Norman Rockwell scene at the Palin's
So, we know that Sarah Palin was letting Levi boink her daughter Bristol regularly in the family home. And we heard recently from Bristol that she was glad she didn’t get married, because it would never have worked out with Levi.
But now Sarah Palin is trotting out her daughter as a spokesperson for abstinence only. Which leads Matt Taibbi to ask, “Am I missing something? What does it take to get discredited as a right-wing ‘family values’ merchant these days?”
A lot, apparently.
The same party that brought us
- promoting marriage through sex with prostitutes and diapers
- voting for anti-gay legislation while using the wide stance in stalls
- presenting the second wife, at the hospital with cancer, with divorce plans and marrying the third wife six months later
has used $100 million of taxpayer money per year since 2006 for the Healthy Marriage Initiative, much of which money goes to religious groups. And President Bait-and-Switch has agreed to continue spending money on it. Hell, what does separation of church and state matter when you’ve already chucked habeas corpus?
David Vitter: Champion for same-sex marriage.
The impetus for this initiative came from conservatives who were “alarmed” by rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and lack of a father presence among poor and minority families. It was part of a wider effort by the Bush administration that included abstinence-only education.
Opponents have seen the marriage program as efforts to impose virtue rather than truly help people out of poverty, as its proponents claim. If they mean by “virtue” some kind of 50s throwback where femininity meant that women knew their place, I think they are correct. The initiative’s main feature on the Web, TwoOfUs.org, seems to define virtue in that way. As AlterNet points out, although the site seems aimed at women, “the discussion boards are, weirdly, dominated by men voicing disdain for marriage and women.”
A reader’s article, called “Why Men Won’t Marry,” is linked from the main page, and includes these gems:
Totally rewrite the divorce laws – that means no more untenable support payments . . . it would also mean that men will get full access to their children, and that any woman who has full custody and denies said access will be punished severely. Under this regime, the laws should also be rewritten so that women can’t commit legalized theft using divorce as a tool. …
Women have demanded equality, time to give it to them. Don’t like it, ladies? Tough noogies! Equality means taking the good with the bad – you can’t cherry-pick or gerrymander things to suit yourself anymore.
Rewrite DV (domestic violence) legislation so that men are not automatically assumed to be guilty and incarcerated if a woman files a DV complaint. Amend the laws so women are punished if they file a false complaint. . . . Women who live with truly abusive partners have a responsibility to themselves (and others) to leave. . . . If such women can’t or won’t leave, despite all possible help being offered to them, then they have effectively consented to the abuse and should be left alone.
End official state support for feminism, which has done more to destroy the institution of marriage than anything else. To paraphrase the words of Stalin, ‘we don’t allow hate movements like the KKK to exist, why should we allow feminism to exist?‘
Require public and private schools and colleges and universities to end their policy of teaching pro-feminist courses if they want federal or state funding . . .
The bottom line is that men have stopped marrying because they no longer feel safe about tying the knot. The extreme legal, financial and personal risks to which marriage exposes them has quite effectively deterred them from playing the game at all.
Ending laws like VAWA [Violence Against Women Act] and IMBRA [International Marriage Broker Regulation Act] would also be a good start. It’s not the state’s business where American men find their brides. If women at home don’t like the competition, then maybe it’s time for them to clean up their act and make themselves more attractive than foreign women.
The legal system . . . is buttered with the continued abuse of men.
Women, remember, keep that chastity belt on until you are married. Because if you get yourself pregnant, it is your fault and your financial responsibility. Of course, that holds if you are married as well. And if you do not display a properly submissive femininity, be aware that men will look abroad for their mates, and you will be an old maid, taking classes in feminist theory at your local college.
And there you have it. Another instance of New Ideas from the right!
You gotta give them credit: whatever shit they come up with, at least it’s consistent.
GOP consistency
Presumptuous Insect 