Reinstate Abstinence Funding

Yesterday, I was asked why in a letter to the Wisconsin delegation in DC requesting their support for abstinence education funding, I included a final option to defund Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, SIECUS, etc.

I strongly agree that governments must inact critical budget reform and know many of our state delegation were elected because they have pledged to cut spending. If budget reform was the reason abstinence education funding was cut, I would be 100% behind its demise as a temporary measure. But not once have I heard saving tax dollars as a reason for killing off abstinence.

Even though I have witnessed many nonprofit colleagues close their services when they lost government funds, I also know many others who diversified their programming and funding years ago and so far have remained solvent, even if again working as volunteers. However, new federal grants for marriage and fatherhood initiatives have stipulated that abstinence programming could not be included in applications. The truth is social acceptance of unwed sex created all the problems these initiatives address. It makes little sense to spend millions on interventions while funding sexual libertarian organizations. But that is the political power of sexual freedom advocates as we watch our families disintegrate.

It seems logical to me that if the government is amenable to restoring the societal factors that together eradicate poverty--two-parent families, education, jobs, etc.--it must be bold enough to stop funding programs that create or support counter-productive life styles. At the very least, politicians should pay attention to other countries which have let free choice policies with a huge price tag overwhelm their national well-being.

I just gave our state representatives in Congress two ways to support abstinence education: restore funding or defund our opponents. I've been in this game a long time and know "the silent majority" will back abstinence.

Wisconsin Assembly Bills 348 and 349

Have none of the sponsors of these two bills read any of the exposes about Planned Parenthood in the last few years? The undercover work that has been done across the nation and in Wisconsin specifically should raise legitimate concern about this legislation. Planned Parenthood has been caught in mega-departures from their stated policies and procedures. Citizens should question the motivation of bill sponsors particularly those representatives from minority communities.

AB 348 changes the Women's Health Block Grant to "Family Planning" funding. At least that removes the impression that recipients will provide total women's health care. It also gives full advantage of increased pregnancy prevention federal funding to family planning clinics.

AB 348 eliminates the Department of Health Services' (DHS) administrative restrictions on sub-grants. Currently, only a government Health Department/Hospital receives funds but can sub-contract out the "women's health" services. For instance, a Planned Parenthood clinic operates in the Milwaukee -Mill Road public health clinic on a contract basis. This means private agencies can receive contracts in direct competition to health departments. So this bill removes a layer of government accountability for tax payer dollars.

AB 348 removes the ban on funding agencies that provide abortion services.

AB 348 provides new funding to family planning agencies for PAP tests and followup cancer screenings, but no other medical services. So it can be assumed that funding is limited to cervical cancer screenings only.

AB 348 provides new funding for private family planning agencies to hire racial minority nurses, mid-wives and physicians assistants.

AB 348 increases family planning funding each year of the next budget period.

AB 349 restores the eligibility for AB348 services from 200% of the federal poverty line to 300%. The family size for both adult male and female clients, ages 18-44, determines the income level for eligibility. Therefore, males can count all their children regardless of his custody or child support to raise his eligibility for free services.

AB 349 does not specify the family planning services a male would receive or whether those services would be limited to him or extends to his sexual partner who might not be eligible.

AB 349 eliminates the current requirement for minors' eligibility to be determined by the parents'/guardians's income and for parents/guardians to be notified of a minor's treatment.

AB 349 strips DHS of policy development restricting it to only the requirements in this law. DHS also must implement every waiver granted by the federal government. In other words, our state law gives federal law precedence stripping Wisconsin citizens of the right to in-state spending of their tax dollars.

Did these 31 legislators understand the bill their names are on?

Strong Communities...Healthy Kids Act

WOW! This is a bill so balanced that opponents have to lie about its content to spur discontent.

This bill returns Human Growth and Development curriculum decisions to local school districts rather than in Madison. It will modify the 2009 Healthy Youth Act. It changes mandated topics to recommended topics. It expects school educational programs to be taught by educators. It requires the state to apply for all funding applicable to recommended topics so that school districts can pay for their chosen curriculums.

This bill does not mandate abstinence education. It does not make Comprehensive Sex Education illegal. It allows communities to determine what is best with the direct input from their citizens. It recognizes that parents have the greatest influence on their children, as is consistently reported in teen surveys. It "levels the playing field" by placing responsibility for children on local adults.

Research studies are read by both sides of the sex education issue. Two recent studies indicate more than 70% of teens and adults think teens should wait until marriage to have sex (US Dept. of Health & Human Services) and a whopping 98% of adults believe parents should be their children's sex educators (Journal of Adolescent Health, 1/2011). Abstinence proponents are willing to trust the opinions and intentions of average citizens. Our opponents continue to strip control from them.

New Website

FINALLY...our website is under construction and will actually have links that work. Look for it in early May

Anti-Smoking Campaign Applied to Sexual Behavior

As an ex-smoker, I have marveled at the anti-smoking campaign and its effectiveness on children. My children forced me to quit smoking because they had heard the message loud and clear in school and used their collective power to save their mother. The government then took the measures needed to protect the general public from a critical health hazard. A smoker can still choose to smoke just not where his/her smoking presents a health hazard to the public.

I now work with children in inner city middle schools and wish with every fiber in me that the same behavior change strategies were applied to sexual behavior in no uncertain terms. Black Americans now account for 50% of new HIV cases, 50% of those living with HIV/AIDS and 50% of those who die from AIDS-related deaths. This city, Milwaukee, ranks first for gonorrhea and Chlamydia and 1 in 5 new cases of HIV are among teens and young adults.

This is a tragedy produced by our health policy. Sexual behavior has been given a public health pass just to protect the unsupportable viewpoint that sexual activity is a right without any boundaries. Our children are being swept up in sexual manipulation that puts them at the top of the tragic health outcomes list. A condom cannot stop this tragedy any more than a cigarette filter could stop lung cancer.

Please require health agencies to concentrate on health in developing strategies. To succeed, changing habits and behavior must be at the core of policies. Copy the anti-smoking campaign and require the condom makers to fund it.

Go Cedarburg!

476 Wisconsin School Districts have spent the last 6 months trying to comply with the state's Healthy Youth Act. The law mandates topics to be included IF the district plans to offer Human Growth and Development. All are related to sex education with only an "age appropriate" nod to growth and development.

The law passed because it did protect local school district control and parents rights (opt-out clause). Willing to accept their victory, the bill's proponents are now getting a lesson in what "local control" means. They either didn't do their homework or believed their interpreatation of the law, the "intent", was more legal than the actual words.

On the one hand, local control means that the state does not have to provide guidance, training, legal advice, funding, define terms, evaluate programs, determine medical accuracy or create curriculums. Yes, the state does have to pursue federal teen pregnancy prevention funding, which is for comprehensive sex education, but historically, school districts have not benefitted from the largesse. Only Milwaukee has ever applied for these competitive funds irun through state coffers in the past. The law acknowledges this by allowing school districts to invite volunteers to teach their courses. So it is the agencies of the volunteers that traditionally have received the federal funds via the state--but now those volunteers have to instruct in all the mandated topics. A brilliant way to keep the riff-raff, like a crisis pregnancy center out, and Planned Parenthood in.

On the other hand, school districts have not been officially notified about how "local control" empowers them...unless they specifically asked for guidance. In a series of emails, obtained through an Open Records request, the spokesperson for the Department of Public Instruction informed inquirers that the local district decides age appropriateness, scope and sequence, emphasis given to mandated topics, legal interpretations, etc. In other words, the ball is in their court.

Wisconsin school districts have been embroiled in this local process --a true act of democracy in action. What is amazing is the creative approaches being pursued to make the course what the local constituency wants. Cedarburg, a suburb of Milwaukee, reached the law's deadline with a new curriculum that the board was not comfortable enacting. It sent its advisory committee back to the drawing board. It notified parents, on the premise of increasing family communication , a requirement of the bill, that students would be opted-in to the "sensitive topics" classes.

Imagine, the problems resolved with this approach. Parents understand what the sensitive topics are, the district would be more inclined to explain what this instruction will be, the parents and kids talk about their values regarding these topics and decide whether their kids need someone else's take on them. In the ideal world, this approach would mean that parents would convey their values, and because teens admit their parents are their greatest influence on sexual topics, a win-win situation results. It could also liberate a district from the 3-year cycle of opposition to its curriculum while giving an impetus to providing excellence in the teaching of the course. Why opt-in to mediocracy?

Even though Cedarburg would still teach comprehensive sex education, I applaud their attention to the well-researched stance that parent involvement in sex education is critical to outcomes. It seems now that the bill supporters do not. Cedarburg has been threatened with a legal challenge--enter ACLU? I'm not a lawyer but I think school districts have the law's interpretation on their side as does, in writing, the spokesperson for the Department of Public Instruction.

Ah, Politics!

Two surprises in one day! Reinstatement of Title V state block grant abstinence funding was passed within the Health Care Bill and a County District Attorney in WI is cautioning that our new Healthy Youth Act may place school personnel in the lawsuit firing line.

ACLU and Abstinence

I am pro-abstinence for young people for the basic reason that sex is really messing up people's lives and needs to be returned to a place of respect in social thought. But I am an American and I am furious that the ACLU is following these Healthy Youth Acts around the country and threatening lawsuits if school districts do not follow the law "exactly".
Schools in Sonoma County, CA are the latest to be faced with ACLU threats. It sounds like the schools have offered what the law requires but the schools also kept in place a peer-education program called Free to Be, which is kids telling kids that abstinence is a liberating experience that has many benefits. The schools, parents and students must like the program--invitations have been extended for 18 years. That doesn't matter at all--ACLU says its illegal and has to go.
One wonders if the ACLU is bothering to investigate whether all those programs which it does not threaten are evidence-based and effective according to the legal standards. My guess is those standards only apply to any approach that emphasizes abstinence. Who gave folks with a political agenda the right to dictate what is taught in schools anyway? Americans need to take back their schools. There is plenty of evidence that they and our children are going to hell in a handbasket!