As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre
An aide walked into the room and quietly relayed the news of the morning: The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, is five months’ pregnant. She is not married but, as Governor Palin announced later, is planning to wed the baby’s father.I may have missed this but once upon a time being a husband meant you were actually married.
Once upon a time there were people who lived on the fine point of distinctions. They claimed to be the arbiters of truth. They judged without mercy. They spared no swath of the sword for those who birthed babies out of wedlock. They railed against a society which allowed such sin.
They claimed there is no in between.
They also claimed a ticket to the middle of Minnesota. They travelled to that exotic place to preach against the wicked - those on the other side of the fall. But when one of their own drew just a bit short - they prayed we should ignore the frailties. We're all human - after all.
7 comments:
abstinence-only education FTW
Sir, with writing like that, I believe you could have a fantastic future as a prog-rock band lyricist.
EXACTLY!
(Sorry to shout, but how is that it's okay for me, but not for me?)
I was surprised at the pass this delegation of the "family values" party gave the Palin out of wedlock story.
It begs the question - were the situation that it was Barack Obama's daughter (or let's say Chelsea Clinton) who was pregnant out of wedlock, would the nod be given? Would there be this shrug of shoulders, this desire to move along......?
This is a poorly-written sentence:
"The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, is five months’ pregnant."
Todd is Sarah Palin's husband, not the daughter's.
Blake Aued
Rusty: abstinence-only education FTW
Karl: As if girls with "progressive" parents who give them condems and go to schools that teach them sex ed never get pregnant ...
Perhaps my experience with sex ed was atypical but I don't think it was: We were rounded up and separated by sex, boys in one room with the old crusty football coach, girls in another room with the slightly butch volleyball coach.
The boys were then shown a Gerald Ford-era film about the dangers of some sort of veneral disease. Snickering ensued. Crusty Coach then turned up the lights and told us to talk amongst ourselves. The Jocks then proceeded to go over the intracacies of whatever football play Crusty Coach was drawing on the black board, and everyone else passed the time the best way they knew how. We spent most of our allotted sex ed time as a free period; the sex ed was just obligatory.
This scenario played out the same way every time I took sex ed, no matter what grade I was in or what political party happened to be in power.
In short, sex ed is a joke, and the only reason we have it around is so we can have something else to fight about in the culture war because battling over abortion get old sometimes.
Karl: As if girls with "progressive" parents who give them condems and go to schools that teach them sex ed never get pregnant ...
Rusty: Don't recall saying that. Would you mind pointing out to me where I did?
YMMV with the quality of any class at any school, regardless of the subject. I had sex ed two years in middle school, and it was about on par with your experience one year and pretty useful the next. On the whole, comprehensive sex ed works. Abstinence-only programs don't work.
Rust: On the whole, comprehensive sex ed works. Abstinence-only programs don't work.
Karl: Actually, I don't think either work all that well. Sex ed -- of either form -- didn't really start in the U.S. until the late 1960's. By then, the teenage birthrate had already come down from the highs of the 1950s. And as the teen birth rate continued to drop, advocates from both sides tried to take credit for it.
But they are probably wrong to do so. Increasing wealth, not abstinence or comprehensive sex ed -- is likely the reason why teen birth rates have been lower than in our grandparents' day.
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