Mary Fallin's Family Values

DISCLAIMER: We didn’t want to write this post.  We believe that by and large, a politician’s personal life is just that; personal.  Particularly for the sake of her family, we had every intention of leaving this story out of the overall discussion.  However, throughout the campaign, Fallin has again and again referenced her “family values” finally culminating with her assertion during last Tuesday’s debate that her status as a wife and mother makes her the more qualified candidate for governor.  We decided it was time to address her “family values.”

When Mary Fallin says that being a mother is a key difference between herself and her opponent, she isn’t just being powerfully anti-femminist,  she’s tapping into a conservative, fundamentalist way of thinking to get out her base.  When a conservative says “family” it translates to the fundamentalist lister as “like you, I am a conservative Christian, I oppose equal rights for minorities, I oppose measures to protect women from gender based discrimination, an most importantly I am pro-life.”
The problem for Mary, though, is that by attempting to wink and nod at her conservative supporters, she has opened the door to a discussion on her personal dedication to “family.”

At event after event she touts that “between my husband and I, we have six children,” as if she had anything to do with raising the four from her husband’s two previous marriages.  In fact his four children were grown before he and Fallin met.

As to her own two children, she put them through what must have been an unimaginably painful ordeal during her messy, contentious, and very public divorce from their father. Despite publicly humiliating him, she still bears his name, so she can avoid the inconvenience of “re-branding” for her voters.  The widely publicized divorce came about after reports surfaced that Fallin had engaged in at least one extra-marital affair with a state trooper assigned to her security detail.  The trooper in question, though later re-instated, was discharged from the force and admitted that his conduct had been inappropriate.

The affair was adulterous for both parties, and destroyed two families.  Voters were willing to overlook her personal infidelities for a while, but the fact that she has, ever since, continued to live a scandalous and immoral lifestyle while in Congress. Family values indeed. It’s time for the hypocrisy to end.