Born Again Virgin

I just read that Bristol Palin has made a vow of chastity.  Isn't it just a little late for that?  I mean really?  I'm not one to ridicule or make light of another's profession of faith or good intentions (although I have often scoffed at any number of New Year's Resolutions), but this strikes me as just bizarre beyond belief. Bristol Palin is a teenager who has a child, born out of wedlock. Given the very basic meaning of the word chaste (in 5 out 5 dictionaries consulted, chaste was defined to mean "a virgin, a person who never had sexual intercourse"), she just doesn't qualify. How can she now vow to be something she can't ever be again?

She can't. It's just that simple. So why do we care?  We don't. Her mother cares. Her mother is running for financial improvement of her current circumstances and doing so on the conservative, religious right money train. Therefore, it matters much to the financial constituents of Sarah Palin that her daughter be pure. Or appear to be pure. Because Sarah, and her cohorts, exhort us all to be pure and to raise our daughters to be pure, because those are the terms for collecting the political pay check on the religious right money train. We are good and our daughters are pure. Virgins.  Or in Bristol's case, Born Again Virgin.

What is the big deal about virgins?  I agree that we do want our daughters to make good, informed decisions and to not have unplanned pregnancies, however wanted the offspring might be. But anybody with a brain and a memory knows full well that teenagers not having sex just isn't going to happen, no matter how hard we try to legislate otherwise. In fact, I would venture to say that the only parents in America who really don't have to worry TOO MUCH about their child having sex are Barrack and Michelle, and I say TOO MUCH because more often than not, their child is never alone, but is always, always, always shadowed by a secret service agent. Except for when she isn't. She could sneak away. She could manage it. I hope she's well informed, and careful, and uses safe sex practices (all of them, especially abstention), but the day will come. Even twenty-four hour secret service detail can't stop teenagers from getting a little wild on occasion (note the Bush girls, college years).

What bothers me the most is that Bristol Palin isn't notifying the world on her own and for herself of her intentions to make better choices. She didn't notify the press, her mother took her to the Oprah show and announced it there. I feel for Bristol. There is nothing I wanted more at her age than to keep my sex life (or lack thereof) private. I would have rather DIE (horribly, gouged, dragged, beaten, skinned, drawn and quartered) than to even hear to the word SEX, much less discuss it in regard to ME, ON OPRAH!

Truly, this is the smallest, pettiest, most meaningless of all my many objections to Sarah Palin. It is, however, a great glaring example of how absolutely stupid and fucking mean she really is.