I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Roman Catholic activists are plunging ahead with the anti-female messages that have been consistent in the papal infrastructure of the new Pope Benedict XVI. At the same time, I couldn’t help but be incredulous at the story I came across earlier today about the courageous message of one young woman to the St. Jude Educational Institute, of Montgomery, Alabama.
It seems that in the message of ‘Choose Life,’ some fine print reads ‘but be ashamed that you’re a harlot’ somewhere in the handbook. Senior Alysha Cosby became pregnant by a fellow student and was suspended in March, reasons cited being that she was a ‘safety concern’. Were they worried someone would slip in a puddle of amniotic fluid if her water broke? I just don’t get it.
Here’s where the story gets fun, and a young woman quickly becomes a hero in my eyes. The school administration also excluded her from her commencement ceremony and left her name out of the commencement bulletin, while letting the young man who impregnated her attend. Naturally, Alysha was offended and made the decision that she wasn’t going to take the insult quietly, and her mother supported this decision. With her mother and aunt as companions, Alysha attended her graduation and at the end of the program boldly went to the front, announced her own name and took her commencement walk across the stage. Despite being met by rounds of applause and cheers from the audience, when she returned to her seat the police escorted her, her mother and her aunt from the hall.
It’s not often that I feel a tremendous amount of pride in the actions of a complete stranger, but this incident definitely was inspiring. The question remains, however, how a group so adamant about sending a message to women to not have abortions can behave so shamefully towards a young woman who did exactly that, and add insult onto injury by welcoming the father of the child to participate in commencement with impunity.
…she was a ‘safety concern’. Were they worried someone would slip in a puddle of amniotic fluid if her water broke? I just don’t get it.
If it means anything, it’s probably a heckler’s veto; the school couldn’t protect her against the imaginary hordes who would riot at the sight of her.
The question remains, however, how a group so adamant about sending a message to women to not have abortions can behave so shamefully towards a young woman who did exactly that, and add insult onto injury by welcoming the father of the child to participate in commencement with impunity.
How? Very easily. All they’d have to say would be “She shouldn’t have had sex.”
She shouldn’t have had sex??? What about the “he” in that equation?
“She shouldn’t have had sex??? What about the “he”? in that equation?”
Exactly. If they had told both the young man and the young woman that they couldn’t attend, it would at least been consistant and in theory defensible – whatever one might think about the underlying ideas. By allowing the guy to show up, the mesage they send is simply morally incoherent, at least on any level besides that of blatent double-standardism.
I wish her luck.
What Dan said.
>>By allowing the guy to show up, the mesage they send is simply morally incoherent, at least on any level besides that of blatent double-standardism.>>
Yeah, that part was clear as crystal.
If the woman’s “desire is for the man”, and if the husband is the head of the wife, then shouldn’t the father of the child be held more responsible than the mother? I dunno why the headship guys think anyone should take their position seriously when they continually dodge the responsibilities their system would logically entail. Leadership this passive must be a real challenge to follow.
Sauce for the goose. You can’t ban one half of the erring couple and not the other half. Gotta come down with you wacky egalitarians on this one.
I agree with the thrust of the original post. If I ran that Catholic School, I would make the young lady valedictorian. She would give the commencement speech were she would be introduced as “the young lady with the courage and compassion to actually carry her child to term”?
It goes to show their problem is with sex, not abortion. I bet there were a few girls who had abortions in that class. They don’t even realize the message they are sending here.
While I think that the school has the legal right to do what they did, I will agree that it seems pretty tacky.
I do think that suspending her from school was a bad thing to do. As for the double standard, at first blush, I think it’s inexcusable. There may be factors here that we haven’t heard (maybe the paternity of the baby is in dispute, and absent a DNA test they couldn’t be certain enough he was the baby’s father to punish him [I’m not certain how far the pregnancy has to progress to make DNA testing easy-to-do]) that would make this less of a double standard than it appears. On the other hand, it’s also quite likely that there aren’t, and that the story (complete with the double standard) is just as it appears.
Looking at the story, I noticed that the pregnant girl is black. Could there be a racial angle? (What color is the father? If white, that would suggest another possible double standard is operating).
Someone should offer this kid a college scholarship, she has great potential. Hell, I’d send a check if I knew how to get it to her. Does anyone know?
Try this on for size: Anti-choice people don’t oppose abortion because it destroys innocent unborn lives. They may sincerely believe that it does–but that is not the true motive of their opposition. They oppose abortion because it gives young women a way to escape the punishment they deserve for being sexually active.
Phyllis Schlafly once said it right out loud: “It’s very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby even ten years later when she may be happily married.”
It’s about power. It’s about punishment. It always was.
Evan said…
Yes, and where’s the horrible, painful punishments for the men who help cause these pregnancies?
Marriage.
Nice, Robert. Unfortunately, marriage-as-punishment is harder on women, who actually have to do the majority of the relationship work. So, there’s no escaping it–it’s women’s sexuality, not sexuality itself, that is on trial here.
Ode to Robert;
“Oh gosh! That`s funny. That`s really funny. Do you write your own material? Do you? Because that is so fresh. “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.“ You know, I`ve never heard anyone make that joke before. You`re the first. I`ve never heard anyone reference that outside the program before. Because that`s what she says on the show, right? Isn`t it? “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.“ And yet you`ve taken that and used it out of context to insult me in this everyday situation. God, what a clever, smart girl you must be to come up with a joke like that all by yourself. Hmm, that`s so fresh, too. Any Titanic jokes you want to throw at me, as long as we`re hitting these phenomena at the height of their popularity? Hmm? Cause I`m here. God, you`re so funny.“
– Stewie to Olivia
Hey, I’m all for painful punishments for irresponsible fathers. (My sociology prof used to buy my acceptance of various policy proposals by promising to allow the use of dogs in hunting down the various miscreants whose behavior would be stigmatized by the proposal.) I have two daughters. What’s it to be – bastinado or entombment? ‘Cause I’ve got a shovel.
But when I say that, I get yelled at for promoting a culture of violence and retribution. Guess it’s only cool to be pro-punitiveness if you’re a squishy liberal and don’t really mean it.
I would say that the having sex and getting pregnant/impregnating doesn’t merit banning the two from graduation. While the double standard is distressing, banning them both and banning neither of them aren’t equivalent ways of addressing the double standard.
You might say, “their school, their rule: if they find sex so objectionable, they can ban the mother-to-be and the father-to-be from graduation.” I agree, as a matter of legal rights, but I think the school is wrong to do so.
In my mind, this raises an interesting question: banning the impregnator from graduating would eliminate the injustice of the double standard, but would compound the injustice of the graduation ban itself. If there were no choice to allow both of them to go to the graduation, and one must choose between banning both and banning just the woman, which is worse?
Julian, you are approaching this from the wrong direction. As the link makes clear, the girl was allowed to graduate, they aren’t stopping her from attending university — they just wouldn’t allow her to celebrate — so the injustice is really more of a rebuke, and no doubt, stems from the embarrassment of school officials at having a visibly pregnant student. Since the boy’s role wasn’t visible, they had no problem with him. They are only pretending to be sending a moral message of any kind here, when in reality, the real message is simply garden variety hypocrisy. They don’t want the other parents and family members in the audience to think that they don’t give a rat’s ass, not they really do give a rat’s ass about what happened. Yes, it would be interesting to understand the racial politics of the situation.
Robert, I doubt there is one punitive liberal here who wanted to pull the boy as well. Both should have been allowed to graduate–more than one girl who walked the stage at my graduation had a pregnant belly and the world didn’t fall apart. And I’m not in favor of setting the dogs on anyone, even the publically pious hypocrites who made the decision not to let this girl walk.
“maybe the paternity of the baby is in dispute, and absent a DNA test they couldn’t be certain enough he was the baby’s father to punish him”
Glaviester: this is a Catholic school. If he admited to having sex and probably being the father, then the punishment should have been equal. But as noted by others, it was the pregnant belly that bothered them- bad example and all that. It’s hypocritaical on so many levels it’s kind of funny.
The moral message they are sending is that women are the gatekeepers to sexual morality and that the female is expected to maintain her purity and prevent men to succumb to the temptation of sexual sin. When she is the one with whom a man commits a sexual sin, she is guilty not only of her own sin of fornication, she is also guilty of enticing the man and enabling him to commit his sin therefor she is more culpable.
The moral message they are sending is that women are the gatekeepers to sexual morality and that the female is expected to maintain her purity and prevent men to succumb to the temptation of sexual sin. When she is the one with whom a man commits a sexual sin, she is guilty not only of her own sin of fornication, she is also guilty of enticing the man and enabling him to commit his sin therefor she is more culpable.
Of course. It’s so logical! Why didn’t I realise it before? Since women have no sexual feeling whatsoever, they are the perfect people to stop yound men having sex. Men cannot be held responsible for their own fornication – God would have struck down the graduation organsiers where they stood, if they’d try to stop the young man graduating or allowed the young lady to.
I’m proud of this young woman for standing up in the face of hypocrisy, and I’m proud of her mother and aunt for standing with her. Culture of Life, my culiddu.
Yes, this is about punishing women for having sex. It also illustrates a clear contempt and loathing for children. Children are supposed to be the “punishment” for having sex, dont’cha know?
Ol Cranky, I wish they were that coherent about what they are doing. Now, I believe, a conservative Muslim school would pretty much be up front about that fact (at least according to my Muslim friends): It is the duty of women to resist the sexual advances of men, who, of course, can’t help themselves and are thus not immoral for wanting to have sex. You get pregnant, it’s your fault, no one else’s and we are going to punish you and you alone! I wish the head dipshit at this school would be honest enough to say that in public. For then everyone would know what they are dealing with, and not be able to make up feeble excuses and what not for such clearly misogynist behavior.
“Glaviester: this is a Catholic school. If he admited to having sex and probably being the father, then the punishment should have been equal.”
I didn’t mean that it was uncertain which sexual partner impregnated her; I meant that maybe the boy she claims to be the father denies having had sex with her, and seeing as they can’t prove he had sex they can’t punish him. Although I will say that if she claims someone to be the father and he denies it, he is more likely to be the one lying; unless there were exceptional circumstances she would have no reason to lie.
I’m not trying to defend the school; I’m just recalling that a lot of times news reports leave out bits of information in order to make stories seem more outrageous.
“Glaviester: this is a Catholic school. If he admited to having sex and probably being the father, then the punishment should have been equal.”
I didn’t mean that it was uncertain which sexual partner impregnated her; I meant that maybe the boy she claims to be the father denies having had sex with her, and seeing as they can’t prove he had sex they can’t punish him. Although I will say that if she claims someone to be the father and he denies it, he is more likely to be the one lying; unless there were exceptional circumstances she would have no reason to lie.
I’m not trying to defend the school; I’m just recalling that a lot of times news reports leave out bits of information in order to make stories seem more outrageous.
The other part that I latched onto and blogged about was the claim of “safety concerns.” If the school were required to have facilities that were safe for pregnant women, then they wouldn’t be able to toss out that red herring and would have to show their true colors.
Wow, if he lied and denied it, I would think it’s just that more outrageous.
It would be more outrageous, but also (absent DNA testing) unprovable. People lie about sex. Men lie about having gotten women pregnant. Women lie about men getting them pregnant. The immature will lie about trivia to avoid consequences even more trivial, let alone serious stuff like life-and-death. He said, she said concerning pregnancy is hardly unusual.
And in fact, it does appear to be a he said, she said situation. According to a story in the Montgomery Advertiser, the school says they don’t know who the father is. Ms. Cosby says it is a particular boy at the school. Ms. Cosby says the boy has asked for a paternity test once the baby is born, which she says she is fine with. Since the school can’t prove that the boy is the father, but they can prove that Ms. Cosby is pregnant, their actions appear to be correct.
It seems to me that since they banned the pregnant girl from graduation, and allowed the father to participate, that the sin they are punishing here is not sex or premarital sex, but pregnancy. Therefore, the Catholic Church must believe that sex is perfectly OK but pregnancy is wrong.
OR, if it really is about sex, since they punished the (sexually active) mother but not the (sexually active) father, the sin they are punishing is not male sex but female sex. Therefore, the Catholic Church must believe that male homosexuality is OK, as it’s the only sexual relationship that doesn’t involve a woman.
Add to this their oft-stated insistance that sex is only OK between married couples, and the Catholic Church must support gay marriage. (And a homosexual couple would never need to use “sinful” birth control.)
OR, since they punished her because she was pregnant, and if she’d had an abortion they never would have found out that she was pregnant, they have greater penalties for “choosing life” than for having an abortion. Therefore, the Catholic Church must believe abortion is a better choice than pregnancy.
Isn’t logic wonderful?
And, Barbara: “Head dipshit?” I love it!
“Wow, if he lied and denied it, I would think it’s just that more outrageous.”
On his part, it’s outrageous behavior. But it isn’t outrageous behavior for the school not to punish him, unless they can PROVE he is lying and decide not to punish him anyway.
In asking for a paternity test, the boy has done the equivolent of admitting to sleeping with the girl.
Robert: try another construct. It is almost certain that whoever the father is, he is a fellow student. Therefore, there are sexually active women and men in this Catholic school, a fact that should be unsurprising to us, as well as to them. In the Catholic world view, sin is a given. And pregnancy isn’t a sin, it’s a consequence of sinful behavior (i.e., extramarital sexual activity), thus it is still hypocritical to “punish” the girl because the consequences of sexual activity are visible, while the male can escape detection and commit further sin by denying responsibility (even if it’s a different boy, obviously, no one has come forward and taken responsibility).
The school had at least five different ways to deal with this without singling out the female student for Scarlet Letter style humiliation while ignoring the putative father. What I took from the Scarlet Letter, whether intended or not, is that while privately imposed punishment might absoleve one of the sexual sin, it doesn’t expiate the sin of taking responsibility for one’s actions. The school chose the single most punitive “solution,” without even acknowledging that there were two parties at fault and which, conveniently, tried to spare the school embarrassment. This student deserves all kinds of accolades for showing the school’s spineless pseudo-moralizing for what it is.
“In asking for a paternity test, the boy has done the equivolent of admitting to sleeping with the girl.”
Not necessarily. If he isn’t certain the kid is his, then yes, he would have had to have slept with her. But even if he didn’t sleep with her, there is no way to prove it, so all he could do is prove that the kid isn’t his through a paternity test.
I don’t think that punishing the girl because the consequences of sexual activity are visible is necessarily hypocritical. Whenever you punish someone, you only punish the people whom you can catch. It may be unfair, but that is not the same thing as hypocrisy.
On the other hand, it does seem hypocritical that they try to rationalize it as a safety concern; and if their real goal is simply avoiding embarassment, it is hypocritical of them to portray their concerns as moral ones.
All-in-all, I do agree though that banning her from commencement was not hte best way to deal with this. Also, policies like this do create perverse incentives, abortion-wise.
On my blog, I suggested that they ban all students who aren’t virgins. That way they can be consistent. They should make each student take a lie detector test before he/she can graduate.
Although I’m not actually being serious. They could do it, though. It’s a private school.
And if they think it’s okay for boys to have sex, but not girls, then it logically follows that the boys must have sex with each other. Cool! Do I get to watch?
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They could have banned all the boys from graduating. Along with the Holy Spirit, just in case.
He admitted to having sex with her, didn’t he? Isn’t that why the paternity test is necessary, because he’s accusing her of sleeping with other boys?
Handy little theory you have there and nice how men are automatically excluded from getting caught.
It has not been established whether the boy in question acknowledges a sexual relationship with Ms. Cosby. Whether he has or not, however, a paternity test is the only way that I know of for him to disestablish her claim of his paternity. Sex is not a prerequisite for a paternity claim.
Although I agree with you, Amanda, that if he has admitted to having sex wit her, he should suffer the same punishment as she is whether or not he happened to be the partner whose sperm “got lucky.”
Hmmmm, his family is encouraging him to get one, not him saying he needs to get one. Interesting. If ya’ll are still willing to state that it’s questionable whether they had sex or not, then I think that there is some serious ostriching for sake of point making going on that is pretty darn pedantic.
And the ‘safety reasons’ now defined. What a crock of horseshit. I’m just about 20 weeks myself and go up and down the stairs all the time just fine. That’s ridiculous.
I agree. Principal Mitchell is being a weasel.
Ruthie her name is Alysha Cosby her cell phone is 334-294-6865. She could really use the scholarship money.
Amen, Robert. Your’s is the only voice of reason on this issue so far. Ms. Cosby would not be the first to falsely ‘charge Paul’ while in fact actually being ‘indebted to Peter’.
More than likely, there is MUCH more to this story than we’ve been led to believe.
They aren’t even being traditional; someone was supposed to strongarm the father into proposing marriage.
Unless, of course, his family is a lot richer than hers. It’s his family who wants the DNA test? ….hmmm.
“St. Jude’s classes are held on two floors, but the school does not have elevators.”?
I hear an ADA lawsuit a-comin’.
As for whether the boy admitted it or not, couldn’t the school officials simply ask him?
I applaud the young woman for taking a stand. She should have sought legal recourse IMO because the school is being patently absurd by denying her the graduation she earned.
On the other hand I find distasteful the author chose in the last paragraph to lump “pro life” in with those who are “anti woman”. Do not confuse those who are for the preservation of life with those who are for the suppression of human rights on the basis of gender. The school’s decision is not about abortion, it’s about holding male above female in a vain philosophical hold-over from the fading days of a male-centric society.
-D