The announcement by Republican vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska that her 17 year-old daughter is five months pregnant will be seen by many as an act of GOP hypocrisy. It is. After all, this is the party that has been waving the morality flag for decades, cozying up to evangelical Christian ideologues and condemning anyone or anything that they judge is contrary to supposedly Biblical standards of behavior. But there is something more important that we should derive from Palin’s announcement than the opportunity to point fingers. Perhaps now we can all get off our political high horses and admit it is far beyond our place to make moral judgments.

Governor Palin has stated her daughter will marry the father of the child. That’s good news. There is no doubt that raising a child in a two-parent environment is the optimal situation, and that a married relationship is commendable. I wish the daughter, her partner and the baby well. However, if her daughter had decided to raise the child as a single adult, I would not think any less of her for her choice. Our position is that these decisions are of a personal nature and should never enter the political arena. These things happen and perhaps by having to confront this head on, in the course of a presidential election, it will force the Republican Party to tone down the rhetoric of some its most rabid right-wing constituents on this and other personal matters. Senator McCain himself has opposed teen pregnancy funding in the past and hopefully the Palins’ experience will cause him to rethink his position.

For too long now our national politics has been held hostage by Biblical blowhards who use Scripture as a weapon and not as a template for self-fulfillment and salvation. Politicians from both sides of the aisle, but primarily those associated with the GOP, have been pandering on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and teen pregnancy to score points with narrow, self-serving constituencies that seek only to implant their views on the nation. Too often political attacks have been made in thinly veiled racist rhetoric designed to embed imagery of reckless Black and Latino teenagers in the public’s consciousness, when the reality of teen pregnancies, as we see with the Palins, is as diverse as the nation itself. Much too much time has been wasted as we have engaged in countless and silly debates on issues that are better left for the individuals involved to deal with in the privacy of their domains. And when these personal issues do impact the public, by way of government spending, the focus should be on equitable outcomes and not planting scarlet letters as a way to demonize individuals or groups.

Even worse has been the grandstanding of politicians who are later exposed to have fallen short on the morality scale. The list is endless, from President Bill Clinton and former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, to former governors Jim McGreevey of New Jersey and Eliot Spitzer of New York, and most recently the admission of an extramarital affair by former Senator John Edwards. The list goes on. It’s not that these people and others are evil, or they should be eternally condemned and damned by us mortals for their failings. In my eyes their civic fault is the manner in which they created a false standard of moral perfection and contributed to the silliness that politicians are qualified to be morality judges and the political arena is the appropriate “court” for those deliberations.

It would be refreshing to hear someone from the Republican Party during this week’s convention stand up and speak frankly about the dilemma of teen pregnancies without it being wrapped in some pseudo religious/moral rhetoric. The nation needs to confront this issue because it has significant consequences in terms of children’s health care and wellness, young adult development and the long-term economic consequences for individual families and the nation. It also has implications in the nation’s fight against HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and other potential medical complications that are a part of any pregnancy. The GOP would serve the nation well if it used this moment for a constructive conversation about family planning that doesn’t prop up abstinence as the easy solution but recognizes the complexity of choices that are made and assigns fault to no individual or decision, but seeks a way to exhibit some real compassion for young mothers and their newborns.

- Walter Fields