We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
and make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course
you're the premium version of our website as well. We're joined today by Jeffrey
Trimbath and David Ayers. Jeffrey is the president of the Maryland Family Institute.
You can follow them on Twitter at MD Family Institute. You can go to
their website at Marylandfamily dot org. He's also a husband and a father,
which is very relevant to what we're going to be talking about today. We're
also joined by David Ayers. He is a professor of sociology at Grove City
College and an adjunk professor at the Great Franciscan University of Stoubenville. Jeff David,
Welcome to both of you. Thank you, Emily, Yeah, thanks
for having us. Of course, I want to start just by getting a
little bit of background about both of you. I think it's both of your
first time on the show, and you're doing such interesting and important work So,
Jeff, if we could start with you and you could tell us just
a little bit about your background about the Maryland Family Institute, that would be
fantastic. Well, I only let me just begin by saying what a great
fan I am of the Federalist Radio Hour. I've been listening for years and
I'm a huge fan and just can't believe I get to be a guest on
the show today, So thank you for having me on. You know,
I've always been interested in the two things you should never talk about with strangers,
religion and politics. And then when I served in the Bush administration doing
abstinence educational work, I realized that sex and money can also be added to
those list of forbidden subjects. And so I guess that my career has been
sort of touching all the things you shouldn't talk about with strangers. So yeah,
I just always been interested in things of faith and things of public policy,
and I feel like that background has really prepared me to launch the Maryland
Family Institute, which we did about four months ago, and so we've been
going strong with the latest Family Policy Council. There are about forty of us
in state capitals across the country promoting all kinds of social conservative priorities. And
so that's a little bit of my background. Such an interesting time to be
doing all of the work. How about you, David, what can you
tell us? Well? I got involved in I'm sorry, family oriented research
back in the nineteen eighties, after Reagan became president, you know, it
was really interested in that area, pursued it. I tried to pursue it
in graduate school in sociology. Sociology, you know, there are certainly exceptions,
but as a whole, let's just say that the discipline has been hostile
to the idea that traditional marriage and family and sexuality and so forth is critical
for human welfare. They've been allergic to that idea for a very long time.
I've written books and numerous articles on the topic. I've taught marriage and
family classes from this point of view since about nineteen eighty seven. It's gotten
increasingly uphill, increasingly well, increasingly difficult, even as the research, the
hardcore research on this area just affirms resoundingly more and more and more over time
that the welfare of the stable, two parent male female household raising children is
absolutely critical to social and cultural welfare. As John Paul the second used to
say, as the family goes, so goes society, I think a paraphrasing
it, but that evidence is strong than ever. Social science and higher education
circles are more allergic to that idea than ever. So interesting, actually,
because one of my questions is in fact going to be is there increasing awareness
There's there's so much social science. It's just a value of great social science
in this direction. Now you know, whether it's Brad Wilcox's new book,
Tim Carney's new book, even the Melissa Curney book. You know, there's
so much evidence, so overwhelming evidence. And I'll ask later, maybe we'll
table that for now, just about how academia is reacting to this flood of
new evidence. And that actually is a great transition point to the report that
you all collaborated on. I have in front of me a member of your
as You board, our friend Alana Squire's, who wrote about some of the
conclusions you came to. He said, acting on the data in this report
means pursuing the vision of the Maryland Family Institute. And I want to get
into basically what this report found. And I'll start with you, Jeff,
if you could talk us through a little bit of what you found to be
the highlights from this survey that would be great. Yeah, well, this
was a sort of a case statement for why we launched the Maryland Family Institute,
which is an organization that has a vision to see Maryland where God is
honored, life is cherished, families flourish, and religious liberty thrives. And
we knew that we needed to have some sort of sort of hace to make
publicly to get folks attention, and so we decided to do this report.
I guess it was a little over a year ago, David, where we
started to collaborate on this, and so we wanted to do a sort of
a county by county deep dive of family formation trends in Maryland, all twenty
four counties and then see if there was a relationship between some of the most
important social pathologies that the state is currently going through. And lo and behold,
there was a very robust coalition a correlation between between marriage, family formation
and these issues. I would say probably the highlight for me from this report
is the fact that this relationship can be seen not just in what we might
traditionally think of as the hotspots in the state. You know, it's always
everybody kind of loves to pick on Baltimore in Maryland as the place where all
the crime is and all the you know, drug use and all this kind
of stuff. And yeah, Baltimore certainly has its problems. There's no one
who denies that. But boy, we see this correlation across the state,
rural counties, suburban counties, and of course in some of the more urban
counties as well. The statistic that sort of leapt out and kind of slapped
me in the face is that in Garrett County, which is the county that
some of your listeners might know is the home of Deep Creek Lake, Maryland
beautiful Lake out the westernmost county. In Garrett County, over twenty five percent
of twelfth graders self report that they have four or more sexual partners. Now
I don't know about you, Emily, it's none of my business, but
that when I think about when I was a senior in high school, I
may have tried to get one or two sexual partners, but I certainly would
not even dream of having four or more. And over a quarter of the
students there have that that is a problem. And so that's one of the
things that this kind of report highlighted so interesting and I want to kind of
ask about the royal urban divide in that. But David, do you have
anything to add Well, First of all, these relationships were overwhelmed. You
know, in statistics core, a perfect correlation is one. It wasn't unusual
for us to have correlations of seven or eight, which is near perfect,
and they held up, you know, when we controlled for different variables and
so. But it also was true schools, school success and achievement, tax
base, wealth, poverty, the violent and property crime statistics are unreal.
In other words, every area that people would associate with quality of life,
no matter what kind of family you're living in. If you're in an area
where most people are living in married couple households, you are in a much
better situation. If you're in an area where there's lots of single parent households,
you're in a much worse situation. And so you know, it matters,
you know, to everyone in some of the more bucolic sections of the
Staten Seaboard or Chesapeake Bay western Maryland Mountains are actually some of the worst thoughts
and the most neglected by the political leaders in Annatolis That's a really important point.
And that's where I'm curious for both your takes on how representative some of
the information in the survey is nationally because what we've seen and Tim Carney calls
this the Lena Dunham fallacy, this idea that people attribute to decad and elites,
what's actually really prevalent among people that are influenced by the policies and the
decisions and the control exerted in corridors of power. But actually, you know,
see different issues with marriage and child rearing and divorce and drugs, and
you know, Maryland is a state that people may think of as this tiny,
little coastal place, but actually has a lot of very rural areas,
has a lot of urban areas, a lot of very affluent suburb areas that
you know, bleed into the urban areas. So could you, and I'll
start with you, David on this one, maybe take us through a little
bit of that dynamic and what stands out in that context from the report.
Well, again, one of the things that stands out is just that we're
looking at the quality of the schools and and what's going on in the schools.
We're looking at violence. You know, in the hallways of the school
we're looking at trafficking and hard drugs. You know, inside the schools,
we're looking at a neighborhood level violent crime rates. You know, this kind
of thing. Everybody's better off, you know, where more people are married.
And the fact is is that in a lot of the more rural areas
of the state, the out of wedlock pregnancy and birth rates are really high.
Cohabitation is really high. You know, fewer and fewer couples are actually
married, and it basically affects all of life. But too in the elite
centers. You know, I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland. You
can't talk about a more money, more elite kind of a place in Montgomery
County, Maryland. Right, Two things I would say about my experience with
Montgomery County, Maryland. It's overwhelmingly liberal. So they're overwhelmingly opposing, you
know, the kinds of policies that we would be recommended. In fact,
you may know that a case I think they went all the way to Supreme
Court involved whether or not parents have a right to know about sex education and
gender identity education going on in their schools. It was Muslim parents standing up
against the Montgomery County school districts that was where I grew up. Those are
the schools I went to, right And it's just as in Charles Murray is
has noted in so much of his later work, the elites preach these policies
that destroy the poor while they themselves are living the success sequence. He's a
Marylander, by the way, if I'm not mistaken, I think he was
living area. So thel are living the success sequence. They're they're not getting
they're not having children on a wet you know, they're getting married before they
have kids, and they're staying married at much higher rates. So you know,
it's it's kind of the opposite of In other words, they're not they're
practicing what they don't preach, but what they're preaching is really toxic. So
but then Montgomery is now increasingly on the front edge of a lot of the
suffering caused by these policies, as a lot of illegals coming into Montgomery County,
a lot of increasingly high crime areas, areas that I used to live
and hang out in, the parks that people can no longer safely go to
the park that I used to go to as a boy, but they're still
continuing to kind of hold on to those very kind of liberal policies with regards
to marriage, family, sexuality, and so forth. And that is a
national story. I mean, the research bears this out nationally. That's where
Brad wilcox recent book comes in. That's where a recent book by University of
Maryland economists came in that just came out almost right when our report came that
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Jeff, Yeah, I would just echo sort of. The elites do
not Yeah, the elites do not live the way that they the way that
they preach, you know, and that whether that's sending their own kids to
private schools, or whether that's making sure they're in the parts of the counting
is have the best schools, you know, whether that's the way they live
their own personal lives or order their own personal lives in a variety of ways.
And I actually think that we're going to only turn our country around,
in our state around to the extent that we can influence those elite opinions to
take another look at the policies that were espousing, you know, Brad Wilcox's
mentor at UVA James Davison Hunter wrote a book about fourteen years ago called to
Change the World, and one of the points that he makes in that wonderful
book is that you change cultures by changing elite opinions. And so as we
look at the future, both nationally and in terms of the state of Maryland,
we only think you're going to turn the culture around when you turn elite
opinion around. So, can't overemphasize elite opinion and behavior enough? And let's
shift to the policy realm. As you just mentioned, Jeff, I'll start
with you what policies maybe need to be abolished, and then what policies should
actually be sort of on the table as legislators and even people on the city
level, I mean, just pull level think about them. Yeah. Well,
as you answer that question, you know, we're always keeping in mind
what is possible in a place like Maryland. You know, Maryland is not
like Alabama. It's not like Oklahoma. It's two to one Democrat, it's
veto proof majorities in both houses of the legislature. It's having a very intelligenic
and well spoken, but radical leftist governor who has never met a progressive policy
that he didn't appear to love. So the question is, what are those
policies that we can actually prevent from being passed, and one of those that
we may be able to repeal, let alone passing in an environment like that.
I think for us, you know, a big part of it is
kind of making the case for some of these policies. You know, obviously,
every parent wants their kid to go to a good, well performing school
in Maryland, and the answer to that problem that the legislature has put forward
three years ago is to pass this massive spending program called the Blueprint for Maryland's
Future, which passes four billion a year over and above the existing budget limit
for the next ten years. So it's a forty billion dollar outlay on all
the ideas that I would be willing to bet my next paycheck will have no
effect, no appreciable effect on academic achievement. And so as that piece of
legislation starts to work through and you're really starting to see this, the redistribution
of resources that that legislation is requiring is actually taking money away from wealthy schools
and giving it to poorer schools county by county in Maryland, and you're seeing
wealthy parents stand up and say, wait a minute, we didn't sign up
for that. So I think just one answer your question is, as some
of the negative consequences that previous policies are passed, that will give us an
opportunity to make our case for better policies in the future. And what are
some of those better policies. Well, Maryland has a very small school choice
program about ten million dollars annually that benefits about thirty two hundred students. We
were successful actually in keeping that program in the budget, so that looks like
that will pass this year, so we're grateful for that. We're always thinking
about the life issue, and we were able praise the lord able to defeat
physician assistant suicide in Maryland. Now, I think it's the seventh year they've
brought it up and we killed it even before it had its first vote in
the legislature, which was just awesome. A variety of other programs as well.
We think we can make a difference on sort of penalties for possession of
pornography. We're always looking at parental rights in public school issues. Unfortunately,
legislators in Napolis want to take away the rights that parents have to opt out
their kids from objectionable materials, and so we're trying to fight against that.
There are some crazy ideas to regulate even churches and religious organizations in Maryland to
sort of push the LGBTQ agenda forward, even in churches and religious organizations.
So we're pushing up against that. So a variety of places that we're trying
to fight, all the while realizing that we don't currently have the political numbers
to pass a lot of things in Maryland. Yeah, David, what do
you do you have anything to add to that? Well, I mean,
I think one of the challenges that Maryland Family Institute, who they from the
start, is that when you look at the conservative landscapes and where people you
know, want to invest both their their time and their their cultural capital,
their personal networks and so forth, but also their monetary capital, people want
to take places like Maryland to just write it off. You know, let's
invest in Iowa. Let's let's let's invest in a family Institute in Alabama or
Texas or Iowa, you know, where some of you know, our desired
legislation has a snowsed chance of getting past. I think that's a very very
wrong headed approach because if you look at Maryland, what you're seeing is is
that there is amongst first of all, a lot of the Hispanic and African
American groups, which are very large in Maryland, you know, very large
portions of the population in Maryland. There is a kind of a quiet and
building descent going on, as as folks in those communities are having to live
with the consequences of these liberal policies and see all around them, what are
data shows. They know what it's like to go from Baltimore to Howard County,
or what it's like to go from Alleghany County in the west to you
know, Anna Arundel County. You know, they know how much better off
these elites have it. They know how much nicer those schools are. They
know they're never going to get their kids into the schools, and they know,
you know, just you know, unbelievable problems in the schools for example,
that they're facing. And you know, that's a kind of a bottom
line issue with a lot of families and parents, and so, you know,
I don't think they're fool you know, about the importance of the natural
family in their communities and neighborhoods. And I think It's kind of like the
Emperor's new clothes, Right, everybody's agreeing with this crazy idea that this guy
is actually wearing clothes, when in fact he's naked. But then suddenly somebody
steps forward and says, you know what, he's naked. The Emperor doesn't
have any clothes. You know, the truth is this, And then all
of a sudden everybody jumps forward and said, yeah, you're right. And
the other thing is is that places like Maryland, like states like California or
bell Otters with exercising enormous influence nationally. I mean, Maryland is home to
probably forty percent of the elites of Washington, DC, if not more,
and they are federal elites. They control policy that affects the entire nation.
So for us to basically ignore Maryland really doesn't It doesn't make sense. You
know, there's a lot of a lot that can be accomplished in a place
like Maryland simply because of where it is and what it is nationally. So
you know, I think that we I think that we're doing the right thing
in Maryland, and I think that we're making I think Jeff in his organizations
is making a really good start at doing the right thing now. Actually,
just as you were giving that answer, it occurred to me that both Charles
Murray and Tim Karney, Tim at least when he wrote Alienated America and Charles,
I believe when he wrote Coming Apart, were both based in Maryland.
To your point about the forty percent of elites in DC living in Maryland,
you know, there's a lot of value to studying Maryland as a state,
and I think that brings us back to this question of how we are seeing
I guess we could say elites react to the data, because you know,
when the Melissa Kearney book came out that was there was a really interesting reaction.
I think some people were responding to it in elite media to defend kind
of these libertine postmodern ideas about marriage as a concept, about womanhood as a
concept. But it's still gotten to the mainstream. Richard Reeves's book He's Farted
the Brookings Institution, he talked about it on this podcast, made some waves
in the so called mainstream as well. Of course, there's nothing particularly mainstream
about denying the importance and the value of marriage. But that said, what
have both of you noticed. I'll start with you again, David, what
have both of you noticed when it comes to all of this wealth of information
stacking up on top of information, and then more information stacking on top of
that information. There's really so much evidence right now at this point on the
sort of importance of family values from just a database perspective. It confirms what
a lot of people know from their common sense. But do you think there's
receptiveness to this in the corners of policymaking, whether that's on the state level,
the local level, or even in academia and in media. What have
you noticed as papers like the one we're talking that you guys worked on have
come out. Well, personally, I think there's more receptiveness, you know,
when we look at the reception that may be more nationally well known years
have had with precisely these kinds of ideas, like doctor Kierny, like Brad
Wilcox and so forth. You know, more and more, even the liberal
social scientists are saying, you know, I can't really argue with this.
Now. The dodge that they're going to get into, and you see this
somewhere Kearney, is that they're going to then want to say, well,
but we can't really change this, So we're going to have to do more
redistribution to single parent homes in this kind of thing, which is what we
see Maryland doing right re routing resources. But that's going to produce a backlash,
as Jeff also mentioned, and I think that's that. I think those
type of quote solutions and they're not solutions, they don't do anything. They
actually make it worse. But I think they've kind of seen their day.
I don't think the average you know, upper middle class family in Howard County,
Maryland, wants to see one more tax increase or one more redistribution of
wealth or school resources. Uh, you know, I think they've seen enough.
But I think they've kind of hit the limit. So I think that
those elites are going to find that they're bumping up against reality when they're trying
to use this dodge, either denying it but saying, well, you know,
we admit this is a problem, but we can't fix the family.
So we're just going to be redistributionist types of policies, which then further undermine
and we can, you know, the families. So I think that's the
real challenge now. But if I could just say one more thing and then
you know, when I had a chance to be in a hearing for the
Maryland Senate to actually our senator was introducing legislation that would have implemented a recommendation
from our report that before considering a piece of legislation that the Maryland Senate would
look at the potential impact on married households of that and try not to advance
legislation. If I'm reading it, try not to advance legislation that would harm
married couples and married couple household And it was kind of interesting because one of
the gentlemen, the senator, one of the senators, African American gentleman,
highly educated, really thoughtful guy from what I could see, basically said,
I can't find fault with anything in this report. Everything you know is true,
you know, because the report came up. I think they report came
up. Anyway, he said, I know people are better off than married
couple of households. I know communities are better off with married couple of households.
But then he explained why he probably wasn't going to support the legislation,
having to do with, you know, diverse definitions of marriage and diverse definitions
of family and needing to respect that, et cetera. But it was really
interesting that he wasn't really willing, you know, to double down on the
idea that these types of arguments were not true. He kind of had to
admit that they were true, but then had to kind of explain why,
even though they were true, he couldn't support, you know, such a
kind of a basic common sense piece of legislation that so I think we're I
think increasingly those social scientists who are documenting these facts are putting the elites in
a very difficult situation that they need to be put in right now in terms
of explaining why they're producing the policies that they're pursuing. That's so interesting that
the feedback where he said, I can't disagree with anything in the report,
Jeff do well, Yeah, I just I just want to echo that clearly,
and just to kind of pull out the fact of the key role of
the African American community I think will play in answering your question, Emily,
in terms of reacting to the current cultural situation. You know, in addition
to there being just a recognition that these things are true, because not only
do our data tell us that that's true, but they're personal experiences telling us
that that's true, but also a recognition that that's not how decisions are made
in Annapolis or in Washington, DC. Frankly, we all know that data
may play some role in what legislators do, but it certainly doesn't play the
decisive role in a far more important factor in the decision making that an average
legislator makes is power. And as sort of the Left is being confronted by
the reality of I would say, how God has created human beings to live
in community with each other. They're having to rely more and more on that
power in order to maintain their agenda. We had an amazing example of this
in Maryland just last year where the Speaker pro tem of the House of Delegates
was summarily sort of dismissed from her position. African American female Democrat who she
had the gall to vote against using Maryland Medicaid dollars to pay for gender mutilation
surgery, and that decision was very much in keeping with her Christian condiction,
her Christian faith, and boy, we couldn't have any of that in Maryland,
you know. And a lot of people saw that and they understood,
we're now not talking about data or logic or reason. We're talking about raw
power. And I think to the average person Republican Democrat, conserner liberal,
that's a sobering understanding, and I don't think most people really want that,
and so we're there to provide an alternative. Hello, thank you for listening
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And I'm also curious how the polarization on the national level. This is one
of the most I think interesting things when I talk to people who do this
work on a state level. But from your perspectives, how the polarization on
the national level trickles down to the state level. Because my impression is actually
that on the state level there is less polarization now. At the same time,
some of those still those same challenges still obviously exists, but it seems
to me it can often be easier to get what are hot button political topics
discussed, or to find common ground on the state level. Jeff, I'll
start with you. Do you agree with that? Is there a nuance or
texture that should be added to that? Well, I think you're right,
Emily that it is less on a state level. Now, in a place
like Maryland, where one side just has such an overwhelming majority, it's kind
of easy to be bipartisan or nonpartisan or whatever because the other side, you
know, has very little chance of getting anything done, you know, So
it's sort of like, you know, one side is magnanimous and the other
side is kind of you know, resigned to the to the fates, right,
So what's the use? But I also think you do see some opportunities
for progress depending on the issue. And so that's what we've had to do
at Maryland Family Institute is just take each issue on its own and see,
Okay, who on the other side from our perspective, who on the other
side can we deal with, who might share our perspective on these things?
And of course for us and Maryland that means, you know, we have
to talk with and meet with and pray with a lot of Democrats on the
other side of the island, So that's fine. I do think the national
polarization is making it more and more difficult for those state based Democrats to follow
their conscience on issues like abortion, like transgenderism, some of these social issues,
because that national pressure has just basically said, if you're a social conservative
at all, you're not sort of welcome in this party. And so that
that sort of really rears itself on the local level. But we've found some
folks that we can have good conversations with, depending on the issue. What
do you make of that, David Well, First of all, one of
the insights I remember in the nineteen eighties and end of the nineties, and
one of the great champions of this is that maybe may recalled Dick Army,
and the idea is that the action, the real action and policy should be
at the state level, because you can get more done at the state level,
and states are willing to try something and actually oftentimes able to manage it
better than you would see done at the national level. Right, and then
if it's done on the state level and it succeeds, then you have case
studies to support federal legislation to do some of these things. You know,
at the national level enterprise zones. I think we're one of the issue things
that were kind of promoted that way. The farther down that you get in
the levels, and you know, you know, well federalists and federalism,
right, the more the relationships are face to face, the more difficult it
is to demonize the opposition, because the opposition is living in your town,
their kids are in your schools with your kids, and so just from a
sociological like microsociology, just the interpersonal level, you just are'erencying more of the
same things. You're going to the same beaches, you're going to the same
parks, You're interacting more. And so I would say not only at the
state level, but as you go down to the county levels and things that
can be done in county level school school districts and county government too. I
think you just the environment is also naturally more more kind of conducive. But
there's a word that's gotten to be kind of a dirty word on both the
right and the left, and too many circles, and that is you also
have to be prepared to compromise and not get everything you want. And you
know, sometimes we've had a difficult time living with those realities. And I
think in many ways it's easier to do that at the state and local level
than it is at the federal level as well, because we've created these forces
that punish people for reasonable compromise, and I think that's more difficult to do
when you when you're dealing with things at the county and state level. And
just while we're on this topic of policy change, you know, I remember
there's a Brookings paper from Janet Yellen and her husband late nineties talking about how
abortion access. The Actually she was talking about Roe in particular, social science
showed that more babies were created out of wedlock, and the sort of theory
after row, the theory was that, well, women were just having more
unprotected sex. It was sort of changed the norms of sexual interaction. They
were doing it out of monogamous relationships. And then that sort of followed from
these these norm shifts. And now though I think conservatives understand because of these
types of trends, why life is really inextricably intertwined with some of the downstream
questions that this report deals with marriage or not even down stream, but interconnected
issues of support deals with marriage, the force, struggle, use, poverty,
et cetera. But do you guys see the non compromising position on life
as something that's been an impediment to coming to the table. I mean,
when I talk about these issues with my friends on the left, it does
seem to be one of the kind of brick walls that you hit with the
left that if you are pro life, you know there are different challenges to
coming to the table and compromising on things like marriage and divorce and all of
that. Is that true? Do you think has that been true in your
experiences or is that maybe something that's mostly active on a national level. Well,
I think in Maryland specifically on the question of abortion. You know,
in Maryland basically it's abortion up till forty weeks for any reason. So sadly
that's been the case for decades. And there there was a very robust sort
of pro life democrat presence in Maryland in the nineteen eighties. In fact,
there was a famous state senator, Frank Kelly, who philibustered an abortion bill
successfully. He and a lot of his other pro life democrats. The next
year and I think eighty nine he was primary out and you know, really
since that time, it's been kind of a very much a pro abortion state,
and so, you know, sort of abortion purism, I think is
a limited kind of you know, utility in a place like Maryland. However,
I will say, you know, at least rhetorically speaking, gosh,
even a fifteen week ban or so, I know, the president form President
Trump just came out in favor of that. You know, something like ninety
eight percent or ninety three percent of all abortions take place, you know,
before that time. And so even with that position allowing that many abortions to
continue, Trump is the one who is seen as the you know, as
the anti choice candidate. You know. So I just I think this kind
of issue, when you talk about it as you as you framed it Emily,
really does highlight the extreme nature of the pro choice side, at least
here in America. You know, a lot of folks were lauding the French
constitutional amendment that just passed a couple of weeks ago. Well, guess what
France does not allow for abortion past? I think it's week twenty or twenty
one, right, So even there there are significant restrictions on it. We
know, in Maryland, pulling I've seen thirty three percent of Democrats want some
kind of restriction abortion. Well that will just that just is not there's no
room in terms of policy for that view in Maryland because of the rhetoric on
this issue. Yeah, go ahead, Well I was gonna say, I
want to toss that to you also with the issue of immigration thrown in because
I mentioned earlier what had happened to Montgomery County and these are two just like
highly charged national political issues. And I know that there has been a lot
of resettlement of migrants from this recent Biden near a wave in Maryland. And
then at the same time there have been there has been to Maryland immigration of
groups that are very pro family, in Nigerian Americans, for example. So
how has that sort of complicated the picture along with a life question too.
Well, it's kind of interesting that immigrants from Africa are unbelievably pro family,
and of course Africa is a place that is almost uniformly very hostile to the
gay agenda, I mean unbelievably so so, and then that creates a dilemma,
you know, for the Democrats, because it's it's hard for them to
stand up to them as particular constituencies. I mean, what do you do
when there's a lot of Nigerian parents complaining about pro trans center policies out of
Montgomery County High School where they're sending their kids. You know, it creates
a real again, it creates for real dilumma for them. But I know
that in Montgomery County where I grew up, Wheaton, Maryland was the town
that we were closest to and where we would ride our bicycles and so forth.
Very large Hispanic population there, very large illegal Hispanic immigrant population there.
And from what I've been able to see, the folks who are here legally,
you know, don't like the situation at all, because of course they
they crossed all the tea's and dotted the eyes and did everything required of them
to come to the United States legally, and now they're being lumped in with
folks who didn't. And of course mixed in with them are the gangs.
M thirteen has definitely made its presence known in Wheaton, and there's been murders
you know, by M thirteen gang members. And we've reached in a park
where I used to spend day after day when I was a kid, and
again that's where you have even very liberal households beginning to really question the policies
that are coming out of Montgomery County and out of Annapolis with regards to those
issues. So I think those things all get lumped together, and you know,
on the abortion side, I think we on the conservative side have been
haven't done a good job of pointing out just how extremist. You know,
for example, right now, the Democratic Party platform really iss that large portions,
you know, really do defend abortion right up to the day of delivery.
And you know, they dodge it, they try to disguise that fact,
and they're afraid to back thought of their support for that, even though
among folks like for example, both Bill and Hillary Clinton were very viscerally kind
of repelled by that whole agenda. You know, Bill Clinton meant it when
he said that abortions should be legal, but it should also be rare.
And you know, that position is long, you know, it has long
kind of disappeared. But I would like to see you know, almost no
abortion except to save the life of the mother and this kind of thing.
But when I support a policy that would eliminate ninety five percent of the abortions
while saying, you know, of course I'm going to continue to press on
the other five percent again except those for the save the life of the mother.
Of course I'm going to press on the other five percent. But you
know, are we going to basically hold out on legislation that would eliminate ninety
or ninety five percent of them? You know, I think that, I
think that both sides of this debate have got to deal with the extremists in
their mists. And you know, that's probably a controversial statement of our some
members of my particular tribe, but I just don't see any way around it.
If I can get rid of ninety five percent of the abortions that are
currently happening in the United States, or ninety percent of them, or even
eighty five percent of them, nobody's binding me in terms of what I can
push for later. But taking that now, you know, I think,
I think, you know, we should really take a look at that the
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important conversation, and that's very helpful. Jeff. I'll talk to you that
question about immigration and also just you know, ask if you have any final
thoughts from this whole conversation that you want to make sure are mentioned, and
then I'll go right back to you. David. Yeah, I think the
key sector for us in terms of really making a difference in Maryland is working
with those who, you know, may be outside of our own sort of
tible comfort zone, as David just mentioned, you know, and for us,
that is working with the Muslims in Montgomery County, which we have done.
I've met with the Coalition of Virtue people and they are fabulous folks.
They agree with us on you know, ninety five percent of what we believe
in Marrilyan Family Institute. They don't believe in Jesus as their savior, but
everything short of that they believe. And so you bet we're working with them
and hoping to activate their networks for pro family. And you know, I
would also say just the importance of us locking hands with our African American brothers
and sisters, particularly in Prince George's County in Baltimore City, which we've been
interacting with a lot at Delana Squire's community there in Prince George's County. Look
on so many things we see eye to eye and they're just a lot of
them are just kind of going along with this stuff, but internally they don't
agree with it. And so it's been really fun to get to know many
of these spoeks, particularly in Annapolis, to hear that and to figure out,
Okay, how can we work together on this or that for good positive
And so I think in terms of our impact at Maryland Family Institute, it
might look a little different, Our work will look a little different than it
might be in Alabama. Arn't worre in Iowa, but it's encouraging. Nonetheless,
what about you, David Well, you had mentioned earlier about you know
why Maryland and then of course the whole You know how much there is a
correlation with the national scene. You know, at this point, if conservatives
think they're going to advance their agenda without significant support in the Asian communities,
in the Musalem communities, in Black communities, you know, Hispanic communities,
and so forth, you know they're they're simply wrong. And I remember Jack
Kemp talking about that in the nineteen eighties. You know that the Republicans,
for example, have got to find ways to reach because he believed that their
message of basically freedom and family resonated in the African American community. And I
think he was right. He just felt, you know, we hadn't tried
hard enough, and we hadn't you know, put our necks on the line
to inter aqua folks and accept those challenges and difficulties in reaching out beyond our
tribe. And so Maryland is a great place to work on that because it
is it is. It is unbelievably diverse state. It's diverse, far more
than many people realize in terms of its basic land mass and the different situations.
You have the Bay Area, you have the ocean fronts, you have
the Washington Baltimore metroplex area. You've got the western Maryland Mountains. You know,
very diverse in terms of the daily living, the way that people live
in these areas, diverse in terms of well but also very racially the verse
large Asian American populations, Black populations, is Hispanic, and so forth,
large immigrant populations. And so you know what a great place to really develop
those relationships and develop models and patterns for having those kinds of conversations. You
know, where you can really sit down with people face to face, visit
folks in their churches and in their neighborhoods, and have these conversations. For
more information on this report, I definitely recommend folks go to Marylandfamily dot org.
You can read the whole report there. You can read about the Maryland
Family Institute. Jeff and David, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you, Emily, Yeah, thanks for having us. Of course,
you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm I'm
a L. Kashinsky culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon
with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious with the pers
I heard the fame voice, the reason, and then it faded away.