BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Black Bloggers Call Palin Nomination Dead on Arrival
September 3rd, 2008
This is a public statement myself and Francis of The Francis L. Holland Blog crafted:
When our highest moral challenge as a nation is to teach teenage sexual responsibility, and one of our greatest public health threats is sexually transmitted disease; including tens of thousands of new AIDS cases per year; the unfortunate circumstance in which the Palin family finds itself can only represent irresponsible sexual choices, teenage pregnancy and shotgun marriages that quickly end in divorce.
“Abstinence only” education and practices can and do work in tightly-knit religious communities where abstinence is constantly reinforced by parents, pastors, peers, and social functions that are focused on spirituality rather than sexual attraction. But we live in a pluralistic society where teens are as likely to be influenced by television and movies as by the abstinence education of their parents and churches. Therefore, in a setting such as a typical public school; it is neither healthy nor effective to ignore the necessities of teaching sexual defenses to youngsters who are already sexually active, or have a strong propensity to soon be.
Abstinence-only is a policy issue that has been debated endlessly over the last decade, with the Bush Administration seeking to deny funding to agencies that teach about contraception. It clearly isn’t reliable even in conservative families that strongly support it.
“We respect Palin’s preference for abstinence only education within her own family; but her failure to teach her daughter the facts of life has quite predictably taught her daughter the facts of pregnancy.”
Now, what Governor Palin has wrought in her own family, she seeks to turn into a national public policy, with similar results.
According to a recent National Newspapers Publishers Association article
“The number of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is 40 percent higher than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been reporting each year, according to new figures recently released…According to the CDC, approximately 56,300 new HIV infections occurred in the United States in 2006. The previous estimate had been 40,000 new infections per.”
www.blackpressusa.com/News/Article.asp?SID=3&Title=Hot+Stories&NewsID=16260
When a U.S government study was released in March of this year denoting that 1 in 4 teenage girls had a sexually transmitted disease, the Miami Herald wrote:
“To those who work with teenage health issues in South Florida, the news of one in four adolescent girls being infected with a sexually transmitted disease is not shocking.
‘If you ask any local department of health, anywhere in the country, they will say — `Where have you been?’ ” said Alex Moreno, director of outreach at the University of Miami medical school’s division of adolescent medicine…A first-of-its-kind federal study released Tuesday found that at least one in four U.S. teenage girls, or 3.2 million, have a sexually transmitted disease.” http://www.miamiherald.com/living/health/kids-health/story/453178.html
We marvel that Governor Palin promotes public policy for secular schools that she cannot even effectively implement in her own home, even with the family supports and religious backing that so many other youth lack.
What may appear viable in one’s personal home and church settings cannot be simply transplanted into the public policy of the secular school setting, nor substituted for public health policy. It doesn’t work for some and it doesn’t work for all.
Will we let our children die for social politics?
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4 Responses to “Black Bloggers Call Palin Nomination Dead on Arrival”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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Although I’m loath to spend too much time criticizing a choice( Palin ) which is either going to shoot these people into the White House or pronounce them dead in the water - no in between here it will go one way or another - I think that attacking her on this is one of the best ways to do it.
I do believe that the public has the right to know how an ideology (or policy) she stands firmly behind, despite all evidence of it’s ineffectiveness, works for her. It’s our right to know it didn’t really work well for her family, it’s our right to know that kid really doesn’t want a kid and is probably getting married because he has to.
It is also important to point out how by her beliefs she is assuming every one has family like hers, either that or she blatantly doesn’t care about those who have no family, no support, no shotguns to force marriage, and whose choices would certainly be smothered by her no choice stance.
In the case of AIDS I would certainly like to hear her answer some questions on the issue as well.
Yes Cooper, I’m sticking to the publicly policy issues; and how her stance on issues would effect public policy.
If she can’t even implement a policy in her own home; then it makes no sense for her to try to implement a policy that her own home experiment has proven ineffective, on public schools.
I used to teach teenager Bible classes, including, proffering the abstinence message; which I think is the best value to teach teenagers. But to try and push abstinence outside of the spiritual context and without the spiritual undergirding it takes to commit to and sustain such a position; absent other strong internal motivation is unhealthy and just simply ineffective.
Having both been a teen regularly in church under the abstinence message, and then on the other side a teacher of it; I can attest that in a culture where sex is SO ever present it’s effectiveness even then only goes so far. Those teens I was teaching are now adults and I have adult conversations with them about what was going on at the time, and those freaks were all humping each other the whole time - lol.
It takes hold with some people, and for others it comes into play later in life (for instance I was celebrate for 3 years of my adulthood); but it’s nonsensical to put kids at such grave health risk by simply keeping them ignorant.
We pray that the abstinence message takes hold; but we know it won’t for every individual so you give them the tools so that they don’t have unwanted pregnancy, or contract and spread disease.
I still believe that baby with downs syndrome belongs to one of her daughters.
I don’t know that I think that but something is clear not right. I don’t know what the situation is one way or the other, but I can’t understand how you get on an 8 hour flight after your water breaks instead of going to the nearest hospital. And why if reports are true she had to have the baby for which a baby bump was never seen, out in the woods.
Also, the daughter being out of school for 5 months with mono? I’ve never heard of such. One week, two weeks; but not 5 months. Either you have mono and die, or your out for a couple weeks. Since when can you just consistently have mono for 5 months. Maybe that was just to cover up the now admitted 7 month pregnancy; but they don’t want to come out and say that the good Christians have been lying for half a year.