Why Bristol Palin's Pre-Marital Pregnancy is Fair Game

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.