Fair is Fair

VP nominee Sarah Palin has gotten more than her share of the spotlight lately. Not only has she been dealing with the truth, she has to deal with the rumors as well -- such as the pernicious rumor that her son, Trig, is not hers, but her daughter's firstborn. I could go on, but I will quote the bloggers as Jezebel.com who say it best:

When we waste our time and energy rooting around in someone's personal life for John McCain's next black baby, we are conceding to conservatives that they are right. They have spent the last couple of decades saying that the gender of the person one chooses to love should be grounds for discrimination at work, in housing choices, in marriage rights and whereever else a little homophobe's heart desires. They have said that the government should be able to limit (and to know) what woman does with the contents of her uterus based on what they wish to make a government-sanctioned religious conception of when life begins. They use their power in government to limit children's access to age-appropriate sex education in schools in the name of teaching children their religious-inspired world view on sexual behavior. I could keep going, but you get the point.

And when liberals and progressives pounce on rumors like this one about Trig's "true" parentage — whether or not it is true, which I'm pretty sure it's not — or rumors about Republican politicians' sexuality (in the absence of crimes committed) we are conceding that conservatives are right, and personal choices do qualify or disqualify one for certain aspects of participation in public life and this democracy. We are accepting their terms, their definitions of appropriate private behavior, and attempting to use those definitions to defeat their candidates. And once we do that, even if we do "take down" Sarah Palin or whatever Republican candidate in order to protect gay rights or reproductive rights or educational rights, then we've lost on those issues anyway because we've conceded that the underpinnings to the Republican positions on those issues is valid.