Issue Position: Family

Issue Position

Family is the sacrosanct, wellspring of social governance--the garden from which all other levels of government derive. Inasmuch, the role of any other government is to revere, defer to, and safeguard family to the utmost. Where family thrives, societies thrive. It is incumbent upon us to see that the families of Missouri are provided an environment conducive to flourishing. No other platform issue is as important.

Possible Initiatives:

Marriage is the optimal staging ground for building a family. Possible measures to strengthen marriage:

Revisit "no-fault" divorce. Marriage is a covenant; a bona fide contract. When someone breeches such contract, that party should bear the brunt of their infraction.

Marriage-friendly tax codes. Tax codes should be constructed in such a way as to encourage, support, and sustain marriage.

Parenthood is the epicenter of family. Possible measures to respect and strengthen parenting:

Mitigate abortion. We must work to discourage abortion:

Through recognizing, respecting, and giving legal status to the life of the unborn child;

Through education programs designed to encourage life for expectant mothers;

Through measures to encourage the relinquishment of the child to adoption--as opposed to abortion;

Through discouraging the mindset abortion is viable method of birth control.

Encouragement and facilitation of adoption.

Utilize credits, deductions, grants to ease the financial burden of adoption and encourage qualified and willing parents to step forward.

Facilitate an integral role in the adoption process for social and religious institutions.

Affirmation of parents as the rightful frontline of guidance, discipline, education in the lives of their children.

Children are the fruit of the family, and family is the setting in which children best flourish. Tacit acknowledgement and affirmation of the autonomy, essentiality, preeminence, and rights of parents in the upbringing and guidance of our children is of foremost importance. Being our state's finest treasure and our posterity, the welfare of Missouri's children must be central to any platform and subsequent initiatives.

Child welfare. Shore up and maintain child welfare agencies; encourage development of child welfare initiatives among private institutions.

Gender confusion. Initiatives to prohibit gender reassignment among minors.

Source