Posted on: Friday, November 5, 2004

Put those values to good use

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

To all who made "traditional marriage" and "family values" their top priority in the election — now that the paranoid shrieking has subsided — perhaps all you well-intentioned politicians and political supporters could actually put that fervor to good use.

If you truly support families and marriages, you will work to make sure everyone on this island has decent, affordable housing. There are too many children growing up in cramped, unsafe, broken-down apartments; sleeping six kids and an uncle to a bed, no place to do homework, no guarantee that there will be daily showers.

If you truly support families and marriages, you will do everything in your power to ensure that drug and alcohol treatment and after-care is available to every man, woman and child who wants it. There are too many families where Daddy is incarcerated, Mommy is on a wait-list for rehab and every day is a fresh nightmare.

If you truly support families and marriages, make sure job retraining, adult education and college scholarships for nontraditional students are available.

If you support families and marriages, fix it so that parents don't have to work four jobs to pay the rent on a crackerbox apartment. Fix it so that young couples have hope of moving out of their parents' house.

Fix the public schools.

Lower gas prices.

Be a foster parent and take in kids who have only known suffering and heartache.

Make prescription medication affordable. Make health insurance companies pay for prenatal vitamins and anger-management classes. Make quality childcare affordable for all working parents.

Clean up the filth that has become part of the fabric of our community.

How many fathers spend the kids' milk and cereal money in the strip bars/prostitution dens on Kapi'olani, on Ke'eaumoku, in Kaka'ako, in Pearl City?

How many children buy their after-school snacks in little corner stores where pornography is kept in plain view and at their eye level?

And what about the families being torn apart by the war in Iraq? How many new widows and orphans before we say "enough."

And that's just a start. The list goes on.

There are myriad social ills that contribute to the breakdown of marriage and family. Many of these problems are solvable.

It's our business to solve them. But what two men or two women decide for their personal lives is their private business, not ours, and it certainly has nothing to do with Mr. and Mrs. America or Mr. and Mrs. Kalihi struggling to keep their family together.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.