In light of the revelation that Republican vice-presidential candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s seventeen-year old (unmarried) daughter is five-months pregnant, Democratic opponent Barack Obama has proclaimed “hands off” this issue. I’m assuming that he isn’t talking to me, since, even if he becomes president, he can’t tell me what I can say or not say. Besides, the issue with this matter that concerns people isn’t the pregnant daughter, but rather her mother.
And the mother is a politician who has wielded her power in public office to enforce her vision of what is “moral” on the entire population regardless of their religious orientation. That includes insisting on abstinence-only-based sex education in Alaskan taxpayer-funded public schools, with the idea that showing methods and availability of contraception is immoral. And I suppose, if someone else’s teenage daughter became pregnant, that would be immoral as well. But since Sarah Palin is on the “right” side of the political spectrum, Focus on the Family's Christian Ayatollah Dr. James Dobson is all beside himself with fulsome praise for the Alaska governor. Tell me with a straight face that he would be reacting in the same way toward a liberal Democrat!
There is a concept tossed around in conservative Christian intellectual circles called “moral relativism”. The idea behind this is that it is impossible to determine whether a behavior is moral or immoral without placing it in its proper context. And conservative Christians have railed incessantly that this is a trait of “secular humanism” designed to dilute God’s absolute standards of morality. Yet conservative Christians like Sarah Palin and James Dobson seem to have no problem with shifting into this mindset whenever the behavior in question touches upon them in any way.
Look, this sort of thing can happen in any family, the way I see it. It’s a delicate matter that belongs to the concerned family to resolve. And that’s why I think that folks like Palin and Dobson are despicable in that they are the ones who set out to tell other families how to behave. While pushing for the police power of the state to enforce their views on others. What hypocrites!
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Yeah, they had someone on the radio here this morning, in a local NY segment (I think they were talking to a NY Republican delegate), who said that the fact that Bristol will have the baby and marry its father makes the whole thing positive, because it shows that "the family is living their morals."
ReplyDeleteUh-huh.
Let's see... their morals include these:
1. No abortion. Check -- they're living that.
2. No homosexuals. Check -- got that one, it seems.
3. Abstinence only, for the kids. Ch... oops. Um.
We seem to have missed one, eh?
So, now maybe it'd be nice if they'd acknowledge that expecting abstinence from teens doesn't work, and that abstinence-only education is a Very Bad Idea. And that insisting on absolute "moral" values and forcing them on everyone also doesn't work.
That would make this a positive thing.
Am I the only one who seems to notice that Governor Palin's family is "off limits" to her critics, but she can and does use her children as campaign props and sticks them in her speeches as well? So having a "special needs" baby is going to make her an advocate in this area (so vote for McCain, all you special needs parents). And having a son about to go off to Iraq is a big feather in her campaign cap as well. To me, this expedient use of one's own children for political gain is what should be "off limits".
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