Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Talkback Live

How Did Student Visas Get Approved for Atta by INS?; Are We Surprised by Rosie O'Donnell's Secret?

Aired March 14, 2002 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ARTHEL NEVILLE, HOST: Hello, everybody, welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Arthel Neville.

Does the name Mohammed Atta set off an alarm in your head? Chances are you recognize the name of the man believed to be the ringleader in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. So, how is it student visas issued to Atta and another of the terrorists managed to escape the eyes of everyone at the Immigration and Naturalization Service? The idea may make you roll your eyes, and probably a few heads will roll over this one, too. We will give a chance to comment about that today, so give me a buzz, 1-800-310-4CNN, or e-mail talkback@cnn.com.

Right now, let's take a look at what else we are talking about today.

Are you surprised by Rosie O'Donnell's not so big secret?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARBARA WALTERS, "20/20": For Rosie, this is a much bigger story than (UNINTELLIGIBLE) sexuality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEVILLE: Maybe it's about her book, and maybe it's about her kids. Will Rosie be the poster child for gay adoptions?

Also, when identified terrorists can get student visas, you've got to wonder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE TONIGHT SHOW")

JAY LENO, HOST: What the hell do you do to get denied a visa in this country?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEVILLE: Yeah, Jay, a lot of us would like to know that as well. Well, here to talk about INS lapses are Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform; Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum; and here with me right here in Atlanta, former INS director -- district director, Tom Fischer.

Mr. Fischer, I want to start with you and ask you the big question everybody wants to know, which is how did this happen?

TOM FISCHER, FORMER INS DISTRICT DIRECTOR: Obviously, it's a management goof. The process is broken. It needs to be fixed. The individuals, as you can -- as you noted, did receive an approval notice prior to 9/11, and not that that makes anything good, but to receive the approval notices six months after 9/11 is just unacceptable.

NEVILLE: So -- exactly. So explain to us, just break it down for us, how do you go about getting a student visa?

FISCHER: You go two ways primarily, and let's talk about the two individuals here. Both of those individuals were here in this country. They came here as tourists. They had non-immigrant visas issued to them by the Department of State overseas. When they entered this country, they were obviously sharp enough and shrewd enough to get by the admission process, to tell the immigration inspector that they were basically tourists or here for business purposes.

NEVILLE: So, let me understand. So they came here, they were on tourist visas...

FISCHER: That's correct.

NEVILLE: ... and then they enrolled?

FISCHER: No. Then, they went to a flight school.

NEVILLE: Right.

FISCHER: And based upon the conditions of the tourist visa, they could take a limited number of hours, like 18 hours a week, legally, to meet that requirement. When they decided they wanted to take a full time pilot program, then the school, which is a designated school and approved by the Immigration Service to participate in the foreign student program, then filed a change of status for them, to change their status from a B-2 non-immigrant to an M1 vocational student, which was approved prior to 9/11, and the final notice came out on March 11.

NEVILLE: But see, that's wrong. That's wrong. How do you -- it's almost like the schools arbitrarily saying, oh, these people are OK, so let us -- let them go ahead and get a student visa. I mean, that is -- there is a problem there.

FISCHER: Obviously, the program is not time sensitive. I mean, that speaks for itself.

NEVILLE: No, but you keep talking about time sensitive. Let's speak for real here, and that is the fact that nobody, no terrorist or anybody who is coming here to do wrong, they are not going to put it on their resume, hey, look, this is what I do, I'm a known terrorist. They're not going to put it there, so to me there has got to be some system in place that red flags these people.

FISCHER: There was a system in place, and unfortunately there were two of them, and both of them are broken. One is Atta received his non-immigrant visa in Germany. He should not have. He should have been sent back to his home country, to be processed by the American consul or embassy in that country. The American State Department accepted jurisdiction of him in Germany and issued him the non-immigrant visa.

Secondly, INS started a program in 1995, which was curtailed in 1999, which was a sophisticated database program that really would have perhaps caught these individuals, and it was stopped.

NEVILLE: And why was it curtailed? Too much money?

FISCHER: Foreign students in America is a $2 billion business, and the National Association for Foreign Students didn't want the foreign students to pay $180 a year to participate in the program.

NEVILLE: So mean green is more important than red flags?

FISCHER: Unfortunately, it's probably true.

NEVILLE: All right, listen, we have a statement here from the INS. I would like to pop it up on the screen and share it with everybody. It says: "It is important to emphasize that decisions regarding the request to change status were made in the summer of 2001, prior to the tragic events of September 11. It is equally important to recognize that when the applications were approved, the INS had no information indicating that Atta or Al-Shehhi had ties to terrorist organizations."

Again, I'm going to let my other guests weigh in here now. Frank Sharry, it's not as if a terrorist is going to say, hey, look, they are going to make themselves known, they're not going to put it on their resume.

FRANK SHARRY, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM: That's right. Now, this points to a number of problems. Clearly, it was a failure of immigration policy, but it was mainly a failure of intelligence. Unless our gatekeepers at our consulates overseas at our INS inspectors at points of entry into the United States know who the potential terrorists are, they are not going to know whether to keep them out or not. What was really pointed out by 9/11 is that we need to put the terrorists on the run, identify who they are, share that intelligence with our gatekeepers, and keep out potential terrorists before they ever get on U.S. soil.

NEVILLE: Dan Stein, what do you have to say about this?

DAN STEIN, FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM: Obviously we've got a whole systemic failure. It's a continuation of a process we have talked about for years, that the whole legal system in immigration doesn't work, the immigration system is broken, the nine million people here illegally, people who have overstayed visas. We've got folks in Congress who carry the water for special interests to help reward lawbreakers.

You know, back as recently as 2000, we had Senators Leahy and Senator Ashcroft himself, the attorney general, asking the INS to hold back on the foreign student visa tracking system, because the universities and schools didn't want to pay a fee and have more responsibility to monitor and track foreign students. We want the president to initiate top to bottom overhaul review of how we manage migration generally, immigration totally, because it's broken in virtually every phase of the operation. And this incident is so tragically emblematic of what is wrong with how we try to manage migration.

And if we can't get control of the numbers, we are going to have to cut them back, cut back the overall immigration flow until we get control of the process.

NEVILLE: Travis from Texas, what do you have to say about this?

TRAVIS: Well, what he is saying is true. To change your status from a visitor to a student is very easy. When I worked in a community college in Houston in the student visa office, it's a big money industry. Those people pay their student -- pay the tuitions that are astoundingly high, and they get their visas changed, and they get their changed before it is approved by the INS because of deadlines. So you have students who come here, change their visas -- or visitors who come here, change their visas, go to school, pay $2,000 a semester at a community college for tuition -- no one knows why or what they are planning to do.

NEVILLE: That's right. And you are right, Travis, because international students get between nine billion and 13 billion a year to U.S. schools, and here we are again talking about the issues of money and that money is ruling.

I have got to take a break right now, but when we come back I want to ask you at home and our panelists, should we shut down the immigration system, shut down their shores and doors until it's fixed? We'll talk about that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEVILLE: And welcome back. We're talking about that embarrassing foul-up at the INS over student visas. And let's hear what President Bush had to say about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It got my attention this morning when I read about that; I was stunned. And not happy. Let me put it another way, I was plenty hot. And I made that clear to people in my administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEVILLE: Dan Stein, the president is plenty hot. A lot of people are plenty hot about this. I want to ask you the question, do you think we should just shut down the system, fix it before we let anybody else in here? What do you think about that?

STEIN: Well, we got -- we definitely have to cut back the numbers, but what we really need from our politicians is a little reality check and some truth. We need to let the American people in on the secret, which is we virtually lost control of the whole process. And you know, if George Bush was surprised about what happened, well, he is the only guy in Washington who was surprised, given what everybody knows, the litany of GAO reports and other evidence that the INS is simply, like, not working at any phase of the operation.

It's like the plumber. You ever seen a plumber try to fix a pipe without turning off the water? It's a disaster. We've got the highest level of immigration in American history. We are on our way to half a billion people in this country, with millions and millions of people who come in illegally, break the laws, then demand to get green cards. The Immigration Service can't keep up with it. The State Department is overwhelmed.

What is it going to take for our political leadership to get the message? This is not just about people coming across the pick cantaloupe. This is about national security, vital strategic interests, public safety. I hate to think what's going to happen if we don't get a more serious response from Congress than we have seen today.

NEVILLE: And there needs to be some sort of cross-referencing here between the universities and the INS.

STEIN: They've got to stop fighting every proposal that gets suggested to try to improve the system. The universities have fought this proposal for years. We have seen special interests, cheap labor interests, big meat packers and others at Chamber of Commerce, every single proposal that's put on the table to try to fix the immigration mess, if it interferes with somebody's private greed agenda or somebody's political ethnic power bloc agenda, it never gets off the ground.

You know, just the other day, Congress passed an amnesty, the House has passed an amnesty. The Senate is going to vote on it any day; it's called section 245i -- a huge new workload is going to be added to the Immigration Service to adjust all these applications when nobody has provided them the resources.

NEVILLE: Frank, let me let you jump in there. I think you are shaking your head, and then I'm going to get to my guests here.

SHARRY: Well, unlike Dan -- and I'm not normally in the habit of defending President Bush, but he has got it right on immigration. What he has said is that there is a difference between immigrants who come to seek the American dream and a small handful of suicide bombers who come to kill innocent Americans. And we have to be able to distinguish between letting people in who spend money and go to universities and want -- a small number who come to settle to make a new life, and those people who come here to do us harm. We need to identify who they are, keep them out before they are here, have a better handle on who is coming to not only the United States but into North America, work with our Canadian and Mexican colleagues to have a better idea of who is crossing our border, who's going to universities here. We can take a number of sensible targeted steps.

We also have to fix the INS along the line, that President Bush has recommended long before 9/11, and long before this latest tragedy. In fact, it's members of Congress in his own party that are stopping him from moving forward on an INS restructuring plan that will get at the root of the problem.

NEVILLE: Let's just politics don't get in the way of this one. Let's just hope.

OK, Marcos, you are here in San Jose, California -- in San Diego, California, in from Costa Rica, here about eight months ago, you are on a student visa. What do you think about all of this?

MARCOS: Well, first of all, I do -- I agree that there needs to be more control on the way people come in and out of this country. But at the same time, I do believe that up to this point, there are a lot of limitations and there are a lot of policies that are set up for the entering of us, international students, to this country. There are -- the procedures, it's very...

NEVILLE: Let me ask you this, Marcos, what did you have to do and how long did it take you to apply for your student visa until you actually got one?

MARCOS: Well, first I applied to the college, I went through the normal application process. And I proved that my English proficiency was good enough to enter a college, a United States college, and then I had to wait for the university to give me the I-20, the form that proves that I'm going to be enrolled in that school, and...

NEVILLE: So let me ask you this, so did you have to take a test, a written test or an essay test or something?

MARCOS: I had to take the TOEFL exam, which is the one that proves your English proficiency. And then...

NEVILLE: So that's a written exam?

MARCOS: Yes, yes. And I mean, you have it in the embassies, and the international...

NEVILLE: OK. So the school, you get your I-20, you fill out this form, and then what happens?

MARCOS: And then I have to -- well, they mailed it to me, so that takes like sometimes two months, after they've proven that either they can give me the financial support through scholarships -- and basically, that's all we can hope for, because we can't have financial aid or loans, because we are... NEVILLE: Right. Right. So then, where would you get the financial support from?

MARCOS: Just scholarships. I mean, I applied because of my academics and my extracurricular activities, and all those amounted up to certain scholarships that aided me in solving the...

NEVILLE: So overall, would you say this process was easy or not?

MARCOS: No, it takes a long time.

NEVILLE: How long did it take?

MARCOS: Probably about six, seven months -- because after I got my I-20, I have to go to the embassy and go through a whole process.

NEVILLE: Thank you for sharing your story. Tom Fischer, I want to go to you now. You just heard Marcos' story, and I'd like to reemphasize to everybody and explain -- I think Marcos did a good job in terms of helping us understand how, in fact, you go about getting a visa. And if you can expound on that.

FISCHER: Keep in mind, all schools do not participate in the foreign student program. A university or a vocational school makes an application to the Immigration Service, and based upon certain criteria, for example, accreditation, are the hours transferable, the number of Ph.Ds on their staff, the size of their library, is it FAA approved and things of that nature, then the INS would approve and designate five officials from that school to sign a form, as Marcos said, called an I-20. Then here I am, I come from -- I'm in Ireland and I apply to Georgia State University. Georgia State accepts me based upon my academic achievements.

NEVILLE: Right.

FISCHER: They then send me an I-20 form, which the school is designated by the INS to sign. I take that form, I go to the American embassy in Dublin, I file a non-immigrant application -- now it's called the DS-156 -- along with I-20, and if the State Department wants to, they issue me in my Irish passport an F-1 non-immigrant visa, and then I come to Atlanta, and I present myself for admission before the immigration inspector.

NEVILLE: And that's it?

FISCHER: That's it.

NEVILLE: So that's too easy in your opinion?

FISCHER: No, it's not too easy. I think the process does work. Certain embassies take longer, certain schools take longer. As Marcos said, all depends on how efficient the school is, how efficient the embassy is.

NEVILLE: So there needs to be a better, like, overall guideline? FISCHER: Well, there needs to be a better guideline, but I tend to agree with what Frank said earlier. And what perplexes me now is that since INS decided back in 1999 to forgo a good tracking program -- there are many tracking programs that the private sector uses for non-immigrants also. When you look at your big corporations like Motorola and Microsoft, who are with the specialty -- and a lot of these participants here know what I'm talking about -- for the specialty jobs, and the tracking process, like an IT Hubbard these have, there is no reason the government couldn't monitor or take a system that they have, and quickly implement it for foreign students.

One last thing...

NEVILLE: I want to ask you something quickly, too, that can you come over here on a student visa for any type of school -- cosmetology, you know, if I wanted to go to medical school, or?

FISCHER: If the school is approved by INS in a certain academic or vocation, yes.

NEVILLE: So it doesn't matter. I can get over here on a cosmetology student visa.

FISCHER: In certain situations, yes. And keep in mind, there are no numerical limitations on foreign students. It's what the market will bear. Each year, the State Department issues approximately a quarter of a million non-immigrant visas. The INS will admit a quarter of a million. Now, people say that means there is only a quarter of a million in the country? No. There is probably 600,000 to 700,000, because if I come as a freshman from Ireland, INS is going to put on my little I-94 D/S, duration of status. And as long as I remain an academic passing my courses, I can stay here for baccalaureate, masters, Ph.D.

NEVILLE: And then not to mention that people are here on expired visas, but that's a whole another story.

Dan Stein, I want to let you jump in here before we go, and...

STEIN: We don't even -- INS doesn't know if they ever leave. They don't know where all the foreign students are.

NEVILLE: Exactly.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: Come on, there are a lot of people here who are not on working visas, student visas...

STEIN: They don't know where they are.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: Go ahead, Dan.

STEIN: I mean, if a student drops out of a course of study, the problem is the INS doesn't know. They are not notified, or if they are notified, they don't do anything about it.

There is a reason why we've got nine million people here illegally in this country. There's no interior enforcement to ensure departure of people who overstay a visa or go out of status, and that a big, big, big problem.

NEVILLE: Oh, boy. You know, we could talk about this forever, but this is -- we are out of time for this segment. Tom Fischer, Dan Stein, Frank Sharry, thanks so much for joining us today and enlightening us here.

Up next, the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Joan Garry of GLAAD will talk about Rosie O'Donnell's big secret. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEVILLE: And welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. There must be somebody in America who doesn't already know Rosie O'Donnell's big secret. She's gay. Rosie is outing herself to Diane Sawyer, and anyone watching prime-time Thursday tonight -- of course, Rosie's already way out of the closet. She has already told her comedy club audiences, Barbara Walters mentioned it on "The View," and Rosie has an autobiography that's due out in April that should confirm it. So why make it a big deal?

Joining us are the Reverend Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia; Joan Garry, executive director of GLAAD; Armstrong Williams, host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show "The Right Side With Armstrong Williams." And he has a book out, his latest one, "Beyond Blame: Moving Beyond Being a Victim." And Michael Alvear, a syndicated columnist who's right here with me, and his column is called "Slouching Through Gomorrah." It's a staple of many gay newspapers and appears in "Newsweek" as well as "The New York Times."

All right. Let's start this discussion. Some people might charge Rosie with being contrived, to increase the sales of her book. Michael, let's start with you. What do you think about this?

MICHAEL ALVEAR, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, I think that's true, I think she hid her sexuality to sell the show, and then she exploited it to sell the book. She chose to come out at a time when she was -- could have the least amount of public good and the most amount of personal credit. And I think that was -- I think she's doing the right thing the wrong way.

NEVILLE: Right thing the wrong time, in your opinion?

ALVEAR: Yes, I do. And if I could tell you just a quick story, I have a friend who came out, his parents practically disowned him. He knocked on the door of his mom's house one day, she peered through the curtains and saw that his boyfriend was waiting in the car. She told her son, come back when you're alone. Now, this woman loves Rosie's show. She practically had to yell it over her monologue to tell her son to go away. And so I think that Rosie -- there was a huge missed opportunity. NEVILLE: Well, you know what, that's actually some other things I want to talk about here in this segment, but let me go ahead and let Joan Garry jump in with her comments. Joan. go ahead.

JOAN GARRY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GLAAD: Well, a couple of comments. Let me first say that the single most important factor in building awareness and acceptance of gay and lesbian people is to know who we are, to hear our stories. And for America to hear Rosie's story is a very big deal, from our perspective.

I think to Michael's comment about the notion about whether or not it's a missed opportunity, you know, I'm not going to sit here and cast judgment on how anyone chooses to come out and in what kind of timeframe. The bottom line is that it's a very risky proposition to be out in this country.

Look at the recent news reports out of Santa Barbara, California. A man was doused with fuel and set on fire because he was gay in Santa Barbara. You know, whether you are a bank teller in Cincinnati, or whether you are Rosie O'Donnell, it's a very risky proposition to come out. There is always something to lose.

And I think the other important thing to recognize here, also to Michael's point, is you are right, that woman does watch Rosie's monologue. She considers herself to basically have coffee with her every day. And for her to sit there and listen to Rosie's story and say, "wow, you know, I know Rosie is a great parent; wow, you know, gay people can't adopt and you know what, Rosie should have a legal connection to those kids." That's profound change.

NEVILLE: Well, you know what, Joan, I have to take a break right now, but when we come back, we will talk about that. Maybe Rosie did wait until people got to know who she is just as a single successful woman, not as a gay women, and people like her. So, will that change their opinions? We'll talk about that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEVILLE: And welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.

We are you talking about Rosie O'Donnell coming out tonight on "PrimeTime Thursday" with Diane Sawyer. But before the break, we were asking the question, whether or not Rosie's idea of waiting so long to come out was in order to defy the stereotypes, let people see her over the years as just a single woman, a single mom -- this is all about judgment -- so judge her or view her in that regard, not as a gay woman.

Armstrong Williams, let me let you jump in here now.

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: You know, actually, to me, it is irrelevant, as someone said, the time that she chose to come out.

And someone said that there is some mounting criticism because they felt she was exploiting the situation. It seems to me that, no matter what time she comes out makes that kind of announcement, she is going to have critics and supporters on both sides. So it's just a matter of timing for her, when she felt comfortable enough to do it. And so it's a personal decision that she had to make. And I just have to respect her decision.

NEVILLE: Reverend Falwell, we haven't heard from you yet today.

JERRY FALWELL, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY: Well, I have no question that Rosie loves her children.

And we have operated for 22 years a home for unwed mothers here in Lynchburg, Virginia, the Liberty Godparent Foundation. And we have a national adoption agency, the Family Life Services Program. And we have placed many, many children all over the nation.

But we have a policy. We do not place a child in a home unless there is both a father and a mother legally married, and where they meet state criteria and, we as a Christian ministry, our Christian criteria. We would not place a child, for example, in a home where a man and a woman were living together unmarried. Nor will we place a child in a single man's home or an unmarried woman's home, and certainly not in a gay home, not because we think they are bad people, but because we think the role model of family -- and God's standard for the family -- as a Christian, I believe the Bible, take it seriously -- is a husband and a wife legally married and committed in love, one to another.

And when a child has that opportunity, no one could really and sensibly believe that there is any better opportunity for that child to make it. Now, we are not saying...

NEVILLE: Now, Reverend, I'm going to jump in there on you. Excuse me a second, but I'm going to jump in. And you are leading to the impact that Rosie O'Donnell might have on gay adoption. She is planning to move to Florida and is interested in overturning a Florida law which bans gay people from adopting children.

And that brings us to the next subject.

Michael, I am going to start with you on that one. And let's talk about the pros and cons of gay adoptions. What do you think about that?

ALVEAR: Well, picture this.

You are a judge in Florida. And you've got Rosie O'Donnell, on the one hand, who has proven to be enormously committed to the well- being of her own children and also children all over the world. And then let's say she is up against serial groom Newt Gingrich, who marriage after marriage after marriage, creates a kind of instability that his children might experience.

The law forces the children to go with Newt Gingrich over somebody like Rosie O'Donnell. So the king of mean trumps the queen of nice.

NEVILLE: So, what's your final answer? Do you think gay adoption is a good thing or not?

ALVEAR: Well, absolutely.

NEVILLE: OK, and Heather here, I would like you to weigh in on this subject. What do you think, Heather?

HEATHER: I think being gay doesn't make you a weaker person. And the fact that Rosie O'Donnell has established herself first as capable mother and then as a serious person within business world, and then she came out, that -- you know, again, as someone stated in audience, the opinion is not going to change overnight of her. And the fact -- her earlier accomplishments are not going to be diminished by her being gay. And her moving to Florida and challenging that law is definitely going to prove her a formidable foe to the legal system.

NEVILLE: And then also, you mentioned earlier, Heather, that -- you were saying that the law enforcement or anybody else, they are not showing up on the steps of single parents.

HEATHER: No, they are not. When you are talking about, well, you have two men's perspective or two women's perspective, you have a single-parent home and you don't see these children as the lower members of society. You see them thriving and still being able to develop. And, so by having a single-parent home, you are still having a strong individual being the role model for children.

NEVILLE: And you are saying it's still one sex at that particular moment.

I have got a caller now. I would like the caller to go ahead and weigh in.

Marron (ph)? Marron?

CALLER: Oh, hello.

NEVILLE: Go ahead. What do you have to say about this?

CALLER: Well, to Jerry Falwell, I would like to tell him that I'm a 60-year-old born-again Christian, which you will argue about, who just happens to be a lesbian.

Now, in my 60 years, I have never met a gay person who came from a gay household. Everyone I know or ever met came from a straight household. So it tends to make me think that people are just programmed one way or the other.

Jerry, can I talk into being gay?

FALWELL: Well, the reason you can't talk me into being gay, because I believe the Bible is the infallible word of God and I believe the words of Christ and the words of the Bible, which teach that gay is not OK. Are of our lifestyles are chosen. I have chosen to be what the Bible teaches I should be. And that is a father, a husband, a heterosexual, a grandparent, a grandfather. And I teach our children and grandchildren and the 22,000 members who are a part of the church of which I'm the pastor that we are to love everyone. We opened our church to 200 gays and lesbians a couple of years ago. But we believe the lifestyle is wrong, just as wrong, but no more wrong than adultery or heterosexuals live promiscuously.

We believe the Bible teaches that a man and a woman legally married constitute a family, period. And when you go past that, you are abrogating the laws of God. Therefore, as a leader of a home for unwed mothers for 22 years of an adoption agency, we don't place children in gay homes and never would do such a thing.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: Go ahead, Joan. Jump in, please.

GARRY: What I was just going to say is, here is the reality, is that these kids are Rosie's kids. And shouldn't they have the kind of legal protection to Rosie and her partner that they deserve?

Unless Reverend Falwell...

FALWELL: No one is arguing that, Joan, at all.

GARRY: Unless Reverend Falwell is suggesting perhaps that the children should be removed from Rosie's household.

FALWELL: No one is arguing...

NEVILLE: What about the children? Because if the children are in a loving household, it doesn't matter who the parents are at that particular moment. I think it would be worse to have the kids be put back into the foster system.

(CROSSTALK)

GARRY: A family should be judged based on their ability to be good, loving, supportive parents, regardless of their sexual orientation. And I think that what Rosie is attempting to do here...

FALWELL: Joan, there is something called role modeling.

(CROSSTALK)

FALWELL: And anyone who takes the Bible seriously believes that a gay couple could never properly role model the family for anybody's children.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: We'll have to take a break right now. When we come back, a TV kiss between two young girls one city tunes out. Would you? We will talk about that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) NEVILLE: OK, now, this past Monday, an ABC station in Lynchburg, Virginia pulled an episode of the show "Once and Again." It's the one that showed a romantic kiss between two very young teenaged girls. Now, the station would not confirm that's the reason it canned the show. But I understand GLAAD is insisting the station air the episode within 30 days.

Joan, is that so?

GARRY: Yes, there's a couple of issues to raise here.

First of all, we feel very strongly about the fact that media has responsibility to reflect the diversity of our society in its images. The second thing is that, frankly, let the viewers decide. Air the episode. And I'm sure that Reverend Falwell didn't have his set tuned on 10:00 on Monday night to the show. He gets to make that choice. And so do I. So I think that there is an issue about giving people the option to decide.

And the last thing that I would say that is that, if you saw this episode -- and many of your viewers may have seen it; many of them may have not -- this was as a careful, thoughtful, wonderfully done episode about what it is like to think about being gay as a teenager, what's it like about parents who may be actually considering that their children may be gay. It was smart. It was thoughtful. And I think it makes lot of difference to gay teens and to their parents.

NEVILLE: So it opens up discussion, in your opinion.

GARRY: Absolutely.

NEVILLE: Armstrong, let me let you jump in, because I have not let you speak for a while now. Go ahead.

WILLIAMS: Listen, I mean, there are parts of this country -- and Lynchburg is probably one of many parts of this country where people, that is not necessarily their value system. It's not something they want to see and want their children to watch and influence them in any kind of way.

Parents have another enough difficulty in trying to raise their children instead of trying to have something like that influence them. And if a television station wants to censor and pull that off the air, it has every right to do so.

You know, it is amazing to me to listen to Joan's dramatization on all of this, as if this, when they just saw the kiss between those two girls -- those girls are being exploited. They are being used. They are being used for an agenda. And the kids, they don't even care about the kids in this whole agenda. What they care about is pushing their agenda anywhere that they possibly can.

The bottom line is, is having money and loving a child is not enough to love a child. You've got think about that child's emotional and mental stability throughout their lifetime in that household. And I think we should put the interests of the children above ourselves. If Rosie O'Donnell wants to deal with someone who is an adult, let her deal with an adult. But leave the children out of it. And I think they are being exploited.

NEVILLE: All right, we've got a lot of stuff going on here, but I want to -- thanks for your comments, Armstrong.

But I want to go back to the whole episode of "Once and Again," because I have got three teenagers here, or young people, to speak about it.

Heather, how old are you and what do you have to say?

HEATHER: I'm 17.

And I think it's a parent's responsibility to censor their child, not a network's.

NEVILLE: All right, Christopher, how old are you and what do you have to say?

CHRISTOPHER: I'm 17. And I agree with the affiliate that it's their choice whether to show it or to not show a particular session of the show. But, also, it is the parents' responsibility to censor their child, not necessarily the network's.

NEVILLE: OK.

And, Megan, here, what do you have to say?

MEGAN: I'm 18.

And, personally, I have been to schools where I have seen this. And so I think that, when they take it off the air, they are not doing it to shelter the child, because the child has already seen this. The child is already exposed to it. I think it's more just helping the parent. The parent is the one that doesn't want to see it, because the students see it all the time.

NEVILLE: And that is precisely the point. Should we censor this kind of programming, because then you sort of close the door to that sort of discussion? Because if you see something like that on television, you can turn around as a parent and say: "Emily, wait a minute. Does this happen at your school? Is this something, can we talk about this?"

GARRY: Yes, I totally agree with that, actually, Arthel.

And I would say that parents are the ultimate arbiters here. And they need to take responsibility. And I bet that is something that we would all agree about on this call. I think that -- you know, as I look at that episode, I think I wish there was kid in that audience who was gay and a teenager who had potentially had just been bashed against his or her locker for being called gay in a hall. That program

(CROSSTALK) WILLIAMS: See, there you go again trying to manipulate. That is more rare than anything else. That is what drives me crazy about your agenda, because you are using isolated situations to make us think that we are horrible, discompassionate people. And that's not the truth. You are manipulating us. And people can see right through it.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: Reverend Falwell, go ahead.

FALWELL: Armstrong, I live here in Lynchburg. And the president of WSET, the ABC affiliate, who decided not to play that version of "Once and Again" happens to be member of the church of which I'm the pastor. He has a wife and children. I talked to him this morning. I did not -- you're right, Joan, I didn't see the program.

But I talked to him this morning after I read it in the media, congratulated him, told him I was proud to be his pastor, and asked him why he pulled it. He said it was not a statement against homosexuality. It was far more than that. He said: "It is something where children with children are doing something that I felt was not appropriate for airing to our audience"; and, secondly, another incident where a child about that age was flirting with or trying to develop a relationship with a schoolteacher which also was problematic to him.

(CROSSTALK)

FALWELL: And he did it not as a statement against gays and lesbians, but as a responsible businessman responsible for the welfare of people watching. And God bless Randy Smith for his courage.

NEVILLE: All right, Reverend.

Michael you've got a couple minutes. Go ahead. I mean a couple seconds. Go ahead.

ALVEAR: OK. Arthel, you know what really offends me is TV programming that is religiously intolerant. But it would never occur to me to say you are not allowed to portray an accurate segment of the American public, right-wing fundamentalism.

(CROSSTALK)

NEVILLE: We have to take a break.

Sean, here -- I just wanted to let you guys that Sean feels that it is OK for the station to make that decision.

Michael Alvear, Reverend Jerry Falwell, Joan Garry, and Armstrong Williams, thank you so much for that heated debate.

Up next, It's "Speak Up or Shut Up."

You're working with me today, right?

Boy, have folks been speaking out. Wait until you hear what our e-mails are saying today.

Read the rest of that.

SEAN: That's coming up next right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NEVILLE: Oh, boy. Well, welcome back.

It is now time to "Speak Up or Shut Up." And there are -- I mean, we're talking about so many e-mails that came in, because we have so many opinions on yesterday's show. We talked about the Andrea Yates verdict and possible sentencing.

And now here is what Ray in Los Angeles had to say: "The Texas law with respect to the insanity defense is archaic. Even if it was properly applied in the Yates case, the law is flawed if it punishes someone for being sick rather than being evil."

Moving on now, from John: "Did this jury know right from wrong? I don't think so."

Now, most of you have sympathy for the ousted Yankee center fielder Ruben Rivera. He was booted for taking a bat and glove from teammate Derek Jeter and allegedly trying to sell them for $2,500.

George in Chicago says: "I get ripped off every time I go to a game with the prices. Now one of them knows how it feels."

All right, moving on: "It's a shame that today's athletes don't realize just how lucky they truly are. To steal when you make millions of dollars just doesn't make sense," Chris in Jonesboro, Georgia.

And, finally, on last night's celebrity boxing match on Fox, Benedetta in New York says: "If I want to see white trash fight, I will go to a sleazy bar" -- spoken like a true New Yorker.

All right, man, I'll tell you what. I'm so glad to hear from a lot of you at home. Sorry we didn't get to all of you. But you know what? We will be here again tomorrow. That is it for today. Remember to include your phone numbers on those e-mails. I might call you.

I'm Arthel Neville. So glad to see you today. And I'll see you again tomorrow, 3:00 p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com