This is my rifle, this is my "gun"...

This one's for fightin', this one's for fun...

Apparently Sarah Palin (and John McCain in May 2007) is a backer of "abstinence-only education."

For those of us who don't know exactly what the hell that even means, here's John McCain's take: "Sen. McCain believes the correct policy for educating young children on this subject is to promote abstinence as the only safe and responsible alternative. To do otherwise is to send a mixed signal to children that, on the one hand they should not be sexually active, but on the other here is the way to go about it. As any parent knows, ambiguity and equivocation leads to problems when it comes to teaching children right from wrong. Sen. McCain believes that there are many negative forces in today’s society that promote irresponsible and dangerous behavior to our children. The public education system should not join this chorus of moral equivocation and ambiguity."

For me the problem with a politician arises when I get mixed signals. Gov. Palin is a strong supporter of gun ownership, a lifetime NRA member, and a strong supporter of gun safety education. I just don't understand how a person can want to empower young people to understand how to use and avoid harming themselves and others with guns, but want children to not learn how to use and avoid harming themselves and others with "guns." Obviously, I'm talking about sex here.

McCain and Palin seem to be saying that it is good and right to teach children the following:
"Here's how to load a gun...insert the shell into it, cock it, point it at the target, and fire. Be sure to never point the gun at another person, becuase if the gun is loaded, it could accidentally go off and you could seriously hurt them. Also, you should never point an unloaded gun at someone either, becuase...how sure are you that it is unloaded?"
They are saying as far as guns go, "don't kill anyone, but here's the way to go about it."

However, its not okay for children to hear:
"Here's how to have safe sex. Insert...etc etc...blah blah... Be sure to never have sex without protection, or you could get pregnant. Even coitus interruptus can lead to pregnancy, because...how can you be sure no sperm got out early?"
Because it's not okay to say "don't have sex, but here's the way to go about it." Somehow that's a mixed message, unlike the gun safety message.

If you want your kids to not get pregnant, spend less time trying to tell them not to have sex. Young adults thrive on rebellion. Instead teach them to value their bodies and minds and the sacredness of the act so that they willingly choose not to have it until a time when they are mature enough to handle the consequences.
That is how hunting works. Gov. Palin agrees that you teach a young person the sacredness of hunting, of wild game, and of the importance of legally hunting to conserve the wild game herd for your children and your children's children. By teaching children how important it is to hunt during the legal season, and about the sacredness of the wild game you are hunting, you prevent offseason poaching.

I guess I'm trying to make two points here. One is that hunting and gun safety is just like sex safety and you can't expect young minds to somehow grasp the nuancal differences between the two when you teach them that they are somehow fundamentally opposite...but yet the same.
And two: no matter how good gun safety is, no matter how good hunter education is, there are still accidents. Accidents that would be far greater in number if we didn't teach our kids how to properly handle the guns in the house. Same goes for sex.

Abstinence-only sex ed is a pipe dream. Pre-marital sex is just as prevalent (though actually safer and less pregnancy inducing) as it was 20, 30, and 40 years ago. We just have better news coverage of it now. There wasn't Fox News 30 years ago pumping near-maniacal ultra-conservative agendas to us 24/7 back then.