EXCERPT FROM THE FAMOUS
“MURPHY BROWN” SPEECH BY DAN QUAYLE TO THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF SAN FRANSISCO
IN MAY 1992
And for those concerned
about children growing up in poverty, we
should know this: marriage
is probably the best anti-poverty
program of all. Among families headed by married couples
today,
there is a poverty rate of
5.7 percent. But 33.4 percent of
families headed by a
single mother are in poverty today.
Nature abhors a
vacuum. Where there are no mature,
responsible men
around to teach boys how
to be good men, gangs serve in their
place. In fact, gangs have become a surrogate
family for much of
a generation of inner city
boys. I recently visited with some
former gang members in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. In a private
meeting, they told me why
they had joined gangs. These teenage
boys said that gangs gave
them a sense of security. They made
them
feel wanted, and
useful. They got support from their
friends.
And, they said, "It
was like having a family."
"Like family"--
unfortunately, that says
it all.
The system perpetuates
itself as these young men father children
whom they have no
intention of caring for, by women whose welfare
checks support them. Teenage girls, mired in the same
hopelessness, lack sufficient
motives to say no to this trap.
Answers to our problems
won't be easy. We can start by
dismantling
a welfare system that
encourages dependency and subsidizes broken
families. We can attach conditions--such as school
attendance, or
work--to welfare. We can limit the time a recipient gets
benefits.
We can stop penalizing
marriage for welfare mothers. We can
enforce child support
payments.
Ultimately, however,
marriage is a moral issue that requires
cultural consensus and the
use of social sanctions. Bearing babies
irresponsibly is, simply
wrong. Failing to support children one
has fathered is
wrong. We must be unequivocal about
this.
It doesn't help matters
when prime time TV has Murphy Brown--a
character who supposedly epitomizes
today's intelligent, highly
paid, professional
woman--mocking the importance of fathers by
bearing a child alone, and
calling it just another "lifestyle
choice."
I know it is not
fashionable to talk about moral values, but we
need to do it. Even though our cultural leaders in
Hollywood,
network TV, the national
newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think
that most of us in this
room know that some things are good, and
other things are
wrong. Now it's time to make the
discussion
public.
It's time to talk again
about family, hard work, integrity, and
personal
responsibility. We cannot be
embarrassed out of our
belief that two parents,
married to each other, are better in most
cases for children than
one. That honest work is better hand-outs-
-or crime. That we are our brothers' keepers. That it's worth
making an effort, even
when the rewards aren't immediate.
So I think the time has
come to renew our public commitment to our
Judeo-Christian values--in
our churches and synagogues, our civic
organizations, and our
schools. We are, as our children recite
each morning, "one
nation under God." That's a useful
framework
for acknowledging a duty
and an authority higher than our own
pleasures and personal
ambitions.