Idaho House approves establishment of Traditional Family Values Month

BOISE — The House on Tuesday approved the establishment of Traditional Family Values Month, in a similar resolution to one passed in the Senate in February. 

Rep. Joe Alfieri, R-Coeur d’Alene, sponsored House Concurrent Resolution 18, which designates Mother’s Day through Father’s Day as Traditional Families Month — highlighting two-parent households with a mother, father and biological children.

“It’s simply another celebration of an aspect of society that really should be honored on a more consistent basis,” Alfieri said.

House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said she’d support a resolution to celebrate Idaho families, but she pointed out that the language in the bill singled out certain types of families with “some startling” claims.

The resolution contrasts the divorce and marriage rates of 1950 and 1960 versus today.

“Ah, the glory days of 1960, if only we could get back to that time when women couldn’t open bank accounts,” Rubel said sarcastically. “That was the year RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) graduated from law school, first in her class, but couldn't get a job at any law firm in the city of New York because not a single one hired women. Maybe that’s why marriage rates were so high and divorce rates were so low, because women had absolutely no economic options for independence in the workplace.”

Rep. Kyle Harris, R-Lewiston, said the resolution is “simply giving people the opportunity to celebrate a month based off the traditional family.”

“We have a month for everything under the sun,” Harris said. “There’s a cheeseburger day. There’s a pizza month.”

The Senate version of the resolution included statistics cited from the International Federation for Family Development, such as “90% of all homeless or runaway children, 85% of all children who show behavior disorders, 80% of rapists with anger problems, 71% of high school dropouts ... ” and more come from fatherless homes. The House version did not include these statistics.

Both resolutions included that “research demonstrates children who grew up in families with traditional values and gender roles are more likely to have traditional values and gender role expectations themselves.”

The resolution designates parts of the month for mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, grandparents, daughters, sisters and aunts. It ends with the celebration of “fatherhood and marriage between a man and woman.”

The resolution passed 60-8, with two absent.