SpongeBob Squarepants is one of the popular children's TV characters appearing in a new 'tolerance' video.
Posted on 01/08/2005 7:02:35 AM PST by NYer
In a new video to be distributed to 61,000 schools across the nation, homosexual activists are using popular children's TV characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Barney the dinosaur to surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle, a pro-family activist group charges.
SpongeBob Squarepants is one of the popular children's TV characters appearing in a new 'tolerance' video. |
Based on the 1970s hit song "We Are Family," the video will be distributed to public and private elementary schools nationwide March 11, along with lesson plans for teachers, points out the American Family Association.
The distribution, sponsored by FedEx, will coincide with the video's broadcast March 11 on Nickelodeon, PBS, and the Disney Channel in celebration of the proposed National We Are Family Day.
AFA researcher Ed Vitagliano sees the project as an "open door" to a secondary discussion of homosexuality, noting the the foundation has a "tolerance pledge" on its website that children and others are encouraged to sign, which includes sexual orientation. [Editor's note: This story previously linked to the website of a group that has the same name but no connection to the video. WND regrets the error.]
"While we want everyone to respect other people's beliefs, we do not consider it appropriate for children's television to be used in an effort to indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality," he said.
Vitagliano says the foundation is employing a bait-and-switch approach, with popular children's figures such as Arthur, Dora the Explorer, JoJo, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Big Bird and Bob the Builder.
The objective is to get children to the foundation's website "and there they're given the full pitch about homosexuality," he said.
Video producer Christopher Cerf called the video an "unprecedented event."
"For the first time characters from all of the important kids shows came together to appear in the same video," he said in a November news release. "The producers and performers from each show embraced the spirit and message of this project."
The We Are Family Foundation was founded by singer-songwriter Nile Rodgers, who wrote the hit song recorded in 1979 by Sister Sledge.
The video was financed by a grant from the Toni Mendez Shapiro estate.
"Cooperation and unity are the most important values we can teach children," Rodgers said. "We believe that this is the essential first step to loving thy neighbor."
The We Are Family Foundation says its partners in the production are the Anti-Defamation League, Crown Theatres, Disney Channel, FedEx, Nickelodeon, HIT Entertainment, Nile Rodgers/Sony Publishing/The Bernard Edwards Estate/Warner Chapel, Nelvana, PBS, Scholastic, Sesame Workshop, Toni Mendez Shapiro Estate, and WGBH-TV in Boston.
A Federal Express spokesman said the company is "proud" to provide shipping for the project.
"Promoting diversity is part of our corporate culture at FedEx," said William G. Margaritis, senior vice president, worldwide corporate communications.
Characters appearing in the video are from award-winning shows including "Arthur," "Barney," "Bear in the Big Blue House," "Between the Lions," "Blue's Clues, Bob the Builder," "The Book of Pooh," "Clifford the Big Red Dog," "Dora the Explorer," "Jimmy Neutron," "JoJo's Circus," "Kim Possible," "Lilo & Stitch: The Series," "Little Mermaid," "Madeline," "The Magic School Bus," "The Muppet Show," "The Proud Family," "Rugrats," "Sesame Street," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and "Zoom."
The video also features cameo appearances by entertainers Bill Cosby, Diana Ross and Whoopi Goldberg.
First Amendment: but it is his PLACE to say anything he chooses, just as it is yours or mine. We ALL influence legislation, by voting, by letter-writing, by marches, etc. And if we are a "personality," then it is often done via the media. BTW, you're personal opinion and citation of the First Amendment differs from my posts how exactly?
And what "facts" have you presented, other than a few ramblings from a jackass psychologist with an agenda?
You've got your blinders on, as well, or you would have seen the many posts with links. And that psychologist, he's not the jack@ss....he's sitting in front of your keyboard.
BTW: Signing off for now to handle my nightly business (make dinner, watch the season premier of "24", etc).
However, Please do keep b****ing and flaming (and flailing) away.
I'll catch up with you tomorrow.
RE: "And that psychologist, he's not the jack@ss....he's sitting in front of your keyboard."
Your point is?
Goodnight (because I can't think of anything better to say).
But we still have laws against adult incest and prostitution (yet no more against unmarried fornication or adultery).
2 minors (or a minor near the age of his adult sex partner) who want to engage in homosexual acts are "free to" now as well.
Sex between "consenting adults" is not a part of the equation.
-----
We all know that if the two men in Pasadena Texas had been caught smoking crack in their bedroom rather than engaging in anal sex, we never would have seen the laws overturned.
If it's not a political issue, why are my tax dollars being spent promoting "tolerance" of the deviant behavior? Why do gay activists want gov't recognition, approval, and benefits if it is not a political issue. REALITY: It is a politcal issue as long as homosexuals are asking the government for stuff using tax dollars.
Were we wrong to take note of the communists who had infiltrated our government? It is certainly wrong to pin all of that investigation on Joseph McCarthy; the Crucible was written as a response to such inquiry long before Senator McCarthy came into the discussion.
Homosexuals are aligned with the modern left and as I have clearly stated, the Homosexual Agenda is the battering ram used to knock down America's laws and mores for the much larger Sex Positive Agenda.
Do you understand what I am talking about? I did not create the term "Sex Positive" and neither did the detractors; it comes from the advocates of such teaching.
Whether their denegration of America and its institutions is deliberate or not is unclear but the outcome is certain.
Don't fall into the trap of referring to it as "consenting adults in private".
It means absolutely nothing.
We are talking adults with adults, adults with minors (in certain legal circumstances), and minors with minors.
Adults are still prohibited from engaging in any number of consensual acts (sex or otherwise) in the privacy of the home.
The Supreme Court was real clear in making that point that it was only ending all laws against sodomy. That it was consensual or in private is completely irrelevant to the argument.
You've muddied the waters, now I must ask, what is YOUR point?
Kids should have sex with adults? Because you can't take the moral high ground?
"It would be nice" if we all had the same rights as homosexuals, but consenting adults are still beholden to the laws of this nation?
Are the Greys behind this too? First the Greys mastermind the teaching colleges now they are demanding a sex-positive agenda...maybe that's the reason behind all the anal probing in the UFO abductions.
You are the one with the fascination in anal probing. G'bye troll.
We apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment and are listing a number of excellent resources for teens and parents about sex and sexuality at the bottom of this page. This was a difficult decision reached after months of contemplation and we realize that many people will be unhappy about it. Many sites shut down across the Internet every day, usually due to poor response or not being able to turn a profit, but this is not the case with All About Sex. On the contrary, the success and popularity of this site since 1997 has been nothing short of phenomenal and we appreciate all the positive sentiment - it should be clear to any sex educator or parent familiar with this site that kids want and need open, honest and non-judgmental answers to their sex and sexuality-related questions, and that if such a forum is provided to them, they will flourish with it and ask questions they wouldn't be comfortable asking anywhere else. Rather than the days when talking about sex was only done in whispers and biology class, today's kids have so many more options for exploring the subject of sex, and, frankly, their own sexual interests. When AAS started, there was only one other site that had anything positive to say to kids about sex, but now there are many, many sites with excellent, open and honest information about sex.However, being so successful has a negative side as well, and keeping up with the popularity of the site and the work involved in maintaining the site and providing regular, fresh content, has become more than we can handle along with our obligations to our own families and employers. Expense has been another factor, although our host, Advances.com, has always worked with us to bring bandwidth expenses down, and this site has never been a profit-making site, and has never even taken donations. So, for a combinations of reasons, we are closing the site and hope everyone will understand. It has been a fantastic 7 years and we have been touched by so many of the fantastic regulars and kids who have poured out their hearts and souls talking about their sexual dilemmas, their happy and exciting first experiences, and their traumas and disappointments. Judging by the comments we frequently get, it seems that we've touched a few people's lives and been a positive force in general, and for that we are thankful. Some additional factors for those interested...
Below are links to many other excellent resources for parents and for teens.
Very Sincerely,
The owners and volunteers of All About Sex.org
RESOURCES FOR TEENS AND PARENTS :
Advocates For Youth - Calls for politicians to "Respect Young People's Right To Be Responsible". Excellent site that has a section focusing on responsible sexual rights of adolescents, with excellent reading material about sex education elsewhere in the world and how it compares to the U.S.gURL.com - A truly fantastic website created for girls that has an extensive area on sex and sexuality. They give honest, factual answers to girl's questions without pushing any ideology. They also have an excellent set of books for adolescent girls called the "Deal With It" series.
PFLAG Talk - Parents & Friends of Lesbian And Gay Youth - One of the most well-known and solid organizations available to gay, lesbian and bisexual youth - http://www.critpath.org/pflag-talk/
Being Girl.com - A really cool website created by the Tampax Corporation that talks about many sex-related issues (and has a sex-positive attitude), with a focus, of course, on the female body.
SexPedia - From the Discovery Channel's website, in the section focusing on sexual health, comes a 'encyclopedia' of sorts of sexual facts, from A to Z
The Coalition For Positive Sexuality ~ This site was the ONLY other site when we started that promoted a POSITIVE approach to adolescents and sex, and they helped make the AAS website so popular by being the first site to link to us! They have excellent instructions on condoms and other safe sex practices.
Ask Alice! - Now one of the most established and well-known resources available to people of all ages dealing with health, in general, and more specifically, sexuality and sexual health. It is run by Columbia University in New York and is very well done.
Like It Is! - The Brits Do Exactly That... They Truly Tell It Like It Really Is! No Political Agenda, No Religious Dogma, Just Honest And Open Conversation About Teen Sexuality, Discussed The Way It SHOULD Be In America (but isn't)
The Joys Of Teen Sex - Obviously, This Website Is Not In America... But It Is No Parody... It Is A Non-Politicized View On Teen Sex In The U.K., Where Adolescent Sexuality Is Considered... NORMAL (gasp!)
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Condoms!! - A Fantastic Resource From The People At CONDOMANIA!
SIECUS - The Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States - A resource geared toward sex educators and parents.
SOME ADDITIONAL FACTORS...
To be perfectly honest, there are other factors in our decision to shut down, and although those factors are a little embarrassing to admit, they are important enough that others need to know about them. Speaking now just for myself as the creator of this site and primary owner, I have had other things to consider in keeping AAS open the last year or so including the fact that I now have a wife to consider and a family of my own to start, and negative opinions about this site (even though we rarely hear any) no longer affect me alone. Also, sadly, the political climate in America has changed so dramatically since the Bush Administration and the Tom Delay Congress came to power that people no longer feel that they can speak out freely on controversial issues - especially if one is daring to disagree with the current political forces. Free Speech in America has been chilled by the Bush Administration in ways I did not think was possible in this country.
Obviously I am not a fan of President Bush - no secret there - but my dislike is not based on anything personal; it is based on the sweeping policy changes related to sex education and reproduction issues in area after area of our government. In order to push their religion-based idea that there should be no sexual activity outside of marriage (between a male and female only) they have issued Executive Orders and quietly issued new policies to department after department in the U.S. Government, and most recently has begun targeting for investigation organizations and websites speaking out against their "abstinence-only" programs and ideology. As much as I hate to admit it, this is very intimidating, especially for a couple of individuals who could be ruined, financially, just attempting to defend themselves against such an investigation, even if no wrong-doing is ever found. Below is a clip from a Salon.com article :
"Only a few weeks after No New Money went live last August, 24 House Republicans, led by Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., jotted off a letter to HHS Secretary Thompson asking that both SIECUS and Advocates for Youth (which was listed on the site along with more than a hundred other 'supporting organizations') be investigated."
And that is just one small example of what the political climate has become... SIECUS is now under further vicious attack by Republicans in Congress and a score of Religious Right groups. Keep in mind that SIECUS has been writing the sex education curricula for public and private schools in America since 1964 and is hardly a "controversial" group. To get a better idea of exactly what is going on, you can read the complete last article posted on the AAS site in December 2003. You can also visit the SIECUS website for the latest news.
On the up-side, All About Sex has never taken grant money to operate and there was nothing illegal on this site. However, neither of these organizations are anywhere close to being as controversial as some of the content on this website and we cannot afford the high-powered attorneys they can in defending themselves.
In past rulings about Free Speech by the United States Supreme Court they have talked about situations like what the Congress and Bush Administration is doing and said that such intimidation and censorship "chills" the air for those speaking out against government policies. This is what our elected officials are doing - and will keep doing until the American public decide's they've had enough. Well, the way I see it, when it comes to talking honestly and openly about teens and sexuality in North America, it has gotten downright freezing, and is likely to remain that way until a new, less conservative Administration is voted in. And American children will be the ones paying the price for years to come.
Below is the full text of the final news article posted on the AAS site. We believe it to be important enough to keep in circulation despite closing the site.
Article From Salon.com
No Sex, Please -- Or We'll Audit You
Why are some nonprofit organizations that don't agree with the Bush administration's "abstinence only" philosophy repeatedly investigated by the government, while faith-based groups get a free pass?
By Christopher Healy, Salon.com
Oct. 28, 2003 - Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, condoms: George W. Bush has a lot of enemies. And the question is finally starting to be asked, just what steps is his administration willing to take in order to silence them? Network anchormen and coffee-break pundits alike were abuzz over the did-they-or-didn't-they CIA leak scandal. But the outing of Valerie Plame isn't the only instance where the federal government has been suspected of using its resources in direct, if somewhat sneaky, retaliation against its political opponents. Ruining the lives of CIA agents may make for dynamic headlines, but recent evidence shows that the Bush administration also has much smaller fish to fry.
Take Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit organization that provides teens with accurate and informative sex education. In 18 years as a federal grantee, it has never been subjected to a government financial audit. That is, until it was suddenly hit with three in less than a year (one by the Centers for Disease Control back in October 2002, a second by the General Accounting Office in early 2003, and the third just two months ago, by a different arm of the CDC). The organization is crying conspiracy -- saying that it's being unfairly targeted because of its negative views toward the administration's abstinence-only education policies -- and the claims appear to be more than just paranoia.
In July 2001 the Washington Post published a leaked memo from the Department of Health and Human Services in which Advocates for Youth was described as "ardent critics of the Bush administration." This charge apparently came as the result of several Advocates for Youth press releases that railed against the president's backing of the "global gag rule" that prohibited any funding to foreign agencies that performed or facilitated abortions. In the leaked memo, it was also suggested that the Advocates for Youth programs did not go over well with the HHS because "the secretary [Tommy Thompson] is a devout Roman Catholic."
While Advocates for Youth may be near the top of Tommy Thompson's Most Wanted list, it is certainly not alone. After a group of activists booed Thompson at an international AIDS conference in Barcelona last year, a cadre of congressional Republicans called for investigations of the hecklers' various organizations. The CDC has conducted three reviews in the past 10 months of San Francisco's STOP AIDS program in an effort to make sure that none of its federal grant dollars have gone toward funding workshops that may promote sexual activity. And the New York-based Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) has been audited twice this year (its first audits ever, despite a decade of receiving federal grants), evidently because it created No New Money for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs, a Web site designed to educate the public about the possible dangers of abstinence-only education and to call for grassroots campaigns against the continued funding of these programs.
So far, Advocates for Youth, STOP AIDS and SIECUS have come through all of their audits with flying colors. But last year, as it turns out, a number of federal grantees were found guilty of misusing their government money. They were faith-based organizations.
Louisiana, a number of sex-education programs funded by Gov. Mike Foster's Program on Abstinence were found guilty in a federal court of openly violating the constitutional tenet of separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the governor's program after discovering numerous violations, including the use of grant money to teach abstinence through scripture, to perform skits with Christ as a character, to purchase Bibles, and to fund prayer vigils at abortion clinics. Though those Louisiana nonprofits are now required to turn in regular reports to the governor about their activities, none, to date, have been put before an HHS audit.
"Our complaint is not with getting audited," says Advocates' president James Wagoner. "Our complaint is with the selective and political nature of these audits. Ideology is invading -- if not subverting -- science within the Department of Health and Human Services [which houses the CDC], and we ended up on the audit table because we are one of the organizations pointing that out."
Advocates for Youth has continually stood behind its time-tested, research-backed policy of comprehensive sex education and HIV prevention, as opposed to adopting the Bush-backed method of abstinence-only education. Through its varied and numerous programs -- ranging from peer counseling and educator training to the creation of lesson plans and instructional videos -- Advocates for Youth has worked nationally and internationally to, as their mission statement reads, "help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health." This includes providing them with information about contraceptives as well as abstinence and brings with it a sensitivity toward all forms of sexuality.
Comprehensive sex education has, for years, had the backing of the scientific community as an excellent preventive measure against teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Its proponents -- the American Medical Association, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics among them -- will point to studies in publications such as the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Adolescent Health and the Journal of School Health, to back up their claims.
Support for the other side comes mostly from non-science sources, like Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation. In a much quoted April 2002 diatribe against comprehensive sex education, Rector cited a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association to back up his claims that abstinence-only programs work. He pointed out that the results of this study showed that teens who take "virginity pledges" exhibited a delay in their initiation of sexual activity. He failed to include, however, information from that same study that also reported that virginity pledges did not work for children under 14 or over 17; that they didn't work in communities where more than 30 percent of the teens took the pledge; and that teens who broke their pledges were far less likely to use contraception.
There is a clear lack of scientific data to back up the efficacy of abstinence-only programs, yet they have the full and complete support of the federal government. Hence James Wagoner's fears about ideology interfering with public health.
Wagoner is not the first one to charge the CDC with manipulating science for ideological purposes. In 1992, the CDC posted a page on its Web site listing sex-education "Programs That Work" from around the country that had curricula proven to be effective. All of the cited programs were comprehensive and included information about both abstinence and contraception; none were abstinence-only programs. Despite repeated outcries from proponents of abstinence-only, the list remained intact. That is, until George W. Bush came into office.
That Web page has vanished from the CDC's site, as have positive statements about condom use. Research results showing that abortions have no definitive link to breast cancer were taken off the National Cancer Institute's Web site, which is part of HHS. And now with these suspiciously motivated audits, it appears that HHS has graduated from simply hiding scientific information that offends the religious right, to retaliating against groups that disseminate that information.
There are three streams of revenue from which the federal government has chosen to award grant money to abstinence-only education programs: the Adolescent Family Life Act, started by President Reagan in 1981; the Welfare Reform Act of 1996; and the newly developed Special Programs of Regional and National Significance, which puts federal money directly into the hands of community-based organizations. All of these initiatives share a strictly delineated eight-point definition of "abstinence-only" that any program must meet to receive funding. Basically, this amounts to teens being taught that the only way to avoid pregnancy or STDs is to abstain from any and all sexual activity until marriage. For a program to comply with the eight-point definition, it must teach students that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity." Teachers in these programs are not allowed to endorse the use of condoms or other forms of contraception. However, they are apparently allowed to use instructional texts containing lines such as, "Is it fair to make a baby die because of a bad decision his or her parents made?" and "What if a girl came to school in a crop top, just barely covering her bra, and shorts starting three inches below her navel? What 'game' would she be playing?"
The abstinence-only drive was labeled a priority for HHS almost immediately after George W. Bush stepped into office. Starting in 2002, Congress has granted more than $100 million each year to organizations that sponsor abstinence-only programs; the average spending on these programs during the Clinton administration was about $60 million a year. Currently the only avenue through which organizations supporting comprehensive sex education can acquire federal grants is the Department of Adolescent Sexual Health, a division of the CDC that offers money strictly for HIV/AIDS prevention and gives out approximately $10 million a year divided among more than 40 organizations.
SIECUS' No New Money Web site urges people to contact their representatives and demand that funding to abstinence-only programs be stopped. That call to arms is what provided all the fodder the right wing needed to begin its retribution.
Only a few weeks after No New Money went live last August, 24 House Republicans, led by Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., jotted off a letter to HHS Secretary Thompson asking that both SIECUS and Advocates for Youth (which was listed on the site along with more than a hundred other "supporting organizations") be investigated. The letter pointed out that current law forbids the use of grant money for lobbying and explained that this group of congressional representatives just wanted to be absolutely sure no government dollars had gone into the construction or maintenance of No New Money. "I requested the audit of Advocates for Youth because I was concerned that the group was using taxpayer money to engage in political activities, not to help people," Pitts said in an e-mail to Salon. "And I intend to continue keeping an eye on how taxpayer money is spent, both here in Washington and by private groups."
Pitts has eagerly taken on a crusade against what he has called the "waste of taxpayer money." In a statement last month on his official Web site, he even called for an investigation into the spending practices of the NIH, suggesting that funding should perhaps be pulled from the venerable institution if it could not "provide a clear accounting and explanation for how it spends taxpayer money." He voiced his fears about "government agencies engaged in clearly useless activities" and illustrated this with examples from the NIH, such as research on female sexual arousal, gays and lesbians in the Native American community, and methods for better promotion of the morning-after pill. He insists that he is "not criticizing the objectives of these studies" but is "questioning the wisdom of using taxpayer resources to engage in research that has, at best, spurious benefits to our nation."
It isn't difficult to find a pattern in the type of programs that Pitts has targeted for possible defunding: The two specific Advocates for Youth programs that are funded by federal grant money -- and that are therefore at risk of being shut down by the findings of these audits -- are HIV prevention for young women of color and HIV prevention for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.
Pitts happens to be an ardent supporter of providing federal funding to faith-based charities. ("Rather than preempt these organizations with a government program that would never be as effective, we want to partner with them," he said in a September press release.) It shouldn't be too hard to see why groups like Advocates are feeling singled out.
The letter about No New Money that Pitts and his colleagues sent to HHS was cited to both Advocates for Youth and SIECUS as the impetus for all of their audits thus far. Strangely, CDC itself seems somewhat confused about exactly what they've been doing to these nonprofits, both of which were given the disclaimer that the investigations they went through in September were not audits. "In this case, CDC does not have official audit authority," explained CDC spokesperson Kathryn Harben. "So what we're doing is referred to as a 'business and financial review evaluation.'"
However, Enrique Tessada, president of Tessada & Associates, the independent firm contracted by the CDC to perform its most recent "business and financial reviews," wrote in his company's Spring 2003 newsletter that his staff was "auditing community-based organizations... [that] receive grants to conduct HIV/AIDS prevention and training nationwide."
Semantics aside, no one can disguise the fact that, regardless of results, these audits can have a punitive effect on nonprofits. "Each one of these rounds costs our organization enormous amounts of time and money," says Wagoner. "In many ways it can grind you to a halt if you have to go back through every book, pull every piece of paper, and so on."
When asked why Advocates and SIECUS were being subjected to so many reviews in such a short period of time, Harben said she thinks "it was really more poor planning [on the government's part] than anything else." When asked if every grantee organization was equally subject to CDC review, Harben said that "the history of that is probably not consistent." She also indicated that the reviews "could take anywhere from a couple of days to four or five days," but the groups under investigation report a lengthier time commitment. Preparation included, Advocates for Youth says it lost almost four weeks to its last audit, and SIECUS about two weeks.
"If they can't bury our heads in the sand about abstinence-only," says Wagoner, "they're going to try to bury our organization in audits."
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., fearing an abuse of federal audit power, has emerged as Advocates for Youth's greatest defender in this struggle. He and a contingent of 11 other congressional Democrats have voiced their concerns about the motivation behind these audits in letters to Tommy Thompson. In those letters they ask that HHS provide information about its auditing criteria in order "to determine whether there is sound scientific foundation for HHS' actions." Waxman's first letter received a response that was both delayed and abbreviated and left most of his questions unanswered. His follow-up letter, sent on Aug. 14 and requesting answers by Aug. 29, has yet to receive any response.
While attempting to get a response out of Tommy Thompson has become a Sisyphean task for Henry Waxman, it appears that all Joseph Pitts needs to do is mutter something under his breath and HHS will jump into action. On Oct. 2, Pitts and his Republican posse presented a list of 150 scientists whose work is funded by NIH grants, including some of those whose projects he questioned on his Web site. The NIH has already begun calling these blacklisted researchers, some of whom have contacted Waxman to tell him that they fear the loss of their funding. Waxman has picked up his pen once again, and on Monday demanded that Thompson take a stand and denounce this "scientific McCarthyism."
The true danger is, as Waxman says, "that some organizations will stop offering comprehensive education programs as a result of these audits, causing public health to suffer." That is also the biggest fear of Advocates for Youth. "This is not about the left vs. the right," says Deb Mauser, Advocates' vice president. "It's about what works at keeping young people safe and healthy. It's a human right to have effective science-based strategies available to young people who are facing an [AIDS] epidemic. Ultimately, Advocates [which receives only a third of its total funding from government grants] will survive. Whether young people will get the service they deserve is questionable."
"On one level, we feel vindicated by the audit process," says Wagoner, "but on another, we can not deny the impact of this kind of tool being used on nonprofits, and not just the intimidation on a group like ours -- we're going to wake up in the morning, come to the office, do the work we're always going to do -- but there's the residual intimidation of other organizations in this field. There are lots of them that get government money, that don't have diversified funds. And they may look at Advocates and say, 'There but for the grace of God go I. And if it's because Advocates is raising concerns about the subverting of science and research, if it's because they're raising their heads up a little too high, well, that tells us we'd better keep ours down real low.'
"You cannot convince me that this campaign isn't aimed at making an example out of us for the rest of this field," he continues. "My only hope is that it backfires, that those who have committed their lives to this field and to young people or to any other group that needs good quality public health -- we will not take it lying down. We will go back to work. We will do what's right."
About the writer
Christopher Healy's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Teen People, and "Out of the Ordinary: Essays on Growing Up With Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Parents."
NOTE: This article was reprinted here after being submitted to us by James Waggoner of Advocates For Youth.
Big yawn...there's no real point in going any further with this.
Got no answer to the Sex Positive Agenda. Can't make jokes about people advocating for sexually active children.
If you bother to read through that page, you will see that is the advocates FOR Sex Positive teaching, not someone trying to cast their agenda in a negative light.
Why can't you defend the practice? Do you really believe that it is that different from teaching children about "sexual identity"?
However, indoctrinating young minds is a big part of the homosexual agenda under the disguise of diversity and tolerance. Their goal is to get into the minds of children as young as 5 years old through the school system.
Excellent post, Victoria! I totally agree.
We have been discussing inexpensive ways to fast track kids through high school to avoid the liberal agenda:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315730/posts?page=84#84
The thread title was not well thought out, because some parents might instinctively skip over it due to attached stigma, whether real or imagined.
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