Another Gloucester Scandal

Sigh. Everybody knows about it by now. The media feeding frenzy has once again run amok and everyone from Dr. Phil to Tyra Banks and news outlets from Boston to Singapore are flashing the news --- Seventeen Girls in Gloucester High had a “Pregnancy Pact”. This is very depressing. On top of all the issues Gloucester has to deal with from our collapsing fishing industry to our collapsing roads and City Hall, we will now be known world-wide as the town where little girls compete to get pregnant the fastest and the youngest. Wonderful. I blog all the time about our amazing arts community, our wonderful writers, our warm and friendly people --- not to mention the sheer gorgeous beauty of this place. And what makes the international news? Pregnant teenagers. Just wonderful.

And, concurrent with all of that, is the finger-pointing. If you read the blogs and the message boards there is no shortage of opinion on who is to blame: the schools, the city officials, the media, Britney Spears little sister, cheerleading, the Catholic Church, and Beyonce's clothing line for children for a start. Lots of folks know what kind of a lock to use on that barn without any horses in it. I'm considering launching a line of knitting patterns for chastity belts. Who knows, might help.

There are so many thoughts going through my mind about this but the number one thing I have been thinking and saying and writing about is what did we expect when we, as a culture, advanced the idea that there is no such thing as morality anymore? Just because people have rejected religion --- for good or for ill --- does not mean that morals need to be rejected too. Humans are social animals. We live within a society. And to function within a society we need to impose certain standards on ALL members if they want to be a part of that society. Part of that is done through laws and part of that is done through moral behavior. You can make laws around things like murder and theft. It is a little more difficult when it comes to things like adultery and slander. We rely on the greater conscience of the whole to impose social standards in such cases. We rely on a code of moral and ethical behavior to keep us from descending into total barbarism. Some would say we are losing that battle.

When I was in high school in the 1960s there were girls who got pregnant. Nothing has changed there. They left school (it was a Catholic prep school) and went to visit an “aunt” in Milwaukee. Some months later they returned home, sad and embarrassed, and, if the were lucky, finished high school at the local public school. Was this a good way for such things to be handled? I don't know.

Back then out-of-wedlock pregnancy was shameful and immoral because it meant you were having sex outside of marriage. I doubt you could find a handful of people in any high school today who would agree with that but there is another moral imperative here: It is the duty of those who bring new life into this world to support, nurture, and be responsible for it. Having babies you cannot support is --- I'm going to use the word --- IMMORAL. It is immoral and an affront to the society in which one lives to bear children that will not be supported financially, emotionally, and psychologically. A fifteen year old girl who mates with a 24 year old homeless man so she can go to baby showers with all her friends commits an immoral act by getting pregnant. She needs to be held accountable for that.

The media frenzy around this scares me. The message being sent around the country is that getting knocked up at fifteen will get you a shot at Oprah. I have already heard friends of the local girls venture the opinion that these girls will be getting lots of percs thanks to all of this --- everything from their medical expenses paid to free Pampers for life. I doubt any of that has any bearing in reality but that's where kids' minds go ---- “ooooo, she's so lucky to get to go on Tyra Banks!!!” Great. Just great.

Some of the blogs have been merciless. Rachel Banks at Driving the Short Bus to Enlightenment had this to say: I can’t possibly fathom why this situation is a mystery to anyone who is paying attention to popular culture. Frankly, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often and on a grander scale. We’ve allowed the rampant sexualization of girls all the way down to toddlers. Britney Spears’ little sister, star of a Nickelodeon show, had a baby this week at the age of 17. Read the article I linked to for that and notice how they act like this is good news and she’ll be such a great mom! OMG, like, she’s so fun! The stigma of being a slut is gone, thanks to Paris Hilton and the like. You can be publicly KNOWN to be a drunken, STD-carrying, wildly promiscuous shit-for-brains and what will happen? You’ll get acting jobs, endorsement work, a fashion line, and hundreds of magazine covers.

And Michele Catalano at Pajamas Media says: This is not an issue about sex. This is a much deeper issue, one about young girls with no direction, no guidance and no boundaries, whose role models are the pregnant classmates who came before them. As much as one wants to point to the economic factors of this struggling, isolated fishing community as reasons why this happened, that’s doing a disservice to every young daughter in that community. It’s a cop out. It’s shrugging your shoulder and saying “we can’t help it, it’s the way things are here.” There are millions of parents out there who are struggling financially and emotionally, whose daughters don’t decide to overcome the hopelessness of their lives by becoming a mommy at 16. It takes education. First and foremost, by the parents, with backup education by the schools. By giving in this disturbing trend and not being outraged by it, the parents of this community are only ensuring that this will no longer be a trend in Gloucester, but commonplace.

All I can say is that I hope that Gloucester can salvage some dignity out of this by serving as a starting point for people to talk about what in heaven's name we have done to our children by abandoning them --- emotionally, psychologically and morally. These children need to know that they matter and that they have a responsibility to society and that we will be there to support and guide them --- not to throw them baby showers and applaud them for their performance on Dr. Phil.

Two excellent blog articles by local bloggers:

Jim Dowd's: An open letter to the people calling me concerned about Gloucester

Marc Randazza's: Gloucester and It's Pregnancy Pact: A Native's Perspective

Thanks for reading