Bob's Thesis

McDonnell Served on Board of a University with a Policy that Discriminates Against Women in Hiring Decisions

On page 34 of Bob McDonnell’s blueprint, he writes,

If the government at all levels has a duty to uphold the family, then it follows that it has the authority to legitimately discriminate in support of this goal.

Luckily, McDonnell hasn’t been overly successful imposing his views at the government level. But hiring policies at Regent University, where McDonnell served on the Board of regents for seven years,  follow Bob’s thinking.

The Washington Post observed

In 1996, McDonnell became a member of Regent's Board of Trustees, a position in which he served until 2004. By then, the Titus view on permissible sexual distinctions had become firmly rooted in university policy. Critics have cited Regent's "Equal Opportunity Policy" -- which includes a section addressing sex discrimination -- in contending that McDonnell long tolerated sexually discriminatory policies at Regent.

The third provision of the policy commits Regent to equal opportunity "without regard to gender," although "consistent with a scriptural family policy, recognizing that God created mankind male and female (as determined at birth and not subject to change), and recognizing that God instituted and defined the family as the primary civil institution of civil governance, designating a specific authority structure within the home." As biblical authority for that statement, the provision cites a passage from Ephesians, which reads: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church."

Here's the actual policy:

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY POLICY:

  3.   Afford equal opportunity to applicants, students and employees without regard to gender and consistent with a scriptural family policy, recognizing that God created mankind male and female (Gen. 1:27) (as determined at birth and not subject to change), and recognizing that God instituted and defined the family as the primary civil institution of human governance, designating a specific authority structure within the home (Eph. 5:22-23; 1 Pet. 3:1-7).  
  4.   Base decisions upon a person's qualifications for the position being filled or the benefit sought, recognizing that God has gifted men variously, as He wills (Ex. 35:30, 36:2; 1 Cor. 12:6-11; Rom. 12:3-8; Eph. 4:11-13).  
  5.   Afford equal opportunity to applicants, students and employees without regard to age or physical or mental disability, unless such condition would impede one's ability to fulfill the demands of the position or activity under consideration, recognizing that age and physical or mental disability can interfere with one's ability to fulfill a particular responsibility (Deut. 31:2). 
Ephesians 5:22-23 (New International Version)
Wives and Husbands
 22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

1 Peter 3:1-7 (New International Version)
1 Peter 3
Wives and Husbands
 1Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. 4Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. 5For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, 6like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
 7Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Bob McDonnell's Thesis Advisor

Herbert Titus was the Dean of the law school and a dominant figure at Pat Robertsons university while Bob McDonnell attended. Titus was McDonnells principal thesis advisor and his ideas clearly shaped McDonnells. Titus has written that equal pay for equal work and tax-supported day care are part of Lenins blueprint, and that "God created the woman specifically to meet the man's need." (Biblical Principles of Law, Herbert W. Titus, P.33)

Eventually, Titus proved to be too extreme even for Pat Robertson who fired him in an effort to position the school for accreditation.   The firing set off a firestorm of accusations and litigation in which Robertson wrote that Titus and his allies were not “capable teachers of law,” were “third-rate minds,” were “extremist fanatics” and compared them to “cultists after the order of Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians.” (Richmond Times Dispatch, 5/6/96; Virginian-Pilot, 4/22/96)

From Sunday's Washington Post:

When McDonnell entered politics by running for the House of Delegates, his constitutional law professor, Herbert W. Titus, proudly attended his candidacy announcement. "I felt he had a chance to be very successful," Titus remembered. "Bob was part of the Republican resurgence at the time. . . . This was the kind of thing we hoped our good students would do, try to apply what they had learned."

The founding dean of Regent Law School, Titus had served as chairman of a three-member faculty committee that supervised McDonnell's thesis, the professor and McDonnell discussing the development of the paper in meetings during which Titus offered gentle guidance. He listened to McDonnell's goals for the paper, which argued that social changes, federal welfare policy and Supreme Court decisions had undermined family values. Titus made broad suggestions and critiqued McDonnell's work.

"It was more general suggestions, because I think Bob had a fairly good idea what he wanted to do," Titus remembered. "The [thesis] is presented now [by critics] as a radical position; but it's hardly radical. The ideas expressed by Bob in the thesis were quite compatible with the idea of family as God created it and its importance to the economic life of the nation -- the idea that you can't be a fiscal conservative if you're not a social conservative. Bob is right."

Today, Titus has avuncular praise for McDonnell. "Bob was a family man, very congenial, someone you liked," he said. "His commitment to family [issues] was obvious. This was the kind of person you wanted to see get involved, someone who wanted to apply the principles and approach learned here."

Titus defined that approach in his classes: Students would be learning a different perspective than that taught at most universities. Titus said he taught the "Blackstonian view," a series of legal concepts derived from the writings of 18th-century English legal scholar William Blackstone that he said dramatically influenced the Framers. At the heart of the Blackstonian philosophy was that man's law derives from God's law.

Titus says the modern American judiciary has violated God's laws, with court rulings that empower citizens to decide for themselves about such matters as contraception and sexual relations, free of regulation by the state.

Biblical passages made it clear, Titus said, that God deemed marriage as the only permissible relationship in which a person could have sexual intercourse. Therefore, said Titus, it logically followed that, as a means to protect the marital relationship, states had the authority and obligation to prohibit intercourse outside of marriage.

As measured by his thesis, McDonnell's view on the matter echoed Titus's. In the thesis, he criticized a 1972 Supreme Court decision in Eisenstadt v. Baird, which declared it unconstitutional for a state to prohibit the purchase of contraceptives by an unmarried person. McDonnell wrote that the court had "illogically extended" the notion of marital privacy to unmarried persons "at a time when every state made sexual intercourse between unmarried persons a crime." In a reference to the broader issue on Titus's mind, McDonnell's thesis scorned the idea that the state should be barred from regulating aspects of private sexual behavior, excoriating the "perverted notion that each individual should be able to live out his sexual life in any way without interference from the state."

The role of women and their rights remained a fluid question in Titus's legal view. Although Titus argued emphatically that legal distinctions based on race were morally wrong and unlawful, distinctions based on sex were sometimes legally permissible, he has said, "because God created two sexes."

In 1996, McDonnell became a member of Regent's Board of Trustees, a position in which he served until 2004. By then, the Titus view on permissible sexual distinctions had become firmly rooted in university policy. Critics have cited Regent's "Equal Opportunity Policy" -- which includes a section addressing sex discrimination -- in contending that McDonnell long tolerated sexually discriminatory policies at Regent.

The third provision of the policy commits Regent to equal opportunity "without regard to gender," although "consistent with a scriptural family policy, recognizing that God created mankind male and female (as determined at birth and not subject to change), and recognizing that God instituted and defined the family as the primary civil institution of civil governance, designating a specific authority structure within the home." As biblical authority for that statement, the provision cites a passage from Ephesians, which reads: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church."

Titus sees the criticism against his former student as a knee-jerk display of liberal bias. "Promoting intact, one-male, one-female lifetime marriage: That was really the essence of Bob's thesis," Titus said. "And it's traceable back to Genesis 1:26-28: God commissions the family to exercise dominion, which is the very foundation of the free-enterprise system."

McDonnell is circumspect about the subject these days and openly uncomfortable with repeated attempts to have him discuss it. After taking his tour of Alexandria and sitting down in the office of a friend, he nods upon hearing Titus's name. He smiles at a reference to his days in Titus's constitutional law and common law classes where he learned about the Blackstonian view of law. Summoning another factoid, he recalled a seminal Blackstonian tenet, reciting it nearly verbatim: "This is what Blackstone said: 'The goal of the judge is to find and declare the law.' They were not to read new meaning into the Constitution."

Reminded of the praise he expressed for Titus and two other advisers in his thesis, McDonnell said he can only "remember a little bit about the class." His powerful memory for statistics and legal quotations fails him on the subjects of his thesis and the man who guided him through it. He said he can't recall many details about Titus's help on his thesis, nor can he recount much about Titus's lectures that remain memorable for others, such as Klarich. "They've got better memories than I do," he said.

To learn more, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/

Bob telegraphed his campaign in his thesis

On page. 55 of his blueprint, Bob telegraphed the type of campaign he’s running when he wrote that,

It is also becoming clear in modern culture that the voting American mainstream is not willing to accept a true pro-family ideologue because as then-Representative Trent Lott (R-MS) observed, "Americans think of themselves as conservatives; they want government reduced. But in their hearts they are liberals; they want all the goodies coming in."156   Leadership, however, does not require giving voters what they want, for whimsical and capricious government would result. Republican legislators must exercise independent professional judgment as statesmen, to make decisions that are objectively right, and proved effective.

But Bob also telegraphed what his term as governor will looks like – and it’s very different from his campaign. 

To learn about it, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/

Bob telegraphed his campaign in his thesis

On page. 55 of his blueprint, Bob telegraphed the type of campaign he’s running when he wrote that,

It is also becoming clear in modern culture that the voting American mainstream is not willing to accept a true pro-family ideologue because as then-Representative Trent Lott (R-MS) observed, "Americans think of themselves as conservatives; they want government reduced. But in their hearts they are liberals; they want all the goodies coming in."156   Leadership, however, does not require giving voters what they want, for whimsical and capricious government would result. Republican legislators must exercise independent professional judgment as statesmen, to make decisions that are objectively right, and proved effective.

But Bob also telegraphed what his term as governor will looks like – and it’s very different from his campaign. 

To learn about it, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/

Pg.65: “Feminism” is one of “the real enemies of the traditional family”

On page 65 of his blueprint, Bob writes,

While such thinking may be attacked for lacking political realism in a changing world, it is imperative that government stand firm in support of traditional family values.  The real enemies of the traditional family - materialism, irresponsibility, feminism, lust, and ultimately selfishness - are largely outside the sphere of federal government impact.

Materialism, irresponsibility, etc... of course.  But feminism???

No wonder Bob voted opposed efforts to give women equal pay for equal work in the legislature. [Washington Post, 9-17-09; HJ 800, 2001]

To learn more visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/women/

Pg. 16: "In all cases" parents can make education decisions "independent of state oversight or compulsion"

On page 16 of his blueprint, Bob writes that

Under the umbrella of parental authority is the choice of means to accomplish their duties, through home schools, church schools, or other alternatives. It is in these areas of concurrent jurisdiction of family and state, in which the state acts in its limited but legitimate role of parens patriae, that the difficult policy decisions are made. In all cases, parents must be accorded the maximum opportunity to discharge their responsibilities independent of state oversight or compulsion.

In other words, Bob thinks that even if parents opt to teach their kids themselves, government cannot provide oversight.

To learn more, visit www.bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/education

Pg.6: “never married adults age 25 to 29” is one of “unmistakable signs of social dysfunction”

On page 6 of his blueprint, Bob writes,

While families were arguably in a better economic position with two wage earners in the home, the derivative problems of "latchkey children" and the "child-care crisis" have become among the most widely discussed policy issues of the 1980's. There is a continuing trend of young adults either postponing marriage or opting to remain single. This unique American demographic shift is evidenced by the doubling of never married adults age 25 to 29 from 1970 to 1984. Those who do marry are having fewer or no children. The changing views of the utility of children, the economic burden of raising them, the self-centeredness of modern individualism, and the wide acceptance and convenience of birth control and abortion, have reduced birthrates below that which is required to replenish the current population.   Increasingly, children spend less time with their parents and more time under institutional supervision, in front of a television, or on the streets with peers.  The unmistakable signs of social dysfunction linked to traditional family breakdown took on a fresh awareness in the 1980's. The scourge of rampant drug abuse by the nation's youth, and the widespread exposure of children as customers and victims of pornography were new indicia of trouble. Studies showed the great negative impact that toys, music, television and other media were having on children, as violence, sex and the occult were common themes in these vehicles of play and entertainment.  Children have been further affected by reductions in child support and spousal maintenance awards in no-fault divorce decrees, and a national crisis in support enforcement.  These represent yet further manifestations of a spirit of militant individualism and perversity which is gripping the culture.

To learn more, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/

Pg. 62: "Separation of church and state" is "folklore"

On page 62 of his blueprint, Bob writes that:

With the new Republican Administration under George Bush, and a conservative leaning Court, leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state.

When Bob McDonnell wrote this statement, George H.W. Bush was President. Bob then pursued his rigid ideological agenda through George W. Bush’s entire Presidency. 

So how would Bob McDonnell’s views on separation of church and state impact Virginia women, public schools and families if he became Governor?

To learn more, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/

Pg.66: Using Vouchers to Transfer Education to the Private Sector

On page 66 of his blueprint, Bob McDonnell advocated working toward

an ultimate goal of transferring social welfare 
responsibility to the private sector in local communities.

If public benefits are to be paid, utilize the voucher system which maximizes freedom of choice for families and others in the area of housing, education, and medical care.

So it's no surprise that 50% of the education bills that Bob McDonnell sponsored would have created school voucher programs to undermine our public schools.   (Note: we use the term “50%” loosely – he only sponsored 2 education bills in his 14 years in the General Assembly) [HJR187, 1994]

In 1999, Bob checked off on a questionnaire that the state should “provide parents with state-funded vouchers to send their children to any participating school (public, private, religious).”  (Attorney General Robert Francis ‘Bob’ McDonnell, Project Vote-Smart Virginia State Legislative Election 1999 National Political Awareness Test)

And the Daily Press reported:

In what may be among the most divisive issues, conservatives hope to get a school-voucher measure out of committee this year. Republican lawmakers called last year for a study of the idea to offer a $2,500 income tax credit for parents who send their children to private schools, but it died in committee. ‘This will be the first year that it'll be in earnest,’ McDonnell said. ‘But there's a rising tide for those sorts of bills. Clearly, the fact that you've got parity means that more of these bills will get serious debate and will get passed. I'm a little more optimistic this year; your more social conservative legislators now have some experience, and they're getting more competence and respect in the legislature.’ (Daily Press, 1/10/99)

In 2005, Bob even voted to to eliminate “free or reduced-price breakfasts for poor children” at school. (History of Amendment 150 #1h to HB1500, 2005, and History of HB1500, 2005 and The Associated Press State & Local Wire, 02/10/05)
And of course, he has proposed a plan that cuts $5.4 billion from Virginia’s public schools over the next ten years. Can Virginia students compete in a global economy if Bob McDonnell implements his plans?

To learn more about Bob McDonnell’s record of neglecting public education, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/education/

Larry Sabato: Bob McDonnell hasn’t repudiated his thesis

In today’s Washington Post, Director of UVA Center of Politics Larry Sabato discusses how Bob McDonnell has reacted to the discovery of his thesis.

Sabato also criticized McDonnell for not more forcefully repudiating some of the more controversial pieces of the paper.

"He's danced around it," Sabato said. "You've had the formulations in the paper: 'Well, that was a long time ago,' and 'Here's my daughter.' He hasn't said, 'I don't believe that working women hurt the family.' He has to repudiate it, and he hasn't because he's worried about offending the social conservatives who still believe that."

To learn more about what exactly Bob has failed to repudiate, visit http://bobmcdonnellblueprint.com/