Wisconsin D. A. Says Sex-Ed Teachers Could Be Arrested
By Donna Garner
April 8, 2010
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Wisconsin D. A. Says Sex-Ed Teachers Could Be Arrested By Donna Garner April 8, 2010 |
Excerpts from this newspaper article posted at the bottom of this page:"A Wisconsin district attorney is urging schools to drop their sex-education programs, warning that the teachers involved could be arrested if they follow a new state law requiring them to instruct students on how to use condoms and other contraceptives…
"In his letter, Scott Southworth [a Wisconsin District Attorney] told school district leaders the new law promotes sexual assault of children, and warns that teachers who follow the law could be charged with misdemeanor or felony delinquency of a minor, with maximum punishments ranging from nine months in jail to six years in prison…
"The Wisconsin Department of Health Services [a public health department under the Obama administration] stated, 'Study after study has shown that abstinence-only education does not work.'”
[Note from Berit: Many abstinence-only programs do prevent promiscuity -- especially among students with a Christian moral foundation, But morality was never the real goal of sex education. Sex-ed actually "works" well, since the underlying goal is to replace a student's traditional values with amoral global values that are incompatible with Christian beliefs.]
BOGUS CONTRACEPTIVE STUDIES: THE WAXMAN REPORT
Actually the term “study after study” refers to those done by Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman and the Obama administration who have promoted these bogus contraceptive “studies” in an effort to discredit abstinence-only sex education programs.
Congressman Henry Waxman started this anti-abstinence-only push back in December 2004 when he presented a report written by his own staffers and not by medical experts.
Waxman’s report was never submitted to the full Committee on Government Reform for review, and no Congressional hearings were ever held to discuss the accuracy of the report. Yet the Waxman Report became the springboard for the many bogus contraceptive “studies” that have followed, and the Obama administration has joined right in to perpetuate the no-holds-barred, sexual freedom message.
CECILE RICHARDS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD: VESTED INTERESTS
Most of these bogus “studies” have been performed by people with vested interests in pushing the contraceptive sex-education agenda.
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, has been a frequent visitor to the White House and is closely tied to leftwing notables such as George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and John Kerry.
Richards has recently become a board member of the Ford [Motor Company] Foundation.
Cecile Richards’ husband is Kirk Adams, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Planned Parenthood gets rich either way: PP makes money from selling the contraceptives. If the girls get pregnant, PP gets rich by selling the abortions.
Data show that 52 million abortions have been performed in the United States since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
PP’s abortion income last year was $132,809,850; total clinic income was $374,700,000. This means that Planned Parenthood’s abortion income was actually 35% of its clinic income (STOPP, 1.10.10).
Over $3 Million of Planned Parenthood’s income came from taxpayers’ dollars.
According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, for many years the federal government has been spending at least $12 promoting contraceptives and condom use for every $1 it spent on abstinence-only education.
U. S. Sect. of Education Arne Duncan was the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools during the time that Planned Parenthood was awarded over $2.5 Million to conduct comprehensive sex education programs. Abstinence-only programs were thrown out. What was the result? One in seven of its female students became pregnant.
TEXAS FREEDOM NETWORK AND ITS TIES
Another group that pushes these bogus “studies” is Texas Freedom Network. TFN has been in close association for many years with Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign (largest homosexual organization in the country).
TFN, PP, and HRC are like a "sisterhood" and work in conjunction with one another to destroy any vestiges of traditional marriage and traditional values that are left in our country.
The Sisterhood is joined at the hip by ex-TFN presidents, Cecile Richards and Samantha Smoot, who work closely with TFN's present leader, Kathy Miller.
Dan Quinn, the Communications Director of TFN, outed himself in a major newspaper article in recent years.
BOGUS RESEARCHER: DAVID WILEY
David Wiley is a “researcher” who is frequently quoted by Texas Freedom Network as an expert on contraceptive issues. He has no medical school training whatsoever and has his degree in health education.
DR. DOUGLAS KIRBY: VESTED INTERESTS
A “study” frequently highlighted by the Obama administration and the Democrats is "Emerging Answers 2007." This bogus “study” praised 15 contraceptive sex education programs for their effectiveness, but the man who wrote the “study” is Dr. Douglas Kirby who serves on the staff of the company that produced at least 5 of the 15 sex-education programs heralded in the study.
A report released by Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy (6.21.07) praised a contraceptive education program called Safer Choices Level 1. This program was developed by California-based ETR Associates and mentioned condoms 383 times and abstinence 5 times. Who is the senior researcher for ETR? It is none other than Douglas Kirby.
BOGUS STUDY: MATHEMATICA
The Mathematica study released in April 2007 cost taxpayers $8 Million and was 9 years in the making. Mathematica chose to track only 4 elementary/middle school abstinence programs. With the United States having 700 abstinence programs which received federal funding under Title V, Section 510, Mathematica chose to study only 4. Which 4 programs did they choose? They studied 4 little-known abstinence programs which were picked because they were situated in schools/communities which had the staff and the diversity which Mathematica needed to carry out the study.
Mathematica did not choose well-established and well-researched abstinence programs such as Scott & White Worth the Wait®, Best Friends, Not Me/Not Now, Operation Keepsake, Abstinence by Choice, Teen Aid, Sex Respect, FACTS, Project Taking Charge, etc.
BOGUS RESEARCHER: DR. BUZZ PRUITT
Dr. Buzz Pruitt is a health educator at Texas A&M University. He was commissioned by the Texas Department of Health a few years ago to lead a study of sex-education programs. His findings were touted in major newspapers all over the country.
However, Pruitt’s “study” was terribly flawed because there was not a comparison group where the data from one group of students came from those who received abstinence-only instruction and the other group received no abstinence-only instruction.
Pruitt’s findings were further flawed because during the project, the researchers realized too many of the students were also hearing abstinence-only messages.
Also, Dr. Pruitt sampled only 11% of middle-school students by giving them a 10-page questionnaire to fill out. How many middle-school students would be able to concentrate and adequately answer that many pages of questions? More than likely the students started marking any answers just to get the task finished.
Dr. Pruitt also chose only five abstinence-only programs to follow and did not try to correlate his findings against any public health data from the counties in which the students lived.
BOGUS RESEARCHER: JANET E. ROSENBAUM
Another oft-quoted “study” is the one done by Janet E. Rosenbaum called "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective." One problem with Janet E. Rosenbaum's "study" of abstinence pledges is that her information is predicated on information gained between 1995 and 2001, before the abstinence-only funding and accompanying medically based curricula actually began to increase in the public schools during the 2000’s.
LEGITIMATE, EXPERIENCED RESEARCHERS IGNORED
Long-time, professional researchers such as Stan E. Weed (Ph.D., Research Director, Institute for Research & Evaluation), Robert E. Rector (Senior Research, Fellow, Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation), and Christine Kim (Policy Analyst, Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation) all presented their reports to Congressman Henry Waxman’s committee in April 2008 but were completely ignored even though their reports showed:
"Teenagers face strong pressure to engage in risky sexual behavior. Each year some 2.6 million become sexually active, and nearly one half of all high-school students say they have engaged in sexual activity. Yet empirical data show that teens who do so risk a host of negative consequences, including STD infection, emotional and psychological harm, and unwed childbearing."
EMERGENCE OF SURPRISE LANDMARK STUDY
One thing that the Obama administration had not planned on is a landmark study released just two months ago by University of Pennsylvania researcher John B. Jemmott, Loretta S. Jemmott, and Geoffrey T. Fong published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, February 2010:
As reported by The Medical Institute for Sexual Health on 2.25.10:
"After 24 months, only the abstinence-only intervention was effective in preventing adolescents from engaging in sexual intercourse, with 33% fewer students initiating sexual intercourse in the abstinence intervention than in the health-promotion control group. None of the other interventions showed a significant decrease in the number of students initiating sexual intercourse when compared to the control students.
"The researchers concluded that the abstinence-only intervention had the most dramatic effect on the prevention of adolescent sexual involvement."
The Washington Post reported on February 2, 2010
"Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity…
"The study is the first to evaluate an abstinence program using a carefully designed approach comparing it with several alternative strategies and following subjects for an extended period of time, considered the kind of study that produces the highest level of scientific evidence…
"The research…comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After falling for more than a decade, the numbers of births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing.
"The Obama administration eliminated more than $170 million in annual federal funding targeted at abstinence programs after a series of reports concluded that the approach was ineffective. Instead, the White House is launching a $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative [contraceptive education] that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work -- a program the administration on Monday proposed expanding to $183 million."
NOW WE UNDERSTAND TODAY’S NEWSPAPER STATEMENTS
Obama and the Democrats have taken ownership of the highly funded contraceptive education programs thare are being pushed into America’s public schools through such agencies as the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. It is these public health organizations led by political appointees that are forcing their dangerous agenda into the schools.
Thankfully a Wisconsin District Attorney is fighting back with the law. Here is today’s story:
Wis. DA Threatens Arrest for Local Sex-Ed Teachers (4.7.10), Lisa Holewa Contributor, AOL News
(April 7) -- A Wisconsin district attorney is urging schools to drop their sex-education programs, warning that the teachers involved could be arrested if they follow a new state law requiring them to instruct students on how to use condoms and other contraceptives.
In light of a letter from Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth, leaders at the five school districts in the county are evaluating what to do now, New Lisbon School District Superintendent Tom Andres told AOL News today.
"I don't intend to put our teachers in harm's way," he said. "We were just about to meet to discuss how to comply with the new law. Then this letter came, and this is another piece of the puzzle that we'll have to consider as we figure out how to move forward."'Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth sent a letter to leaders at the county's five school districts, warning them to stop their sex-education programs or risk the arrest of teachers if they follow a new state law requiring them to instruct students how to use condoms and other contraceptives.
The state law, called the Healthy Youth Act, took effect in March. Starting this fall, it requires schools with sex-education courses to teach students medically accurate, age-appropriate information, including how to use birth control and prevent sexually transmitted diseases. It also requires the classes to include information about how to recognize signs of abuse and how alcohol can affect decision making.
Parents will be permitted to remove their children from sex-education classes, as they could under previous state law. Schools also will be allowed the choice of whether to offer sex education, but must notify parents if they decide not to.
In his letter, Southworth told school district leaders the new law promotes sexual assault of children, and warns that teachers who follow the law could be charged with misdemeanor or felony delinquency of a minor, with maximum punishments ranging from nine months in jail to six years in prison.
"For example, if a teacher instructs any student aged 16 or younger how to utilize contraceptives under circumstances where the teacher knows the child is engaging in sexual activity with another child -- or even where the 'natural and probable consequences' of the teacher's instruction is to cause that child to engage in sexual intercourse with a child -- that teacher can be charged under this statue," Southworth wrote.
"Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior," he wrote, adding, "Our teachers should never be put in this position."
Southworth did not return calls or e-mails from AOL News for comment today.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services released a statement Tuesday disagreeing with Southworth's interpretation."The law provides comprehensive, medically accurate, unbiased and age-appropriate information, and teaches teens about the potential negative consequences of their choices," said department spokesman Seth Boffeli. "The law helps identify abuse and prevent teen pregnancy.
"Study after study has shown that abstinence-only education does not work. The Healthy Youth Act updates our standards to reflect the health risks teens face today," the statement said.Southworth's letter also said the new law requires schools to condone controversial sexual behavior because they must teach students about gender stereotypes. He said that would likely mean teaching about homosexuality and transgender and transsexual people.
"In effect, the new law injects an intense amount of unnecessary politics into our human growth and development classrooms, and places our teachers and children into a position of discussing extremely controversial issues that will likely conflict with the religious beliefs and values of most Juneau County families," he wrote.
He urged school district leaders to simply drop their sex-education courses until the state Legislature "amends or repeals these new mandates."
Andres, whose district is in a small rural area of Wisconsin, near Madison, said his teachers are already walking a tightrope in sex-education classes, being careful that the information they present is age-appropriate and respectful of various religious and family views. But, he added, the schools also must fulfill their responsibility to students.
"You look on YouTube and you can see there already is a significant amount of sexual activity going on among our youth," he told AOL News.
"We have a responsibility to talk about it. We need to do it in a safe and responsible way," he said. "It's already difficult, and this [letter] makes it more difficult. ... We certainly don't want to contribute to the delinquency of a minor."
His district leaders will meet next week to decide how to proceed, he said. The school board will make the final decision.
Donna Garner - Wgarner1@hot.rr.com
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