Palin On The Wrong Side of the Issue of Rape, Repeatedly
By Saintless. Filed in 2008 election, Sarah Palin |
I really, really don’t want to write another blog about Sarah Palin. But, this issue just cannot be ignored. First, I will say that I fully respect Palin’s right to her personal views on abortion and contraception. However, I do not believe she has any right to force those beliefs on me, or anyone else.
My personal view of abortion is that, in a nutshell, it’s an awful, horrific thing. My moral values tell me it’s wrong. My moral values also tell me that I can’t force my morals on any other person, and the government has absolutely no business doing that, either. And anyone who believes that abortion should be 100% banned should read this article.
That aside, Sarah Palin has absolutely no respect for a woman’s body when it comes to the issue of rape. I’m convinced of that after finding out more of the story about Palin’s “Troopergate” scandal. (h/t Kagro X of DailyKos) According to ABC News, Alaska has an epidemic of “sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence and murder that make her state one of the most dangerous places in the country for women and children”, the rate of this abuse is 2 1/2 times that of the national average. Even Palin apparently agrees that this is an epidemic, and needs to be fixed.
According to the article, Palin did have members of her administration focused on the issue, and they were even devising a very ambitious plan to combat the problem.
But, then….
Some members of Palin’s administration were focused on the issue of sexual violence. Officials in the Department of Public Safety were devising an ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state, but Palin’s office put the plan on hold in July.
Days later, Palin fired its chief proponent, Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, after he declined to dismiss a state trooper Palin accused of threatening her own family members. Palin has said she fired Monegan because she wanted to move his department in a “new direction,” and he was not being “a team player on budgeting issues.” The dismissal is now at the center of a hotly-contested investigation by the state legislature.
Many have suggested that Palin’s true cause for firing Public Safety Commissioner Monegan was that he wouldn’t fire her former brother-in-law. That’s the subject of the investigation centering around Sarah Palin. This isn’t a bad rumor going around about Palin. There’s enough evidence that she’s being investigated over it.
This suggests to me that, as Governor, a vendetta against Palin’s brother in law trumped women’s safety. If her brother in law was truly a danger, there are protections in place that would have led to him being fired. But, those would have gone through a normal course of legal standards, which Palin apparently has little respect for.
But, the story doesn’t end there. Back in 1996, when Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, the town’s police force began charging rape victims for forensic work done in their case. Palin signed of on the budget where that became the standard, and otherwise never said a word about it, leading to Alaska having to make it illegal in the state to charge the victim for the kit. I cannot even imagine the empty space that must be inside of any person who would even consider asking a rape victim to cough up $1,000 to cover a rape kit. Mary Mapes over at HuffPo has this to say:
Oddly enough, Fannon did not make the same kind of choice in other criminal cases. He did not make people injured by hit-and-run drivers or mugging victims or the families of murdered men and women cough up money to investigate their cases or collect evidence to catch their attackers.
It only happened in rape cases.
Hmmm.
Now, why would that be?
There is one terrible possibility: that this happened because somebody in charge in Wasilla — either the police chief or the Mayor or both — hails from the craziest corner of the pro-life community, the people who believe that birth control is abortion.
These people oppose paying for forensic work in rape cases because as part of that process — as a final step in a humiliating and dehumanizing procedure — a woman is typically asked if she would like a “morning after” pill, a medication that will prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the lining of her uterus. The treatment is believed to be about 80% effective in preventing pregnancy.
Sarah Palin has not deigned to take questions from the unwashed masses in the media, but if she ever does, this might be a good place to begin.
Does she believe that giving a rape victim a “morning after” pill is committing murder? Does Palin believe that the taxpayers shouldn’t pay for this or that police shouldn’t offer this as a matter of course? Does she really believe that a woman should have to bear the child of her rapist?
We already know that’s what she would want for her daughter.
During her successful gubernatorial campaign in 2006, Palin declared that she would not choose an abortion for her daughter — then 14 years old — even if the girl was raped and became pregnant. “I would choose life,” Palin said.
Eric Croft suspects that these pro-life beliefs were the reason behind Wasilla’s no pay police policy on rape victims.
He is the Democratic legislator who got the system changed by sponsoring a state proposal in 2000 that required local police departments in Alaska to pay for victims’ “rape kits,” as the evidence-gathering process is called. He wrote the bill with Wasilla’s misguided police procedure in mind.
After asking a whole host of questions related to this story, Mary Mapes then says:
Maybe this is all some kind of unthinkable misunderstanding. Maybe Palin didn’t know this was happening, didn’t hear about it even the whole state joined the conversation, maybe this tough-talking Mayor couldn’t control her police chief.
Maybe she has changed over the years, maybe she now recognizes the immorality of treating rape victims this way.
Whatever the answer — before we vote — before we are treated to another story about her taste in shoes or her time as Governor, would someone please pin Palin down and ask her what the hell was going on with rape victims in Wasilla?
And more importantly, why?
This person who says she’s prepared to be a heartbeat away from the presidency could clear this whole thing up in a heartbeat.
Why won’t she?
After you read the ABC article, read the rest of Mary Mapes’ article, and think about how these stories fit together.
It really reminds me of my childhood. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness (JW). They have strict beliefs about literal interpretation of the bible, and I understand that Palin’s religion does, as well. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that if a woman is being raped, but she does not yell out, struggle with all of her might, even up to death, that she is responsible for the rape. I have no idea whether this idea might be taught from the pulpit of Palin’s church, or whether she agrees with it. But, this teaching comes from Deuteronomy 22:23, 24:
If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death–the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
Now, having grown up where that scripture was used to teach us that if we’re raped, it’s our fault. We were also taught that if we wore clothes that excited a man, then we were asking to be raped, and even screaming wouldn’t take that responsibility from us.
Add to that, when a JW elder, who was also a close friend of the family and my employer, began to touch me inappropriately about the age of 14 or 15, I ended up telling. Which led to me being taken into a room with other elders, and my mother, where I was told it didn’t happen, because there weren’t two or more witnesses, and I must be imagining it. His wife later told me he was impotent, so it couldn’t have happened. I didn’t have a clue what impotent was for years. But, I did know that when he would come up behind me at the counter and “give me a hug”, there was something poking at me, and it’s not normal for a 50-something year old man to “hug” a 14 year old girl for 10 minutes at a time.
I won’t get into the other, more personal, stories that have affected me regarding religion and/or rape. But, suffice it to say, it’s a big issue with me. And when I put the bigger picture together about Palin’s passive acceptance of charging for rape kits, her putting on hold the comprehensive rape legislation to get back at her brother in law, I can’t help but wonder if her religion could be guiding those decisions. And if so, what future decisions might be guided by her religion, and what direction would they go?
Mind you, I could care less what church someone belongs to, with very few exceptions. But, what a person of authority and power does with their religious beliefs is very much my business. When that person’s worldview is very much shaped by their religion, it’s my business. And yours.
There are lots of scary questions out there, but my biggest question is this: Does Sarah Palin care more about doing what is right, or what her religion says is right?
Sarah Palin seems to have some very misguided views, and she’s repeatedly been on the wrong side of the issue of rape, which scares the shit out of me. She doesn’t seem to have a moral compass that tells her kindness and compassion is needed, and she’s put her interests ahead of the citizens of the town and the state that she’s been in charge of. And she most certainly doesn’t have the judgement to be Vice President of the United States of America.