Chapter 10

"Did you see this?"

Jerry yawned. His sister thrust a newspaper into his arms and sauntered into his apartment. She kept one hand on the budding baby-bump she carried so sexily and walked toward his kitchen.

The man sighed, closed the door to his apartment, and adjusted his bathrobe.

"I've been up for maybe ten minutes," he said as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Haven't even had my coffee yet."

"Oh, poor baby," Diane said as she opened his refrigerator. "At least you can still have coffee.

"Just read the lead article in Local, it's good stuff."

"You're the one who wanted to get pregnant," Jerry said. He walked into the kitchen and took a seat at his table. He opened the paper his sister had given him to the Local News section and immediately saw what his younger sister was referring to. The headline read: "State Senator will not run for national office".

"State Senator Lana Rogers, who rose to national prominence for her outspoken and sometimes controversial positions regarding what she described as 'traditional Christian family values', along with her calls for the teaching of abstinence only sexual education in public schools, announced late yesterday that she would not be seeking the Republican nomination for the open Senate seat of retiring senator Andrew Fullard as had been widely rumored.

"In a statement released by her State Senate office Ms. Rogers explained, 'While I still believe that the work that needs to be done on a federal level to protect our children and our country's Christian values from liberal, secular interests remains important, I have decided after much deliberation that the work needed on the state level remains unfinished. I am not one to walk away from an unfinished job. Therefore I have decided to retain my position as a state senator and not seek any national office at this time.'

"In light of revelations made last week that the state senator's daughter was not only pregnant but possibly a homosexual, political analysts were quick to point out that retaining her state senate seat might not be as easy as Ms. Rogers' statement would suggest.

"'She's going to face an upward battle, ' noted Paul Wonderkind, a professor of Political Science at St. Joseph University. 'We're talking about a woman who built her reputation on being a conservative, traditional family values Republican. She frequently touted her daughter as being the poster child for such values, a teenage girl who organized purity pledges, ran Bible studies, and who rejected what Sen. Rogers often called a sinful, un-American way of life. She's going to have a hard time not appearing to be a hypocrite now, fair or unfair as that may be, given her daughter's alleged actions.'"

"State Representative Paul Chill would seem to agree. In a statement released by his office two days ago the fervent conservative announced that he would challenge Ms. Rogers in the primaries next year for her current state senate seat. While not specifically mentioning the rumors about her daughter as his reason for doing so Mr. Chill did state, 'Now more than ever it is important for our party to retain its purity as a Christian Conservative Party. Anyone can simply preach our values but the voters deserve leaders who actually live them, too.'

"All this comes on the heel of Ms. Rogers' fall from national prominence. Future appearances on Fox News by Ms. Rogers, who had become a regular on the news network over the last year, were canceled by that network last week. Fox News denied repeated requests for comment but Prof. Wonderkind explained it this way, 'It's no surprise, really. She was supposed to be the rising Republican star in this state. She had a compelling personal story, a flawless background, and she spoke the Christian Right's language to a T. It was just last week that her office tried to quietly announce her daughter's pregnancy but that only seemed to fan the flames of some of the more sordid rumors that have been bouncing around the Internet blogsophere for months.