Personal and Family Issues

By Mike Halliwell

I defend legal definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, with appropriate positive incentives such as joint filing tax advantages and spousal social security benefits. Same sex life partners should be free from interference and enjoy benefits of civil unions plus right to adopt. I favor parental notification before an abortion to end a minor child's pregnancy, with judicial bypass in hardship situations.

The most fundamental problem that marriage helps to cope with is unplanned pregnancy, a circumstance which never arises in gay intimate relationships. There is no such thing as a universal subsidy. There used to be a $1000 veteran's property tax exemption in California, which I never felt was an invidious discrimination because I didn't receive it. Giving this exemption to everyone had the same effect as taking it away. A brother and sister are not allowed to marry each other, for which there are sound genetic and social reasons. Does this mean that either the brother or the sister is not a fully equal member of society? A comparison between inter-racial marriage bans and not giving full marital status to same sex couples is sometimes made. Proponents of this argument usually get it backwards. Mixed race marriage brings together groups in society whose defining characteristics, such as skin color, are superficial. Traditional marriage brings together the genders, which have real and mutually beneficial differences. To say that there is no rational basis for encouraging the formation of opposite sex unions, is not a tenable position. This does not mean that couples which form in spite of incentives to follow a male + female pattern, should be disrupted. Why such same sex unions are a durable feature of human society and how they should be treated is discussed after the core issues in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (HR 3396), which I support, are explored.

Marriage strengthens the bond between a man and a woman and provides vital protection for their children. Joint filing of tax returns and spousal Social Security benefits are es-pecially vital to disadvantaged groups struggling with family instability due to economic forces beyond their control. I support the 2001 marriage penalty relief bill (HR 6) which doubles the child tax credit and allows married couples to pay taxes no higher than would be owed if they were single people filing separately. In my March 7, 2010 Mill Valley Groupa Palooza speech, I emphasized the need for Republicans to keep faith with our allies in minority communities:

My name is Mike Halliwell and I'm running against Lynn Woolsey for Congress. Many of you were with me in the 2008 Proposition 8 fight, against the State Supreme Court's assault on traditional marriage. We tried our best, but when the votes were counted we lost + the white vote. However, a landslide vote in the Black community provided the margin which pulled our chestnuts out of the fire. If you want to know why 75% of black women voted for Prop 8, you need only to have seen the lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots in Black precincts. Typically, more than 2/3 of Black voters are women, a source of heart ache to those who are hoping to find a husband, and a depressing scene to little black kids who are wondering what life holds in store when they become men.

Like the American troops hanging on by their fingernails to the crucial railroad junction at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge, believers in traditional values in the Black community are refusing to surrender. In 2004, Black congregations mobilized by an Ohio initiative to preserve one man, one woman marriage doubled President Bush's Black vote compared to 2000. These mostly Democrat Black voters kept Ohio's key electoral votes in the GOP column, thus saving America from having a President John Kerry and a Vice President John Edwards. The Washington D.C. City Council knows how its mostly Black constituents feel about traditional marriage, which explains why they rammed their gay marriage legislation down the throats of voters there, without allowing a referendum vote.

Gay relationships do not arise from an inherited biological trait. Such a characteristic with so strong a link with a basic evolutionary force, differential reproduction, would have disappeared from the gene pool long ago. It is clear that sexual orientation is a multi-faceted phenomenon. One aspect of lesbianism is clearly the shortage of men, which leaves many women with the sort of choice available to a shopper who arrives at an after Christmas sale late in the afternoon. Women who profoundly dislike the male predilection toward promiscuity (which is adaptive when men are scarce) and pugnacity, are likely to prefer a partner who will show them more respect. When some women pair off, this strengthens traditional marriage, since this leaves more men to go around. Many people who now think of themselves as "gay" have children from relationships before they "discovered their sexual orientation." Since society allows children to be raised by a single parent, I see no reason why same sex Life Partners should not be protected and allowed to adopt children, including orphans.

Another important family stability issue is parental notification before an abortion is performed on a pregnant minor child (which was the focus of Proposition 4 on the 2008 ballot and will appear again on the 2012 general election ballot). Requiring a pregnant minor to notify a parent before seeking an abortion, with a judicial bypass for incest or other hardship situations, allows potential grandparents to make known their willingness to help before it is too late. In many cases a teen-age couple which has broken up reconciles later, and rejoices when their child has been given safe haven by grandparents.

Like Governor Ronald Reagan, who signed the Anthony Bielenson's 1967 abortion bill which decriminalized this procedure, I also support a necessary safeguard to assure a truly uncoerced decision by the mother. This is the elimination of subsidies that tilt the balance against the unborn child. This was the basis of the 2009 Stupak Amendment to HR 3962, which requires abortion insurance to be purchased separately from any federally subsidized health insurance policy.