Column: Inquiring minds want to know

By Kelly Young

During the course of the past few weeks, readers have started contacting me seeking my opinion on one political issue or another or simply to suggest a topic for future columns. Considering that no contact information has ever been made available publicly, I applaud your ingenuity in tracking me down.

For the sake of facilitating feedback in the future – and to get people to stop calling me at work - I have created an email address specifically for reader comments and queries. In the future, please send your remarks to pcnightmare@live.com. I am also now on Facebook, and I post all columns there as well; so if you missed a week or want to reread a previous article, just send me a friend request and I will accommodate you.

Henceforth, from time to time, I will be using this space to answer some of the questions that I have received from readers. This is one of those times.

What is your opinion of Sarah Palin? Should she run for president in 2012? Would you vote for her?

While I think Palin has considerable value to the GOP, it is not best utilized as a presidential candidate. She angers the left in a visceral, primal way, and I personally think Republicans should be focusing their efforts on analyzing her blood and trying to find a way to weaponize it.

That she is still the frequent target of liberal columnists, talk show hosts and bloggers indicates just what a threat she poses to the progressive agenda. A successful, independent woman who is pro-life and conservative? Blasphemous! Their consistent molestations of her indicate to me just how fearful they are of her potential.

If Palin were as clueless as David Letterman so desperately wants you to believe, he would have no reason to attack her. That he continues to harangue her 15 months after the general election, is proof that she poses a very real danger to the liberal ideology he so spiritedly champions.

While certainly not the vapid ditz that the mainstream media would like you to believe she is, neither will Palin be confused with a Rhodes Scholar anytime soon – a fact used constantly and effectively by the news media and SNL during the last election cycle to castigate her and her party. The same will remain true in the future, and will always constitute a political liability.

I see her being much more useful to the GOP not as the ticket, but more as a billboard energizing the base and directing attention towards the 2012 candidate….cough….Mike Huckabee….cough cough. Having said that, if the 2012 election comes down to Palin v. Obama, I’d choose her without hesitation over a second term of Barry.

What is your opinion of the upcoming wet/dry election in Jacksonville?

As a city employee, when I started writing this column, the only caveat I received from the city manager was that I couldn’t discuss local politics. That’s why I haven’t spoken publicly about any of the city or county races, and why I have remained mum on the issue of alcohol sales in Jacksonville, as well. Just to be safe, I have also avoided opining on state races where one or both of the candidates call J’ville home (Banks, Hopson, Nichols, etc.).

So while you can rest assured that I have opinions on local races and issues, I just won’t be able to disseminate them here. As for the wet/dry election, the side that can mobilize more of their advocates to vote will win – isn’t democracy grand?

How do you feel about abstinence-only education?

I am very conflicted on this topic for two simple reasons. One, as the best option for our society to combat unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and spiraling moral degradation, I strongly believe we should all be doing everything possible to instill the importance of sexual abstinence into our youngsters. Two, the empirical evidence has shown that abstinence-only curriculum has not been even remotely successful.

While it is possible to find the occasional study that proves to be the exception to the rule, an imposing majority of researchers have found that abstinence-only programs are having no lasting favorable impact. Students who go through the courses do not positively alter their sexual behaviors, STD and pregnancy rates do not decrease and the age of initial sexual activity does not increase.

In fact, a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that students who took part in some sort of virginity pledge not only didn’t have sex any less, but were less likely to use any form of birth control whatsoever when they did.

It’s no coincidence that all but one of the five states with the highest teen pregnancy rates (Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas) are teaching only abstinence to their children. During a time when President Bush nearly tripled funding for abstinence-only education, 17 states opted out of the programs - forgoing free money in order to pursue more effective curriculum that teaches contraception alongside abstinence.

The truth is, as inundated as our culture is with sex, most kids are going to do it. And for the ones who are strong enough to abstain, the catalyst behind them managing to preserve is much more likely to be the principles infused in them by their parents than anything said by their 6th grade health teacher.

But for the majority of kids who are likely to seek out sex as often and as early as is possible, it is insanity to send them out into the world without a working knowledge of birth control methods and the effectiveness rates of those methods. Anything less is like tossing a child a loaded gun without first teaching them which is the business end.

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