Never Surrender!

The left is of course having all sorts of orgasms over the astonishing news that a seventeen year old girl had sex and became pregnant. (Only happens to conservative Christians, you know; conservative Christians never discuss or practice birth control, and every teenager who's not a conservative Christian has a perfect track record of using birth control.

One of the most mind-blowing statements today, however, is from a lefty still pushing Trig Trutherism:

Of course. A conservative family that can't even control their own daughter's sexual behavior. Is that what we want in a potential President? An unmarried pregnant girl about to have her second child out of wedlock. Her first, unfortunately, has Downs syndrome. Palin is the WORST choice McCain could have made. The man doesn't think with the head on his shoulders.

Incidentally, just for the sake of comparison: Mama Obama was three months pregnant when she married her footloose and fancy-free Kenyan paramour.

None on the right, as far as I know, even thought of making an issue of this. What possible issue could be made? Who the fuck cares? What has it to do with the price of tea in China?

So, we, the moral scolds, never even considered going after Obama's family just to vaguely kinda-sorta get at him in some way.

Perhaps we're just not as imaginative as the lefties are as to the political usefulness of our opponents' family members' out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

From the Department of Things That Make You Go "Yawn"...

Madamoiselle Milky Loads is still demanding proof that Sarah Palin is Trig's mother -- even after it's been revealed Bristol is pregnant.

Now they've cleared the air on this - and good for them - what harm would it do to release the medical records showing that Sarah Palin delivered Trig on April 18 in Wasilla? This is not hard: there must be an obstetrician, medical records, and data that can easily refute this rumor. It is not out of the ordinary either: candidates routinely issue medical records. So let's have them. And then we can move on.

No, actually, we can move on as of before this was even viciously pushed as a smear.

And then he prints this reader's musings that it's still medically possible (though unlikey) that Bristol had back-to-back births, one kept secret, one revealed:

A reader points out what is left implicit in the Palins' statement:

I'm not sure how to say this politely, but if Bristol Palin is more than three and a half months' pregnant, it is physically impossible for her to have given birth on the 18th of April to Trig.

I know with "about five months" it's difficult to be certain what they mean, which is why most doctors talk in weeks. But basically a pregnancy is calculated as 40 weeks, and is dated from the previous period so for the first two weeks of the 'pregnancy' one is not actually pregnant.

Women tend to take at least six weeks to start ovulating again, and often several months. Say Bristol is very young and made a medically exceptional recovery - the very very earliest she could have become pregnant 'again' would be from mid May, which would put her at three and a half months pregnant.

Check this out, as Sullivan seems almost persuaded that Trig is Sarah's baby:

Also, and for me this is the clincher:

it's pretty horrible down there [i.e., the vagina -- ed.] for quite a while after giving birth, most doctors will order no sex for at least six weeks, and well let's be honest, most men wouldn't want to go there for at least six weeks. And most women certainly won't be in the mood for just as long. Which means that again she is unlikely to be more than three months pregnant if she gave birth in April.

This seems persuasive to me.

I'll bet it does, Power Glutes. Ick!

Now back to Sullivan... sort of persuaded, but damn, he wants those records just the same:

But it's based entirely on a vague verbal statement. Why not kill this rumor with Palin's medical records?

Because you have many of the symptoms of AIDS-dementia and steroid-rage, and you're a conspiratorial crank lunatic, and we typically don't "prove the Moon landing really happened" just because some sick-n-twisted brain damaged boytwat has some doubts about the "flutter in the flag"?

Alas, it's not just the far left. The Sexual Taliban Types of the right can be assholes too.

Given Sarah’s own eloping with Todd timing, it may be that she in fact passed down the same values.

Here's the response from another Freeper:

Except for the FACT that they just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversay last Friday and their eldest son in 18.

Quit passing idiotic speculation, slander, and gossip.

Another goon steps in to say...

Actually, this is not a good thing. It is a statement that some of those familly values that Sarah is advancing could not even be passed along to her own kid.

I still like Palin, but, if true, this is not good.

It's this punitive and unrealistic worldview that gives conservatives, and especially conservative Christians, a bad name.

Listen up, Stupid: You can do "all the right things" and live your life according to Christ and teach your kids values and all that stuff, but guess what? You're still going to sin.

Your religion, in fact, explicitly states that no one is without sin, except Christ, so implying otherwise is a direct heresy against Christ's teachings.

And furthermore so will your kids sin. And their grandkids.

The worldview is utterly naive and unrealistic, which would simply be chuckleworthy, if not for the other part of it: Because there is among some this heretical belief that accepting Christ is a perfect defense against all sins, these jackoffs become nasty and gleefully judgmental about others falling short. It's not really morality; it's just a pretext for self-celebration and exulting in the travails of others.

Christ didn't ask you to be smug nasty prick, did He? No, I don't think that's among his teachings.

Part of this is unavoidable on the right. Part of the great right/left cultural divide concerns the usefulness of prohibitions and judgment to reduce bad or self-destructive behavior, versus accepting and even celebrating those who stray or fall.

To be quite frank, this is one of those Great Questions that really can't ever be answered because they're both kinda true. Without some semblance of a moral code and some pushing of self-restraint and adherence to that code, bad behavior increases, because there's simply no internal inhibitors.

On the other hand, if it's all code and all judgment and all punitive scorn, it's just plain nasty, especially given that those being burdened with social scorn are probably also burdened by a lot more than that and hardly need additional penalties levied on them.

Without some degree of social disapproval there is license and encouragement of behaviors best kept in check; without compassion and understanding for those who fall short there is a somewhat inhuman delight in scapegoating and schadenfreude.

I don't know what the proper balance is. As a social conservative I suspect it ought to be drawn a bit closer to the prohibitory side and further from the approval/acceptance side than it is now.

On the other hand, I know for damnsure it's not where some of these nasty Church Ladies think it ought to be, stroking their turgid moral superiorities as they take delight in the fact that they exercise more sexual restraint than a seventeen year old girl in the full bloom of her sexual maturation and to whom love is a new and all-consuming emotion.

For God's sakes, the girl's getting married and having the kid. She did things a bit out of the preferred order. We're going to brand her a whore for that?

This strong-form punitive morality backfires because it makes a mockery of itself. Liberals find their goo-goo worldview mocked because they falsely cry concern over crap they actually could care less about; they just know it's socially required to feign concern. Everyone knows they're full of shit, preposterously so, and so even their better points get ignored in the lachrymonious wash of endless compassion. "Compassion fatigue," a few pundits called this as the nation turned right and the nation didn't seem as receptive to liberal bullying anymore. We'd had enough of the endless moral preening and innumerable moral imperatives and just tuned them out.

No one wants to be preached at. Or rather, some like being preached at, but for a couple of hours on Saturday or Sunday, thank you, and by a representative off the church we've selected, and not 24/7 by an endless parade of Concern Scolds who have appointed themselves Conscience Ministers Without Portfolio and General Universal Missionaries for Caring.

But the same effect happens when strict moral conservatives just won't give it a fucking rest about sex and older forms of conventional morality. There is not a much bigger audience for that, either. It's not as if people are looking to be bullied without pause by self-appointed Morality Inspectors all goddamn day long, and it's just that we dislike the particular service offered by the liberal moral scolds.

Call this Morality Fatigue. Yes, I kind of agree with most of what you say about morality, at least to some extent. But you know what? I didn't fucking ask you to serve as my substitute conscience, nor to be my proxy in moral scolding anyone who errs, and if I were seeking someone to fill such a position, I'd want to see a resume and references first. I'd want to know that you actually are qualified for the position.

And, quite frankly, your enthusiasm for this job does not count in your favor, nor does your presumptuousness in performing the job's fuctions before I've made you a formal offer of employment.

A bit of reluctance to accept the title, even if offered, might just increase your odds of landing the job.

I really don't see how this buffoonish, cartoonish view of human morality (and immorality) serves the purposes of moral teaching at all. It makes mockery of the whole idea of morality and thereby drives people towards nihilism. People confuse message and messenger all the time. And if the messenger seems like he's full of shit, it's easy to conclude that so must the message be, too.

The View from Wasilla: Mind your own goddamned business seems to be the ethic in Alaska, and I think we could use a bit of those small-town values down here in the lower 48.

Thanks to Laddy and AQ.

Okay, Maybe Two Were Without Sin: Meep speaks up for the Papists:

Hey! Correction: Mary was also without sin. (Ok, maybe the non-Catholics don't agree with the Immaculate Conception, i.e., that Mary was conceived without Original Sin, but I want to speak up for the Mother of God.)

But the point is, of course, that even the saints sinned. Reading St. Augustine's Confessions will let one know about that. And sexual sin is one of the most popular ones....(as mentioned by Augustine as well.)

Lord, give me constancy and chastity, but don't give it to me yet.

Catholic Teaching... on Mary's sin is apparently nuanced. Or at least commenters are disagreeing about it. I have no idea.

I have to be honest here. Everything I know of Catholic theology comes from The Exorcist and The Prophecy.

I'm really not being snarky. It's just that Catholicism is the go-to religious milleu for horror movies, and that's pretty much where I get all of my information about everything.

posted by Ace at 03:35 PM

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