Us magazine reports that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston are engaged. While this won’t be quite the royal wedding on the scale of Charles and Diana, this impending nuptial with a Mama Grizzly-in-Law tweeting in the background is sure to please both the lamestream media and the Palinite alike. After all, it’s an Alaskan Fairytale come true, albeit through the twist and turns of a presidential election, Playgirl, and perhaps a liaison with a woman from the D-List.
All kidding aside, it is Bristol Palin that I have had the most empathy for throughout this last two years. After all, it’s hard to be pregnant as a teenager, and especially have the whole world find out about it because your mother is a vice presidential candidate. It’s also hard when that same mother puts you out on the media stroll hawking the virtues of abstinence, while you have to see your boyfriend showing most of his goods to millions of men and women who don’t have any compunction about getting their groove on. The young Miss Palin may have been a statistic, but I am hoping that this engagement came about because these two people really do love each other and their baby, and not because mom may be gearing up for a run in 2012. Somehow, the timing of Levi’s apology makes my cynical gene pop out, yet I will reserve my judgment, and wish them both well.
The real story is how evangelical/Pentecostal beliefs and politics surrounding sex, procreation, and abstinence place people in moral and physical binds. These religious cultures have an inherent bias in their focus on the sexuality of youth, and making their older members adhere to sexual standards designed for hormonally challenged teens. I may get a lot of comments on this one, but abstinence policies aren’t only about teenagers having sex: it’s about demanding that older unmarried people stay celibate, too.
What I can’t understand are the 35-55 year old Christians who keep waiting for God’s perfect person so they can get married and have sex. It traps middle-aged evangelicals into living like Christian teenagers in their relationships. Having had some experience with many good Christian people who are still “waiting” and having dated a guy like this (yes, you know who you are, and I hope you read this!), give me Levi and Bristol any day. The abstinence crew in this older age group have some notion that their chastity will keep them closer to God. I challenge any of the “God told me to wait” folks over 35 to grapple with the fact of aging bodies and sexuality. You can wait on the Lord, but that little blue pill might be the miracle if you’re over 45. And somehow, I don’t hear Sarah laughing on this one. She didn’t have to endure painful fertility treatments.
I’d love to see some research on this, instead of the countless youth studies on evangelical Christianity. If someone can tell me about the sex life of the 35-55 year old evangelical Christian, I’m listening!
Either married or single, one thing is certain, Bristol Palin won’t have to endure a life of poverty as a young single mother on her own. Thanks to her mother’s all-consuming media presence, Bristol is signed to a speakers bureau. Sex and family values is an economic strategy in the short and long run. Both she and Levi — thanks to Mama Grizzly — do have some economic means to be able to care for their child.
For Bristol, though, a big source of her income, abstinence talks, may dry up now that she’s leaving the ranks of single motherhood to become a married woman. I seriously doubt, however, that this will curtail her earning ability. Like countless others (Juanita Bynum and her ex, for example), Bristol and Levi can get out on the Christian circuit with the baby to talk about God’s grace and a Godly marriage. For young unwed mothers and middle-aged abstinent evangelicals, however, no role models are available in sight. Everyone is a treated like a teenager until they become a married person. Family values, indeed.
