August 21, 2004

JEFF BERKOWITZ, HOST: You're watching Public Affairs. Berkowitz is my name, and politics is our game, and we will be doing politics this evening, because we have as our guest the Republican candidate for the United States Senate. He is Ambassador Alan Keyes, and he has spent a good deal of his life in politics and in government. He was born in New York. He grew up in a variety of areas because he was, as he describes it, an "army brat." That is, his father was in the Army, so they moved around a bit, attending over time both public schools and parochial schools, and then has a double degree from Harvard, and actually started out at Cornell. Right?

ALAN KEYES, ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: Started out at Cornell. I was there my freshman year, then I studied under Cornell's auspices at the Institute des Etudes Politique (sp) in Paris, and then I came back and finished at Harvard for the last two years.

BERKOWITZ: Why at Harvard? Why did you go as an undergrad from--Cornell was known, is known--my daughter's there--as the "Big Red." Was it too red, and was Harvard less red?

DR. KEYES: No, no, I actually was studying at Cornell with a few professors who, after all, they had all their troubles in '69, I guess it was. I was studying with, in particular with Allan Bloom and Walter Burns, and they both left Cornell, so when I got done with my studies in France, I transferred to Harvard to study with Harvey Mansfield who was a colleague of Allen Bloom's, and they took sort of a similar approach to political theory.

BERKOWITZ: OK. And then you got your Ph.D. in government, and your dissertation was, what, on constitutionalism, on federalism, under [unintelligible]

DR. KEYES: Well, it was actually on Alexander Hamilton's contributions to the constitutional debate at the time the Constitution was being framed, so it dealt with his role at the convention, his role in the Federalist Papers, and his role at the New York state convention. And also, a discussion of course of the kind of theory that was involved in his contribution to the U.S. Constitution.

BERKOWITZ: Then, nine years in the United States Department of State, the State Department--

DR. KEYES: Approximately, yeah.

BERKOWITZ: And four or five as a foreign service officer--

DR. KEYES: I was a foreign service officer for almost exactly five years, yes.

BERKOWITZ: And four years as a Reagan--

DR. KEYES: I was a political appointee of President Reagan's for about four.

BERKOWITZ: Some of which was, you were ambassador to the United Nations. Right?

DR. KEYES: Right. My original appointment from the President was as U.S. Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council. I think that's the third-ranking position at the United Nations mission. We have five ambassadors in New York who are posted to the United Nations, and I was the third-ranking one, sat on the Economic and Social Council, represented the U.S. in the second committee of the General Assembly, which is the one which deals with economic issues, and so forth. And, left the State Department in '87.

BERKOWITZ: You--and then you, of course, ran for the U.S. Senate twice from Maryland--

DR. KEYES: '88 and '92.

BERKOWITZ: And then twice in the Republican primary for President of the United States, right?

DR. KEYES: Yeah. Participated in the Republican primaries in '96 and 2000.

BERKOWITZ: OK. And then you were called, we're taping this on August 21, you were called both figuratively and literally about three weeks ago, a little longer.

DR. KEYES: I think it's two.

(laughter)

I accepted about two weeks ago. I was probably called, right, three weeks ago-called, and contacted-

BERKOWITZ: Called, and contacted, and went before the State Central Committee and all that apparatus,

DR. KEYES: Yeah.

BERKOWITZ: And, two weeks ago, as you said, you accepted the offer to run as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate against Barack Obama who, of course, is the Democratic candidate, and we now have, as we tape this, there are ten weeks left. This will air in the suburbs on the week of, if you're watching this in the suburbs, it's the week of August 30th. If you're watching in the city of Chicago, it's Labor Day, September 6, and you will at that time, as you're talking to people throughout the city, you'll have eight weeks left--

DR. KEYES: Uh-huh.

BERKOWITZ: --to run and win a United States Senate seat. A rather compressed campaign, would you say?

DR. KEYES: It kind of depends. I mean, a lot of the work-and I have to say, originally coming as I am, hailing from Maryland-there was a time in Maryland politics when the general election campaign never began until September, because the primaries were held in the first week of September, and Maryland is not the only state in which that is true. So, the notion that a general election campaign basically starts after Labor Day and goes through the election is not all that uncommon. Admittedly, one would think that coming into Illinois from another state, I'd be starting way behind, and it would be true if people here didn't know me and if I didn't have a good base of support here already, but I do. I think that's one of the reasons that the state party thought of me in the first place.

BERKOWITZ: And they know you because you've had a variety of contacts. You've had a nationally-syndicated radio show, right?

DR. KEYES: Well, yeah, but I don't think media contacts are the most important.

BERKOWITZ: And you had a television show. But you're saying that your contacts--

DR. KEYES: My contacts were more with grassroots people, people involved with the right to life movement, people involved in the pro-family movement, people involved in Second Amendment efforts, people who are strong supporters of Israel--I mean, I've been in and out of the state, working with those folks over the years, not in my political interest, but in order to help them do their work, build their organizations, and address the issues that they care about.

BERKOWITZ: I know that pro-life, and you just mentioned that, is extremely important to you, and your philosophy, and your whole approach to the whole political philosophy as well as moral philosophy. Let me start with some of what we call the domestic, economic issues. We'll go back to foreign policy, and we'll come back to social issues, and perhaps our audience will see that these are interwoven.

But let's start on, you know, well, in 1992, Bill Clinton, running for President, said, "It's the economy, stupid." We're twelve years later. Is it still, "It's the economy, stupid," in terms of the major national or senate issue?

DR. KEYES: Well, actually, no. That wouldn't be true.

BERKOWITZ: That wouldn't be true.

DR. KEYES: I think even some of the polls I've seen indicate that, yes, the economy is a very important issue, but it's often coming number two behind national security. I think most Americans remember that we are still in a war, that thousands of Americans died, fresh in our memory, and that we'd better protect ourselves. But I think, behind that concern-and in part, I think, too, is part of it-is the concern with the economy, and especially in Illinois because, for reasons we might want to get into, Illinois has lagged behind even its other states in the region here, in terms of, especially, jobs, from the recovery the rest of the country has been experiencing.

BERKOWITZ: Is that a tax-you know, Rod Blagojevich has gone out of his way not to raise income taxes, not to raise the general sales tax, but he has raised business taxes-taxes specifically on business. And are you saying that has made a less friendly business environment and, therefore, retarded job growth in Illinois?

DR. KEYES: It's not the only thing, but I think it's an element, because one of the fallacies of, I'm afraid, of Democrats, liberals, socialists in general is they always talk about jobs, but they are then people who will adopt policies that kill the businesses that offer the jobs. It's totally self-contradictory, and I think that Blagojevich is in that category, somebody who talks a good game, says he cares about people and wants people to have jobs, but then creates an environment that is hostile to jobs, not only because of taxes, but there are a lot of other problems--educational problems, medical access problems, and finally, I think in Illinois, the problem of the corruption tax that is deeply discouraging to businesses coming to locate, and that I think is also discouraging to their remaining in Illinois.

BERKOWITZ: Well, getting somewhat at the corruption taxes, you know the incumbent, the current junior senator, Peter Fitzgerald, appointed independent U.S. attorneys general-three throughout the state of Illinois and, in particular, in this district, he appointed Patrick Fitzgerald, brought him in from out of state from New York, and many say he has made a great start on reducing corruption by being an independent force, and looking at public corruption, and prosecuting those individuals.

So, the question is, if you win the United States senate seat, and if President Bush wins, you two would then have the prerogative of picking the next U.S. [unintelligible] attorney, or keeping Patrick Fitzgerald. Would you make a commitment to keep Patrick Fitzgerald?

DR. KEYES: Oh, I will make that commitment unequivocally. I think his job is not done. Obviously, he might be called away to do other things, because I understand there has been some talk about his getting involved in the anti-terror war, and so forth. So when you've got a good person, it's possible somebody else may want to pluck him away, but I'd want to keep him, and if he were to leave, I'd want to replace him with someone like himself. I think it's absolutely critical that we have somebody in those positions who is not beholden to any special interest, and who is therefore not going to be in some sense, purposefully or not, conniving at some of the things that in fact need to be investigated and dealt with.

BERKOWITZ: Does that mean you would be going outside, to look for an attorney from outside of Illinois to find somebody independent similar to Patrick Fitzgerald, or could you find somebody inside Illinois?

DR. KEYES: I think, I don't know. I think that will entirely depend on the situation at the time, and who the individuals are who seem to be best fitted for the job, but I will say this-I think in an environment such as we have, having somebody who is not beholden to any existing interests for, and who is not part of the skein of political interconnections that, unfortunately I think, have created some of the problems in this state-that's going to be of advantage to a U.S. attorney. And I think that Peter Fitzgerald was right. He did some very sound thinking and courageous thinking in the move that he made, and I think the priority has to be given to getting the job done, and if the best person comes from outside the state, I think that that's what you'd have to do.

BERKOWITZ: Getting back to the economy on the national level, as you know, President Bush proposed, and actually passed, through the Congress, a major tax cut program, in both 2001 and 2003--eliminating the marriage penalty, across the board cuts in marginal rates of taxation, I guess, ultimately phasing out the estate tax, as people call it, the "death tax." Would you have supported that entire package?

DR. KEYES: I would have. I've never seen a tax cut I didn't like, I don't think. Maybe I have, but I can't think of it.

BERKOWITZ: And that's the way you differ from your opponent, Barack Obama, in that he has said on this program at one point that he wouldn't have favored any of those tax cuts. He would have favored, instead a cut in the payroll tax. Now he's said he might favor some of those tax cuts--

DR. KEYES: Well, excuse me. "Payroll tax," you mean, Social Security?

BERKOWITZ: Social Security tax, yeah. You disagree with him on that?

DR. KEYES: The great problem is that I think he's somebody who misunderstands the nature of the system. The Social Security system is called a tax, but it's actually, as we all know, a social insurance payment, and there is a direct connection between that payment and the solvency of the Social Security system. It is kinda careless to say you're gonna cut payroll taxes, without looking at the issue of how that affects the solvency of the system, and though I do believe the system needs fundamental reform, I think we have to keep the promises we've made, and that we can't simply take steps that are aimed at some kind of fiscal result that would interfere with those promises. That's why it's responsible to look at what you need to do to bring spending in line with the money available, while cutting taxes in such a way as to encourage and stimulate economic activity, because that expands the pie, and actually improves your revenues.

BERKOWITZ: You favor, you mentioned Social Security reform. Would you favor privatization as giving individuals control over how the money that they put into Social Security is invested?

DR. KEYES: This is what I've always favored. As a matter of fact, there was a plank, as I recall, in both my presidential campaigns, that we need to look at ways to introduce the whole idea of Social Security to the wonderful and fruitful dynamic of market investment. That doesn't mean, of course, that you abruptly terminate the system, but my rule is, keep the promises you make, and stop making promises you can't keep, so that you introduce those who are going to be in the out generations, the younger folk coming on line and so forth, to a new way of doing business, that will allow them to invest their retirement dollars in more productive areas of investment, that can take advantage of the dynamism of the U.S. economy.

BERKOWITZ: And what do you say to those people who say, "If you do that, some people will invest foolishly, and then you will be left, and others will be left, taking care of them in their retirement years because they won't have any retirement funds"--what do you say to this?

DR. KEYES: Meaning no particular offense, in the first instance, the track record of what happens with our Social Security money has nothing in it that resembles the returns you get from investment. So if we're talking about people investing foolishly, at the moment I think the track record of the existing Social Security system is really foolish--

BERKOWITZ: It's about 1.3 percent now. You can do better than that.

DR. KEYES: --compared with what you could get in the market economy, but second, I just dislike that kind of contempt for people. Folks who are taking responsibility for themselves are usually going to understand their limitations, look for better advice than they might be able to get for themselves, and some of them will certainly be able to come up even on their own with what they need to take care of themselves. The assumption that somehow people can't do that is one that I think is simply a self-serving assumption of those who wish to increase the power of government bureaucrats and politicians.

BERKOWITZ: Switching over to education, you as I understand it favor school vouchers, and charter schools, and school choice in general, right?

DR. KEYES: Yes, I do.

BERKOWITZ: OK. And so, and you would favor a fully-funded school voucher in the sense that, in the city of Chicago, similar actually to Washington, D. C. and many other inner cities, we spend I think on an average about ten or eleven thousand dollars per year per kid, so would you favor taking that ten thousand dollars as I often do on this show, put it in a backpack, strap that backpack on a kid, and let the parents choose, do they want to keep that ten thousand in a public school, or do they want to send it to the school of their choice, a private school? Would you favor that kind of choice?

DR. KEYES: What I would favor is the principle that the money we spend on education ought to follow the choice of the parents. The assumption that the parents will make a choice that requires that eleven thousand dollars is, when you actually look at the private choices available, a false assumption, because a lot of times, the private choices that are available--parochial schools, faith-based schools--are achieving results better than what we get in our public school system, for less money. So I'm not going to tell a parent, "You must go out and spend eleven thousand dollars," but I will say that up to whatever is being spent in the public school system--

BERKOWITZ: You would give them that choice.

DR. KEYES: --you can have access to those dollars. I think we would end up finding that they would actually make, in the existing array of things, a more economical choice than that, and you end up saving money, in many cases.

BERKOWITZ: Now, many people say that they're concerned about the schools in the inner cities, that they're not performing well, but a number of those folks also say that the schools are performing well in the suburban areas. So, would you focus on a school voucher or school choice program for the inner city, as opposed to the suburbs, or would you, school choice, school vouchers for everywhere?

DR. KEYES: I think, overall, the principle of education ought to be school choice. Given that we have, in the immediate term, limited resources, I would certainly think you want to first target the areas of greatest need, in order to free parents who don't presently have the opportunity, from the burden of being forced into an education system that's failing them. So I do believe that it would be right to give priority to those who are not in a situation right now to make that choice for themselves.

BERKOWITZ: Your opponent, Barack Obama, has said on this program that he favors charter schools and school choice perhaps within a public school context, but he doesn't favor school choice that would allow the kind of choice you and I have just been discussing. He says he thinks that would result in a tiered education, that is, some kids would go at a high tier, and others at a low tier--

DR. KEYES: What does he think we have? I think, right now, what we have is an educational system where people who can afford it, including some people who end up being double taxed, going out to work a second job--I was talking to a fellow just the other day, near where I live in Cal City, was at a restaurant. He works for Ford Motor company, and he was telling me just this-that he had taken his daughter out of the public schools, put her in private schools, that it had cost him, over the course of her education, some twenty thousand dollars. He had had to work a second job, and he felt that it was unfair, because he was paying taxes and paying for her education,

BERKOWITZ: He was paying taxes and paying for her education. Right.

DR. KEYES: So I think right now that we have a tiered system that forces people to do that, and that deprives people who don't have the opportunity to make the extra income, or who aren't in an income bracket where they can afford it, they have no choice. They are stuck with schools that are failing their kids, including one that, one of the folks I talked to, said that you have situations where the kids don't even have books to take home, to do their homework. One book per desk, and the classes are funneled in and out of the classroom, and the kids leave the book with the desk. And one is sitting there asking, "Well, how do they get their homework done? How do they get their study done, under a situation like that?"

So, I think we're in a situation where the system is tiered, and the poor get the short end of the stick because they have no choice.

BERKOWITZ: Now, is this issue something, school choice, school vouchers, which we were just talking about now, do you think you'll be making that a major issue in this campaign, especially as you see folks in the inner city of Chicago as well as troubled areas throughout the state of Illinois, not just Chicago?

DR. KEYES: Sure. This is one of those things that, I think, involves what you were talking about earlier, because the idea that this is an issue separate from jobs and from economic prospects is false. One of the reasons you have a hard time getting and holding businesses-and please remember that businesses provide jobs. People who mouth on about jobs and then do stuff that kills businesses are lying to us. That's Barack Obama. They lie to us. They say, "Jobs, jobs, jobs," and then they do everything in their power to kill the businesses that provide the jobs. But one of the things that attracts and holds businesses is, "Where are we gonna send our kids to school, if our business is located in Illinois, if our business is located here?" And if they don't have a good answer to that, we're gonna lose that business to a state that does have a good answer. And that's where I think these things are connected.

BERKOWITZ: So you think quality education is important to keep jobs--

DR. KEYES: Quality education is important to keep jobs. Access to proper medical care is important to keep jobs. We have to look at the whole picture and not just act as if we magically create jobs by doing what? Throwing money at some government bureaucracy?

BERKOWITZ: Let me play devil's advocate here, because I think Barack has been on this show about eight times, so I think know reasonably well what he thinks, and he would say he cares about, certainly, improving the quality of education. He cares about the jobs, and he understands that it's important to have a quality education in order to keep jobs here in Illinois. In that he would say he agrees with you. He differs with you on the methods to maintain jobs.

DR. KEYES: Well, so I'm sure that he can easily mouth the words, because that's what folks like this--

BERKOWITZ: But you've called him a socialist. Do you stand by this?

DR. KEYES: He is a socialist. Folks like this--

BERKOWITZ: You--

DR. KEYES: Even the issue--

BERKOWITZ: He has said on this show that--

DR. KEYES: Let me finish. Even the issue we're talking about, all right-if you look at his stand, his stand says the only way we can get education is with government-run, government-dominated schools. That's socialism. I say, let's have schools in which you give parents the choice, which then allows them to both go into a sector where the schools are going to be faith-based, parochial schools, schools that are started by private individuals, where they might even be able to get together in their community and start schools for themselves, rather than do it under government domination. That's the difference between a socialist, and someone who really believes not only in free enterprise, but in self-government in the community.

BERKOWITZ: Switch over to foreign policy, the war in Iraq. A lot of people thought that, before you came in and started talking about and articulating your position as you have in the last two weeks, that based what they knew about Alan Keyes, that a lot of people thought you perhaps were opposed to the war in Iraq, that you were, because they saw things you said that you were opposed to the United States invading other countries.

DR. KEYES: Right.

BERKOWITZ: And yet it turns out, apparently, that you are in favor of the war in Iraq. Is that right?

DR. KEYES: Well, let's be clear about this.

BERKOWITZ: Or at least, taking military action in Iraq.

DR. KEYES: No. Well, one of the things I disagree with-why do we call it, "the war in Iraq"? I don't understand this. We have a war against terrorism--

BERKOWITZ: OK.

DR. KEYES: And a front was opened in Iraq, and you can refer to it as "the war in Iraq" as we referred to, I don't know, "the war in North Africa" during World War II, but it was understood that that was a front in the larger war, and that's why the question is different. I do not believe in gratuitously going into other countries with military force because we don't like their governments, and so forth and so on. There are better ways to handle that problem. Nation building, which was one of the favorite things of the Clinton administration--

BERKOWITZ: You don't believe in nation building?

DR. KEYES: I think the notion that you do that, but with military force, is entirely false, but when you are engaged in a war for your own defense, and you are assessing what is required in order to deal with a global threat that then has bases and infrastructure and other things in different countries and different places that are interconnected, you have to identify priorities, and the President decided Iraq was one of the priorities that we had to attack in the infrastructure of terror, and that's different than just invading a country.

BERKOWITZ: What would you, there are people, as you know, who question whether Iraq was a part of the terrorist infrastructure. What would you point to and refer to say that you are right and they are wrong?

DR. KEYES: Well, first of all, and there are two things. I always have to assume, and I think we all do, that the President has to make his decisions based on the intelligence he's got, not the intelligence that we see in the newspaper six, seven, eight months after a decision has to be made, but the intelligence he had at the time. All this conversation and second-guessing and stuff is academic. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is, at the time the President made his decision, did intelligence indicate to his satisfaction that Iraq was in fact interested in developing, or had developed, some weapons of mass destruction, that it had both the history and the ties with the terrorist organizations to move those weapons of mass destruction into their hands in a way that would threaten America, and was it required that we preempt that possibility in order to prevent tens of thousands or even more American lives. That's the decision he had to make, and I think he made a necessary call.

BERKOWITZ: I thought there were people in the government, in the Bush administration, who gave the reason that you just gave, as one reason why they thought it was appropriate to take military action in Iraq, but I thought there were others who also thought it was important to set up, if you will, a model democracy, and remove a totalitarian regime, as a second reason. Not the only reason.

DR. KEYES: Maybe. Maybe. I have said--

BERKOWITZ: And also for humanitarian reasons. Do you agree with me?

DR. KEYES: No. I have said repeatedly, in the world we ourselves put together after World War II, there is only one proper justification for war, and that is to defend yourself. Nation building is not a proper justification. Disliking a regime is not a proper justification. We unleash the genie of all kinds of evils that we were trying to contain--

BERKOWITZ: Self-defense. Self-defense.

DR. KEYES: So, only those things which represent a threat to your security are, in fact, legitimate grounds for war, and all the rhetoric of democracy building and all that might be a good side effect, but it is not a proper justification, especially not, by the way, for the offensive use of military force. And in this particular case, we were taking an action that was offensive-that is to say, we went into Iraq, we hadn't been directly attacked-- because we were responding to an attack that had begun on September 11, 2001, and we felt, the President decided that this threat in Iraq was part of the infrastructure that supported and sustained that continuing threat from terror.

BERKOWITZ: All right. Let's go over to social issues. Guns, gays, God, abortion, starting in reverse order, with abortion. You know, you view an abortion as taking of a life, right?

DR. KEYES: Um, I "view it"? It is the taking of a life. I think that that can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of anyone who's fair.

BERKOWITZ: Is it demonstrated scientifically, or is it demonstrated in part on religious belief?

DR. KEYES: No. It's demonstrated logically, because the question isn't whether you can draw some fine line that experts disagree over. The question is, does that child in the womb have the same claim you or I have to be respected in its life? And I've often asked people this question: "What's your claim to be treated as a human being?" It wasn't decided by a scientific panel or anything. Your claim to be treated as a human being is, quite simply, that your parents were human, you know? Cats for the cats, dogs for the dogs, human beings for human beings. And that fact--that the parents are human--then establishes the humanity of the offspring to the satisfaction of all people who walk around outside the womb, I think. And if we're going to make that satisfactory for the people outside the womb, it surely is for the people inside the womb, and that answers the question.

When people approach me and say that this is not so, I think it's rather strange. I once got a question from a young collegian, a young lady, and she was raising this issue. She basically said, how dare I equate the mass of tissue or whatever with a person like herself, and I questioned whether or not she could in fact, by certain standards that might be applied to her by others, justify her personhood. But, insofar as she was willing to question the humanity of the offspring in her womb, that raises a question about her humanity, because if what's in her womb isn't human, what is she?

BERKOWITZ: Does that view of yours go back to your own heritage, your own lineage, as you, I know I've heard you talk about grappling with the issue, the issue of slavery and what it meant, and what it meant to be free or not free--did that influence your own views in terms of what you just stated about abortion?

DR. KEYES: I think, unfortunately, it goes back to the heritage of America. As I often point out to people, Frederick Douglass used to have to go around to different audiences giving a speech. It was called, "That the Negro is a Man," meaning to say, a human being, and in the course of this speech, he was going to prove the humanity of black Americans. The notion that somehow or another, this is the first time when we have removed the claim of humanity from a certain class of human beings in order to be able to abuse their lives according to our choice, is a lie. Slavery exactly involved this same principle, and the same justification that somehow blacks were subhuman was involved in the reasoning.

BERKOWITZ: We're gonna continue to speak as the credits roll, and it's been a very quick half hour, and I very much want to thank Alan Keyes, who of course is the Republican candidate for the United States Senate. All I can say is, I hope you come back soon, Alan, so we can cover all the other topics that we haven't yet finished, but thank you very much for coming.

DR. KEYES: Well, I'm glad to come, and I'll certainly be here.

BERKOWITZ: All right. So, and you would make abortion completely illegal. That would be your goal. There are various vehicles to do it, but that's one thing you'd want to do. You would also want, you also cannot countenance same-sex marriage, is that right?

DR. KEYES: Well, it seems to me that there is no marriage there. The heart of marriage is procreation. If there can be no procreation in principle, there can be no marriage. And if you embrace--

BERKOWITZ: Excuse me. What about people who are infertile? I mean--

DR. KEYES: I said, "in principle." People who are infertile are not in principle incapable of having children--

BERKOWITZ: But if they know--

DR. KEYES: They are infertile. That means, as an accident or incident of their particular physical makeup-which, by the way, as we've gained increases in science--in some cases, people who were thought infertile in the past are now found to be fertile. That's an incidence.

BERKOWITZ: But also by science, two gays, two lesbians can also, through surrogates and other ways--

DR. KEYES: No, they can't.

BERKOWITZ: They can also have children.

DR. KEYES: No, they cannot. That cannot happen.

BERKOWITZ: They procreate. They can have children.

DR. KEYES: It cannot happen. Those two individuals cannot procreate. Procreation isn't just one of them--

BERKOWITZ: But they can have a child.

DR. KEYES: No, they can't. The two cannot become one flesh, and that is the understanding that underlies the whole meaning of marriage.

BERKOWITZ: You're talking about two individuals transcending themselves in a child. Cannot two gays or two lesbians also transcend themselves in a child?

DR. KEYES: No, because they can't unite in the flesh--

BERKOWITZ: Even if they adopt?

DR. KEYES: Their DNA cannot be united in a single being. The two cannot become one flesh, and therefore I would argue, marriage has no meaning.

BERKOWITZ: God. Should God be a part of public life, a part of . . .

DR. KEYES: God is necessarily a part of American public life. Our creed is that our rights come from God. If He doesn't exist and has no authority, then we have no claim to rights. The notion that God cannot be mentioned in America means we can't prove the claim to our basic rights.

BERKOWITZ: Can atheists be conservatives?

DR. KEYES: Oh, I would hope so.