Whether we like it or not, the failure of Paterno to do more than the bare minimum is a more important part of his legacy than the cute coke-bottle glasses he wore, the way he led his team onto the field in a ratty sweater, and any football game won. Football is a game. It does not affect life. The abuse of a child is an act that affects the victim for life and can lead to self-hatred and suicide. I, for one, know of no football player who committed suicide because he threw a last-minute interception or missed a game-saving tackle.
Even before Paterno’s death Sunday, the travesty of Penn State was already veering away from the countless acts of sexual abuse Sandusky allegedly committed against minors, not to mention all the indications of a cover-up by the top echelon of the university, including Paterno. Instead a new steam engine has been in motion, questioning whether Paterno had been treated fairly by the trustees when he was fired. The chorus was growing louder, forcing board of trustee members to go on a public relations blitz to The New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer to make their case they had done the right thing. Which they did. Artful, no, because of the way he was notified, with a phone message to call a board member. Necessary, yes.
My guess is that the death of Paterno will pump that steam engine even more. Those who loved him—and there are many thousands, and they have every right to love him—will push him more and more into the sanctity of the martyred because of his death.
Still, there’s a major difference between this battle and the one over access to abortion under health reform—a fight anti-abortion rights forces won. On contraception, opponents are far outside the mainstream.
Unlike on abortion rights, where opinion polling demonstrates a notoriously conflicted public, birth control is wildly popular. Eighty percent of Americans say pharmacists should be required to dispense birth control regardless of their own opinions on the morality of premarital or non-reproductive sex. Three-quarters of American Catholics disagree with their Church’s anti-contraception policy. A recent survey of evangelical leaders—the family values crowd—found that 90 percent of them consider hormonal birth control and condoms “morally acceptable.”
The business community, too, is enthusiastic. A new report from the National Business Group on Health found that most companies would save money in the long run by providing their employees with co-pay-free birth control.
There’s also massive demand for these drugs: According to the Guttmacher Institute, seven out of every 10 American women over the age are 15 are currently sexually active and don’t want to become pregnant. Eighty-nine percent of them are using some form of contraception; 15.3 million Americans use prescription hormonal birth control.
“Fear and hate are cheap and easy recruiting tools. But they can result in a divided, dispirited and somewhat deranged nation, unable to agree even on a common set of facts when it diverges from a dominant narrative. If someone believes that the government is coming to seize their guns, news of Supreme Court cases seem distant and intellectual compared to emotional appeals by their favorite opinion-anchor. It might not even help to point out that early Hatriot groups like the early-60s Minutemen were telling their survivalist supporters about a plan to “confiscate all private fire-arms by the end of 1965.” But that cold-water splash of perspective should stir a healthy sense of skepticism; people have tried to sell that fear-infused snake oil before, and we shouldn’t start buying it now.”
“Women will continue to take two steps forward and three steps back until they drop the sorority girl act and become the stateswomen and leaders that we need.”
