What Social Conservatives Really Want

By now everyone knows that profamily conservatives are a powerful political force. But how will we judge the rhetoric about social problems and solutions offered during the 1988 campaign? Our fundamental principle is the one that inspired the Family Protection Act: The family is strong when it has functions to perform.

The Act has already transformed the political landscape. By 1980, it had become the standard of definition for what was meant (beyond simply being pro-life and anti-ERA) by being profamily: righting the fiscal injustices to the family, restoring parents’ rights over their children’s education, seeking ways to get families and the elderly off government dependency. The Left, suddenly deprived of the moral high ground, was stunned; it took four years before Mario Cuomo found a way, in his keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention, of appropriating the word “family” for liberal purposes.

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C. Marshner

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By now everyone knows that profamily conservatives are a powerful political force. But how will we judge the rhetoric about social problems and solutions offered during the 1988 campaign? Our fundamental principle is the one that inspired the Family Protection Act: The family is strong when it has functions to perform.

The Act has already transformed the political landscape. By 1980, it had become the standard of definition for what was meant (beyond simply being pro-life and anti-ERA) by being profamily: righting the fiscal injustices to the family, restoring parents’ rights over their children’s education, seeking ways to get families and the elderly off government dependency. The Left, suddenly deprived of the moral high ground, was stunned; it took four years before Mario Cuomo found a way, in his keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention, of appropriating the word “family” for liberal purposes.