OPINION: As Sarah
Palin stood before the average American family
Wednesday night, touting hers as one and the same -- her
five-months-pregnant, 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, dressed
in formfitting fabric appearing to almost accentuate
her baby bump while the daddy-to-be, clean-shaven
(unlike his rougher-looking MySpace photos), sat
alongside adoringly, the picture of Abercrombie perfection
-- for the first time, I saw what all this gay
marriage fuss was all about.
OPINION: As Sarah
Palin stood before the average American family
Wednesday night, touting hers as one and the same -- her
five-months-pregnant, 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, dressed
in formfitting fabric appearing to almost accentuate
her baby bump while the daddy-to-be, clean-shaven
(unlike his rougher-looking MySpace photos), sat
alongside adoringly, the picture of Abercrombie perfection
-- for the first time, I saw what all this gay
marriage fuss was all about.
I’ve
always understood the practical reasons -- health care
benefits, tax credits, custody rights -- but, to be
frank, I’ve been a little perplexed by
semantics. Marriage equality versus civil unions --
what’s the big deal?
The big deal is
it’s different, and people like Sarah Palin view us
as such. This is a woman who would use her
daughter’s out-of-wedlock, underage pregnancy
as a way to shore up the pro-life vote by touting the
decision to keep the baby. This is a woman who cut funding
for underage mothers and for sex education programs
only to put her daughter on a national stage -- not as
an example of what happens when you cut those programs
but as an example of how you can “take lemons and
make lemonade.”
This is a woman
who, standing before thousands of “average American
families” Wednesday night, lied through her teeth,
telling the parents of special-needs children that
they would have an advocate in the White House. Never
mind that before she gave birth to a special-needs child of
her own, Sarah Palin voted to cut funding for special
education programs.
On and on, so on
and so forth, Sarah Palin painted herself to be the
picture of the average American family -- a woman who will
fight for the rights of the steel mill worker, the
stay-at-home mom, and the family with five kids
struggling to make ends meet.
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