Ok, I've about had it.
Within hours of John McCain announcing that his VP choice was Sarah Palin, Governor or Alaska, the rumor mill got going trying to destroy her.
First was the claim that her last child, Trig, who has Downs, was actually her daughter's - that she had fraudulently concealed her daughter giving birth.
That was quite-quickly disproven with a photo that showed an obviously-pregnant Sarah Palin. Oops.
Next up they went after Mrs. Palin's daughter with the (true) claim that she is in fact pregnant now, and every possible means of attack was launched.
On my forum the attacks included innuendos that this was caused by an "abstinence only" belief by her parents all the way to the possibility that she was raped!
Folks, this sort of crap is blatantly out-of-bounds and both candidates have now said so, including Obama himself in the national media.
I am outraged at this blatant exploitation of candidate's children in this regard, and let me remind the "liberal left" that Obama was born when his mother was 18 - and there is question as to whether she was married at the time of conception!
This has exactly nothing to do with legitimate political debate. It does, however, have everything to do with forcing the indoctrination of our children against the expressed wishes of the parents of said kids.
And there I draw the line.
My daughter has a good friend who's parents are strictly religious. He is forbidden to see certain movies that I personally think are great fantasy, such as Harry Potter, on religious grounds, among other restrictions.
I have no right to demand that this child be given access to material that his parents find offensive in their particular religious milieu; indeed, our First Amendment says quite the opposite, in bold, black print.
Now either you believe in our Constitution or you do not. If you do then a parent's decision on what to teach their children about religion and all matters related to it, including human sexuality, is none of your damn business.
It is my considered position that "sex education" in our schools is absolutely out of bounds in all forms just as is demand that someone attend a Bible Class. BOTH are exactly equal. You do not need to teach abstinence (or birth control methods) to teach the biology of sexual reproduction, nor the biology of disease progression. Both can be taught without any sort of religious or socio-political overtone, and should be.
But the indoctrination of our children in matters religious is explicitly barred in government schools by the United States Constitution in the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Period.
The fact of the matter is that The Hard Left is absolutely apeshit over Sarah Palin. There is no way to know how this pans out over time, but the idea that McCain would nominate a religious conservative woman who willingly bore a Down's child with full knowledge of the consequences utterly trashes entire realms of attack on the Republican campaign and leaves the Democrats exposed to extreme negative public reaction should they attempt it anyway.
The result was an outpouring of scurrilous nonsense and Obama was wise to say "stop it!" - although that it took him three days was curious. I suspect he was spending those three days taking polls and sticking his finger in the air, and only when it dawned on him and his advisers that trying to attack a 17 year old who got pregnant might end up blowing up in his face as his own birth is dangerously close to that very scenario did he step up.
But whatever prompted him to put a stop to it, I'm glad he did.
Now let's have a debate on the underlying issues - whether our government schools have any business teaching this sort of thing - in any way, shape or form.
If you answer "Yes", then I hope you're prepared to launch an immediate amendment to the Constitution to allow it, because as The Constitution stands today such instruction, no matter which form it takes, is explicitly barred by law.
Period.
