State Director Charla Bansley Speaks at Augusta's July 4th Tea Party

Good afternoon!

It is so exciting to be gathered with so many likeminded Mainers at the Taxed Enough Already TEA Party!

My name is Charla Bansley, I am state director of Concerned Women for America, I am a high school English teacher, and I have three teenage sons still at home and I am alive to tell it!

The government reminds me of my teenagers. Both like to spend other people’s money. And both will use the false premise of saving money to get their way to spend more of other people’s money. For example, my eighteen year old is getting ready to go away to college and needs a computer. But the $800 laptop at Best Buy is not good enough. He is trying to convince his dad that he needs a $1600 laptop—and get this—it will actually “save” money. He can use his Blu-Ray laptop for all his television and movie needs—thus he won’t need a television or a DVD. He can use it for all his gaming needs—so he won’t have to take his Xbox to school (of course, in consideration of his little brothers.) With a Blu-Ray laptop, he can NetFlix all the latest movies, thus it will save him from having to go to the theatres…and on and on.

Government officials play the same game. To promote abortion, the government calculates the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 to be over $204,000. To promote gambling, officials in Bangor touted that the Racino brought in $20 million to local businesses. To promote same-sex marriage, the UCLA School of Law predicted same-sex marriage would bring $8 million into the Maine state coffers.

Before I go on, let me say that you cannot be socially liberal AND fiscally conservative. Social policies directly impact fiscal policies. The more socially responsible one votes, the more fiscally responsible. The Claremont Institute studied Republican Senators’ votes on social vs. fiscal issues. They found that more socially liberal the politician, the more fiscally liberal is the politician. “For the most part,” the study concluded, “a conservative is a conservative and a liberal is a liberal.” We can certainly see evidence of that here in Maine. Need I say more?

Abortion-- Let’s start with the pro-abortion argument and how it ties in with fiscal irresponsibility. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) told ABC’s George Stephanoloulos that “family planning services reduce costs” to state and federal governments.

However, we know that the basis of any economy is its population or people.” Fifty million people have been lost since Roe v. Wade.

• 50 million fewer children means less produce sold by farmers and less clothes sold by manufacturers.

• 50 million less children means fewer teachers and health care jobs to teach and care-for those children.

• 50 million fewer parents buying blankets, bottles, book bags, and baseball bats.

• 50 million fewer Big-Wheels, bicycles, and first cars.

• 50 million fewer teenagers performing entry level positions

• Those 50 million teenagers grow up to be taxpayers, blue-collar and white-collar workers, and entrepreneurs.

• 50 million fewer home buyers.

In other words, as long as our population trends downward, our economy will trend downwards. Population affects the number of people buying, selling, producing, manufacturing, serving, researching, and developing. One only needs to look at towns across Maine which has lost thousands of jobs in recent years with the closing of mills and manufacturing plants to see the result. Construction slows, cities shrink, and towns die. That is why God’s first commandment to man was to populate the earth. (Gen. 1:28)

For years, all we have heard from city planners is the need to control population growth. But this month the National Public Broadcast admitted that the population is shrinking and American manufacturing cities must find new solutions. Do you think? Where have they been for the last decade—or three decades while our population has been in decline because of abortion.

The sad reality is since Roe v. Wade, we have lost 50 million minds creating new knowledge—new cures, new inventions, and new businesses.

Same Sex Marriage

The same story is found in other social issue of the day: same sex marriage. Title 19 of Maine State Law says:, “The people of the State of Maine find that. . .the union of one man and one woman joined in traditional monogamous marriage is of inestimable value to society.” That means that the value of traditional marriage to Maine’s society is so great, so valuable that it cannot be counted or measured.

This spring, the UCLA School of Law issued a research study that concluded that Maine’s new same-sex marriage law will bring $8 million into Maine’s government coffers per year.

Hmmm…traditional marriage “inestimable value”; same-sex marriage “$8 million”; “inestimable value”; “$8 million.” It doesn’t seem like a hard choice to me.

This is interesting. When you look into how they came up with the number $8 million, UCLA researcher Brad Sears first predicted that half of Maine’s same-sex couples will marry in the first three years.

It boggles my mind that the brightest and best of America’s academia—researchers at UCLA’s School of Law—would use such random numbers and short sighted research.

The numbers are completely erroneous when you consider that Massachusetts has the highest rate of homosexuals who have married—and the greatest estimate is under 17 % . That is a long way from the 50% predicted by UCLA.

The UCLA research is incredibly short-sighted. Nine European countries now grant marriage rights to same-sex partners. The effect of their choice is what should be researched and those consequences should be a forewarning to all Americans.

• A study in the Netherlands, which has legalized same-sex marriage, found that the average duration of a homosexual relationship was 1.5 years—certainly nothing to build a family on—much less a society.

• The same study found that “committed” homosexual couples were also intimate with an average of eight extra-marital partners per year and divorced within only eighteen months. This is not anti-gay rhetoric; these are statistics published in the official journal of the international AIDS society.

• In Scandinavia where full same-sex marriage has been the law of the land for over a decade, marriage is dying. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents.

• England adopted same-sex marriage in 2005. A recent report states, “Marriage hits lowest rate since records began almost 150 years ago.”

The economic costs are staggering. The tax rate in Denmark has reached 68 percent.

Here in America, we are seeing the continued decline in the family with the acceptance of same-sex marriage. Out-of-wedlock birth rates are up, which results in staggering costs for the economy and society.

Americans born out of wedlock are seven times more likely to end of in poverty and seventy times more likely to end up in prison.

Benjamin Scafidi, an economist at Georgia College & State University estimates that family fragmentation costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion each and every year.

Americans are the most generous people in the world. However, most of us would agree that the best way to overcome poverty is to prevent poverty—which means we should be passing laws that strengthen marriage, not weaken it.

You can help strengthen marriage by signing the people’s veto petition at the back. This is not about equality; it is about protecting marriage and families!

Fellow Mainers, it will take more to turn Maine around then gathering signatures or coming together for a rally on the Fourth of July. It will take a complete overhaul of our legislature. One Maine legislator told me recently that while the Maine House was working late into the night to finish the session, 25-30 young freshmen Democrats were partying in the State House parking lot for hours.

It is time for responsible legislators. It is time for YOU to run for the Maine House and Senate. President James Garfield said, “Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them.”

Endnotes

Janiskee, Brian. "The Legend of the Social Liberal-Fiscal Conservative." 15 Oct. 2003. The Claremont Institute. 2 July 2009 .

This Week. ABC News. New York, NY. 25 Jan. 2009.

Gallagher, Maggie, and Joshua K. Baker. "DEMAND FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: EVIDENCE FROM THE." IMAPP Policy Brieff. 16 Apr. 2006. Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. 30 June 2009 .

Timothy J. Dailey, “The Slippery Slope of Same-Sex ‘Marriage,’” Family Research Council, March 23, 2004 (http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=BC04C02). See also Maria Xiridou, et al., “The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,” AIDS (Lippincott: Williams & Wilkins, 2003), Issue 17.

ibid.

Stanley Kurtz, “The End of Marriage in Scandinavia,” Weekly Standard, Vol. 9, Issue 20, February 2, 2004 .

“Marriage Rates Hit Lowest Rate Since Records Began Almost 150 Years Ago,” Associated

Newspapers Limited, March 26, 2008.

“What country has the highest tax rate?,” Guiness World Records (accessed July 1, 2008).

National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2007 with Charbook on Trends in the Health of Americans, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 2007), p. 143, “Table 10: Non-Marital Childbearing by Detailed Race and Hispanic Origin of Mother, and Maternal Age: United States, Selected Years 1970-2005.”

Robert Rector, “The Wrong Course: The Senate’s Proposed Amnesty will Cost a Fortune,” The Heritage Foundation, May 26, 2006 ed052606b.cfm>.

Michael Medved, “The Jessie Davis Case and Dangers of Out-of-Wedlock Parenthood,” Salem Web Network, June 27, 2007 .

Scafidi, Benjamin. "The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unmarried Child Bearing." 30 June 2009 .

Munro, Neil. "NATIONAL JOURNAL: The Generous American (01/19/2007)." National Journal Online. 19 Jan. 2007. 30 June 2009 .