|
Every time news like this comes up, we get lectured about it being a
private family matter that should not be dragged into the muddy
political arena. Barack Obama is being praised for doing the
responsible thing by saying family members are off limit and should not
be dragged into this campaign. Good for Mr. Obama, but there is more at
stake in Ms. Bristol Palin's pregnancy than a private family affair.
Why should we care that 17-year-old Ms. Palin is 5-month pregnant? For more reasons than one.
The way the news came out is cause for concern. An Internet rumor about
the Palin family's last child being the child of Bristol helped to
flush news of the pregnancy from the dark room of family secrets into
the limelight of national news. It was after that rumor took off online
that the family told us of the pre-marital pregnancy. Gov. Palin should
have volunteered this information as soon as she hit the campaign trail
with Senator John McCain.
The governor could have said something like, "For the most part, our
family has tried to uphold the moral standards we believe in and stand
up for. But like most people, we too struggle with these standards.
Even though I have championed the cause of abstinence education (no sex
before marriage), I want you to know that our high-school-age daughter,
Bristol, is pregnant. No, we do not approve of pre-marital sex, but we
will support our daughter, who has decided to carry the child to term,
and to marry the father of the baby. We apologize for this sad
situation, but we are counting on the understanding of the American
people."
But instead, the governor made it sound like she has no remorse for the
daughter's behavior. In fact, she nearly praised her daughter for her
heroic decision to keep the baby and marry her sex partner.
This issue matters, because Mrs. Sarah Palin, like an outspoken
conservative, has made abstinence a political issue throughout her
political career. She has run on that issue and won political office
based on her support of 'no sex before marriage'. In short, she
condemns sex before marriage. Based on that stance, hiding the news of
her own daughter engaging in pre-marital sex amounts to being less than
honest. Unless these people want us to think that hypocrisy is now an
acceptable behavior in American politics, this is no innocent little
snafu.
Some of the most disturbing, if not disgusting responses to the news of
Bristol Palin's pre-marriage pregnancy have come from conservative
evangelicals, America's watch dogs of moral values, the supposed
conscience of society.
In Dr. James Dobson's response, the evangelical gian said in part, "In
the 32-year history of Focus on the Family, we have offered prayer,
counseling and resource assistance to tens of thousands of parents and
children in the same situation the Palins are now facing. We have
always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and
always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though
there will of course be challenges along the way. That is what the
Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just
talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out
even in the midst of trying circumstances."
There is no word in Dr. Dobson's response saying he frowns on the young
woman's sexual impropriety. This kind of talk makes a mockery of these
evangelical leaders who seem to grade one sin above another, or worse
yet, wink at some sins while taking others for the kill. Which Bible
are these fellow Christians reading? Dr. Dobson is not totally true to
the Holy Scriptures in his views on this matter. The Bible outrightly
condems pre-marital sex; it's called fornication, and that's the sin,
not the pregnancy. On the other hand, the Bible says nothing directly
about abortion, which traditional evangelicals have made the cardinal
sin of our time.
From their attitude and words about Bristol's pregnancy, it seems like
to Dr. Dobson and the Palin family, as long as you are pro-life (decide
to keep the pregnancy), no other sin really matters, short of murder of
course. But if you will keep the baby, you get a pass on fornication
(pre-marital sex). If you vote pro-life, like Senator McCain, we give
you the nod on adultery. But did not one of those precious Ten
Commandments did say, "Thou shall not commit adultery"? But, hey, if
you are against abortion, it's not that bad. It seems like "pro-life" cures all ills and covers all transgressions. Really?
The other political fallout from Bristol Palin's pre-marital sex and
pregnancy is that it will strengthen the argument of those who propose
all-out, no-holes-barred sex education for our youngsters. They will
say, "Aha, you see, abstinence only is not realistic. As Bristol Palin
proved with her pregnancy, teenagers are going to have sex, regardless.
We must now divert funds from abstinence education to condom-based
safe-sex education to protect our children from unwanted pregnancies
and STDs." The Dobsons and the Palins are making the argument for the condom pushers.
Such behavior, when it is accompanied by a total lack of apology from a
pro-abstinence candidate, goes a long way to undermine the efforts of
those who are still trying to promote sexual purity as a viable option
for our youth. If we evangelicals keep going down this road of making
excuses for sexual misconduct, while singularly focused on abortion, we
will soon lose the high moral ground, if we have not already, and
forfeit all credibility to "preach" responsible sexual conduct to our
society. Our shameless hypocrisy will be our undoing, because the
baggage will become too burdensome to overcome. One casualty of our
hypocrisy will be the "True Love Wait" rallies that we promote, where
youngsters promise to remain sexually inactive until marriage. At a
"True Love Waits" rally, each participating youngster wears a ring to
symbolize his/her commitment to virginity until honeymoon night.
Evangelicals are shooting themselves in the foot by excusing
fornication and adultery while decrying abortion. The pit we may fall
into is call 'moral equivalence', whereby pre-marital sex and adultery
within conservative families will cancel out abortion within liberal
circles. When that happens, we lose our voice, and we cease to be the
effective "light of the world" and "salt of the earth".
We can help the situation by doing a very simple thing: Admit that
pre-marital sex is as unacceptable to us as abortion. And when of our
children gets pregnant outside of marriage, let's be quick to express
our regret for that child's sexual misconduct before we brag about the
brave act of keeping the baby or marrying the father.
By the way, how is pre-marital pregnancy any different from
cohabitation, shacking up before marriage, something that evangelicals
also frown on?
What is the big lesson here? We would do better to take these moral
issues out of the political arena; that would include matters like
abortion, marriage, etc. That's the only way we can honestly consider
these issues private family matters. We contradict ourselves to run on
so-called conservative values like abstinence and defense of the
traditional family, then turn around and say my unwed daughter's
pregnancy is a private family matter, and it's really no big deal, as
long as our sweet daughter intends to keep the pregnancy and marry the
guy.
|
