolate families in the way that we see in this country so might my question is masturbation question is how can we bring those Alternatives into the discussion and other words to stop sort of just looking at the American scene but really to try and bring you know what's going on in Denmark what are these other countries that are facing from the same problems doing and it's they're really providing some alternative models some problems too but we should be discussing them I thinking I'd like to see what the panelists think about that is that something that we can bring into the American debate first just plug panel number three this afternoon which will be addressing those questions then I think that one of the things that were most successful at is exporting our ideologyelegy of self-sufficiency Independence autonomy and the ideology of the family as the location for for dependency and what you see I think in a lot of the end of other industrialized countries is an attempt to cut back using American models so far from influencing us what is happening here is influencing them and you see this in a variety of ways not only in terms of undermining the welfare states that exist in other countries but also in the context of divorce to the development of anti divorce rhetoric and father's rights movements and they built the Omni to assert mean within the context and confines of families as heads as economically responsible human beings is very much alive and well in other countries is this one so I think that you know the influence is running the other way and fortunatelyover here I just graduated from law school and in our family law class we read the case that was the first the first lesbian mom was able to adopt her partner's child I just wanted to point out as a partner to grab we also learned in constitutional law class about Apollo was saying that each state must give full faith and credit to the other states law so I have two questions when I have a quick question for you Paul what it seemed that when Congress passed this law saying that they're not going to recognize same-sex marriages from another state that was a blatant violation the Constitution so one question is when is that going to when is somebody going to have standing in order to be able to put that you sent that to the Supreme Court and what do you think is going to happen that's one thing the other thing is that I haven't really heard from you you all and I'm interested to hear what do you think is going tohappen now with the new welfare Bill there was an article in the paper this week this to parents of nine children were arrested for leaving their kids alone the father was at work the mother had gone to housing court to fight an eviction notice and it just seems like that kind of thing is going to happen more and more I'm interested in the child welfare system foster care and I just wonder if it just seems like things are going to go from extremely bad to worse now that legal services are especially now that legal services are phenomenally cut so if anybody could answer that question what's the first one is is relatively quick to answer me the challenge to the federal all the Defense of Marriage Act will only be ripe when some states allow same-sex couples to marry and then that couple tries to exercise is the rights of a married couple other you know they are seeking immigration status they are seeking a note to file a joint tax return receiving Social Security benefits something like that andthat will allow that law to be challenged otherwise it's basically a a you know it's sort of foolish because it doesn't affect anything right now there's no one that can marry if you're in the same sex couple on the welfare bill can you hear me yeah interesting Lee in the Washington Post this past week there were a series of articles about the rural communities encouraging women who lived in those communities to migrate to urban areas for job opportunities and that that was one of the things that was projected to occur with welfare reform I have been looking specifically at single mothers in rural communities in the South and clearly one of the issues there has to do with not only low welfare payments that already existed but also the prospect of Economic Development and an employment opportunities in many of these areas where employment opportunities have already been very slim I think this issue about or this potential for migration again is an interesting one and is what I mean in this petition in these particular article the welfare case workers were encouraging people to move I mean it wasn't just kind of what they were saying you'll be better off if you go to these the cities and of course what we know about a lot of the cities is there any jobs there either so I think in one place or another if this kind of trend does occur we're going to see more of these kinds of problems but perhaps even more concentrated in urban areas then they are now add to that that the an interesting feature of the welfare Bill and one which Bill Clinton cannot fix is the way in which it throws everything back to the state so what we're going to see is many many different kinds of attempted solutions to the enormous amount of problems that the welfare bill is creating out first there's going to be a little more money for a lot of States because of the way that the formula is going to salser to cleverly rigged at the bad things will happen after the next presidential election you know after that five years when everybody who's currently now on welfare can't be on it anymore even if they go on it today but it's the attention to who is to the left of Clinton on welfare mayor Giuliani you know Christy Whitman these are the people who have to deal with the enormous numbers of legal and illegal immigrants to get thrown off the fact that you know that there are no jobs out of the fact that people have nine children and all the rest of it and that huge foster care Luis Ortiz they know that this isn't going to work out and because these are Urban places with a lot of media people they're not going to let people starve in the streets maybe people will starve in Mississippi where you know they don't care what some real place you can get away with it these are very feudalistic kinds of Arkansas's another during feudal kind of a state but in the big industrial State you I think you're going to see that some of the governors are going to find that this thing they said they wanted they if it's just a tremendous can of worms we have time for one last question especially if it's okay for cats epaulet I'm interested in what real locations you have in mind when I mean it's clear that it's the economy stupid that's why we don't have better schools let's just focus on the school we don't need uniforms what we need is money to reduce classroom side where does that come from where the politicians are no politician who get up and say we have to raise taxes and have taxes like they have in Denmark so that we can have that but you know whatever what do you see what is your vulgar Marxist dream for where that real location comes from now it seems to me that as a Betty Ford an set at the labor teaching that some of you might have attended and I don't usually agree with her about very much that I think that the different separate movements that we have in this country cannot make more advances against the rising tide of inequality I think that's another thing that family values is about so I would say that all these different sorts of oppressed people have to get together they have to have tremendous amounts of at political agitation and direct action and a hundred thousand people sitting in and you know I'm the Washington Mall I mean it has to be an enormous amount of social for a man and a van and that that's going to make maybe a difference because you're absolutely right if a politician says well I want to raise your taxes to Denmark level so that we can have smaller class size forget it you know people don't even they don't even know what that would mean where do you see it coming when it went off when all these French words get together and they say we want to watch lower the military budget where is it going to come from and what is what is your well yeah yeah yeah it's it's not something that like people will just sit down at a table and say here's what we want it will come out of out of struggle and I have to say I think you know we're seeing maybe only the teeniest tiniest beginning to that I think this is either we're really in for a number of very difficult years before I give you your lunch instructions please join me in thanking Paul edelbruck bonniedale Martha find him and half a pot we had hoped to lunch out on the Barnard lawn and enjoy the brisk Autumn air and the autumnal leaves we won't we do have for you box lunches that are available up these stairs now here's the tricky part where you going to take the box lunch directly across the plaza from us which does require about a 15 feet walk from one building to another there is a lovely Atrium area very pretty with nice couches and tables that you can sit at their also some tables upstairs that you can sit at you if you really hate rain you could come back down here although that's not quite as elegant there are restrooms in the other building directly across the way as well and the Barnard students with the goddess t-shirts will be helping to direct at 1:30 hang on one second 130 please go to your first panel of the afternoon follow your program it'll tell you where to go there are tunnels that connect every building at Barnard and I really only two buildings in question Milbank which is that away and Barnard Hall which is this away and you can do it Underground on this floor so that you need not go outside at 4:30 please be sure to return here for the very exciting Jewell Jackson McCabe and for women's center sponsored cookies and tea we are women Center we always have cookies and tea enjoy the rest of the day