The Palin syndrome, teenage mothers, and the other side of the coin

    Well, the sex life of Republican Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter should not be a topic for the press, nor should race nor a lot of other things blot out the bread and butter issues. But....

    Bristol is going to have a baby and according to Sarah she is going to marry her sweetheart and the mother, governor of Alaska, says she is proud of her daughter’s decision. What is interesting about this issue are the blatant contradictions involved.

    Palin has frequently opposed sex education in schools. She opposes a women’s right to decide, is adamantly against abortion, even in cases of rape, and her super conservative followers applaud her loudly--perhaps due to their luke warm acceptance of many of Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s supposedly "moderate" positions. It comes down to a question of "decision," "choice," "choosing," say the rightwingers. Women should not have the right to decide whether or not to have babies, they say, and then you could add a handful of other issues that sets Palin in the hands of the Christian rightwing: she  opposes embryonic stem-cell research and other scientific initiatives that might give sick people the option of choosing treatments that could cure them or at least allow them to treat their ailments; she opposes physician-assisted suicide and other procedures that might allow terminally-ill people to make choices about whether to end their suffering; she opposes same-sex marriage and other protections for loving couples that chose to secure their relationships and legally protect their families. And she has supported efforts to put in place constitutional amendments that narrow the definition of marriage and ban benefits for the same-sex partners of public employees; she opposes decriminalization of marijuana – although she admits to some toking in her younger years -- and other drug-law reforms that would allow Americans to choose whether to consume recreational drugs.

    But she strongly backs President George Bush’s "preventive wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan, wants to exploit Alaska’s rich oil deposits to free the country from dependency on oil imports from the Middle East, and like most of her fellow conservatives is a strong defender of the right to bear arms. In fact, she is fond of hunting wild animals in Alaska. In fact, she appears to hold positions much closer to those of President Bush that of her running mate.

    A non conservative in any event finds it difficult to comprehend certain attitudes that sound contradictory. For example, the notion of "preventive warfare" does not seem to appear anywhere in the Bible--an inspiration for most conservatives; the redefinition of torture by the Bush Administration to allow hard-fisted treatment of prisoners does not seem to fit with the notion of "do onto others as you would want them to do onto you;" the concern in churches about the poor and hungry is reflected in support for great tax reductions that favor big business and the rich; and sex education in the schools is a naughty word, yet what happens if a girl knows nothing about it and gets pregnant? She must get married and have the baby.