in illinois, i think it's 25% for one child & goes up in small increments from there for each additional child.

i don't see this as news at all. i mean really - do we honestly give 2 shits what is going on with the palins? any more than whether or not michelle obama wears sleeveless shirts?

it's nothing but another sad commentary on the state of the world we live in & the media's force in this world. ridiculous!

not bashing you for posting it, non. the media made it news - not you.

I like how Nonstop is brushing over his typo or "mistake" in the title.. lol..

---

4Pack - I can't speak for Non. But I bash back when bashed. It's kind of like Tipper Gore trying to ban my Heavy Metal music and my Dungeons and Dragons. Those little Tipper stickers (yes, that's what they're called) were the compromise.

I to this day still bash Tipper Gore as well as I bash people who try to ban my guns. Palin has repeatedly gotten holier than thou when it comes to premarital sex so that's where I bash back. This country is pretty backwards when it comes to sexual issues. Heck, the Brits call us prudes and being called a prude by the Brits is sad, just sad.

(For the record, I would have loved Palin had she just stuck to her pro-gun and lower taxes beliefs, but she just had to go out and adopt the rest of the Republican platform, which really sucks).

---

In response to what Zombieslayer said, studies have shown that kids who take a chastity pledge last an average of no more than 18 months longer than their non-pledging counterparts -- so these pledges are essentially meaningless. I know my wife swore she was saving herself for marriage. ;)

In fact, these pledges can be downright dangerous. Studies have shown that pledging teenagers have higher-than-average rates of STDs, since they're much more likely to engage in oral and anal sex (without protection, of course) than their counterparts. There's a whole class of people out there advocating that girls use anal sex as a way of "preserving their virginity for their future husbands."

It happens all the time in the Middle East, too.

I wish chastity advocates would wake up and realize the moral laws they advocate -- which aren't, in fact, nearly as clearly delineated in the Bible as they claim -- were written in an era in which the average girl was married at 13 or 14 and the average boy was married by 17. I learned about these historical facts back in the early 1990s, perhaps even earlier, in a Lutheran-written Hebrew history textbook; but I find it interesting how the obvious implications of these facts haven't dawned on modern religious parents. I know so many Christian parents who tell their kids not to marry until their mid- to late-twenties -- or even later! -- and yet also tell them to save themselves for marriage. My dad went so far as to tell me not to so much as hold a girl's hand until I got married -- and not to get married until I was out of medical school. Not only are such expectations not grounded in any sort of scientific reality, they're downright cruel. They put a huge psychological burden on the kids, one which these parents themselves almost certainly didn't have to shoulder. That's often one of the selling points, in fact: "Don't make the mistakes I made." It's a perfect recipe for creating good little hypocrites who sneak around behind their parents', friends', and churches' backs. Which is exactly what I did.

I tell Christians who argue that it's somehow perverted for teenagers to have sex: "Do you realize your god was born to a girl who was probably 13 or at most 14?"

Their standard response: "But that was then. Things are different now."

No. They're not.

---

Yes, they're different as you've already illustrated. Also, she's called the Virgin Mary for a reason. Feel free to believe it or not, but that's what we believe. The act of sex was not present there, and using someone that we consider to be a virgin as an example of why it shouldn't be considered immoral for an unwed teenager to have sex is... Well, I guess I just don't follow your logic.

Sorry if I'm getting overly defensive here, but it's all about how seriously people take their religion, and retarded teenagers. If people take these chastity pledges and can't control their hormones enough to hold up to them, and can't think things through enough to wait 15 minutes and get some contraception, I put a lot less blame on religious and family pressures and a lot more on retarded teenagers being retarded teenagers. Sorry.

My point isn't to argue that Mary had sex before the birth of Jesus. My point is that she was a young teenager and MARRIED when Jesus was born. No matter how Catholics like to quibble about this issue, the Bible clearly indicates Mary subsequently had other children following the birth of Jesus.



Yes, it doesn't directly state that he took her virginity after she gave her birth, but that's obviously the intent of the statement. To argue otherwise is to torture it beyond all realm of sense. Everyone knows what married couples do, particularly in a culture like the Middle East in which having children is considered not only an honor but a duty. Mary would have abstained for her six weeks per Hebrew law, then undertaken her purifying ablutions, after which they would surely have had normal relations. After all, Joseph and Mary were already betrothed (Matthew 1:18), so it's safe to assume the (probably) 17-year-old Joseph was looking forward to making love to the girl he liked. Some people argue that because Joseph was dead at the Crucifixion (implied by the fact that he wasn't present at the Cross and Jesus commits his mother into the care of his beloved disciple John) indicates he was much older than Mary and therefore his marriage to Mary was probably a second marriage. But that is pure speculation and obviously not based on any textual evidence.

Catholics like to say that in Semitic languages, the word translated as "brother" can also mean "cousin," so the "brothers of Jesus" mentioned in Matthew 13:5 and Mark 6:3 must have been his cousins or at most half-brothers. But again, this is pure speculation and involves ignoring the clear meaning of the text in favor of doctrinal biases.

To quibble, furthermore, that in a Middle Eastern culture, if these men had truly been Jesus' brothers, they would never have taunted him (Mark 3:31; John 7:3-4) is an even weaker argument in my opinion. The people least likely to believe that someone is a great leader -- much less the Son of God -- are one's own siblings. And we all know how much siblings tend to bicker. If anything, the fact they didn't believe in him strengthens the idea that they were his true siblings. As Jesus himself pointed out, a prophet is not without honor except in his own city, where people know him best. Familiarity does tend to breed contempt.

Either way, the point stands: Mary was a young teenager who almost certainly was having sex shortly after the birth of Jesus.

It's a hell of a lot more logical to ask people to wait for marriage when they're going to have a culturally acceptable sexual outlet at 14 than when they're going to have to wait till 25 or later.

---

And again, I'm not saying that there's anything sick or hideous about teenagers having sex, especially when they're married. In the modern world, it's too soon in my opinion, and the age difference at that point in their lives would be a concern. Thus my reference to "retarded teenagers" that can't fully grasp the concept of what they're doing, and aren't ready to commit to raising a child if birth control fails. But that wasn't the modern world, people didn't exactly live to be 80. People (especially females) routinely got married at 13-15.

We are getting into the slippery slope of interpreting the bible.. which I have encompassed for a couple of years.

I am a Christian, raised Catholic that was tossed from Sunday school for questioning the bible and the interpretations around it.. I will say this.. The Bible verses are the flawed word of God and Jesus.. as it was interpreted by man and his perception of the meaning or intent. Hence why different religions vary in understanding the word of the Lord...

Now.. ducking out of this conversation.

---

Actually, your argument is based on a faulty conflation of the terms "lifespan" and "life expectancy." The human lifespan is about exactly as long today as it was in biblical times, as the Bible itself points out:



The reason why the human life expectancy used to be so short is that the infant and child mortality rates were so horrifically high. However, if you made it to adulthood, the chances were pretty good that you'd live the same 70 to 80 years humans do to this day.

People got married younger back then because a) that's about the age when humans are designed to start having sex and b) people were expected to be able to shoulder adult responsibility at that age.

In modern culture, we have an overt anti-youth bias, as evidenced even on this site, where we often call people in their mid-20s "kids." We raise young people to be immature kids far longer than our ancestors did, and wonder why they can't handle responsibility.

I also flatly disbelieve that teenagers don't know the possible consequences of sexual intercourse. I knew what caused babies before I was the age of 10. If any teens truly exist who don't know what can happen when a penis goes in a vagina (it's instinct, for godsake!) -- that's clearly the fault of parents.

---

Palin's kid screwed up. NO ONE is perfect. Does that mean we should just give up trying to teach kids right from wrong? That's what i see here. The old "Kids are going to do it, so why TRY to stop them?" attitude.

I don't know if the money amount is "fair" or not. Does the gold digger that marries a rich dude then dumps him deserve thousands of dollars of support every month? When does it become too much? The court decides it.
20 thousand a year child support. Is that reasonable? I don't know.

But this should serve as another lesson for girls to keep their legs closed and guys to keep it in their pants, wouldn't you agree?

If you don't want to pay, DON'T PLAY.
I don't feel sorry for the man. No one forced him to screw the girl. In the end, he has only himself to blame. He COULD have said "NO" you know.
(Yeah....i know.....thats asking too much, right?)

---