Are Social Issues Really Distractions?

In an article filed last Saturday (“State leaders say social issue bills sidetrack Legislature,” Casper Star Tribune, January 28, 2017), Governor Mead and Senate President Eli Bebout are cited as warning “that social issue legislation could distract lawmakers from more pressing issues.”

This raises a question. Which bills, exactly, are they referring to? If Laura Hancock is representing their position accurately, they would be referring to five second amendment bills, three pro-life bills, two obscenity bills, and a religious freedom bill, among others.

It is curious that there is no mention of the HB 212 which would strip virtually all references to man and woman, husband and wife, out of Wyoming law. Neither does it mention SF 153 which would have injected a new and ill-defined legal category, “sexual orientation or gender identity,” into Wyoming law. Are these not social issues too? Whether these are omitted by our Republican leadership or by Ms. Hancock remains unclear.

What seems clear is that some Republican leadership considers pro-life, pro-family, and pro-gun issues to be distractions and unimportant. That is a shame.

What, then, do they consider more important? Money is more important, namely the $156 million budget deficit and the $400 million school deficit. To be sure, these are important and daunting problems. But there are several things that should be said in response.

First, last January was the biennial Budget Session. At that time, many legislators saw today’s short-falls on the horizon and tried to address them before they became a problem. But time and again their concerns were minimized while additional spending was authorized. Meanwhile, a number of important social issues were kept off the floor because the budget was more important.

Shall we now turn 2017 into another Budget Session, and put off important social considerations yet again? That would defer them for another two years, assuming we don’t repeat the same budget mistakes in 2018.

Second, we should remember that the government of the state of Wyoming is primarily about securing our freedoms -- not spending our money. The first 18 sections of Wyoming’s constitution cover subjects such as equality, humane treatment of people, religious liberty, and the like. Money is not mentioned until the 19th section, and there it is a restriction on spending, not a mandate to spend.

Likewise the Constitution of the United States of America reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility…” These are all rightly characterized as “social issues.” They are the necessary topics to discuss in order to build a just and peaceful society.

Especially at a time of significant social upheaval, and when the federal courts have declared significant portions of Wyoming law unconstitutional, we need to set aside the time to talk and reason and consider our state’s response to the federal challenges to states’ rights. If we cannot do this in the state house, where exactly can we talk about these matters and when?

Third, to drive a wedge between social issues and budgetary issues is to ignore to the economic implications of social engineering. If you think that gun bills are irrelevant to budget considerations, look at the consequences of stripping away all gun rights. Consider how the city of Chicago pays the cost in law enforcement dollars and in lives.

Again, if you think that recreational drug legalization is a pure “social issue” talk to any law enforcement officer or teacher about what they see in the classrooms, and in the domestic violence calls that they respond to. Tinkering with social law has expensive and sometimes deadly consequences.

“A Fifty-State Survey of the Cost of Family Fragmentation” (Regent University Law Review, 12-31-12) calculated that Wyoming spent $112 million dollars from 2007-2011 as a direct result of broken families. This only counts the monetary cost of three specific programs. It cannot even begin to count the pain and suffering of the parents and the children who could have been helped by stronger support for their families.

Addressing family life and passing laws which support the family, rather than tearing it down, can potentially save the state of Wyoming millions of dollars per year. For this reason alone, it is short-sighted to dismiss social concerns in favor of budget concerns. Moreover, it is not only families that have concrete monetary value for the state of Wyoming, so also do churches and church organizations, private schools, adoption agencies, soup kitchens, nonprofit hospitals, and the list goes on.

Such mediating institutions produce educated citizens and ethical businessmen. They support at-risk families and work against substance abuse. They care for the poor and work to rebuild broken families. And they do all of this at zero cost to the government. Imagine what it would cost the state of Wyoming if we had to do all this work on the government dime.

Without protection for their First Amendment rights, many of these institutions are at serious risk. Already, we have seen states like Illinois and Massachusetts shut down church adoption agencies. Who has stepped up to fill the void? No one.

It is in the interest of the state that we pass laws to prevent the dismantling or weakening of these vital mediating institutions. They serve as a buffer between the vast and clumsy power of the government and the individual needs of people in everyday life. They also are the most agile and economic way to take care of the countless unique situations encountered in daily life. If we do not protect and promote these mediating institutions, there will be two predictable consequences, one for every citizen, and one for the state as a whole.

First, for every mediating institution that is forced out of business, the state will have that much more involvement in the minutiae of your daily life. Just consider all the places government intrudes when a single marriage falls apart. The court must be consulted on everything from the monthly budget to vacation plans.

Second, as state bureaucracies move in the fill the void, they will do ham-handedly, and at double or triple the cost, what families and churches do easily with little money. Think about it. Is a state-run orphanage, by any stretch of the imagination, as good at raising children as the simplest and poorest of married couples?

So, by all means address the budgetary issues which should have been handled last January. But let’s quit pretending that money issues are more important than everything else. It simply isn’t true.

See Also:
Wyoming Tribune Eagle: shortened version
Casper Star Tribune: letter to the editor