Bristol Palin Wants to Talk to You About Abstinence ... for $30,000

by Michael Jones · 2010-05-18 14:37:00 UTC
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Bristol PalinIs there a family more audacious than the Palins? Sarah Palin, for instance, built a career championing oil drilling and the shooting of wolves, yet she gets her own show from a company supposedly dedicated to nature and learning.

Meanwhile, proving that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Bristol Palin just enlisted with the Single Source Speakers Network, where she can be booked to appear around the country to talk about ... abstinence and preventing teenage pregnancy. Now that might sound a bit strange, given that Bristol Palin gave birth to a child while unmarried and in high school. It would kind of be like asking Rep. Mark Souder to come to your community and talk about fidelity, or perhaps Dick Cheney to talk about the Geneva Conventions. But alas, it gets even crazier.

Because Bristol Palin is charging anywhere from $15,000-$30,000 for each speaking engagement. And she's working on a book, too. Lovely.

As Abbie Kopf wrote here on Change.org back in February, abstinence-only programs tend to treat LGBT folks (particularly LGBT youth) with a large degree of hostility. The ACLU found that most abstinence-only programs tend to discuss same-sex sexual activity in the context of disease, promiscuity, and general ickyness, and that some programs even went so far as to blame HIV and AIDS solely on the LGBT population. (Something they have in common with a certain Washington University professor.)

That's misinformation at best, and downright homophobic and dangerous at its worst. And sure, there's no word on how Bristol Palin might discuss abstinence in the context of sexual orientation or gender identity, but if her politics are anything like her mother's, this isn't going to be a well-informed presentation on abstinence. Because while Sarah Palin claims to have gay friends, she's taken several opportunities to wax sour on gay relationships. She's voted to deny benefits to gay couples, and said that same-sex marriage is a dangerous concept.

Perhaps more frightening is that Sarah Palin's old church in Wasilla, Alaska, and the same church that Bristol Palin attended, believed that you could pray away homosexuality. As one insert inside a Church bulletin said a few years ago in advertising a conversion therapy program, "You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality."

Does Bristol Palin plan to make that part of her abstinence presentation?

Or, better yet, is there really someone or some group out there that's willing to pay $30,000 to find out?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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