Joe Lieberman: “I very briefly want to thank the Senator from New York for his kind words. He has made here what is to me a very…”

“I very briefly want to thank the Senator from New York for his kind words. He has made here what is to me a very important point, a very stunning point, and I just want to repeat it if I may, which is that there is a way in which the collapse of the family opens the door, in the metaphor that the Senator has used, to the further collapse of the family. And we are, of course, generalizing here. There are many circumstances where this does not take place. But if you have a situation where babies are born to unmarried women and there is no father in the house, then as the baby, if it is a girl, grows up, will the mother be able to alone protect the child from a man who may be a predator? And I understand it is much more complicated in many cases than that. But there is a way in which nature has created this unit, and we all have our roles to play in it. The single, poor mother may be ill-equipped to alone defend her child, against a man whose intentions are not good. The Senator is right, we do not enforce these statutory rape laws anymore, but they are statutory. These acts are illegal, and they are illegal for a good reason. The consequences are disastrous, and I think if we can put some fear out there by more vigorously enforcing these laws, we not only will be doing what is right, but we may actually have an effect on the rate of out-of-wedlock births.”