Thursday, July 8, 2010

Ms. Angle on Rape Victims: Turn Lemons into Lemonade



So very, very simple: why hasn't anyone thought of this before?  Republican candidate for the Senate Sharron Angle is encouraging rape victims to turn the lemons of being sexually assaulted into the lemonade of, well, I'm not quite sure.  I'll let her explain.




Asked what she would tell a young girl raped by, say, her father, who then becomes pregnant, Angle responds,

And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.

She then elucidates (or tries to do so) her remark, by noting that, in her view, "it is meaningful to me to err on the side of life."  Which seems, oddly, to conflict with her opposition to legislation to prohibit capital punishment for the mentally impaired or to create a two-year moratorium on executions of those on death row in Nevada. 

In the latter case, she opined, "We haven't executed people who did not want to be executed for years and years."  

Elsewhere, Angle has noted (a link is in the HuffPo piece to which I link at the start of this posting) that those pregnant due to incest and/or rape ought to trust in "God's plan."  Where God was when they were being raped is not clear to me.

Europeans are expressing more and more fear about the--to them--unfathomable turn American politics is taking with folks like Mr. Beck, Ms. Palin, and Ms. Angle.  And well they should: we should all be very, very afraid of what will ensue if these "bible-based" hate mongers gain political power in our vulnerable, economically depressed and highly polarized society now.