Alan Keyes on Families & Children

Don’t lower crime age as a result of adult moral failure

Q: What should be the minimum death penalty age for young felons convicted of deadly crime?
A: [I do not think] we ought to be lowering the age at which we judge people to be adults. I believe that the tendency in that direction now, to want to treat our children as if they are adults, is a confession of our own failure, our own failure as a society to maintain the structures of family life, to maintain the basis of moral education. As a result, yes, we have children now in whom there exists a howling moral void and those children engage in some acts that are heinous and shocking to us. But at the same time, I think we need to respect the difference that exists between children and adults. We need to insist from adults on moral accountability and moral responsibility. We need to help our children develop that ability to be mature adults. But I don’t think that we should take out our failure of moral education on younger and younger children. I think that this is a great error. Source: GOP Debate in Manchester NH Jan 26, 2000

Save kids’ souls-they don’t need free speech

Q: In free-speech terms, do people have the right under the First Amendment [to view anything on the Internet, or] should they be kept from that right on these computers? A: I don’t think it’s a free speech issue. It’s an issue of public decency. Anyplace you let our children into ought to be subject to standards of public decency that make it clear that they are not going to be polluted with garbage. Don’t use the First Amendment as some excuse to destroy our children’s lives and souls. It doesn’t have to be -- it’d be easy as pie to put a few computers off in a room you don’t let children in and let adults have access to them? You can solve the problems if you want to. The libraries right now are egregiously ignoring their responsibility to our kids, trying to claim free speech rights. I’ve got to tell you something. My kids don’t have the right to free speech. And they don’t need to have it until they grow older. Source: GOP Debate in Michigan Jan 10, 2000

Kids need love from a two-parent marriage

Q. What’s the number one challenge facing children today?
A. Children need love. Those who by nature and the customs of a healthy society are most obliged to give this love are the child’s parents. The well-being of children is therefore primarily dependent on the health of the marriage-based, two-parent family. The most pressing “issue” for children is, then, will we as a people sustain, defend, and honor marriage, and its consequences, including the very life of the child, born or unborn. Source: National Association of Children’s Hospitals survey Jan 8, 2000

Health insurance is family responsibility, not government’s

Q. Even if Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program enroll all “eligible” children, there would still be millions of uninsured children. How do you propose insuring each and every child in America?
A. It is not the office of government directly to insure children or anyone else for health costs. Tax and fiscal policies that promote opportunity and responsibility will restore to families the capacity to do what they can do with maximal discretion and love.care for their own flesh and blood, and those they have adopted in love. It is a common duty of all members of society to attend to the needs of children neglected by inadequate family care, but this duty falls first to the extended family and the local community, including most of all the churches, and then to localities and states. Institution of a national governmental program is a confession of failure in charity and self-government. Source: National Association of Children’s Hospitals survey Jan 8, 2000

Radical gay agenda is destroying the family

It’s about time we all faced up to the truth. If we accept the radical homosexual agenda, be it in the military or in marriage or in other areas of our lives, we are utterly destroying the concept of family. We must oppose it in the military. We must oppose it in marriage. We must oppose it if the fundamental institution of our civilization is to survive. Those unwilling to face that fact and playing games with this issue are doing so irresponsibly at the price of America’s moral foundations. Source: (X-ref Civil Rights) Republican Debate in Durham, NH Jan 6, 2000

Shape our children’s consciences in the fear of God

Q: How would you interrupt this culture of violence? A: The first thing we have to do is restore this country’s allegiance to its basic moral principles. We express great shock and outrage that we are bloodying the hallways of our schools with the blood of our children. What about the blood of our children killed in the womb on the basis of a doctrine that completely rejects the basic principles on which this nation was founded? If our rights come from God, then we ought to shape our children’s consciences in the fear of God. And I think that what we’re seeing in our schools is the direct result of our failure to respect that heritage and to pass it on. Source: Des Moines Iowa GOP Debate Dec 13, 1999

Disintegration of the family causes social ills

We must end government programs like the family-destroying welfare system and sex-education courses that encourage promiscuity. These programs actually hasten the moral breakdown. Our first priority should be restoring the moral and material support for the marriage-based two-parent family. The disintegration of the family is the major contributing factor in poverty, crime, violence, the decline in educational performance, and a host of other expensive social problems. Source: (Cross-ref from Welfare Reform) www.keyes2000.org/issues/wel Jun 14, 1999

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