Quayle-Vision Made Real: a Man for Every Mother : Families: Why not legislate marriage for women on welfare?

Brave as you are, Dan Quayle, you must go further. Our nation must transform your vision of a morally correct family into reality.

We must roll up our sleeves to ensure that every child has an equal opportunity to grow up in a normal family with a parent of each sex. To that end, here is a modest legislative proposal. America counts on you to steer it through Congress:

Just as some states require welfare recipients with children over age 6 to accept jobs, where available, we must require all applicants for Aid to Families with Dependent Children to accept suitable husbands, where available. This would be facilitated by the creation of a federal Matrimonial Data Bank.

Obviously no woman should feel pressured to accept her first marriage proposal. The Matrimonial Data Bank (hereafter MDB) would provide three matches for each single mother. Only after a welfare recipient rejects three offers of appropriate private support would she forfeit her claim to further state support.

I realize that anyone who has ever tried to match-make for a daughter will ask where all these appropriate husbands can be found. We come now to the second morally constructive aspect of this plan.

All single males over the age of 37 who are employed by federal agencies or companies that receive government contracts will be registered in the MDB. I am aware that many of these over-age single individuals will be found, on closer inspection, to be homosexual. Still, we can rightly require them to fulfill the most basic external function of employed men: to share their health insurance coverage with uninsured women and children.

The MDB should not be used to promote marriages across race, religious or class lines or where the woman is taller than the man, for that might violate the very image of marriage that this legislation is designed to preserve. Adherence to these rules may hinder us from finding enough employed men for minority women. If the problem of finding sufficient good husbands turns out to be intractable, then President Bush can appoint a Matrimonial Czar.

It was very brave of a simple rich vice president to speak out about right and wrong, knowing that he would incur the wrath of powerful individuals like college professors and sitcom writers.

Inevitably, such people will say that his courageous moral stands are insincere. After all, saying that people need family isn’t going to get anyone the family they need. Critics will go so far as to claim that it’s hypocritical or callously irresponsible to excite hostility between groups of Americans in order to win an election.

This criticism would be justified if the vice president were casting stones at people for being poor, culturally elite or single without giving them the means to change their objectionable life styles. The criticism will not be justified, however, if he follows up what might seem like destructive, negative remarks with this positive plan to help every American become part of a true family.