Vigilance

Screaming Guy?

2008-02-17T17:23:00.001-05:00

Possible Screaming Guy

Theresa Rickman

David Fishback responds to PFOX letter

2005-01-02T11:26:00.000-05:00

See this post and others at our new location:

teachthefacts.org/vigilance

In Pennsylvania, God or Darwin...Again??!!

2004-12-26T09:22:00.000-05:00

Well, there is that battle we keep referring to in this blog. The article Evolution Shares a Desk With 'Intelligent Design' points to the many dimensions this issue takes. The battle of fundamentalism and beliefs against science. We have said many times that this site got started to lend our support to the BOE decision to approve the new Health Education curriculum, that has turned into the "sex education curriculum" because lately sex has gained some prominence in our minds. But we have also said many times that this is not about "sex," "a condom demonstration," or even defend the rights of homosexuals to life their lives to their fullest and of our kids to now that, in case they have not noticed yet, there exist people that are homosexuals, and nuclear families who are constituted by two mothers, or two fathers... This is not ONLY about any of that, this is about the rights of our children to be educated in a scientific environment that leaves "beliefs" aside, and focuses on facts as we know them now, and as the scientific community have come to a consensus on them.

We have already discuss here that the word "theory" as understood by the scientific community is not just a conjecture or hypothetical proposition - actually, hypothesis are proved or disproved and the proved ones becomes theories - that can sit next to another bunch of suppositions, but theories in sciences are considered the truth until proved otherwise.

The theory of relativity, the theory of evolution.

Now the Board of Education in a small town in Pa. has decided to approve the teaching of the theory of evolution, next to the teaching of the belief in intelligent design -something that even the leaders in the proposition of that are against because they consider it does not have enough scientific backing as it stands now:

The Discovery Institute in Seattle, which is regarded as a leader in intelligent design theory, also opposes the Dover school board's policy in part because it seems to take three steps into old-fashioned creationism. "This theory needs to be debated in the scientific sphere," said Paul West, a senior fellow. "It's much too soon to require anyone to teach it in high school."

What's more impressive here is the fact that it seems we are now willing to vote in what should be considered science and what should be taught in schools, etc.
This lady says she would prefer to believe, but when did it happen that one could prefer what the truth is in matters of science?

DOVER, Pa. -- "God or Darwin?"

Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I'm 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. "What's wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"

Then, others say that the "majority" don't believe in evolution. Well, my daughter would love that the majority do not believe in maths so she could opt out of it, but as of now, she has a tough luck with that one. Science, regardless of what Bush opinion may be on the matter, can not be decided on election day...(Thanks GOD for that one!!)

Many here speak of a personal relationship with Christ and of their antipathy to evolutionary theory (A Gallup poll found that 35 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution). Steve Farrell, a friendly man and owner of a landscaping business, talked of Darwin and God in the Giant shopping center parking lot.

"We are teaching our children a theory that most of us don't believe in." He shook his head. "I don't think God creates everything on a day-to-day basis, like the color of the sky. But I do believe that he created Adam and Eve -- instantly."

Back in the town center, Norma Botterbusch talks in her jewelry store, which has been a fixture here for 40 years. "We are a very lenient town," she said. "But why should a minority get to file a lawsuit and dictate school policy? Most of our kids already know who created them."

Morality Is Not Just About Sex

2004-12-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

One thing I hate is how the word "morality" has been hijacked by religious hypocrites. Once it referred to the distinction between good and evil, and navigating the tricky waters between them. Now it just means sex. Sex education is bad because it has the word "sex" in it. Homosexuality, same thing. You notice how rarely anybody has sextuplets? You know why, don't you?

This writer in the St. Petersburg Times has fun with the whole thing:

When it comes to sex, Americans act like adolescents: simultaneously confused, titillated, scandalized, drooling, obsessed and grossed-out. Maybe it's because we are a comparatively young nation. Maybe it's because our mythic founders - the Puritans - were the most unfun people in Europe.

It doesn't take much for us to get our knickers in a twist. A promo for the nighttime soap Desperate Housewives appearing on Monday Night Football treated viewers to a creamy-skinned blonde, dropping her towel in front of a fully-padded player in a steamy locker room. The family values nation rose up, peppering ABC with complaints. They weren't offended that this low-rent seduction scene played into stereotypes about black men and white women. They just don't like nekkidness. Children could be watching!

Of course, it is a scientific fact that the mere sight of a nice set of female thoracic vertebrae can corrupt the minds of the young. Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires while fans with faces and torsos painted blue or with giant pieces of plastic foam cheese on their heads cheer them on. Football is good clean all-American fun. Sex is dirty; violence is okay.

...

"Values" voters claim to be all about "spirituality," but they are really fixated on the body. The Religious Right regards sexuality as dangerous, anarchic, an enemy of the orderly state. For progressives, expressions of sexuality (like religion) among consenting adults are a matter of individual liberty. In other words, not that big a deal... Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex

Click on the link and go have fun reading this nice article. It'll do ya good.

South Carolina -- Who Woulda Thunk It?

2004-12-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

South Carolina is, as this article in The State notes, "as solid a red state as you will ever find." The Bush administration is pushing for abstinence-only education, but the people of South Carolina don't want it:

The 2005 federal budget contains $168 million for abstinence-only education. The theory behind such an approach is that telling kids how to prevent pregnancy will encourage them to have sex.

The theory is debunked by research performed by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which found that sex education that includes information on abstinence and contraception delays the onset of sexual activity and increases the use of contraception once young people do become sexually active.

You might read that and think, fine, but not in South Carolina, as solid a red state as you will ever find. But it turns out that voters’ attitudes here on teen pregnancy prevention run toward a comprehensive approach.

When the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy surveyed Palmetto State voters about sex education in schools, 81 percent of them answered “yes” to the question, “Do you think that sexuality education which emphasizes abstinence, but also teaches youth about the benefits and importance of contraception, should be taught in South Carolina public schools?” Seven out of 10 of the registered voters also agreed that “comprehensive sex education in the schools decreases rates of pregnancy and disease.” S.C. supports comprehensive approach to stem tide of teen parents

Now, as we'll learn the hard way if we're not careful, you don't always get what you want. Hardline conservatives have been very crafty about implementing programs that the majority of people in an area don't want. They organize, they raise money, they campaign -- we're seeing it right here in Montgomery County.

The State opines:

The approach our state has taken through its laws and policies supports this idea of instruction tailored to the home and the community. It is a rational and reasonable method to work toward the important goal of reducing the number of teenagers who become parents too soon.

Our school board has also taken a "rational and reasonable" approach. Let's support the board in this, and stop the extremist minority now.

Home Schooling: Sometimes a Good Idea

2004-12-21T21:44:00.000-05:00

My kids went to a religious school for a few years, and now they go to public school. In the religious school they learned how to pray, they studied the scripture, and in the public school they acquire secular knowledge. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Religion is appropriate in a religious school, run by a church or synagogue, where everyone is paying tuition and has chosen that school for whatever reasons, probably including the religious stuff. It is not appropriate in a public school that the taxpayers are supporting.

Many of the religious right are choosing to home-school, and I think that's a good idea for them. If you have really, really strong religious convictions, it is unlikely that any teacher, even at a church-run school, can match your fervor. And there is no sense sending them to a public school, because, well, they won't get any religious education at all there.

I just came across a web site where they give advice on home-schooling: Classical Homeschool Curriculum.

Again, if you want children who will not merely survive in this culture, but will overcome and take captives for Jesus Christ, then they will need a distinctively Christian education. One of the most dangerous aspects of public schools is not the drugs, guns, ungodly sex education or even the lie that homosexuality is an acceptable alternative. It is the lie that our children can be properly educated without reference to God.

...

When our children attend government schools, they are told to learn math, but not to learn the central thing about math-that God is a God of order and that in Him all things consist. They are told to learn history, but not the most important thing about history-that Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, died an efficacious death, rose powerfully, and ascended majestically to the right hand of the Father.

When God is excluded from the classroom, we are not merely remaining silent about God. We are teaching children that they may safely disregard Him. Whether or not God exists, the lesson goes, His existence is irrelevant to what we are doing here. So when God is omitted, we are not silent about Him; rather we are teaching the children in the most convincing way possible that God is irrelevant. They can safely omit Him when it is convenient to do so.

So ... good. It's settled then.

You teach your own kids the values and beliefs you hold dear, and quit trying to "overcome and take captive" our public schools.

Deal?

Refuting Blakeslee

2004-12-21T17:15:00.000-05:00

The second author of a report that has been posted at the Recall the School Board web site has written a summary of it, which I see is making the rounds of the conservative web sites. I will insert a few comments.

As Goes Montgomery County, So Goes the Nation?
The Story of how Social Policy Crept into a Sex Education Curriculum

By David Blakeslee, Psy.D

What are parents and educators to do when they are presented with a curriculum touted as "scientific" and asserts that it will help reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in adolescents and the incidence of bullying and harassment of gays and lesbians? Such was the situation for parents and educators when the Montgomery County School Board presented to them last month their Annual Report of the Citizen's Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development. The results of this two year project were about to be implemented county wide to 8th and 10th graders.

The author tries to imply that someone pulled a fast one here. In fact, a citizens' advisory group worked out this curriculum over a period of years. Then they submitted it to the Board of Education, who asked for revisions, which were made. The citizens' committee voted by a large majority to accept everything, and the school board's vote was unanimous.

The curriculum is still quite conservative. It teaches objectively about homosexuality, not that it is evil, but that some people are just gay. As a consequence, a group formed, with the aim of removing the entire school board. Those who had voted in the minority have now apparently decided that, since they were unsuccessful in forcing their hateful "family values" on the county from within the system, they would have to attack it from without.

Many parents were appreciative of the schools efforts to help protect and educate their children. They were concerned, however, that the actual curriculum designed during this two year process may have unintended consequences that would undermine the very purpose of the proposed changes. And so they decided to look closer.

This is pure fiction. The leader of the "recall the school board" group was on the committee. She and another committee member just didn't like the way the vote went.

What they found was a curriculum that makes five critical errors in sex education. In a recent report titled, Health Education as Social Advocacy, co-author, Warren Throckmorton and I critique the proposed curricular changes and examine problems in detail.

And we note that the "report" does not mention anywhere in its text who paid for thirty five pages of criticism.

First, the curriculum may present too much too soon. As in many schools, material is offered to 8th and 10th grade students. We have an observation and concern about this practice. Durex, the condom manufacturer, did a world-wide survey on sexual behavior and sex education. In analyzing their data, we came to a startling conclusion: there is a statistically significant linear relationship between onset of sex education and onset of sexual behavior. Simply stated, the earlier an adolescent is educated about sex, the earlier he is likely to engage in sex. This observation is so remarkable because it remains true across a worldwide tapestry of cultures which have different political systems, ethnic makeup and religious systems. This disturbing finding raises the provocative question: Are there unintentional negative consequences from merely the presentation of sexual education programs?

The change introduced in the eighth grade is that students will learn about homosexuality. Until now, the rule was that a teacher could only talk about it if someone asked. Now, kids will be taught that there are various sexual orientations, and will learn what they are.

In tenth grade, they will be taught about condom use, including a video that shows how to put one on. The statistics that Dr. Blakeslee forgets to mention in this section show overwhelmingly that knowledge of contraceptive techniques reduces the rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Second, adolescents are not adults. There is a growing body of research which indicates that the adolescent mind is undergoing a huge renovation: from thinking concretely to thinking abstractly. During this renovation, however, research suggests that adolescents process their decision making in a highly emotional and impulsive manner. Material in the curriculum which educates about condom flavors and creates an artificial line between sexual behavior of adolescents and high risk sexual behavior in adolescents overlooks this central feature of the adolescent mind. While this is not news to anyone who has one or was one, adolescents are predisposed to think and act impulsively when contemplating sexual behavior because that emotionally driven behavior easily overwhelms their compromised decision-making ability.

Blakeslee is here referring to the findings of a professor at Binghamton Univerity, who has done much research on changes in the brain during adolescence and their effects on behavior and development. When asked in email about the conclusions as they were applied by Throckmorton and Blakeslee, she wrote "How that relates to sex education -- or what should be taught in sex education (and when developmentally) --seems to be more a matter of interpretation. It could be argued that the more hard facts and strategies for dealing with emotional situations, the better armed adolescents would be..."

Third, biology is not destiny. When discussing sexual orientation, the curriculum is permeated by a world view which sees same sex attraction as determined by one's biology. This "born-that-way" position is used by advocacy groups to strengthen their arguments for civil rights in the current political climate. It is not a position supported by research into same sex attraction. Furthermore, the curriculum ignores a competing view in academia which holds that sexual attractions are acquired via an interaction of environment and temperament. Why would the Montgomery County school board present only one view on this topic when the actual research picture is so much more complex?

There is no serious debate in the scientific community. There is wishful thinking by some conservative groups, whose world-view remains consistent if sexual orientation is simply another choice that a person makes. An individual can choose whether to engage in sexual behaviors of any kind, there is no argument there, but in that place called reality, some people "just are" gay.

Further, his argument that the curriculum ignores the interactions of environment and predispositions is simply false -- he's hoping you won't read the report itself. A section called "Interactions Between Psychological and Physical Development" outlines a section on:

B. Factors Contributing to Sexual Identity as Part of Total Personality

1. Physical (genetic, anatomical)

2. Psychological

3. Environmental

4. Other

This clearly contradicts his argument.

Fourth, health education is not an appropriate venue for social advocacy. The curriculum cites resource materials which come from advocacy groups and completely overlooks peer reviewed scientific studies which present more educationally sound material. This is one of the saddest parts of the curriculum, because it so clearly undermines the most cherished value of every educational system: credibility. Credibility leads to trust and trust accelerates the learning experience by defeating unnecessary skepticism and cynicism. This is especially harmful to adolescents who are just learning to think critically. Why would Montgomery County allow their credibility as an educational system to be needlessly undermined by advocacy based education?

The minority on the citizens' committee wanted to include "advocacy" literature, too -- this argument is transparent. Would you object to some facts from the Heart Association if your child was studying the heart? There are groups who promote sex education in America and around the world, and they produce literature. Most of those groups try to teach tolerance, which is what this group can't stand -- our children may grow up thinking that homosexuals are just people.

This point cannot be made too strongly. Blakeslee and those who pay him believe in teaching social advocacy. They wouldn't mind if the school district taught that homosexuality was a disease, or a form of mental illness, or a sin. You can be very sure they wouldn't complain about that. They can't stand your kids learning that some people are gay, without also learning that it's evil.

Fifth, tolerance does not require distortion of facts. The curriculum, in an effort to teach tolerance completely obscures the overwhelming benefit of the two parent family. It defines family in a nearly meaningless fashion: "two or more people who are joined together by emotional feelings or who are related to one another." It implies that those who have significant concerns about the destruction of the family over the last 40 years are "intolerant:" The curriculum states: "American families are becoming more complex and the greater variety of households encourages open mindedness in society." There is no discussion of the significant and still growing body of evidence that shows that these "complex" and "various" households have significantly higher negative outcomes for children and women. This is education, in service of tolerance, becoming a vacuous exercise in social persuasion.

There are many kinds of families. Some homes include the grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins; some homes have adults without children, for one reason or another; and some kids have two daddies or two mommies. It is impossible to see any real way that a gay couple threatens the traditional family.

And note, further, that the notion of a "family," as used by hate-groups such as American Family Council, is a pure fabrication. Look it up. The dictionary doesn't say how many people it takes to be a family.

A family is defined by love. Blakeslee's rhetoric, quoted here, is motivated by hatred of what it does not understand.

Despite recent attacks on abstinence education in the media and by politicians licking their wounds from the November election, recent data suggest that this type of education is making a difference. Teen pregnancies during the last ten years have declined over 20%. Furthermore, children who take virginity pledges delay their first sexual experiences by 3 years (from 16-19 years). Older children making decisions about sexual behavior is likely going to lead to more mature, responsible decision-making. Finally, significant risks for gay identified adolescents and young adults persist: although gay men account for only 2-3% of the general population, they account for 44% of the new cases of HIV. Maybe virginity pledges for gay identified adolescents will help lower the incidence of HIV for these vulnerable adolescents?

Yes. teen pregnancies are declining, and condom use is increasing. Coincidence?

Everybody on both sides of this debate hopes that their children have the good sense to abstain from sex in their teens years. But the facts are that approximately half of teenagers do, in fact, have sexual intercourse. We can't stop them, but we can teach them what to do so that they don't get pregnant or spread disease.

The sexual revolution has been a tremendous success for adults who did not contract incurable STD's and for publishers of sexually explicit material. For nearly everyone else it has had devastating consequences. Let us make sure that during this process of educating our children that we tailor our information to the tried and true and to the developmental needs of our children.

Somebody needs to tell this guy that the sexual revolution was a long time ago. It ran into a brick wall when herpes became epidemic, and rolled over and died with AIDS. Teenagers need to have information, so they can make the right choices, even when they're making the wrong choices. Maybe your kid is one of the few who gets the facts at home, but what about the kid that your kid is going out with?

David Blakeslee, Psy.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in Lake Oswego, Oregon. He is co-author, along with Warren Throckmorton, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the College Counseling Services at Grove City College (PA) of the recent report, Health Education as Social Advocacy, which is available at _http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf._
(http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf.)

In sum, Dr. Blakeslee has a story he wants you to believe. It's right in the title -- he wants you to think that "Social Policy Crept into a Sex Education Curriculum." But no, that isn't what happened. The well-established processes for curriculum change were followed. After years -- literally, years -- of discussion, it was decided that the curriculum needed to be brought up to date. All the t's were crossed, the i's were dotted, votes were taken, citizen input was plentiful. The school board made the right choice, but some people can't stand it.

It is extremely important for the people of Montgomery County to take a stance against those who would force their narrow preferences on us. We need to support the board in this.

Fundamentalism: "Ours," and Theirs

2004-12-20T16:21:00.000-05:00

Turkey, as you know, is working toward becoming a member of the European Union. It is also largely a Moslem country. An emerging problem is noted in this article in the socially-conservative news source, The Daily Standard (web version of The Weekly Standard):

... Before the formal accession process could be begun, the European Union required that Turkey make its laws congruent with European standards. Turkey passed 218 laws which reformed its penal code. Among them were laws making marital rape a crime and treating honor killings of adulterous wives as seriously as other cases of intentional murder.

But as we celebrate, it is worth remembering that Turkey almost didn't make it. Through much of the summer and fall there was one big sticking point. Turkey's government wanted to pass a law that would make adultery by either spouse a crime.

Europe was outraged. The E.U. Commissioner for Enlargement, the German Guenter Verheugen, said the proposed law "can only be a joke." He proclaimed that a law banning adultery would suggest that Islamic law was entering Turkish law, and his spokesman said such a proposal was "alien" to the European way and would indicate "a fundamentalist mentality that the state runs your bedroom."

The Standard article, which is written by a UVa professor of politics, goes on to report some statistics about adultery and its effect upon marriage, which is, as you can imagine, negative.

Europe is in no position to lecture anyone about sexuality whether in or out of marriage. It seems incapable of creating families and societies that meet the most rudimentary criterion for good health--reproducing themselves.

BUT WE MAY have here an opening for America. A 1998 survey of 23 nations by the University of California at Irvine's Eric Widmer found the United States more disapproving of adultery than 15 European nations. Eighty percent of Americans said adultery is always wrong. Only Ireland and Northern Ireland seemed as adamant.

So we can tell Turkey and the rest of the Islamic world that we would never wish to rule out of the company of civilized nations a country whose only offense was taking marital vows seriously. We can remind them that the Bible--as well as the Koran--has something to say on the subject. And we can pledge to work together toward creating societies with laws that strengthen families.

So The Standard sides with the Turks on this one. They think it's a good idea to outlaw adultery, which those effete and dissolute Europeans think is so funny. Dutch blogger Jasper Emmering takes the ball:

In other words, they [The Standard] want the freedom to write Holy Verses into law.

It is important to keep this in mind when reading (social) conservatives on Islam. They hate Islam, but they don't really disagree with Islam on a lot of stuff.

They think it's right for society to demand that women dress demurely, even if they think that the hijab is out of line. They believe in abstinence the way Somalians believe in clitoridectomy, it enhances virtue. They think crime ought to be punished harsher, like in the olden days, even though the chopping off of hands is a bit too much for them. And they think government has a right, nay a duty to regulate the bedroom-behavior of consenting adults. They even got their own bunch of terrorists.

Well, that might be going a little far, don't you think? Mmm, but it is something to think about.

These Christian social conservatives would earnestly like to do everything they can to eradicate Islamist terrorism. Everything, that is, except promote liberalism. But, to paraphrase Tony Blair, to do so would require them to be "tough on terrorism, and tough on the causes of terrorism".

The problem is that these Christian social-conservatives share a lot of values with orthodox Muslims, but at the same time Muslim orthodoxy (fundamentalism if you will) is the basis on which the current batch of -mostly Arab- terrorists have built their organisations. They recruit in Mosques and divert money from Muslim charities to fund their cause. Promoting a more liberal Islam would obviously be in the interests of the United States.

The Unitarian-Universalist web site UUWorld has a clear and interesting article describing religious fundamentalism, Moslem and Christian: The Fundamentalist Agenda. This post is long enough already, I won't quote sections from that article, but the reader may find it very informative.

How would the Taliban feel about the new sex education curriculum? An educated guess: they'd want to recall the entire Board of Education.

Penn Parents Fight Back

2004-12-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

Parents are fighting back, after local religious extremists in Dover, Pennsylvania, forced schools to begin teaching "intelligent design" instead of scientific theories in biology classes.

Highlighting the growing national debate over the role of religion in public life, 11 Pennsylvania parents Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a local school district's order to teach "intelligent design" to public high school students.

The requirement, they said, violates the religious liberty of parents, students and faculty and the constitutional separation of church and state.

On Oct. 18, the Dover Area School District Board voted 6-3 to make biology students at Dover Area High School "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution and include in ninth grade curriculum the theory of "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex it must have been created by some higher power.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg on behalf of the parents, say intelligent design is a disguised, more secular form of creationism -- a Bible-based view that God, not evolution, created all species. Parents sue schools over 'intelligent design:' Teaching about 'gaps' in evolution theory violates church-state separation, they claim

If this is what you have to do, people, then this is what you have to do. Take it to court.

"There is a small group of people trying to push a particular religion on everybody," said Joel Leib, a parent who participated in the lawsuit. "It is basically a way of teaching creationism. ... It doesn't belong in science class, just the same as evolution doesn't belong in comparative religion class. "

And listen to what the school district's argument is:

[attorney] Thompson acknowledged that intelligent design "has religious implications" because its proponents can't identify the "transcendent being that created species. But there are religious implications to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as well. If man was an accident and not a directed thing, then you do away with God. The implication of the theory of evolution is, there is no God; it's all forces of nature," he said.

Sad to think that some people feel that God can't exist in the same world with the facts of science. To them, if there's evolution, there can be no God. Can it possibly be that simple?

American Family Association Sends Sexually Explicit Mail to Thousands

2004-12-17T17:26:00.000-05:00

Hey, here's something the gang that wants to kick out the MCPS school board hasn't thought of yet. They could do like the American Family Association (motto: "Promoting Traditional Family Values") did, and send letters with explicit descriptions of gay sexual behaviors to 65,000 people's homes.

A sexually explicit letter sent to 65,000 homes in Jefferson County is causing outrage, not only in neighborhoods where it was distributed, but also among members of the Louisville Metro Council. The letter urges people to ask their council representative to vote against the "Fairness Ordinance." And as WAVE 3's Maureen Kyle reports, the letter also targets a religious group.

The language is explicit and the message is clear. "I think its very vindictive -- hateful," says Karen Carpenter. She's one of the 65,000 people who received the literature from Frank Simon with the American Family Association of Kentucky. Residents Outraged After Sexually Explicit Letter Sent To 65,000 Homes

See, the Louisville Metro Council is discussing a local civil rights ordinance, and the issue is whether to include reference to homosexuals in it. Interestingly, Martin Luther King's niece, Alveda King, who is shown in the picture here at the left, argues that gays should not be protected. She:

told the council that gays and lesbians don't deserve the civil-rights protections because homosexuality is not "an immutable characteristic" like skin color or ethnicity.

"I feel it is unfortunate to put these two issues (civil rights based on sexual orientation and civil rights based on skin color) together," said King, who came from Atlanta to support ordinance opponents. 'Fairness' fight is in spotlight

It should be noted that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, has said that King himself would have supported the fight for gay rights, if he were alive: Snatching A Piece of King’s Legacy

Hey, this is kind of interesting:

Those who oppose the provisions that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity brought in four people from out of town to talk about the ordinance.

Besides King, they were a former lesbian who now works for the conservative group Focus on the Family, a lawyer from Cincinnati affiliated with social conservative groups and a counseling professor from Pennsylvania who said homosexuality is a choice.

I'll bet I know who that counseling professor was. I'll bet he's the same guy that wrote a 35-page "white paper" criticizing the new MCPS sex education curriculum, which is now posted prominently on the RecallMontgomerySchoolBoard.com web site. The newspaper doesn't say, but I'll just betcha. This guy is on a mission.

The language in this letter also leaves some Metro Council Members asking which group will be targeted next?

"It definitely shows that bigotry is alive and well in the city of Louisville," Weston said.

Well, folks, sorry to say, but it's not exactly unique to your area.

Creationism and Evolution Need Not Be Opposed

2004-12-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

Every year I attend a conference or two on "evolutionary computation." This is where researchers write computer programs based on the principles of Darwinian evolution, and use them to solve really hard mathematical and engineering problems. The thing is, you can have a problem with lots and lots of variables, all interacting with one another, all nonlinear and hard to figure out, and you want to find some optimal combination of them, so you feed your data set to the computer program and it evolves the solution. This is mostly done using methods based on random mutation and sexual recombination, plus "selection," which is like "natural selection" except it's not natural in a computer program -- it's survival of the fittest.

One thing you come away with is an appreciation for the raw power of these simple processes. The problems these guys solve are analogous to the adaptations that organisms make to their environment, like the development of eyes, and camouflaged coloring, and preference for particular foods. Following a few simple steps in a computer program, these computer scientists can find solutions to problems that are way beyond what ordinary mathematical methods can do.

This has given me a special appreciation for evolution itself. It is one thing to look at the complexity of the world and say, this could not have happened by chance, but it is another when you understand the simple elegance and raw power of the evolutionary process itself. Life is constantly changing, organisms adapt over generations, and the complexity of the biological world is, indeed, within the scope of evolution. Randomness and all.

Across the US, there are today religious groups who oppose the teaching of evolution. They believe it is a challenge to their beliefs, and promote the teaching of some alternative "creationist" belief system instead of the scientifically supported one. These groups have had a lot of success around the country, getting school systems to present their fictional theories as if they were actual scientific contenders. Since most people are not evolutionary biologists and cannot expertly evaluate the literature, they take at face value the information that is given them. And when that information comes from religious proselytizers disguised as scientists, it is extremely difficult for the lay person to know what to think.

A website called unscrewing the inscrutable (motto: "I'm not angry, I just don't agree with you") has been posting a very interesting series of biographies of individuals who promote these creationist and "intelligent design" perspectives. The series is called "Know Your Intelligent Design Creationists."

Today's posting is a little different. They call it "Know Your (Honest) Intelligent Design Creationists," and it is about a real scientist who really believes in God, and who also agrees with biologists that life evolves according to Darwinian principles. This evangelical Christian, Glenn Morton, is a petroleum geophysicist with a belief system he calls theistic evolution.

This is the faith based position that the universe, the solar system, the earth, and the history of life up to and including the evolution of anatomically modern humans from earlier primates, were created by God using processes created by same which humans can understand and explain to some degree through careful scientific investigation. In this view there is no contradiction possible even in principle between believing in a Creator and any valid facts gleaned from studying that Creation. Technically this could be considered a form of Creationism as it assumes a Creator Deity which produced the universe and everything in it. But if so, Theistic Evolution is the only form of creationism which is 100% fully consistent with modern science.

Over the centuries there have been numerous collisions between religion and science. Copernicus, Galileo, and their contemporaries were labeled heretics for their findings, but over time the persuasiveness of scientific research overwhelmed the church, and we are now comfortable understanding that the earth moves around the sun, for instance. Darwin brought a shock to the modern world, proposing out loud that humans are simply another species in the animal kingdom, evolved as apes, subject to the laws of nature that affect all species.

Indirectly, Darwin's challenge underlies the controversy over the Montgomery County sex education curriculum. Is it better to think of human beings as physical organisms, with natural emotions they don't understand and can barely control, or to think of us as spiritual beings, created by God with a special blessing to win the struggle against the temptation of the flesh? It is a hard question, and of course your answer will determine not only how you feel about this specific curriculum, but how you manage your own life.

More directly, we should expect a religious challenge to our county's biology curriculum. My daughter tells me her biology teacher already says "some people believe" in front of any statement about evolution; in fact, it would be accurate enough to say "all biologists believe" in the validity of evolutionary theory.

The example of Glenn Morton shows us that it is possible to hold deep religious convictions and accept the findings of modern science. The two are not opposed, really. Because America is a country where religion is very important, it would be foolish to cast this debate as a war between religion and science. A "win" by the religious side leads us directly back to the Dark Ages. The more enlightened outcome is the development of Christian beliefs that are not challenged by evolution and by the observation that humans are part of nature. People need their faith, but it cannot, in the long run, be a faith that is contradicted by fact.

Reason to Censor TV Even More

2004-12-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

This study came out earlier this year but is right now getting a wave of attention around the Internet, especially on the right-leaning sites. A researcher at RAND did two studies that conclude that, well, as the RAND site puts it:

Exposure to TV Sex May Hasten the Initiation of Sexual Activity Among Teens Does Watching Sex on Television Influence Teens’ Sexual Activity?

A sample of 1,762 teenagers were interviewed about their sexual experiences and what TV they watched, and then a year later they were asked again. The paper is available in PDF form online: HERE

When you study inferential statistics, the very first rule you learn is: Correlation does not prove causation. This RAND study could have been written by a textbook author seeking an example to demonstrate the point.

This study, as it is described in this RAND report, simply does not show what the authors say it shows.

Let's say you have two measures on a sample. You see at Time 1 that some respondents watch sexier TV than others, and you grade them on that. Then, at Time 2 you find that some of the teenagers have had, uh, some degree of sexual activity, and you grade them on that. Raise your hand if you're surprised that the kids who watched sexier TV at Time 1 acquired more sexual experience by Time 2.

The full explanation about correlation and causation is that the two correlated variables (in this case, sex-on-TV and sexual behavior) might have the hypothesized causal relationship, or as is often said A might cause B (TV-watching might cause sex), they may have the opposite causal direction, e.g., desire for sexual experience causes interest in sexy TV, or there may be a third variable at work (C causes both A and B), for instance, there might be personality factors, environmental factors, even physiological factors that cause a kid to be curious about both sex on television and sex in real life.

But these authors entertain only one possibility: that TV watching causes kids to go out and have sex:

Reducing the amount of sexual talk and behavior on television, or the amount of time that adolescents are exposed to them, could appreciably delay the onset of sexual activity.

I can just imagine what the moralists will do when they get hold of this one. America, already the most prudish country in the Western world, is still too libertine for some people. Most people are just not in the position to evaluate this kind of research -- how would they know? Why wouldn't they take these morsels of jargony-sounding stuff as real science? When fake-science "proves" what people hope is true, it's very, very hard to argue against it.

Common Sense for Alabamians

2004-12-16T17:55:00.000-05:00

Awhile back we wrote a little bit about the Alabama legislator who introduced the law to ban novels with gay characters from the libraries, and prevent any university from presenting a play with a gay character, and other stuff. He says he does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". The British online newspaper The Guardian has an interview with this character. There are some insights to gain from it.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. "It was election day," he explains. Last month, "14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman". Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and "moral values in this country" were "the top of the list".

"Traditional family values are under attack," Allen informs me. They've been under attack "for the last 40 years". The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is "Hollywood, the music industry". We have an obligation to "save society from moral destruction". We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from "re-engineering society's fabric in the minds of our children". We have to "protect Alabamians".

Huh? Alabamians??? Is that what they call themselves? Alabamians?

I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can't produce any local examples. "Go on the internet," he recommends. "Some time when you've got a week to spare," he jokes, "just go on the internet. You'll see."

Actually, I go on the internet every day. But I'm obviously searching for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository in history of urban myths. The internet is even better than the Bible when it comes to spreading unverifiable, unrefutable stories. And urban myths are political realities.

...

Since Allen couldn't give me a single example of the homosexual equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama theatre department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which includes, besides "tits and ass", a prominent gay solo number. Would Allen's bill prevent university students from performing A Chorus Line? It isn't that he's against the theatre, Allen explains. "But why can't you do something else?" (They have done other things, of course. But I didn't think it would be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America and The Rocky Horror Show.)

Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but "it's not censorship", Allen hastens to explain. "For instance, there's a reason for stop lights. You're driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop." Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you're gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green. 'We have to protect people': President Bush wants 'pro-homosexual' drama banned. Gary Taylor meets the politician in charge of making it happen

People like Allen think they're just making the world a better place for decent people. To them, this is not censorship, it's just common sense. Gay people are evil -- why would anybody need to see a play about them? It's not hate, it's just common sense.

Two Letters

2004-12-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

There was a fascinating pair of letters to the editor in The Post this week, one from the current and past leaders of the Montgomery County School Health Council explaining why MCPS approved the curriculum, and one from a representative of an "ex-gay" group, complaining about it. Let's reprint both in full, for the record:

Tuesday, December 14, 2004; Page A26

From listening to the small but loud group of misinformed and fearful parents and other county residents, one might think that the Montgomery County Board of Education has spearheaded drastic and radical changes to its health education curriculum ["Writing on the Rightness of Sex-Ed Changes; Curriculum Prompts Hundreds to Protest or Voice Support," Metro, Dec. 5].

What the board did was actually twofold:

First, it ensured that health teachers will be able to provide a consistent message to students, through the use of a compelling video about the importance of abstinence, the dangers of unprotected sex and the proper use of condoms.

While these issues have been discussed in health classes since the 1980s, consistency and accuracy were lacking. Parents still have to opt in to this segment of the health class, and they have the right to bar their children from participating. This has not changed.

Second, the board approved a small pilot program, the results of which will be evaluated next summer, to teach students about the importance of tolerance and acceptance of sexual variation. The aim is to dispel stereotypes and bullying.

While we must respect the views of parents who do not want schools to provide this information to their children, those who oppose this curriculum for their children must respect the wishes of the majority of Montgomery County parents who favor it.

TRACY FOX

Co-Chair

HENRY LEE

Past co-chair

Montgomery County School Health Council

Rockville

Short, to the point, Fox and Lee's letter says what was done, says you don't have to agree with it, and notes that the majority of Montgomery County parents are okay with it.

The second letter was from the Executive Director of a group called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. They don't like the curriculum:

Regarding the article about the controversy surrounding the new sex-education curriculum for Montgomery County public school students:

As part of the curriculum, the Montgomery County Board of Education voted for materials published by gay advocacy groups while censoring other points of view.

For example, one of the board-approved materials urges schools to refer students to select religious groups such as Lutherans Concerned, Dignity for Catholics, Rainbow Baptists and More Light Presbyterians. Advocating certain religions is discriminatory. Nor should teachers be instructed to refer students to religious groups, especially without parental permission. This "resource" has no place in a school setting.

Another board-approved resource discusses whether AIDS is God's judgment on homosexuals and whether homosexuality is a sin. Some of the answers are offensive to people of faith. "Religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression," says one.

The source of that information, Maricopa Community College of Avondale, Ariz., took the material off its Web site in response to our inquiry. Although we advised the board of the college's action, it approved this discredited "resource" anyway.

The board refuses to explain why it approved these and numerous other materials as school resources while rejecting materials with other points of view. It should hold a public hearing to explain its actions.

REGINA GRIGGS

Executive Director

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays

Fort Belvoir

This group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, called PFOX, is an interesting one. The concept of an "ex-gay" person is very helpful to those that would argue that homosexuality is either a choice or a disease, and PFOX exists to tell you that gay people can change. But as the joke goes, there are lots more ex-ex-gays than there are ex-gays -- this bandwagon is famous for the number of people who have fallen off it.

I had never heard of PFOX before the December 4th meeting of the group that wants to recall the school board, but they mentioned them pretty often. You can visit the PFOX website to learn about their activities -- I found that a Google search on "Regina Griggs" turned up many interesting articles, as well. I won't spoil it for you: this is one busy lady.

If you're serious about understanding this issue, there are two other groups you should check out. First is Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG), a group of people who accept their gay family members and love them. This group claims a quarter of a million members and is sometimes referred to as the "rival" of PFOX.

Not surprisingly, there is some strong opposition to the promotion of "ex-gays." The interested reader is pointed toward the Ex-Gay Watch web site, and especially their ABOUT page as a starting point with an overview of this phenomenon. Scroll down, and on the righthand side of their site you will see topics listed. Many of them are very informative.

These are very confused times we live in. It seems that America is undergoing an interior debate about whether to follow the path to scientific knowledge or one that leads to enforced religious obligation. Along the way, the facts get slandered and distorted. Thin strands of evidence carry the weight of great, ponderous conclusions, while mountains of scientific data are brushed off as unimportant or misleading. People reach their conclusions first, then look for anything that will support them. And our schools are right in the middle of it.

We who maintain this site advocate that public school students should be taught empirically-supported facts, as well as they are understood by a consensus of the scientific community, and that topics of faith and values be taught somewhere besides the public schools. The question is not whether people should cherish their faith and live according to their beliefs, but whether religious beliefs should be allowed to overwhelm the teaching of facts in the public schools.

The Times Reports

2004-12-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times had a reporter at the Board of Education meeting yesterday. Not too surprisingly, that conservative paper led with a statement that kinda made it sound as if there were a mass movement opposing the new curriculum. They open with this:

A group of Montgomery County parents yesterday asked the school board to delay implementation of a pilot sex-education program this spring that teaches homosexuality is genetically predetermined and that same-sex couples are one type of family. Montgomery set on pilot sex-ed class

In fact, the "group of Montgomery County parents" against the sex education program was only one person, and there were two speakers in favor (see their statements in the post below this one). The speakers supporting the school board were well received by both the board and the audience. There was also at least one protestor who came with a sign to support the school board's decision, in case there were speakers opposing it.

An error in The Time's lead should also be noted. The curriculum does not teach that homosexuality is genetically determined. The Times was kind enough to interview Chris Grewell and Maryam Babed, who are both associated with this site, after the meeting, and they published some nice quotes.

The Times then went on to describe a "white paper" that is posted at the web site of the people who want to recall the whole school board for adopting the new curriculum.

Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College has published a 35-page scientific critique of the new curriculum that says the portion on "same-gender attraction is based on a theoretical orientation, called essentialism, which does not represent a singular consensus of opinion in the social sciences and research community."

The report also states that the curriculum uses documents "provided by advocacy organizations" and omits "scientific information, published in peer-review journals, which differ from the positions of these political advocacy organizations."

Mrs. Grewell called Mr. Throckmortion's findings "junk science" because it was not published in a "peer-reviewed, scientific journal."

Actually, it does not appear that Throckmorton is a researcher at all, so much as a clinician and conservative advocate. In the word-game presented in The Times, he states that a certain viewpoint can be called "essentialism," and then notes that not all social scientists are essentialists. Without going into the philosophical traditions underlying his argument, we can simply note there is, in fact, a "singular consensus" among social scientists that people do not simply choose to become homosexuals. Throckmorton stands in disagreement with the scientific community in his belief, for which he has only shreds of empirical support.

Comments to the BOE on new sex ed curriculum

2004-12-14T17:12:00.000-05:00

Today, Chris Grewell and I spoke in front of the BOE during the Public Comments portion of its business meeting. Following our comments, we got quite a bit of support and positive feedback from others at the meeting. Chris Grewell's comments are below, followed by mine.

Thank you for this opportunity to address the Montgomery County Board of Education. As the mother of two Einstein graduates (classes of 2001 & 2002) and a wonderful eighth grade student at Sligo Middle School, and as the wife, daughter-in-law and sister-in-law of three Montgomery County Public School tenured primary and secondary school teachers, I'd like to address the recently approved sex education curriculum changes.

First and foremost, thank you to entire Board of Education for taking on this controversial issue with balance and due care. You heeded the sage advice of the Citizen's Advisory Committee, whose research of all relevant literature and scientific studies, led them to propose some important additions to our sex education curriculum. These additions are important because they will save and improve lives by teaching our children to be tolerant of those who are of a different orientation. The curriculum additions also teach our children, who decide to become sexually active even as we stress they should wait, how to slow the spread of STDs and reduce unplanned pregnancies through the proper use of condoms. These are important life saving skills to be taught to our children and I thank you for voting to implement them. And as always, those who disagree with the sex education curriculum for whatever reason, still have the right to not grant permission for their children to attend the class but to take abstinence only or independent study instead. In my opinion, they keep these important life-saving facts from their children at their own peril.

Like the Board of Education, the Citizen's Advisory Committee is to be commended for their difficult and diligent work. While their recommendations to the Board of Education were not unanimously agreed upon, the sex education curriculum additions were supported by a strong majority. As I discuss these curriculum additions with my many friends and contacts in the Einstein community, I find that the vast majority favor teaching our children fact-based information about contraception and human sexuality at school. Many believe that the teaching of moral values about sexual behavior belongs in the home and/or religious institution, and are grateful that the basic facts about human sexuality will now be more completely covered in the classroom.

From accounts in the press, I have come to realize that there are some in this fine county who wish to recall the Board of Education for approving factual additions to our sex education curriculum. I want you to know that the vast majority of my friends and I support and sincerely thank the Board for it's proper and courageous vote to save our children's lives.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Christine Grewell

My comments:

I'm the mother of a 2nd grader at Sligo Creek Elementary School, and a freshman at Einstein High School. I am here to express my support for the new sex education curriculum, and to thank the Board for its wise decision to approve it.

Our children are in crisis, and they need our help. The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any industrialized country. About 40 percent of American women become pregnant before the age of 20, resulting in about 1 million pregnancies each year among women ages 15 to 19. Nationally, 22 percent of births were to teens ages 15 to 19 who already had a child. The next closes nation, the United Kingdom, has a teen birth rate that is only about half that of the United States.

Each year, more than 3 million teens contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD). It is estimated that one-fourth of all new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) cases each year occur in people ages 13 to 21, that half are among people under the age of 25, and that the majority of these infections are transmitted sexually. Other sexually transmitted viral infections that are prevalent among adolescents include the human papillomavirus, associated with the vast majority of cases of cervical dysplasia (a pre-cancerous condition of the cervix that affects over 2.5 million American women), and hepatitis B virus, which increases the risk of cirrhosis and cancer of the liver.

Our children need for us to have the courage that you have shown in approving the new curriculum. We need to have the courage to teach the facts—real, scientific facts about their bodies, about the people around them, and about the powerful urges they will one day be confronted with. They need to know the importance of abstaining from sex until they are ready to take on the responsibilities that go along with having sex. And they also need for us to have the courage to teach them how to protect themselves, should they make the decision to engage in sexual activity—as recent surveys have shown that roughly 50% of teens do have sex before leaving high school.

Thank you.

Maryam Balbed

The statistics I cited are from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, When Teens Have Sex: Issues and Trends:

Overview
Preventing Teen Pregnancy: Strategies That Work

No Comment Necessary

2004-12-13T21:57:00.000-05:00

From a New York Times story we wrote about below. This particular section is getting talked about a lot on the Internet.

State Representative Cynthia Davis of Missouri prefiled two bills for the next session of the Legislature that she said "reflect what people want." One would remove the state's requirement that all forms of contraception and their potential health effects be taught in schools, leaving the focus on abstinence. Another would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter with alternative theories to evolution.

"These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent, and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems," Ms. Davis said.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

Those Texas Textbooks Get Around

2004-12-13T20:33:00.000-05:00

Texas is, not very surprisingly, a place where religious conservatives have their way a lot of the time. This LA Times article, reprinted in the Philadephia Inquirer, paid a visit to Spring, Texas:

This is the home and power base of Terri Leo, a state Board of Education member representing 2.5 million people in East Texas. At the urging of Leo and several other members - who describe themselves as Christian conservatives - the board in November approved new health textbooks for high school and middle school students after publishers said they would tweak references to marriage and sexuality.

One agreed to define marriage as a "lifelong union between a husband and a wife." Another deleted words that were attacked by conservatives as stealth references to gay relationships; "partners," for example, was changed to "husbands and wives." A passage explaining that adolescence brings the onset of "attraction to others" became "attraction to the opposite sex." Texas conservatives mount more schoolbook challenges

Publishers end up making these changes to textbooks to sell in Texas, but of course they print thousands of them, and the same changes end up all over the country.

"I have very little use for this religion-driven curriculum," [director of the American Textbook Council Gilbert] Sewall said. "This confuses sex and moral education."

Texas is the second-largest buyer of textbooks in the nation, after California. Books purchased here wind up in classrooms across the nation, because publishers are loath to create new editions for smaller states. As a result, five social conservatives on the 15-member Texas board, frequently joined by five more moderate Republicans, have enormous clout - and often control the content used to teach millions of children.

Publishers have no choice but to heed many of the group's wishes, said Don McLeroy, a dentist, Sunday school teacher and Texas Board of Education member.

"They've got to sell books," he said. "It's business."

Here's a peek at what your kids will be learning in school before long:

In a nod to those who believe God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, a sentence saying the ice age took place "millions of years ago" was changed to "in the distant past." Descriptions of environmentalism have been attacked as antithetical to free-enterprise ideals; a passage describing the cruelty of slavery was derided as "overkill."

The pace of such efforts to alter the curriculum is expected to increase because Christian conservatives are "emboldened" by the Republican gains on Election Day, Leo said.

This is a theme we're going to hear more and more: they think they have a mandate.

Maybe they do in Texas.

The Christian Right Fights at the State Level

2004-12-13T08:33:00.000-05:00

The New York Times this morning has a brief but informative analysis of the Christian right's movement to affect policies at the state level. Many of them took the Bush victory in the presidential election as a mandate, a sign that they are the majority and that laws at the federal and local levels should reflect their religious views.

Energized by electoral victories last month that they say reflect wide support for more traditional social values, conservative Christian advocates across the country are pushing ahead state and local initiatives on thorny issues, including same-sex marriage, public education and abortion.

"I think people are becoming emboldened," said Michael D. Bowman, director of state legislative relations at Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian advocacy group based in Washington. "On legislative efforts, they're getting more gutsy, and on certain issues, they may introduce legislation that they normally may not have done."

It is on the state level "where most family issues are decided," Mr. Bowman said. And it is there that local advocacy groups hope to build quickly on the momentum from the election when legislatures convene in the new year.

In Texas, conservative Christians are backing an amendment to prevent human cloning, a measure that would also block the kind of cloning used in embryonic stem-cell research. In Georgia, advocacy groups hope to win approval this year of two measures limiting abortion, after redistricting helped Republicans take control of the state legislature. In Kansas, conservatives have won a majority on the State Board of Education, which is expected to introduce changes this spring to the high school science curriculum challenging the theory of evolution. And in Maryland, some black churches have joined with a white Republican state delegate to push for a ban on same-sex marriage. Christian Conservatives Press Issues in Statehouses (free registration required)

Issues such as gay marriage, cloning and stem cell research, and abstinence-only sex education are defined in the press these days as "moral values" issues, as the word "moral" seems to have lost its original meaning -- it has taken on a new definition like, "Conforming to the beliefs and practices of certain religious groups." Right and wrong have become more or less irrelevant to the term.

While Christian conservatives say the most promising legislative and policy efforts are in states that went for Mr. Bush, they are also optimistic about ballot issues they are championing in traditionally Democratic states like Maryland.

Are you okay with that? Are you willing to give these people free run in the legislature, the city council, the school board? Do you know what you have to do? You have to fight back.

Liberal advocacy groups say they plan to fight many of these efforts. But Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said that beyond filing legal challenges, liberals needed to appropriate the language of morality from Christian conservatives to capture the popular imagination.

"Lawsuits are about telling stories, and we need to talk about why we picked this case and why it's important," he said. "For instance, we need to ask, where is the morality when a partner of 20 years is denied hospital access because a state doesn't believe in gay marriage? Where is the morality in forcing a teenage girl into a back-alley abortion?"

Mr. Romero is referring to the old definition of morality, that old-fashioned stuff about doing the good and avoiding the bad. Are there still people in Maryland who think that's important? How far will the religious right get, as far as forcing Marylanders to play along with their amoral agenda?

For the abstinence-only lobby, public opinion doesn't matter

2004-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00

Never mind the fact that "Last summer, some 90 percent of Texans surveyed said they wanted teens to learn about both abstinence and contraception", Texan teens will not be learning about contraception in textbooks.

...The real heart of the textbook controversy is whether Texas students should learn about contraception. And the answer is no.

Texas has now officially gone to abstinence-only textbooks. The students are learning the ABCs of sex ed without the C. And as Texas, the second-largest book buyer in the country, goes, so may go the nation.

Only one of the four approved books even mentions contraceptives. The altered lessons teach students how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases in many ways – including "getting plenty of rest" – but not by using condoms. One actually suggests using latex gloves to avoid contact with blood but says nothing about using latex ... you get the idea.

Never mind the fact that the state mandates that students learn about contraception:

Ironically, the state curriculum for health education still mandates that students "analyze the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of barrier protection and other contraceptive methods." But the books have expunged the information they're required to learn.

For the abstinence-only lobby in Texas (the state with the hightest rate of teen pregnancy in the country) the big business of selling abstinence-only ideology was not about to be hampered by pesky little things like public opinion and state mandates.

Read the full article here (Dallas News, subscription required): Ellen Goodman: Sex Education, Texas-style

A War On Many Fronts

2004-12-12T16:31:00.000-05:00

This blog is mostly about the controversy in Montgomery County over the new sex education curriculum. But it's about more than that, of course. It is imperative to defend the school board's decision now, on this case, because there is no doubt that the religious right plans to intrude further and further into our lives. We need to stop them now.

Yesterday's Richmond Times - Dispatch has an excellent article about the movement to teach creationism in public schools. As they say:

... roughly 40 states face some kind of challenge to the teaching of evolution. Such is the case just up the road in Charles County, Maryland, where a majority on the board of education supports teaching creationism alongside evolution. In the words of one board member, "I believe that if we are teaching evolution, we should have a section on creationism as well, and any other theory. Let's motivate our kids to be creative thinkers." Creationism Might Deserve to Be Taught - in Religion Class

This is not far from us, it's not down in the deep South somewhere -- this is right here in the state of Maryland.

Such creativity, alas, would lead children to the conclusion that two plus two equals five and that when it rains, it does so because angels are crying. There is, in fact, a place for creationism in the classroom - the religious-studies classroom, that is. It does not belong in the science classroom any more than astrology or exorcism does. Yet more than a century after the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, many Americans seem intent on putting it there.

We will see something in the sex-ed debate that we see in the evolution debate, and it is necessary to understand what it is. The religious conservatives will try to argue that there is a "debate" in the scientific community, or they will say that "scientists are not in agreement" about whether God made the universe in a week, or if gay people choose to be that way, or whatever argument they want to win.

To support this, they will find some oddball professor or author somewhere who will be willing to argue, with suitably obscure jargon, maybe even with charts and equations, that whatever the faithful believe is indeed scientific fact. Or if not fact, at least there is a "debate" in the scientific community.

Sometimes these individuals are associated with universities, sometimes with Christian schools, and sometimes less than that. Some of them hold doctorates (and some have less-than-respectable credentials), sometimes even in a relevant field. You can imagine that putting an academic face on the extremists' arguments would be very lucrative, especially since there aren't many academics willing to do it.

This is a matter of obfuscation of the highest degree. The ordinary person cannot tell what the real scientific community believes, and as the Christian conservative movement has no shortage of cash they are able to fund publications and media appearances. The illusion can be created that someone is a real scientist, when in fact they are simply using technical jargon to justify their religious beliefs.

Evolution does not contradict theism - God could have directed the process, and Darwin himself concluded his magnum opus with the comment that "there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."

But perhaps the strongest argument against the view that evolution and creationism are merely two different faiths is this: Were someone to collect sufficient objective evidence to disprove evolution, science would be radically changed - and the disprover would be hailed as a genius of our age. In short evolutionists, like all scientists, are open to the possibility that they might one day be proved wrong. Is there a committed creationist willing to say the same?

Of course I have cut a lot out of the article -- I recommend you follow the link and read through it. We who hope to have scientifically-supported facts taught in the public schools will need to prepare a coherent defense against this technique of slandering science by putting forth phonies.

The Plot Against Sex in America

2004-12-12T14:16:00.000-05:00

I was planning on making some comments, but this article says it all, so why bother?

The article is The Plot Against Sex in America by Frank Rich.

In the case of "Kinsey," the Traditional Values Coalition has called for a yearlong boycott of all movies released by Fox. (With the hypocrisy we've come to expect, it does not ask its members to boycott Fox's corporate sibling in the Murdoch empire, Fox News.) But such organizations don't really care about "Kinsey" - an art-house picture that, however well reviewed or Oscar-nominated, will be seen by a relatively small audience, mostly in blue states. The film is just this month's handy pretext for advancing the larger goal of pushing sex of all nonbiblical kinds back into the closet and undermining any scientific findings, whether circa 1948 or 2004, that might challenge fundamentalist sexual orthodoxy as successfully as Darwin challenged Genesis. (Though that success, too, is in doubt: The Washington Post reports that this year some 40 states are dealing with challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools.)

Go check it out, it's worthy.

Abstinence, Chastity, and Education

2004-12-11T18:50:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow's Post has a very well-written, sensible article on abstinence education. The author, Deborah M. Roffman, has taught sex ed for thirty years and has written a book about it; she makes a lot of points in this story, the main one being that kids know when you're jerking them around.

After learning about a congressional report offering evidence that many widely used abstinence-only courses grossly overestimate the failure rates for condoms, the seventh-grade students at one of the schools where I teach were perplexed.

"Well, if these courses are supposed to be health education," asked one, "why would anyone want to give wrong information about something as important as preventing AIDS?" Another added, "Are they trying to tell kids not to bother using condoms when they need them because they're useless anyway?" "None of this makes sense!" said a third. "Condoms can save lives." To which another retorted, "Well, maybe it's sex they're against, not AIDS!"

Many educators and parents I work with scratch their heads, too, when they learn that hundreds of millions of federal and state dollars are being spent on abstinence-only programs, in which contraception may be mentioned only in the context of its failure rates. They'll Abstain If They're Given Good Reasons

It seems that the federally-funded programs are intended to persuade kids to adopt a certain behavior, whether or not facts are entirely accurate.

If 30 years of experience in this field has taught me one thing, it is that when talking with our children about sex, we need to make sure that we educate rather than dictate and that our approach is based on scientific evidence. Only then can we hope to arm young people against the escalating social and cultural pressures they face.

It is odd, adults don't really have any trouble understanding the mixed message of "don't have sex, but if you do, be careful." The reasoning seems kind of obvious to us. But the kids are trying to figure out what we're up to -- why tell us one thing, if you expect us to do the other?

But there is another way to counsel teenagers that I know they don't find confusing at all: "First and foremost, we love you, and we want you to be safe. The best way to be safe is to abstain. And, for people who choose not to abstain there are steps they can take to lower the risks." Teenagers don't hear that as a Do/Don't message, but as straightforward evidence of how much adults care about their well-being and about how we expect them to take these decisions very seriously.

Of course, all of us parents joke about how much our kids know already. Ah, yes, we know it, partly because we were their age once. One thing that makes sex education difficult is that kids are learning from one another already. An important part of the program is correcting some fallacies that get passed around.

The thing that gets missed in a lot of these discussions is the fact that teenage kids are not dumb. It's really not like they just take whatever they learn in school and accept it as absolute fact. Especially on a topic like sex, you know full well they are trying to figure out what our motives are -- why are you telling me this stuff? If it's because the grown-ups want all the cookies in the cookie jar for themselves, then ... duh, any reasonable kid is going to try to figure out how to get that lid open. And keeping them in the dark does create that impression.

Ms. Roffman makes a most interesting and subtle point, a distinction between abstinence and chastity:

Don't get me wrong: I think the emphasis on abstinence in recent years has gone a long way toward making it a more acceptable option for young people. There is no question in my mind that abstinence -- as in the delay or postponement of sexual intercourse -- is the prudent choice for anyone not yet ready to take on the physical, social, emotional and moral responsibilities inherent in the act of intercourse, or for anyone whose personal or religious values dictate that the proper place for this behavior is only within the context of marriage. I have yet to meet a responsible health educator who does not make these points clearly in his or her teaching.

However, the mandatory guidelines in the federal abstinence-only program reveal a very different agenda. Teachers in schools where these federal dollars are accepted are not permitted to frame abstinence or postponement as a recommended choice in the service of one's health, but as an obligatory state of being until marriage. In other words, abstinence is not to be portrayed as a means to an end (good health) but as an end in itself. The ultimate goal of the program is to promote premarital chastity rather than premarital health.

And, y'know, there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't belong in a school. It belongs in the family, in the church.

There is much concern in the public health community that abstinence-only programs leave those young people who ultimately choose not to abstain in a dangerous information vacuum. I see an equally dangerous moral and ethical vacuum, because they are also left without guidance on how to apply the values they have absorbed to the sexual situations in which they will find themselves. How ironic that in the name of "morality" we may diminish young people's ability to think and behave ethically.

There are a lot of nuggets of wisdom in this article, and I recommend you go read the whole thing, slowly, thoughtfully. The question of abstinence education is not black and white, it's very complicated, but if we approach it with empathy and honesty, we just might be able to get these kids of ours to adulthood safely.

The Gay Agenda: Conspiracy and Science

2004-12-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

The anti-curriculum people made it into the paper again today. The Gazette reports that they demonstrated outside the school system's headquarters. The photo shows two people, and numbers are not reported: Parents protest classes covering condoms, gay issues. The story contains a followup from last week's meeting.

Michelle Turner, former president of both the Montgomery County PTA and the Einstein High School PTA, was elected president of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum. Turner was a dissenting member of the Family Life and Human Development Advisory Committee, the group that recommended the new curriculum to the school board.

Turner, who has four children who attend schools in the Einstein cluster, said her major concern is the lack of scientific support for the discussion of sexual variations.

"There is nothing scientific about this new curriculum," Turner said. "There have been individuals who have been able to leave the gay lifestyle through therapy."

Nothing scientific.

Lay people often think of science as a cold, crisp, deductive process, something like proofs in mathematics, where some hypotheses are proven, and theories rise from the level of propositions to facts. In this case it could happen, as John Horgan suggested in The End of Science, that someday everything will be known, and there will be no need for scientific research.

This is not how scientists think of science however. More likely, scientists conceptualize their work as occurring within a large-scale effort called a paradigm, or "normal science", both terms attributable to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Normal science is an extended social, collaborative phenomenon, comprising not only a body of shared knowledge knowledge but research techniques, terminology, and other features such as participation in approved peer-reviewed journals, competing for academic tenure and funding, etc.

Researchers working outside the paradigm may contribute to the scientific effort. For instance, James Gleick's book Chaos: The Making of a New Science had influence far beyond the popular readership it was published for; scientists in various fields were introduce to chaos theory through that book, and it led them into the literature of the paradigm itself -- the point being that paradigmatic science is open to outside influences, and is not a closed box.

Ms. Turner's comment that "there is nothing scientific about this new curriculum," however, reflects something entirely different. Normal science has researched the psychology, biology, sociology, and even the economics of homosexuality now for decades. The paradigm is firm, consensus has been attained on many questions. And -- this is important -- the facts represented in the school board's new curriculum do reflect the finidings of scientists working within the normal paradigm.

There are a couple of writers who insist that the paradigm is wrong, and that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation. A couple of the more prominent of these are Warren Throckmorton, Director of College Counseling at Grove City College who publishes widely in Christian magazines and newsletters and has a Christian music CD, and Elizabeth Moberly, a British theologian. These writers, who promote the practice of converting homosexuals to a heterosexual orientation, do not base their beliefs on scientific research, but on religious beliefs. These writers are outside the scientific paradigm.

Paradigmatic scientists, that is, those who publish in respected peer-reviewed journals, have not concluded that homosexuals can change their orientation. Professional and scientific groups that oppose the practice of "conversion therapy" to change the orientation of gay patients include:

American Academy of Pediatrics
American Counseling Association
American Medical Association
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychological Association
National Association of School Psychologists
National Association of Social Workers
National Education Association

In sum: the beliefs of the anti-curriculum group are not based on scientific research, and in fact are directly opposite the beliefs of reputable scientists who study the topic of homosexuality.

Turner and many of the other attendees Saturday said they object to their children being taught that homosexuality is genetically predetermined.

This is an odd comment. The new curriculum does not teach this. You will very rarely find a biologist or psychologist saying that a behavior predisposition is "genetically predetermined," and there is no use of this phrase in the curriculum. Almost certainly the phenotype emerges through complex interactions of a genotype with environmental stimuli. In the curriculum, genetics is introduced in a section on "Interactions between Physical and Psychological Development:"


B Factors Contributing to Sexual Identity as Part of Total Personality

   1. Physical (genetic, anatomical)

   2. Psychological

   3. Environmental

   4. Other

This is a wholly appropriate outline for discussing the factors that scientists in the field theorize result in "sexual identity."

"I have no problem with them teaching some amount of tolerance," she said. "What we have a problem with is telling kids it's normal."

Another odd comment. The new curricululm says nothing about what is "normal" and what is not. It only teaches that certain phenomena exist. Further, it should not be necessary to "teach tolerance." That should be the parents' job. But she does have a point: if students are given the facts, it is likely that tolerance will be increased.

Turner and others at the meeting said members of the Family Life and Human Development Advisory Committee, formed in 1970 as a result of state regulation, was composed of people who supported "the gay agenda."

From this we should be able to discern that we are not talking about scientific findings at all, but about conspiracy theories. The gay agenda?

"The advisory committee had a mindset of promoting homosexuality," said Retta Brown, who represented the Daughters of the American Revolution on the committee and said she is concerned about what students will glean from the sex ed classes. "These children will not learn that sodomy will kill you. They'll think it's wonderful."

First, "sodomy" does not kill you. Second, the physical acts performed by homosexuals are not described in the curriculum, but only sexual orientation. If this is what she means by "sodomy," that a person falls in love with someone of their own sex, then this hate group should be ignored, just like the Klan and others are.

It is interesting to follow their logic. They believe, as a matter of faith, not science, that people choose to become gay. If that is true, then two kinds of conclusions can be drawn. First, it means that people can choose not to be gay, and as they -- again, as a matter of faith -- take homosexuality to be entirely a negative, evil thing, it would only make sense to persuade people not to choose it.

Second, and I think the thing they are most worried about: if people choose to be gay, then someone could come into our schools and persuade our own children to prefer members of their own sex. If this were communism, or thievery, or some other bad thing, I think everyone would be in agreement -- we should not teach thievery in school, because thievery is a choice.

But no one who knows the field believes that sexual orientation is a choice. Therefore, it seems reasonable that people who nature has made gay should learn to accept their own feelings, and others should learn to tolerate them -- and, most importantly, our kids are not going to be swept up by the "gay agenda."

The Gazette Speaks Up

2004-12-09T22:30:00.000-05:00

I don't want to take any business away from the Gazette, which is driving home a terrific point today in their editorial section, but I am going to quote most, well, all of their message. Be sure to go to their web site, The Gazette, buy lots of stuff from their advertisers, send them chocolates...

The most important function the school system can perform in sex education is to clear up misinformation. Kids in the 10th grade already know a lot about sex, but often what they know is just wrong.

Most parents do a good job of telling their children about sex, answering their questions and helping to shape their children's attitudes about sex. But sex "education" does not stop at the front door of the home; it continues on the playgrounds, at the mall and in the hallways and locker rooms of schools. And much of what children "learn" out there is simply not true.

That is where the school can step in. A good sex education program at school should help reinforce the instruction children are receiving at home, supporting the parents in their role as the primary teacher. The best program will provide unbiased information, and leave value judgments up to the parents.

A group of parents believes that the Montgomery County school system has gone too far in substituting its judgment for the parents in new curriculum for health classes. They are especially upset about plans to include discussions of homosexuality and a video discussing the value of condoms and demonstrating (on a cucumber) how to use one.

The school board has voted unanimously to show the video -- discussing how condoms can reduce the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or becoming pregnant -- to all 10th graders.

That seems an appropriate age to provide straightforward information to young people. The system tried out the video at three county high schools in the spring, and feedback from students was positive.

As always, if parents are adamantly opposed to having their child informed on the subject, for moral, religious or any other grounds, they can opt out of the program and their child will be excused from that class. Few parents do so, according to the school system, but the option is available.

More controversially, the board has also approved a discussion of "sexual variations," to be tried in eighth- and 10th-grade classes at three middle and three high schools in the spring. It will be the first time the system has initiated discussions of homosexuality, although teachers have been permitted to answer students' questions on the subject since 1970.

Since homosexuality is a much more open topic in society today than it was 30 years ago, with openly gay characters portrayed on television and the movies, it stands to reason that children will have more questions about it than they did in the past. Devoting a few sessions of the health class to information about homosexuality makes common sense.

Yes, common sense, that's how it seems to us, too. The funny thing in this controversy is that the materials seem so appropriate. The group has tried to make it sound like an assault on the family and everything that is good, but really the curriculum is just a little bit of factual information.

Parents should be having their own discussions with their children about homosexuality, and imparting their own moral judgments. Only they have the right to teach their children right from wrong. But it seems entirely reasonable that the school system take some time to give young people unbiased information about the topic.

The school system cannot be seen to promote homosexuality, nor should it condemn it. The school's role is to provide factual information on a subject about which young people are very likely to be curious.

Parents should make themselves aware of the content of the curriculum, and if they have concerns about language or emphasis, they should communicate with the schools and seek changes.

In the end, if the parents are still not satisfied with the content, they are entirely within their right to withdraw their child from the class. And they should do so. If large numbers of children were removed from the health classes, it would send a strong signal to the board that content does not have community support.

The criticism of the new sex education curriculum merits serious discussion. The parents certainly have every right to express concerns and to fight for unbiased content.

We tend to believe, however, based on what we know now, that the parents are overreacting. And we completely disagree that discussions of homosexuality or demonstrations of condom use should be off-limits in schools.

I apologize to The Gazette for reproducing their entire editorial, but it was perfect. They are advocating, as we would, that values be taught in the family, and that facts be taught at school.

Canada Moves Toward Legalizing Gay Marriage

2004-12-09T15:59:00.000-05:00

So, whaddya make of this? Even as the United States rushes to embrace intolerance, our next-door neighbor is going the other way:

The Supreme Court of Canada gave the federal government the go-ahead Thursday to legalize gay marriage, but stopped short of saying that this was required by the Constitution.

Ottawa had hoped the court would require it to allow gay marriage across Canada, making it politically easier to push draft legislation through Parliament. The high court refused to give an opinion on this issue.

Instead, it declared only that the government had the authority to legislate on marriage and that its proposed definition of marriage as "the lawful union of two persons" would not violate the Constitution. Canada's high court clears way for gay marriage

The web site where I found this story, a high-traffic site called MetaFilter, titled this story: It's like America, only with freedom!. Ouch.

It sounds like, now that this is out of the way, it will probably pass in Parliament:

Canada would join Belgium and the Netherlands in allowing gay marriage if the government acts to make it legal nationwide. To pass in the House of Commons, the legislation needs the approval of about 44 of the 95 Liberal backbench members of Parliament to obtain a 155-vote majority.

One top Liberal predicted the legislation should pass easily after its introduction, likely early next year. It already has the support of the 38-member Liberal cabinet and virtually all the 54 Bloc Quebecois and 19 New Democrat MPs. Canadian Court Approves Same-Sex Marriage

This has been one of those issues where you just shake your head and wonder -- why does anyone care? If two people want to grow old together, sit in Laz-E-Boys in front of the TV and argue about whose turn it is to walk the dog -- how can that be "evil"? How can it not be a good thing? How can two guys marrying each other, or two women, "threaten" anybody else's marriage? Why would a gay couple with kids make some other family any less meaningful? How can people in Canada be so different from people in the US?

Inclusive Christians Are Excluded From TV

2004-12-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

The opposition to Montgomery County's sex education curriculum, and the promotion of abstinence education and similar programs, is often -- correctly -- attributed to Christian groups. A lot of the organizing, for instance, is done in the churches. But it is important to note that these are only particular religious groups, particular churches. It is entirely possible to have faith in God, to adhere to Christian Scripture, and to take a nonjudgmental attitude toward people who are unlike yourself. In fact, the gospels quote Jesus many times saying that we should "judge not lest ye be judged," "let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and similar things, and not once saying anything about homosexuality. One could conclude that the churches who teach that homosexuality is an abomination are the ones who have deviated from Jesus' words.

The United Church of Christ welcomes everyone to its services, and wanted to advertise the fact. They put together a television ad that showed a gay couple, a Latina woman, and some poor people being invited into the church.

But the networks are afraid to show it:

CLEVELAND -- The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial." CBS, NBC refuse to air church's television advertisement

So, if it seems that Christians are full of hatred toward gays, it just might be because you're only allowed to hear one side of the story.

Today UCC announced they are filing a petition with the FCC:

The United Church of Christ today (Dec. 9) is filing two petitions with the Federal Communications Commission, asking that two network owned-and-operated television stations in Miami be denied license renewals for failing to provide viewers "suitable access" to a full array of "social, political, esthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences."

WFOR-TV (a CBS station) and WJVT-TV (an NBC station) -- whose operating licenses are currently up for FCC review -- are being challenged because "there is substantial and material question" as to whether the stations' parent companies, Viacom, Inc., and the General Electric Company, have operated the stations in the public interest, the petitions state.

The action stems from a much-publicized decision by both networks to deny an advertisement that makes clear the church's welcome of diverse, even marginalized, segments of the population. CBS and NBC have said the all-inclusive ads are "controversial" and, therefore, amount to "issue advocacy," something the networks have said they do not allow.
...
"Who would have guessed that it would one day be our voice that was silenced?" Chase said. "When CBS and NBC refused to air our commercial because they considered it 'too controversial,' we found ourselves in the very position as other groups for whom we have historically been advocates."

Gloria Tristani, OC Inc.'s managing director and a former FCC commissioner (1997-2001), said, "NBC and CBS and their stations must be accountable to the communities they are licensed to serve. How can it be in the public interest for television stations to exclude a church's message of inclusion?" United Church of Christ files petition with FCC over networks' refusal of church advertisement

Whoever controls the information available to people also controls the decisions those people will make. You might have thought that the Christian church uniformly believes that homosexuality is an abomination, that gay people will rot in hell -- as you can read at the Baptist web site God Hates Fags.

Turns out some Christians believe in forgiveness, in understanding, some believe that God loves everyone. But you won't be seeing their message on TV, no ... that's too controversial.

The AMA Takes a Position on Abstinence Education

2004-12-09T09:36:00.000-05:00

The federal government has budgeted $131 million dollars for abstinence-education programs. As the Washington Times has reported:

"We have said that funding for abstinence education ... ought to be on at least equal footing with other [sex] education programs," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Nov. 17 at the nomination of White House domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings as Department of Education secretary.

"The president is an advocate of abstinence-education programs because he wants to focus on what works," Mr. McClellan said...

It is possible that the President knows more about this than the doctors of America. Here's Fox News this morning:

The American Medical Association says the federal government should not spend money on community-based sex education programs unless it has solid scientific evidence that the programs work, a position that would eliminate many abstinence-only programs.

The new AMA policy puts the doctor group at odds with the Bush administration, which just last week reaffirmed its support of abstinence-only based programs. But AMA president-elect J. Edward Hill, MD, a family physician from Tupelo, Miss., tells WebMD that the issue is too important to back any sex education curriculum that is not evidence-based. AMA: No Evidence that Abstinence Sex Ed Works

The President and the doctors might have two different objectives in mind here, as far as defining what "works." From one point of view, abstinence education "works" because it ensures that kids don't learn about nasty sex practices in school; it maintains their innocence, and lets parents teach their children what they believe the facts are. The second group, the doctors, assumes the objective is to deal with the public health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; those particular issues are better addressed by knowledge than by innocence and family lore.

Abstinence education is intended to keep the teaching of sexual stuff in the family, and it would be fine if all parents were very knowledgeable and very articulate, and had a plan or curriculum for presenting the facts to their children as the schools do. Parents know how they feel, and most have a working knowledge of the birds and the bees, but very few parents have the facts at their fingertips that a teacher has. School would seem a reasonable place for students to get knowledge based on evidence.

There is an interesting chart on the Internet -- Teen Pregnancy in the United States -- comparing teen pregnancy rates in the Red states, which presumably support faith-based abstinence education, and the Blue states, which presumably support evidence-based factual education for their children. The point is unsurprisingly that the Red states have higher rates of teen pregnancy. This is not definitive, of course, but it is vivid evidence that ignorance is not always bliss. (Unless you want your teenage daughter to start having babies.)

What Students Think

2004-12-08T11:02:00.000-05:00

The new sex-ed program contains two topics that are new. One is that homosexuality will be discussed without anyone in the class asking about it -- MCPS's version of "don't ask, don't tell" is falling by the wayside -- and the other new thing is a video demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber. Not that most kids will ever need to put a condom on a cucumber, but ... I suppose it's better than wearing it as a hat.

The group opposed to the new curriculum believes it is inappropriate to show tenth-graders how to put a condom on a cucumber. They question whether tenth-graders are "ready" for such a thing. There are also comments along the lines of "Anybody can figure out how to put on a condom, they shouldn't need to be shown."

You will sometimes hear that the failure rate for condoms is fifteen percent. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist mentioned this the other day on ABC News. Actually, the full statement is that the failure rate for condoms is fifteen percent under what is called typical use. It doesn't mean that they fail fifteen percent of the time, but if you rely on condoms for a year, there is a fifteen percent chance of pregnancy.

Typical use is contrasted with "perfect use," where the couple actually use it right, and use it every time. If they are used correctly, the failure rate is closer to two or three percent -- again, that means that 2-3 percent of women will get pregnant using this method for a year. When people don't know how to put them on, they don't work very well, but used correctly they are quite good.

This seems like a good reason to show kids -- fifty per cent of whom will be having sexual intercourse in their teen years -- the right way to put the thing on.

What do real high school students think about it? The Gazette asked some who had attended the class and had seen the video.

"It was so boring," Christina Tarpley, now a 16-year-old junior at the Germantown school, said of the "Protect Yourself" video, which includes a discussion of sexually transmitted diseases, different forms of contraception and a demonstration of the proper way to put on a condom.

"I didn't see what the big deal about the demonstration was about," said classmate Walter Hood. "It wasn't that serious. It was stuff everybody knew about."

The controversy over the video began last spring and gathered momentum last month when the board approved showing the video countywide and approved a discussion of sexual orientation for trial in eighth- and 10th-grade health classes.

Critics of showing the video and discussing homosexuality, same-sex families and sexual identity see the new curriculum as tilted toward a more liberal agenda by the county school board.

Several students at Northwest said they see it as an appropriate and necessary lesson for young people who are reaching the age when they may become sexually active or begin questioning their own sexuality. High school students say condom video is no big deal

I beg your pardon? Boring? No big deal?

Obviously these immature children are trying to conceal their trauma.

One student complained that the cucumber made students giggle.

"I think the information is good," she said. "The video is good. I didn't like that they used a cucumber. It makes kids laugh. It puts it in a silly tone when I think it's a very serious topic."

She said she would prefer that the video used one of a number of teaching aides used by health professionals that more closely resemble a penis.

(Wouldn't it be funny if people were protesting because the object in the video didn't look enough like a real penis?)

The Gazette also interviewed Lorraine Arca Goldstein, who has taught health at the middle and high school level for nine years.

The discussion of homosexuality in health classes, which will be introduced in three middle and three high schools in the spring, may have its own consequences, Goldstein said.

Some "old school" teachers opposed to including the discussion as part of the course may stop teaching the class, she said. But she does not think it will be enough to cause a noticeable shortage of health teachers, she said.

In fact, Goldstein said she believes teachers will have greater flexibility, since this is the first time teachers will be able to broach the subject of homosexuality without students first asking questions.

School officials and teachers say that the discussions of homosexuality are mostly about promoting tolerance.

"We're just throwing it in as one of the issues, just like we'd talk about arachnophobia, we'd talk about homophobia," said Goldstein, who was one of two teachers on a group that wrote the curriculum on sexual orientation. That group included school nurses, psychiatrists, members of the Citizens' Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development and others.

"We just tried to set down the myths versus the facts and I guess that's the biggest thing, is to promote tolerance," she said.

Intolerance comes from not knowing the facts, said Northwest health teacher Lynn Wiegand.

And that neatly summarizes why we want our schools to Teach the Truth to the kids of our community.

There Can Be Power in Small Numbers

2004-12-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

When I attended the meeting Saturday of the group planning to overthrow the school board, one thing that struck me was a comment about "some people" saying that they were a minority. In fact, whether they know it or not, in Montgomery County that kind of holier-than-thou conservative extremist is a small minority. But that doesn't mean they're not dangerous.

On a parallel battleground, you may have noticed some news stories lately about how jumpy the TV networks are about airing shows that are controversial at all. It seems that people are complaining more and more about objectionable programming -- in 2001 the FCC received 350 complaints, in 2003 it received 240,000 of them. That is nearly a thousand times more complaints, in two years!

This article from last month in the Sunday Herald reviews the trend, which came to a sort of peak on Veterans' Day when many television stations decided not to show Saving Private Ryan, an award-winning war movie that is traditionally shown on that day every year, because of fear that they would be fined.

In fact, one third of the local TV stations affiliated with national network ABC, owned by Disney, refused to air the critically acclaimed second world war blockbuster because it contains swear words. The Oscar-winning film about D-Day, directed by Steven Spielberg, also includes graphic, realistic violence.

The 66 stations, from Boston to Detroit and Honolulu, said they feared sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for airing "profanity" during prime evening hours. That was despite the fact that ABC had promised to cover any fine by the commission, whose members are appointed by its president.

...

"It would clearly have been our preference to run the movie," says Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, which owns three of the stations. "We think it is a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces."

Senator John McCain, a one-time POW in Vietnam, introduced Saving Private Ryan on Thursday. A maverick Republican and a former presidential candidate, he spent much of Thursday trying to stem the desertions. The film is nowhere near indecent, he says angrily. Right-wing moralists launch censor war

You'd get the feeling that America has turned into one very uptight, very conservative country, with all those hundreds of thousands of indignant citizens calling to complain, and nobody watching Desperate Housewives.

Ah ... but wait.

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.

The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, "a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes."

What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was unaware—was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group. Activists Dominate Content Complaints

So, in fact, a small group of conservatives took it upon themselves to change the face of American television. They wanted to make sure that the rest of us didn't see anything that contradicted their own worldview -- and guess what? They did it.

I'm sure they're quite proud of themselves.

We should learn from this, too.

Fresh Challenges in the Old Debate Over Evolution

2004-12-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

Today, The Washington Post published the article Fresh Challenges in the Old Debate Over Evolution. Two paragraphs I couldn't resist quoting read:

Haynes, of the Freedom Forum, sees those numbers and says it might be time for the scientific community to take a new approach to the challenges to evolution.

"The truth is that the majority of Americans would be happy to see an alternative [to evolution] come into the curriculum," he said. "And the scientific community knows this. They haven't won the popular battle."

When did it happen that the right science was something people could choose as if it was a political party? So, what about evidence, what about scientific process of study? One thing, though, that I find impressive is the widespread ignorance about the theory of evolution—which I have been familiar with since my primary education in Cuba. Actually, many students don't understand the theory, don't study it, and then don't know anything about it to actually see what it means.

On the other hand, as Jim said, some beliefs may not hold their place very well in the presence of facts, and that's why it is scary for some people to teach things like evolution. Although, for instance, the Catholic Church, more than 30 years ago, managed to accept evolution, and to acknowledge that "God manifests himself through evolution."

I guess one battleground theme should be the proper teaching of all scientific truths—hence the "Teach the Truth" name for our group, and proper means the in-depth study/reading/experimenting (when feasible) of scientific facts. However, the study could not be, as it is now, circumscribed to the study of those concepts that could be confirmed through direct observation, because in fact what informs many of those concepts are theories such as Evolution.

Honestly, this kind of debate—when the vast scientific community is in clear agreement, and has been so for many, many years—make me feel like we're in Medieval times. And the dishonesty of many of the contenders, especially when playing with things such as the word "theory," and pretending you could say in the same sentence: "theories of evolution, and intelligent design." No! Evolution is a theory, intelligent design, at its best, qualifies as a belief.

An excerpt from an article in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic, Was Darwing Wrong? discusses some of these issues, now that these "challenges" present themselves.

Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's "just" a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is "just" a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally—taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

What the Professional Organizations Say

2004-12-07T09:24:00.000-05:00

In the discussion building over the next few months, it will be important to have the facts out in front of us. In particular, it needs to be understood that there is no scientific debate about whether homosexuality is a choice. The professional mental health and scientific organizations uniformly reject the idea. Many of them make even stronger statements about these issues.

The following is excerpted from ReligiousTolerance.org.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. The American Psychological Association declared that it was not a disorder in 1975.

Recent statements by professional organizations include:

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1973.
The American Law Institute continually updates its Model Penal Code, which is a group of laws that they suggest be implemented at the state level. They recommend to legislators: "that private sexual behavior between consenting adults should be removed from the list of crimes and thereby legalized."
The American Bar Association in 1974 expressed its approval of the Model Penal Code, including its decriminalization of consensual adult homosexual acts.
The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1981.
The American Psychological Association released a Statement on Homosexuality in 1994-JUL. Their first two paragraphs are:
The research on homosexuality is very clear. Homosexuality is neither mental illness nor moral depravity. It is simply the way a minority of our population expresses human love and sexuality. Study after study documents the mental health of gay men and lesbians. Studies of judgment, stability, reliability, and social and vocational adaptiveness all show that gay men and lesbians function every bit as well as heterosexuals.

Nor is homosexuality a matter of individual choice. Research suggests that the homosexual orientation is in place very early in the life cycle, possibly even before birth. It is found in about ten percent of the population, a figure which is surprisingly constant across cultures, irrespective of the different moral values and standards of a particular culture. Contrary to what some imply, the incidence of homosexuality in a population does not appear to change with new moral codes or social mores. Research findings suggest that efforts to repair homosexuals are nothing more than social prejudice garbed in psychological accouterments.

In 1994-AUGUST, The APA sent a proposal to one of its committees that would declare as unethical:
- attempts by a psychologist to change a person's sexual orientation through therapy, or
- referral of a patient to a therapist or organization who attempts to change people's sexual orientation
The APA publishes an undated brochure titled "Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality." They state:
- "...many scientists share the view that sexual orientation is shaped for most people at an early age through complex interactions of biological, psychological and social factors."
- "...psychologists do not consider sexual orientation for most people to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed."
- "...homosexuality is not an illness, mental disorder or emotional problem."
- "There is no evidence indicating that homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to molest children."
In 1997_AUG-14, the APA published a news release about a recently passed resolution "on so-called reparative therapy." The resolution "raises ethical concerns about attempts to change sexual orientation, reaffirms psychology's opposition to homophobia and client's rights to unbiased treatment."
- The American Medical Association (AMA) released a report in 1994-DEC which calls for "nonjudgmental recognition of sexual orientation by physicians." They suggest that psychotherapy be directed help homosexuals "become comfortable with their sexual orientation."
- The Academy of Pediatrics and the Council on Child and Adolescent Health have also stated that homosexuality is not a choice and cannot be changed.
- NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality is a largely conservative Christian organization which promotes reparative therapy for gays and lesbians. Their Statement of Policy and Right to Treatment completely contradict statements by all other professional mental health organizations.
- In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Counseling Association, American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, American Psychological Association, American School Health Association, Interfaith Alliance Foundation, National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of Social Workers and National Education Association jointly issued a document titled: "Just the facts about sexual orientation." They:
  - expressed concern about harassment of gay and lesbian youth.
  - condemned reparative therapy as potentially harmful and of little or no effectiveness
  - describe transformational ministries as representing only one part of Christianity -- those faith groups which view homosexuality as outside God's will, and incompatible with Christianity. They cite other denominations as supporting equal rights, and protection against discrimination, for gays and lesbians.

Point by Point

2004-12-06T15:18:00.000-05:00

The group opposed to the new sex education curriculum has a web site: www.mcpscurriculum.com/, that lists their objections to it. Let me print these, one by one, and we can look at them together. I apologize for the length of this post.

They say:

1. The new curriculum encourages students to "develop your individual sexual identity ," i.e., to identify themselves as either heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. It links the ability to like oneself to one's sexual identity, suggesting to an 8th grader that a sex life is necessary to a good self-image. These misleading messages push teens toward premature and potentially harmful lifestyle decisions.

This is a fabrication. The curriculum does discuss sexual identity, but nowhere does it encourage anything like this. The quoted phrase come from the outline item: What is Human Sexuality? This term refers to emotional closeness, sexual health and reproduction, and sexual identity. As we study human sexuality we will discuss how you develop your individual sexual identity. To characterize a discussion of how sexual identity develops as "encouraging students" amounts to a lie.

Further, the term "self image" does not appear in the board's report anywhere.

This item is totally false.

They say:

2. The new curriculum normalizes homosexuality and presents it as morally equivalent to heterosexuality. The well documented negative consequences resulting from homosexuality are not mentioned. A section titled "Myths Regarding Sexual Orientation" presents as "fact" points that many would dispute. The claim that “sex play with friends of the same gender is not uncommon during early adolescence” is a particularly inappropriate message for teens.

I don't know how you "normalize" something without using the word normal, but it does not appear in this document. Neither do the words "morally" or "equivalent." It's true that the myth/fact section does say that "sex play with friends of the same gender is not uncommon during early adolescence", but this fact happens to be true. It seems that about five percent of adolescents engage in this sort of behavior at some time. A number of surveys converge on this same number. Whether it is perfectly accurate, we dont know, but at least it is an attempt at empirical measurement, and not someone's wishful thinking.

It should be mentioned that the "the well documented negative consequences resulting from homosexuality" mainly come from abuse by bigots. This could perhaps be alleviated through a good, wholesome, truthful education.

They say:

3. The new curriculum defines family as "two or more people who are joined together by emotional feelings or who are related to one another." This statement arbitrarily changes the meaning of family as it has been understood throughout history, to include virtually any human relationship.

It would be suspect to quote from some newfangled liberal dictionary, so ... here's what the 1913 Webster's said:

1. The collective body of persons who live in one house, and

   under one head or manager; a household, including parents,

   children, and servants, and, as the case may be, lodgers

   or boarders.



2. The group comprising a husband and wife and their

   dependent children, constituting a fundamental unit in the

   organization of society.



         The welfare of the family underlies the welfare of

         society.                              --H. Spencer.



3. Those who descend from one common progenitor; a tribe,

   clan, or race; kindred; house; as, the human family; the

   family of Abraham; the father of a family.



         Go ! and pretend your family is young. --Pope.



4. Course of descent; genealogy; line of ancestors; lineage.



5. Honorable descent; noble or respectable stock; as, a man

   of family.



6. A group of kindred or closely related individuals; as, a

   family of languages; a family of States; the chlorine

   family.



7. (Biol.) A group of organisms, either animal or vegetable,

   related by certain points of resemblance in structure or

   development, more comprehensive than a genus, because it

   is usually based on fewer or less pronounced points of

   likeness. In zo["o]logy a family is less comprehesive than

   an order; in botany it is often considered the same thing

   as an order.

Um, it sounds like they're the ones that are trying to change the definition of the word "family," unless nowadays only #2 counts. Most of us who live in twenty-first century Montgomery County don't much care if there are two mommies or two daddies. If they love one another, they can be a family, and it's always been that way.

Seriously, this is wordplay. Even traditionally, there are very many families, for instance, without children, or with one parent, there are extended families, nuclear families, all through the Bible there are polygamous families, concubines, eunuchs ... these people just want to exclude gay people. This is something they themselves introduced for the sake of making a point.

They say:

4. Family values and family influence are frequently presented in a negative light. The new curriculum can easily be interpreted as saying that family values are not to be trusted.

Look, this is like shooting fish in a barrel, as they say. This report is in PDF format, and anybody can search it simply by clicking on the binoculars icon. This turns up 16 occurrances of the word "values." For example:

The existing curriculum wisely taught about the importance of relationships and the development of families 

in ways that convey values of caring and responsibility. But the exclusion from that discussion of the fact that 

not all people are heterosexual, and that non-heterosexuals can have healthy and happy lives, was destructive 

to the mental health of students who were not heterosexual.

...

B. How to develop relationships and share equally

6. respect personal values, rights, and needs

...

Explore how cultural and family values affect relationships and marriage

...

Discuss how family values, culture, religious views, and other factors influence family planning

...

etc.

Family values and family influence are never presented in a negative light. Whoever wrote this apparently expected his or her audience to be too dull to go to the original and look it up.

They say:

5. Whereas the current curriculum emphasizes abstinence as "the best choice" for teens and gives a strong message on its benefits, the new curriculum devalues self-restraint and refers to abstinence only as a means to prevent pregnancy.

No. The report says The principle thrust of the discussion was that some things needed to be made a bit clearer, and the that
there should be even more stress on the simple fact that abstinence is the only way to absolutely protect against pregnancy and transmission of STIs. STI is "sexually transmitted infection." This is a request made by the staff to the committee, which we are told in the report was implemented. In the school board's "Facts and Myths" document online, the very first item is:

FACT: Abstinence continues to be the method advocated as the only absolute protection

against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

No, they're wrong, students are still being taught that abstinence is the only perfect way to prevent both pregnancy and disease. It's not the only way, but it's the best way.

They say:

6. The choice to "opt out" of the sex ed program is not a satisfactory option at all. It would require three to six weeks of alternative study outside the health class. At a time when most teens want to blend in with the crowd, opting out places them at the center of attention on a topic many of them are embarrassed about. Many parents are reluctant to subject their children to the negative consequences of opting out.

This is deplorable. The fact sheet says:

FACT: Alternative units are available if parents decide that they do not want their children to

participate in the classes:

* An alternative unit on "Abstinence Only;"

* An alternative unit on stress management and environmental health; or

* An independent study unit on a health education topic of the parent's choosing.

The obvious fact is, this group doesn't oppose the curriculum because of what their kids will learn, but what everybody else's kids will learn. They are seeking to propagate their hateful homosexuality-is-evil message by making sure that our kids aren't exposed to the truth.

This might be a good opportunity for these folks to teach their children what it is to stand up for what you believe in. But no, apparently it is more important for them to make it easy for their children to "blend in with the crowd."

Even Bill Frist knows better...

2004-12-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

From a report on CNN.com, it looks like the abstinence-only sex education programs have become an embarrassment on the Hill, and Bill Frist is calling for a review.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday that the government should review federally funded sexual abstinence programs, under fire from Democrats who say they contain false and misleading medical information.

The "abstinence-only" programs, which get $170 million from Congress this year, teach children and teens the benefits of abstaining from sex until marriage. By law, they are not allowed to discuss any benefits of birth control or condoms in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

While the recall group is adamant that teens not be taught the benefits of using condoms, Frist disagrees.

He touted the benefits of a more comprehensive approach backed by President Bush in the global fight against AIDS called "ABC" for abstinence, being faithful and use of condoms.

"Whether it's abstinence or whether it's a condom or whether it is ... washing hands in terms of the flu, all of these are public health challenges," Frist said.

Read the full story here: Frist: Abstinence-only programs need review

How Uncommon Is It?

2004-12-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

One thing the "opposition" really hates is the idea that the new curriculum will tell students that same-sex experimentation is common among adolescents. The school board report says it this way:

Myth: You’re a homosexual if you’ve had sex with, or even had a "sexy dream" about someone of the same gender.
Fact: Sex play with friends of the same gender is not uncommon during early adolescence and does not prove long-term sexual orientation.

Those who oppose the new curriculum interpret this to mean that "sex play with friends of the same gender" is a terrific thing to do, and students should go right out and try it.

First, it seems amazing that just saying something is "not uncommon" would possibly mean that it's a good thing to try, but...

I started wondering how "uncommon" this sort of thing actually is. An organization called the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States has a nice informative web page at Fact Sheet: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth Issues, which reviews a lot of studies, with references so you can look it up yourself if you want more.

Several studies are reviewed in the section on Sexual Orientation During Adolescence. Of course all the results vary, but it sounds like around 5 per cent of high-school-age kids have done something with a member of their own sex. Put another way, a class of 30 students is likely to have, on average, 1.5 kids who have (or will have) had sexual experience with a member of their own sex.

So it's not exactly a great fad that's sweeping the nation, but if one kid in twenty is doing something it sure sounds like it could be mentioned. "Not uncommon," that seems good for a five percent phenomenon.

Of course it's naive to think that the people who complain about this are concerned about the accuracy of it. Their goal is not to inform but to manipulate. It seems to be the darkest view of human behavior to think that people will feel uncontrollably compelled to do everything they hear about; I can't quote exactly, but one guy at the meeting yesterday did try to explain that we all have rapists and murderers and homosexuals inside us, and need discipline to keep those evil urges suppressed. I consider this a very dark view, certainly not one I agree with.

There will be two kinds of kids who get this information. Most will go "eeww, ick" and that's the end of it. Some others will breathe a sigh of relief and lighten up a little bit, knowing that they're not the only freak in the world. And what would be wrong with that?

Observations From Yesterday's Meeting

2004-12-05T13:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't know why I do these things to myself, but I attended the meeting yesterday of people opposing the new sex education curriculum. It looked like about 60 people there, mostly in agreement, a few dissenters. I'll quickly summarize my impressions of the main themes -- I only stayed about an hour, so can't report on the planning sessions etc.

Homosexuality is a choice.
No reputable scientific researchers believe that people simply choose to be gay. Yet it seems that the position of this group hinges on this supposition.

Scientific Debate
These people insist that science is still investigating whether people choose homosexuality or it is the result of some biological process. In fact, the question of how people come to be homosexuals is a hard one for science, and there is a lot of research going on. But no serious researcher (by which I mean, researchers who publish in the journals respected in their field) believes it is a choice. Members of this group are convinced that there is no biological difference between gay and straight people. Therefore it's a choice.

The Gay Agenda
Because homosexuality is a choice, our children can be converted to homosexuals. The new sex education curriculum is a kind of tool that the gay community can use to recruit people. At the meeting this was called the "gay agenda."

Moral Values
This phrase always got a good round of applause: this is what they see the fight as being about. These people seem to believe that homosexuality is evil, and their opposition to it expresses positive moral values.

The Cucumber
The condom-on-a-cucumber didn't get much attention. I think people mostly just think it's "inappropriate." It's the gay thing that sets them off.

Abstinence
These people would prefer that the schools only teach kids to abstain from sex. Of course, this is an important part of the curriculum already -- I think the point is that the other stuff should be left out.

Intolerance
It's like a little joke to them that people accuse them of being intolerant. See, they're not intolerant of gay people, they only object to the fact that they act so gay.

Families
Kids who come from families with two mommies or two daddies should be taught that they don't have families. This is a moral value.

Hatred
These people see their moral values as being above hatred. They don't hate, they fight evil. A personal comment here: believing that someone is evil defines hatred, as opposed to simple antipathy.

Religion
It appears that a lot of the organizing for these people happens in their churches. Does that seem weird to you? How do you get from Matthew 7:1-5, for instance, to this?

Organizing
These guys are going to form a strong and influential organization, if we let them. They know the system, and they will be very businesslike about manipulating it.

Me (FYI)
I'm not gay, don't have gay relatives that I know of, don't especially hang out with a lot of gay people, don't care what gay people do. I do, however, care about a well-organized minority of moralistic hypocrites trying to gain control over the political processes in my community.

You
You can be sure that these people won't stop with this unless you act.

Gaygenda or Christgenda?

2004-12-05T01:26:00.000-05:00

As Jim has clearly shown in his post below, this is about much more than comprehensive sex ed vs. abstinence-only sex ed. While members of the recall group initially tried to be low key about who they really are, it's become crystal-clear that they are primarily driven by a fundamentalist Christian ideology. And while fundamentalists continually speak, in fearful terms, about a gay agenda, or "gaygenda", who really has an agenda here?

The Institute for First Amendment Studies may have the answer to that question.

Robert L. Simonds, president of the radical Christian organization known as the National Association of Christian Educators (NACE), and Citizens for Excellence in Education boasted that during 1990 his organization helped elect 450 born-again Christians to school boards across the nation. Simonds is the author of How to Elect Christians to Public Office, a manual used by his groups, known as CEE cells, in more than 600 school districts.

While Simonds' primary focus has been electing Christians to school boards, he has no intention on stopping there. He believes that only Christians are qualified to hold public office, and for his group, the ultimate goal is to dissolve the separation between church and state.

"Atheistic secular humanists," Simonds continues, "should be removed from office and Christians should be elected." He adds, "Government and true Christianity are inseparable!" "There can be no morality (right and wrong) without man's only reliable book on right and wrong." He emphasizes that only "Christians can properly apply Bible principles to government, because they are the ones reading the Bible and trusting its teachings to be true." Simonds concludes, "Holding up Christian standards can only be done by electing Christian officials." To date, CEE cells exist in more than 400 school districts. In the past six months, Simonds' group also claims to have organized 220 Public School Awareness (PSA) committees. PSAs are organized in churches to help the church "fulfill the political mission of the church for Christ." "Our job is to evangelize...our schools are the battleground," says Simonds. How do the NACE and CEE-cells evangelize?

And later...

It's no secret that Simonds organization intends to take over as many of the nation's 17,500 public school districts as possible. How to Elect Christians to Public Office declares that the separation of church and state is a "socialist myth." With the dismissal of the separation of church and state Simonds declares: "Evangelicals are now America's only hope.... We need strong school board members who know right from wrong. The Bible, being the only true source on right and wrong, should be the guide of board members."

It may take time to accomplish their goals, but these folks are willing to be patient.

"It takes a couple of years," according to Kathy Simonds, "to control a school board." She is operations manager for the NACE/CEE, and daughter of Robert Simonds. She told the Freedom Writer, "We are usually completely defeated, or we usually completely win" in individual school board races. Last year, in San Diego County, with its 15 to 20 school districts, Simonds' group won an astounding 30 school board seats.

This article was published in '91, but it is even more relevant today.

Read the full article here: Radicals sieze school board seats

Battling the Homosexual Agenda in Alabama ... and in Maryland

2004-12-04T22:56:00.000-05:00

This Alabama legislator is actually a few steps ahead of our Montgomery County extremists.

An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda." Gay book ban goal of state lawmaker

I heard people talking about the "homosexual agenda" this morning at the meeting to oppose the MCPS sex education curriculum. In fact, it is my perception that this may be a core belief shared by most members of this group, that gay people have secret plans to recruit new members. As one lady stood up and said at the meeting this morning, one of the few dissenters: "This is crazy."

"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.

Oddly, I agree with this statement ... but probably not for the reasons he meant.

If the bill became law, public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters.

When asked about Tennessee Williams' southern classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," Allen said the play probably couldn't be performed by university theater groups.

Allen said no state funds should be used to pay for materials that foster homosexuality. He said that would include nonfiction books that suggest homosexuality is acceptable and fiction novels with gay characters.
...
The bill also would ban materials that recognize or promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama. Allen said that meant books with heterosexual couples committing those acts likely would be banned, too.

His bill also would prohibit a teacher from handing out materials or bringing in a classroom speaker who suggested homosexuality was OK, he said.

I'm not surprised when some guy in Alabama talks like this. But I don't want this nonsense in my neighborhood, y'know what I mean?

John Rock's Error. What the co-inventor of the Pill didn't know about menstruation can endanger women's health

2004-12-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

I know this may seem like a stretch but the article John Rock's Error, What the co-inventor of the Pill didn't know about menstruation can endanger women's health, was rather enlightening for me when I first read it, and clearly shows how much preconceptions about how things should work, and the efforts for conforming the scientific truth and the evidence to fit preconceptions, religious or otherwise, may carry really bad consequences.

Not long before the Pill's approval, Rock travelled to Washington to testify before the F.D.A. about the drug's safety. The agency examiner, Pasquale DeFelice, was a Catholic obstetrician from Georgetown University, and at one point, the story goes, DeFelice suggested the unthinkable--that the Catholic Church would never approve of the birth-control pill. "I can still see Rock standing there, his face composed, his eyes riveted on DeFelice," a colleague recalled years later, "and then, in a voice that would congeal your soul, he said, 'Young man, don't you sell my church short.' "

In the end, of course, John Rock's church disappointed him. In 1968, in the encyclical "Humanae Vitae," Pope Paul VI outlawed oral contraceptives and all other "artificial" methods of birth control. The passion and urgency that animated the birth-control debates of the sixties are now a memory. John Rock still matters, though, for the simple reason that in the course of reconciling his church and his work he made an error. It was not a deliberate error. It became manifest only after his death, and through scientific advances he could not have anticipated. But because that mistake shaped the way he thought about the Pill--about what it was, and how it worked, and most of all what it meant--and because John Rock was one of those responsible for the way the Pill came into the world, his error has colored the way people have thought about contraception ever since.

Today, the Pill is still often sold in dial packs and taken in twenty-eight-day cycles. It remains, in other words, a drug shaped by the dictates of the Catholic Church--by John Rock's desire to make this new method of birth control seem as natural as possible. This was John Rock's error. He was consumed by the idea of the natural. But what he thought was natural wasn't so natural after all, and the Pill he ushered into the world turned out to be something other than what he thought it was. In John Rock's mind the dictates of religion and the principles of science got mixed up, and only now are we beginning to untangle them.

This is a marvelous read, regardless of your position. John Rock's Error

Truth in Education: Accuracy not required

2004-12-04T16:43:00.000-05:00

An editorial in today's Washington Post explains why it is that millions of tax-payer dollars are being spent on abstinence-only sex ed programs that are not even scientifically accurate—accuracy is not required.

What's gotten even less attention, though, is the content of the federally funded abstinence-only curricula. The government reviews only a brief summary about the programs it funds, and applicants must teach, among other things, "that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects." Astonishingly, for most of the programs there's no requirement that the information they provide be scientifically accurate. In fact, a study released this week by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) cites numerous examples in which abstinence-only programs spread false or misleading information.

And while scientific accuracy is not required in these programs, blatantly sexist and offensive views of women and men are often included.

Some of the cited statements were anachronistic, if not outright offensive. "Women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments," says one guide. Another offers a fable of a pushy princess who's dumped for a village maiden: "Moral of the story: Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

And at a time when we desperately need for young people who are engaging in sexual activity to understand the importance of protecting themselves, they're being told that they probably can't:

The teaching materials also exaggerate the failure rate of condoms and minimize their ability to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). "The actual ability of condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS even if the product is intact, is not definitively known," one guide says. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that "latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens."

Here's an interesting opinion posted to Medical News Today that may explain the exaggerated failure rate of condoms taught in abstinence-only sex ed:

Oblivious Sex Education
Abstinence only education is brought to you by the same people that count as "condom failures" the incidents where couples fail to USE them during sex. (Read the fine print in condom research). Also: giving kids condoms without teaching how to use them properly (lube only on the OUTSIDE and squeeze out the air at the tip and put on BEFORE proximity and no petroleum based lubes, etc.) is to ensure that their condoms fail. The conservative agenda of silence on this matter is what creates the inflated condom "Failure" rate.

Read the full Post editorial here (subscription required): Truth in Education

Falwell on Hardball: A Little Humor

2004-12-04T15:23:00.000-05:00

From Wonkette, Chris Matthews interviewing Jerry Falwell:

FALWELL: ... I think all behavior is chosen.
MATTHEWS: I'm open. I don't know.
FALWELL: I think that...
MATTHEWS: Did you choose to be heterosexual?
FALWELL: I did.

Then, a little later:

MATTHEWS: How old were you when you chose to be heterosexual?
FALWELL: Oh, I don't remember that.
MATTHEWS: Well, you must, because you say it's a big decision.
FALWELL: Well, I started dating when I was about 13.
MATTHEWS: And you had to decide between boys and girls. And you chose girls.
FALWELL: I never had to decide. I never thought about it. (CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I think it's a ridiculous proposition that you actually sit down and decide. Let me see, boy or girl this week. Anyway...
FALWELL: I don't think anybody does that.

Spin Doctors

2004-12-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

It's interesting to note how conservatives are responding to Waxman's report on the innacuracies taught in most abstinence-only programs. Rather than addressing the real problems with the content of these programs, conservatives are taking the low road and attacking the messenger, painting Waxman as a man with an agenda (the implication—clearly directed towards conservative Christians—is that he has aligned himself with a conspiracy to corrupt the children of this country.)

From Cybercast News Service:

But Thursday, Linda Klepacki, a sexual health analyst for the conservative Focus on the Family, said Waxman's report should be viewed with skepticism because he "is a vocal proponent of more federal dollars being spent on condom-distribution programs."

In her press release, Klepacki asserted that "Representative Waxman's agenda comes through loud and clear on every page of his latest attempt to discredit the important work being done in our nation's schools to protect teens from the physical and emotional consequences of sex outside of marriage."

Anyone criticizing the validity of the information being taught in abstinence-only curricula automatically becomes an "abstinence opponent".

This is from a press release from Project Reality, creators of two of the programs critized in Waxman's report:

In response to a report released on Wednesday by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) attacking abstinence programs, Project Reality says this is evidence of how afraid abstinence opponents are of the positive results of the Abstinence Education movement and assures the news media that Project Reality stands behind the information in its two main abstinence curricula that were referenced in the report, Game Plan and Navigator. "The information presented in Game Plan and Navigator is medically accurate, and all information presented is from data compiled by national sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and the American Social Health Association," stated Libby Gray, Director of Project Reality

Read the full Cybercast News Service article here: Conservatives Hit Waxman for Report Blasting Abstinence-Only Sex Ed

Read the Project Reality press release here: Project Reality: Opponents Attack Successful Abstinence Programs

Last Call

2004-12-03T17:43:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning is the "recall" meeting.

It appears that this was initially intended to be an insider thing, a meeting to organize to complain about the new curriculum and try to stop it. But I think all parents who care about their kids' education, and in fact anyone who cares what direction the Montgomery County community is going to take, should show up.

The details from the "recall the school board" web site:

DATE: DECEMBER 4, 2004

TIME: 10 AM

WHERE: KENMONT SWIM AND TENNIS CLUB

2900 FAULKNER PLACE

KENSINGTON, MD. 20895

Here's a MAP to it. Looks like it's off University, near the mall.

Will there be honest and open discussion? Go, and see.

The Post Article

2004-12-02T10:04:00.000-05:00

As noted in the previous post, this morning's Washington Post has a front page article that addresses the fraudulence of many "abstinence" programs that receive federal funding. These are programs, favored by the current administration, that focus on teaching students the importance of abstaining from sex until marriage, rather than informing them about sex.

Unfortunately, because these programs are intended to indoctrinate rather than educate, they seem to have a tendency to deviate wildly from the facts:

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.

Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.

The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact. Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says

This article exactly identifies the reasons that Montgomery County citizens need to fight back against the extremists who want to throw out the current, fact-based, sex education program in favor of one that preaches their own point of view.

Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says

2004-12-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess it's official. Please, pay special attention to the following paragraph:

McIlhaney acknowledged that his group, which publishes "Sexual Health Today" instruction manuals, made a mistake in describing the relationship between a rare type of infection caused by chlamydia bacteria and heart failure. Chlamydia also causes a common type of sexually transmitted infection, but that is not linked to heart disease. But McIlhaney said Waxman misinterpreted a slide that warns young people about the possibility of pregnancy without intercourse. McIlhaney said the slide accurately describes a real, though small, risk of pregnancy in mutual masturbation.

This is a small mistake that only implies that you could die of a heart attack if you have sex. I know I'm exagerating it, but you know how scare tactics work, specially how they work with those same impressionable children they want to protect from seeing a cucumber with a condom on. That a doctor made a convenient "mistake" on this, is rather surprising, specially in a context in which they are making other "mistakes" with the statistics, and bending the true until it actually breaks, for example by saying that condoms fail to protect from STDs by 31% while all stats agree that the number is 3% or even less.

I'm wondering if the notation "though small" risk actually appears in the slide...Something tells me it doesn't and this is outright lying.

Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says

No sex or safe sex? Mothers’ and adolescents’ discussions about sexuality and AIDS/HIV

2004-12-01T13:05:00.000-05:00

The authors examined in this study whether mothers and adolescents discussed abstinence and safer sex, and how these discussions relate to demographic characteristics. Fifty mother–adolescent dyads (25 girls and 25 boys, aged 11–15) participated in videotaped conversations about two topics: (1) dating and sexuality, and (2) AIDS/HIV. These conversations were coded for specific topics. Both discussions of abstinence and safer sex occurred relatively infrequently during both conversations, although they were more common during AIDS than sexuality conversations and more for mothers than adolescents. The two topics were related—dyads who discussed one were more likely to discuss the other. Adolescents who discussed safer sex with their mothers tended to be older, less religious and have more educated mothers than those who did not. Using observational rather than self-report measures, this study revealed that the extent to which mothers and adolescents discuss abstinence and safer sex can depend on individual (age, gender, socioeconomic status and religious involvement) and contextual (conversational topic) factors.

Eva S. Lefkowitz, Tanya L. Boone, Terry Kit-fong Au1 and Marian Sigman2

Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, and Departments of 1 Psychology and 2 Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90025, USA. E-mail: EXL20@psu.edu

No sex or safe sex? Mothers’ and adolescents’ discussions about sexuality and AIDS/HIV

Abstinence and Safer Sex HIV Risk-Reduction Interventions for African American Adolescents

2004-12-01T13:01:00.000-05:00

This is an article from 1998 in JAMA. It shows that, even though as we all know, abstinence is foolproof when practiced, the expectations that youngsters will use it forever is way overblown.

Results.— Mean age of the enrollees was 11.8 years; 53% were female and 92.6% were still enrolled at 12 months. Abstinence intervention participants were less likely to report having sexual intercourse in the 3 months after intervention than were control group participants (12.5% vs 21.5%, P=.02), but not at 6- or 12-month follow-up (17.2% vs 22.7%, P=.14; 20.0% vs 23.1%, P=.42, respectively). Safer-sex intervention participants reported significantly more consistent condom use than did control group participants at 3 months (odds ratio [OR]=3.38; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.25-9.16) and higher frequency of condom use at all follow-ups. Among adolescents who reported sexual experience at baseline, the safer-sex intervention group reported less sexual intercourse in the previous 3 months at 6- and 12-month follow-up than did control and abstinence intervention (adjusted mean days over prior 3 months, 1.34 vs 3.77 and 3.03, respectively; P.01 at 12-month follow-up) and less unprotected intercourse at all follow-ups than did control group (adjusted mean days, 0.04 vs 1.85, respectively, P<.001, at 12-month follow-up). There were no differences in intervention effects with adult facilitators as compared with peer cofacilitators.

Conclusion.— Both abstinence and safer-sex interventions can reduce HIV sexual risk behaviors, but safer-sex interventions may be especially effective with sexually experienced adolescents and may have longer-lasting effects.

Abstinence and Safer Sex HIV Risk-Reduction Interventions for African American Adolescents

Group wants homosexuality, condoms out of curriculum

2004-12-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

I love the "objectivity" of The Gazette in this article (see link below) which only quotes at large people that hold that position, although had to admit that it is a "A small but passionate group of parents and community members".

Group wants homosexuality, condoms out of curriculum

Abstinence

2004-12-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Kay Romero sends the Einstein listserv a couple of relevant articles.

First -- the Bush administration's big push in sex education is for "abstinence education." The idea is to teach kids to put off having sex, relying on sheer will power. As CNN reports:

Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in a $388 billion spending bill, an increase of $30 million but about $100 million less than Bush requested. Meanwhile, a national evaluation of abstinence programs has been delayed, with a final report not expected until 2006.

Ten state evaluations, compiled by a group that opposes abstinence-only education, showed little change in teens' behavior since the start of abstinence programs in 1997.

The president has been a strong proponent of school-based sexual education that focuses on abstinence, but does not include instruction on safe sex. Verdict out on abstinence-only sex education: Bush wants more federal funding

Note that the verdict is not really out, this is a CNN euphemism. The studies have been done: abstinence education does not reduce pregnancy rates or STDs.

The push for abstinence is one of several Bush policies popular with religious conservatives. Also topping the agenda: the faith-based initiative, which aims to open more government programs to religious groups. That push will continue into a second term, said Jim Towey, who directs the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

"This is a culture change in the way the government provides social services," he said in an interview. "It's a change to recognize if we really want to help our poor, we want to give them some choice of programs and providers."

The argument about sexual education has raged for years, between those who say teaching about sex promotes promiscuity and those who say teens will make better choices if they are fully informed.

The "abstinence-only" initiative was part of the 1996 welfare law. Because programs are so young, there has been little conclusive research about their effectiveness. Independent researchers said in 2002 there is no reliable evidence whether these programs are effective in reducing teen sex, pregnancy or the transmission of disease.

Kay also linked to a story from the Advocates for Youth web site, which reports on evaluations of abstinence programs in ten states. Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact.

The results are broken down into short-term and long-term. Regarding short-term effects of abstinence programs on sexual behavior, the findings were:

Sexual Behaviors—Six evaluations measured short-term changes in sexual behavior.
Three of six programs had no impact on sexual behavior (California, Maryland, and Missouri).
Two of six programs reported increases in sexual behavior from pre- to posttest (Florida and Iowa). It was unclear whether the increases
were due to youth’s maturation or to a program’s effect, as none of these evaluations included a comparison group.
One of the six programs showed mixed results (Pennsylvania).

(There were other dependent measures -- see the report online for more.)

The discussion section is copied here in full:

These evaluation results—from the first five-year cycle of funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage under Section 510(b) of Title V of the Social Security Act—reflect the results of other studies. In a 1994 review of sex education programs, Kirby et al assessed all the studies available at the time of school-based, abstinence-only programs that had received peer review and that measured attitudes, intentions, and behavior. Kirby et al found that none of the three abstinence-only programs was effective in producing a statistically significant impact on sexual behaviors in program participants relative to comparisons. In a 1997 report for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Doug Kirby reviewed evaluations from six abstinence-only programs, again finding no program that produced a statistically significant change in sexual behavior. This was again confirmed in 2000, when another review by Kirby found no abstinence-only program that produced statistically significant changes in sexual behaviors among program youth relative to comparisons. This failure of abstinence-only programs to produce behavior change was among the central concerns expressed by some authors of the evaluations included in this document. [For examples of authors’ remarks on behavior change, see quotations under Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Pennsylvania in the state-by-state analyses that follow.] It is important to note that a great deal of research contradicts the belief that changes in knowledge and attitudes alone will necessarily result in behavior change.

Take "Advocates for Youth" as you will, the findings are uniformly unspectacular. Telling kids to promise not to have sex is not a very good way to keep them from doing it. If you combine this with an educational system that teaches them nothing about how to prevent pregnancy and STDs, the result cannot be a pretty one.

Christian Science Monitor: Gay Marriage Debate Spreading

2004-12-01T09:20:00.001-05:00

Same-sex marriage may have been trounced in the recent elections. But it is far from dead as a political and legal issue.

Following this month's clean sweep in 11 states, amendments banning gay marriage are likely to be on the ballot in at least a dozen more states in 2006, advocates say.

But not without a fight. Some of the just-passed measures already are being challenged in court. Lawmakers in California are discussing same-sex marriage laws patterned after the controversial court decision in Massachusetts. Lawsuits in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington State seek the same result.

More broadly, the whole issue of same-sex couples, as well as the rights and definition of marriage, is coming under increased scrutiny as judges and state legislatures weigh in.

A Vermont family court just ruled that a lesbian couple that broke up their civil union must share custody of one woman's daughter. Michigan lawmakers are promoting premarital education. "Covenant marriages," meant to counter the ease of getting a "no fault" divorce, are spreading. Under pressure from conservatives, publishers of textbooks in Texas recently agreed to refer to marriage as a "lifelong union between a man and a woman."

Looking ahead to 2006, opponents of gay-marriage anticipate that 12 to 15 states will vote on the matter. And as was the case in nine of the 13 state amendments passed since August, most ballot measures are likely to target officially sanctioned civil unions and other nonmarriage forms of domestic partnership as well. Political battles over gay marriage still spreading: 12 more states may vote on banning it in 2006 (there's more)

Religious Bush Supporters Want Changes

2004-12-01T09:20:00.000-05:00

A certain amount of the opposition to the new curriculum springs undoubtedly from the religious beliefs held by some. It is important to retain respect for these beliefs, to protect the rights of those individuals to believe and practice as they feel is proper, without allowing any minority to force their values on the majority. Because ... some of them really want to. From an ABC News story:

"Values" voters delivered for the president, and the president must now deliver for them — especially in the courts, said Gary Cass, head of a grassroots political organization affiliated with Coral Ridge, called the Center for Reclaiming America.

"It's about the next 40 years and how the courts are going to affect the world in which my children and grandchildren are going to be raised in," he said.

Cass wants a U.S. Supreme Court that will outlaw abortion and gay marriage. "Do you want to take your children to a National League baseball game for instance and have homosexuals showing affection to one another? I don't want my kids to see that," he said. Evangelicals to Bush: Payback TimeChristian Conservatives Say They Gave Bush 'Moral Mandate'; Call Him to Act on Their Behalf

Gay Marriage Stands in Massachusetts

2004-12-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over gay marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation's only law sanctioning such unions.
Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. They declined, without comment.
In the past year, at least 3,000 gay Massachusetts couples have wed, although voters may have a chance next year to change the state constitution to permit civil union benefits to same-sex couples, but not the institution of marriage.
...
State legislators will decide whether to put the issue before Massachusetts voters in November 2006. Voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in November elections. President Bush has promised to make a federal anti-gay marriage amendment a priority of his second term.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court narrowly ruled that gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.
The nation's high court had stayed out of the Massachusetts fight on a previous occasion. Last May, justices refused to intervene and block clerks from issuing the first marriage licenses. Court Declines to Hear Gay Marriage Case