Neither Religious, Nor Right

For the record, I'm not upset that the Religious Right is rallying around the Palin family. It might be a bit much that they are turning an unwed pregnant 17 year old into some sort of hero, but that's better than stoning her in the village square.

What bothers me is how purely disingenuous is that embrace.

If Joe Biden's daughter was knocked up would Dobson and Perkins et al be standing by her family? Of course not. In that instance, we'd be hearing all about the moral lassitude of Democrats, how a father with a pregnant teen is clearly unfit for the 2nd highest job in the land, about how our culture and media glorify sex and "tsk, tsk" this is just another sad example but what can you expect from people with no family values?

You know I'm right.

For 30 some years the Religious Right has been breaking our heads with their sanctimonious crap. They are not perfect, they'll hasten to tell you, just forgiven and this is what allows them the "moral" high ground from which to pronounce judgement on the rest of us.

James Dobson believes that teen pregnancy is the result of parental neglect. But you won't hear that this time; partly because it's not true. Teen pregnancy is, as our new poster child for abstinence-only education illustrates, caused by teens having unprotected sex. But the other reason you won't hear anything suggesting that there is a smitch wrong with the way the Palins raised their daughter is because, hello, the Palins are Republicans.

You see, for a group that spend all their time living in black and white, proclaiming at every opportunity the moral absolutes of their tenets, the Religious Right is only too quick to indulge lapses, forgive sins and adjust their ethics to the situation - provided the individual in question is a Christian (of their stripe) and a red state conservative.

Grace, redemption and understanding are reserve for the few, despite the fact that Scripture is quite clear on the universality of God's love for all humankind. Somehow, the wing nuts keep missing that.

I'm glad the Palin family are standing by Bristol in this matter. That is only right. What sickens me is that the rest of the wingnut community is falling over themselves to be gracious, even as they continue to poke holes in the family values of the rest of us.

This must be what Jesus felt when he called the Pharisees "whited sepulchers". The "Religious Right" has no credibility with me and won't until the day when they demonstrate the love of Christ to everyone, not just people like themselves.