Abstaining from change
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For all you snobs out there who think Sarah Palin couldn't or shouldn't be vice president, I have two words: Dick Cheney.
I mean, really. Could she possibly be any worse?
I'd bet my house that she's a better shot. People in Alaska carry guns around like us East Coast elitists carry copies of The New Yorker. The upcoming Palin-Johnston nuptials will be a shotgun wedding not necessarily because the happy couple is being forced to get hitched, but because half the congregation will be packing.
And given that her son is in the Army, I'm guessing a Vice President Palin would be less likely to push for an unnecessary war. And if war was necessary, she wouldn't send our troops into battle with light armor that can be pierced by IEDs like so much Swiss cheese.
Still, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for Sarah Palin to call a news conference, at which she'll announce that, ahem, given the circumstances, she's changed her position on all this abstinence-only jive.
Because that's politics.
What is happening to Palin's unmarried, pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, on the other hand, is real life. And it could happen to any of our sons and daughters. Which makes this a great teaching moment.
That won't get taught.
Because to use as a teaching moment the situation that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston find themselves in would not be an invasion of privacy, it would be an inexcusable deviation from an unquestionable shibboleth of the religious right, and we can't have that.
Here's some news for the holy rollers who want religion to be used in the making of secular public policy: Teenagers have sex. You can throw God at them all you want. But you'd better throw some condoms, too.
This is not a mutually exclusive arrangement. It doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage our teens to abstain from sex until they are mature enough to handle the consequences. Or to believe in God.
It means we should look at the data and realize that teenagers have sex no matter what we tell them. To believe that we can, by invoking God and invoking abstinence only, curb the biological drives of young people in a highly sexualized culture is like believing we can change the world if only those knuckleheads in the Middle East would embrace the wonders of democracy and
So yesterday I called Anne Teschner, who runs The Care Center, an alternative school for pregnant and parenting teens in Holyoke, the great old mill town where I got my first newspaper job.
Anne and her staff deal in a real world, not a fantasy. Holyoke has the highest teen pregnancy rate, three times the state average.
"We're not meeting the spiritual, psychological, educational, or emotional needs of our teens. A 17-year-old shouldn't feel this is the best possible option," she said. "John McCain and Sarah Palin oppose sex and teen pregnancy education. They actively oppose it."
Anne paused for a moment and then spoke with the utter generosity typical of those who work with the most vulnerable. "Maybe this will change their views," she said.
I'm less charitable. I don't believe it will change a thing because this is politics, and politicians change their positions not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the expedient thing to do. Can you say "Mitt Romney"?
Seeking a We Are Family moment, the Republicans invited Bristol Palin's betrothed to their convention last night.
I guess it would have been asking too much for Levi to step forward on the podium, hold a packaged condom aloft, and say, "My bad."
As good a hockey player as he is, Levi Johnston wouldn't be allowed to step on the ice without a face protector. Just saying no to getting hit in the face with a puck doesn't work.
Too bad all those folks who invited Levi to the convention don't feel the same way about human nature.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.
