An Open Letter to Orrin Hatch

Dear Senator Hatch: For over a decade you have been the most stalwart friend of the family in the U.S. Senate. You have been subjected to fierce pressures and suffered ugly religious smears. You have ignored the orchestrated chorus of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the news magazines, and the networks, and upheld the sanctity of marriage. You conducted a series of Senate hearings that brought the case against the unisex Equal Rights Amendment to the public, and you were second only to Phyllis Schlafly in achieving its final defeat. While most other conservative senators cowered in their offices surrounded by feminist aides, you again and again have bravely made the case for sexual sanity in an America sinking into a slough of family breakdown and subsidized moral decay.

On all points you have been entirely vindicated. Your belief that only traditional families could be relied on to raise children into responsible adults finds confirmation in the chaos of female-headed families in the ghetto, mired in poverty and assailed by waves of crime. Your skepticism toward government programs designed to “help families’’ is vindicated by the epidemic of broken families we witness amid the proliferating government programs of this nation’s cities and of the semi-socialist welfare states of Western Europe.

About the Author

George Gilder

Mr. Gilder is a founder of the Discovery Institute, a venture capitalist, and the author of 15 books, including The Israel Test.

Dear Senator Hatch: For over a decade you have been the most stalwart friend of the family in the U.S. Senate. You have been subjected to fierce pressures and suffered ugly religious smears. You have ignored the orchestrated chorus of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the news magazines, and the networks, and upheld the sanctity of marriage. You conducted a series of Senate hearings that brought the case against the unisex Equal Rights Amendment to the public, and you were second only to Phyllis Schlafly in achieving its final defeat. While most other conservative senators cowered in their offices surrounded by feminist aides, you again and again have bravely made the case for sexual sanity in an America sinking into a slough of family breakdown and subsidized moral decay.

On all points you have been entirely vindicated. Your belief that only traditional families could be relied on to raise children into responsible adults finds confirmation in the chaos of female-headed families in the ghetto, mired in poverty and assailed by waves of crime. Your skepticism toward government programs designed to “help families’’ is vindicated by the epidemic of broken families we witness amid the proliferating government programs of this nation’s cities and of the semi-socialist welfare states of Western Europe.