Education: Oppose efforts to bankrupt the public school system through private school vouchers. Support site-based decision-making and public school choice, with strong protections against discrimination.

Homosexual Rights: Condemn homophobia, bigotry and negative stereotyping of all kinds. Provide civil rights protection for gay men and lesbians; repeal ban on gay/lesbians in the military.

AIDS: Declare war on AIDS and HIV disease, implement the recommendations of the National Commission on AIDS and fully fund the Ryan White Care Act, provide honest drug treatment for all addicts who seek it; guarantee access to quality care; expand clinical trials for treatments and vaccines; and speed up the FDA drug approval process.

Abortion: Stand behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, regardless of ability to pay, and support a national law to protect that right. Provide for the full range of reproductive choice – education, counseling, access to contraceptives and the right to a safe, legal abortion.

Arts Funding: Public support for the arts, including a National Endowment for the Arts that is free from political manipulation and firmly rooted in the First Amendment’s freedom of expression guarantee.

Welfare: Should be a second chance, not a way of life. Offer a new social contract that includes investing in education and job training, and provides the child care and health care they need to go to work.

Civil Rights: Support ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, affirmative action, stronger protection of voting rights for minorities, including access to voting, and resistance to discriminatory English-only pressure groups.

Deficit: Calls for fair and shared sacrifice for the common good. Achieve defense savings; reform entitlement programs to control soaring health care costs; cut federal administrative costs by three percent annually for four years; limit increases in the “present budget” to the rate of growth in the average paycheck.

Religion and Public Life: Our future as a nation depends upon the daily assumption of personal responsibility by millions of Americans from all walks of life – for the religious faith they follow, the ethics they practice, the values they instill, the pride they take in their work.

Family: Governments don’t raise children; people do. Children should not have children. We need a national crackdown on deadbeat parents, an effective system of child-support enforcement. Supports family/medical leave legislation to ensure that workers don’t have to choose between family and work.

Health Care: Support universal access to quality, affordable health care – not as a privilege but as a right. Cover all Americans regardless of pre-existent conditions. Tough controls on health costs.

Policy: Call for foreign aid to be targeted at democracies, not tyrants. Swifter action to help former communist nations maintain sanctions on South Africa. Would condition favorable trade terms with China on respect for human rights, market access for U.S. goods, and responsible conduct on weapons proliferation.

Environment: We reject the Republican myth that energy efficiency and environmental protection are enemies of economic growth. Vow to protect old-growth forests and wetlands and oppose new offshore drilling. Promise a civilian conservation corps.

Firearms: Support a reasonable waiting period to permit background checks for handgun purchases, as well as assault weapon controls to ban the possession, sale, and manufacture of the most deadly assault weapons.

Crime: Create Police Corps for participants to receive college aid in return for police service. Favor innovative sentencing and punishment options, including community service and boot camps for first-time offenders; tougher penalties for rapists, victim impact statements and restitution to ensure that crime victims will not be lost in the criminal justice system.

Taxes: We will relieve the tax burden on middle-class Americans by forcing the rich to pay their fair share, providing tax relief to families with children.

Economy: Renew prosperity through public and private investment, particularly in transportation, environmental technologies, defense conversion and a national information network. Create an investment tax credit and capital gains reduction for investors in emerging technologies and new business, instead of a capital gains windfall for the wealthy.