You Broke It, You Fix It
Posted by Hazel Stone | Filed under Plain Old Hypocrisy
It’s times like these I’m embarrassed to have the “R” on my voting card:
A Colorado Springs lawmaker referred Wednesday to unmarried, pregnant teenagers and the fathers as “sluts” who should be made to feel ashamed for their lack of morals.
Rep. Larry Liston’s remarks were made during a discussion with health care professionals at a Republican legislative caucus lunch about Colorado’s high teen pregnancy rate.
No, teens should not be having sex. They doubly shouldn’t be having unprotected sex. But they do have rampaging hormones, something of which the undoubtedly ossified Mr. Liston has only the dimmest memory. It is up to their parents to teach them the consequences of a lack of control, and to watch them like hawks to prevent windows of opportunity.
The trouble is most parents aren’t strong enough to put the fear of parental wrath into their children. Just knowing that I will extract something vital (with a spoon!) will serve to remind my children to use their damned brains in hormonally-driven situations. But many parents are either incapable of that level of attention-getting, or simply trust in the ephemeral threat of an Almighty-based smiting, oh, 70 or 80 years down the road. People, that is no kind of threat a teenager is going to take seriously.
Back to Mr. Liston:
“In my parents’ day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are,” Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during the meeting in Denver. “There was at least a sense of shame.”
Would you like to know, Mr. Liston, where that sense of shame came from? The Church. Religion. The local preacher. This is the same sense of shame that prompts girls to keep the pregnancy secret and eventually abandon the newborn in a dumpster or bathroom. So, if anyone has anything to answer for, it is you holier-than-thou bastards who A) set up these horrible situations, then B) censure everyone but yourselves when they come to pass.
You want to know how to fix the problem of teen pregnancy?
#1 – Parent your children. Don’t leave the task to their school, their babysitter, their friends, or the pedophile in the nearest pulpit.
#2 – Remove the stigma you have painted on teen pregnancy. There are quite enough eager adopters out there that every single child accidentally brought into this world can have a happy childhood instead of a cold death.
#3 – And I suggest this even though I know there’s no way in hell you’ll do it…get OVER your problem with abortion. I realize funding is always a serious issue, what with Church A needing a new roof, and Church B losing constituents to Church C, but we are not your personal golden geese, bred for numbers and kept wing-clipped by evangelism. You can keep trying to sell that “birth control and abortion are forbidden” bill of goods, but we all know it’s just a cheap method of gaining new recruits. There are 6 billion people on this planet. You want more converts? Get your butts out there and get them the hard way…convince them you have something meaninful to offer.
Good luck with that, by the way.
Tags: parenting through humiliation, religion
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February 7th, 2008
6 billion.
February 7th, 2008
Details, details.
February 8th, 2008
Looking at your #2 it appears that your answer to the problem of teenage pregnancy is to define it as no longer a problem.
For those unconvinced, who still think it’s a bad thing that should be discouraged, deploying the “s word” as a deterrent, (however minor) seems sensible. And even if parents and churches should be in the forefront of the ones using it, I see no harm in letting schoolmates, politicians and random passers-by help if they want.
February 8th, 2008
All three suggestions are to be taken TOGETHER, Ralph. You can’t just pick one.
And your second point is just pointless, has already been refuted in the original post. The motives of the church in making nudity, sex, and even pregnancy, into sources of shame are centuries old and nothing even close to altruistic.
February 8th, 2008
I don’t care about their motives, I care about their results. As the socially applied shame has gone down, the incidence has gone up. Incentives matter.
February 8th, 2008
Oh, so anything goes to accomplish your goals? How…morally bankrupt. I’ll take actual parenting over hypocrisy, thanks.
February 8th, 2008
How is a politician supposed to parent other peoples’ children?
If you think teenage pregnancy is just fine, it makes sense to object to shaming teenage mothers. If you think it’s self-destructive and bad for society as a whole, why wouldn’t you?
February 8th, 2008
Well, Ralph, either you didn’t read my post, or you really didn’t understand it. So, this one last time, I’ll help you out a bit…
My post is CENSURING a politician for perpetuating the stigma of shame attached to extra-marital/teen pregnancy. If you had read any other post on this site, or the About page, or even the tagline up there above the header, you’d get the concept that we’re ANTI NANNY-STATE. Do you understand that phrase? It means politicians do not belong in any aspect of day-to-day living. Politicians may arrange to pick up my garbage and they may protect my country’s borders. THAT IS IT.
As to your second “point” I do believe I stated, again in the original post, that I DO NOT believe there’s anything particularly wrong with teenage pregnancy, if parents have done an adequate job of raising their children to be responsible. Teens WILL have sex, and condoms do break accidentally. The stigma of shame comes from a corrupt, archaic system of maintaining control over a more-primitive population, and it should therefore be summarily dismissed.
And that’s the last explanation you’ll get from me, Ralphie, because based on a quick Google of your name, you’re just another troll.
February 8th, 2008
My post is CENSURING a politician for perpetuating the stigma of shame attached to extra-marital/teen pregnancy.
ANTI NANNY-STATE
As soon as he starts to try to use the power of the state I’m with you. But so far he’s just been calling people names.
I want the state to have less power, which means I want other social functions, like voluntary associations and public opinion, to have more (see anyone from Hayek to Kropotkin for expansion on this idea.)
I don’t like teenage pregnancy, and I think discouraging it is a good thing. Therefore I applaud the public spirit of anyone who calls a pregnant teenager a “slut.” I don’t expect you’d agree with me on that, but it is at least within a citizen’s rights, isn’t it? Even if he does happen to be a politician?
February 8th, 2008
As to your second “point” I do believe I stated, again in the original post, that I DO NOT believe there’s anything particularly wrong with teenage pregnancy, if parents have done an adequate job of raising their children to be responsible.
Sorry, I misunderstood you and thought you were saying proper child rearing would prevent teenage pregnancy. Yours is a rather more unusual claim, that I’ll have to think about … certainly if the teenager is guaranteed not to wind up on public assistance things do change.
February 8th, 2008
At a Republican function, where members of the press would be sure to quote him, not so much. In his own house, in private, on his personal weblog, absolutely. But not on the platform of the party.
What I am against, Ralph, are the results of shaming…the babies abandoned in toilets and dumpsters. Remove the shame, set up an adoption avenue, and prevent senseless tragedy. Everyone wins.
February 8th, 2008
The raising of children to be responsible *should* eliminate teenage pregnancy. But, as I said, that sort of parenting is in short supply.
February 13th, 2008
I agree completely with your take – and surely you have had numerous occasion for embarrassment in recent times with the R’s, haven’t you?
On every single social issue, the Right is very much a nanny state in the making. Anything related to the word SEX, sets off a frenzy of stern diatribes.
I am reminded ever so often that we Americans are after all descendants of the puritans – the western Taliban if you will – our propensity for suppressing sexuality is only equaled by the passion with which we embrace its perversion in our reality.
April 7th, 2008
Just for the record. I’m a former teenage mother. I gave birth at age 15. I went to a school for pregnant girls and met many other pregnant teenagers before I gave birth. I am very committed to making sure my son doesn’t make the same mistake I did and I can honestly say I’ve never seen so much misinformation on any issue than on this one. First of all describing pregnant teenagers as “sluts” is not only completely ineffective it is also inaccurate. Most of the girls I knew, myself included, were actually much less sexually active than our birth-control savvy peers and our naivete about sex was in fact the very thing that caused our pregnancies in the first place. Another thing I constantly hear is about “raging adolescent hormones”. This is ridiculous and completely inaccurate. As anyone who has researched female sexuality would know womens’ sex drives are at an all-time high in their 40s and are at there lowest during the teens. I remember asking my son’s father after I’d lost my virginity, “is that all??”. To this day I’ve hardly enjoyed actual intercourse and neither had the other girls I’d known. We all know what women really want when they sleep with a man, it’s securing his affection. Which never works but women and girls still believe it. What really causes teenage pregnancy is a lack of knowledge. It’s ignorance, not stupidity. Sex is the most volitile, biased, misrepresented subject that there is. Honest, factual conversations with parents are rare. I know why I got pregnant. I didn’t have information. I didn’t even know what planned parenthood was, I was ill-equipped to handle (but very flattered) by the attention given me by older manipulative boys. Abstinence won’t work. Humans are biologically programmed to start reproducing during the teen years. What works is teaching teenagers about birth control and how to navigate complex romantic relationships.