Commentary on the Sarah Palin Candidacy & Implicaitons for Reproductive Rights
Commentary and Panel from On The Issues Magazine
On October 20 in New York, a panel of writers on Christian fundamentalism co-sponsored by On The Issues Magazine and The World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime expanded on the dangers that Sarah Palin represents. Their comments, carried more fully in the The Café of On The Issues Magazine.com provide powerful insights:
Kathryn Joyce (author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement):
On the day she was announced, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America released a statement saying: "Take that, feminists - here is a woman of accomplishment who brings a fresh face to traditional values and models the type of woman most girls want to become. For years, the feminist movement has acknowledged for leadership only those women who embrace a radical agenda. How refreshing that we have a woman who reflects the values of mainstream American women, pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family."
That the Christian Right has found a way to approve of Palin's candidacy should not be seen as a comforting move towards modern gender roles, but rather a stark reminder of how far afield from the mainstream the people Palin appeals to and represents are.
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Esther Kaplan (author of With God on Their Side, George Bush and the Christian Right):
Sarah Palin is an enormous, enormous star on the Christian Right now. Even though the polls are pointing to an Obama-Biden victory, this is just a prelude to a mega political career for this woman.
Another really important thing is, as we see in her rallies, Sarah Palin has really unleashed something or exposed something really significant about the Christian Right, that it's a white racist movement.
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Sunsara Taylor (writer for Revolution Newspaper):
Palin's candidacy - as extreme as she is -- is in a lot of ways the logical conclusion of the whole political spectrum and discourse in this country on abortion and women's rights for the last 15 years. It's one that's been initiated and led by the Christian Right, but conceded to and adhered to by the Democrats, and it's a framework that needs to be decisively ruptured if we're not going to witness the ushering in of the horrific dark ages view of women that Palin concentrates.
The only way you can bring together two antagonistic positions - the view that women's role is to be enslaved to their biology and to their husbands and the idea that women are human beings and are capable of participating fully and equally in every sphere of society together with men - is by having one side capitulate to the other.
And the Christian fundamentalist movement, the pro-natalist movement and the movement to criminalize abortion are not capitulating and they are not toning it down.
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