hatepalin.com

Bristol Palin is a teenager who now finds herself in a difficult unplanned situation. She’s a single teenage mom. She doesn’t deserve to be getting as much press attention as she is. She needs to have safe space with loving supportive family and friends as she navigates the difficult path to growing up while raising a baby. We wish her the best.

Here’s why it’s relevant – and fair – to talk about her situation at all.  Because her mother Sarah Palin brought it up.  Sarah of the abstinence only sex education.   Sarah of the “real America” has “real American” rural white heartland God-lovin’ gun-shootin’ Bush-votin’ values.  Sarah who shouts for all to hear “look at my superior family values.”  Sarah who thinks that gays are “destroying the very foundations of society.”

“Values politics” was created by the Republican party as a way to try to keep fundamentalist, evangelical and pentecostal Christians happy and in the party tent.  It was and is a codeword for those to whom it was meant to appeal without being so transparently divisive and off-putting to the majority of those whom it was meant to exclude or condemn.

The “values” arguments usually go something like this:

America was founded as a God-fearing Christian nation.  Our rich wonderful beautiful history and culture was that of thrift, hard-work, monogamy, church-attendance, strong morality which resulted in people of superior character.  But then all these weird people either (a) got their freedom (blacks), (b) moved here – sometimes “illegally”, (c) came out of the clost – and these new influences have simply ruined the Garden of Eden.  These people with their other languages, their different beliefs, their sexual freedom, their irresponsibility.  That’s the source of all of our problems.  If only we could keep our borders closed, force the gays back into the closet, legislate morality – we could return to that once idyllic promised land.  And God in heaven would smile, prosperity would return, and all things wrong in the world would be good again.

The unstated appeal to those who cling to it is that this patently false mythological past is also primarily white.   Certainly the appeal of such a vision, even though based on a multitude of falsehoods about the past and the present, can be understood for those whose self-righteousness is exceeded only by their own self-delusion.  But it’s simply false.

And that’s why Bristol Palin is relevant.  The “Values Politics” of Sarah Palin are stripped naked in the face of the realities of a young girl living life under the roof of someone espousing such rhetoric.

Leave the girl alone, but reject with prejudice (irony fully intended) the false and harmful Values Politics of her mother, Sarah Palin.

Why do so many who claim to be Christian behave in ways that contradict traditional Christian teachings?

In this latest example, Governor Sarah Palin together with evangelist Franklin Graham (of Samaritan's Purse) showed up in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta complete with full press retinue to make sure that their very public act of giving to people in distress would be recorded and broadcast. True giving or PR stunt?

Here are some words from Matthew against which to judge her actions:

“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.” – Matthew

Others chose the more noble route, and did their giving more discreetly.

This latest partnership was prompted by a letter from Nicholas Tucker of Emmonak, who alerted Alaska that some folks in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta faced the prospect of choosing between food and fuel this winter. Many Alaskans rose to the occasion. Donations came anonymously, without fanfare, from individuals and tribal, political, nonprofit and religious organizations to regional authorities like the Bethel-based Association of Village Council Presidents, who saw that aid got to the right people. At the request of Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, the BIA has discreetly provided a huge amount of assistance.

But Samaritan’s Purse chose a different path.   (Alan Boraas, Anchorage Daily News)

I’d encourage you to read this full coment here.

By all means do good deeds.  Give to those in need.  But do it for its own sake, not to feed your own ego, or improve your public image, or to make some cockamamie political point about state-faith partnerships in ill-conceived “faith-based initiatives.”