Gender-Bending Lesson

After studying the 1960s, including themes of the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, I gave follow-up lessons on legacies of those and other issues in American culture today. This is one.

“Feminists and homosexual activists use the words ‘genders’ and ‘sexes’ almost interchangeably. They’ve been pushing an idea that there are more than two genders since at least the 1990s,” I told them. “They’ve been trying to pass a United Nations resolution that instead of two genders, there are five.”

“What would those be?” asked a girl with an incredulous look.

“They claim that male and female are out on the edges of a spectrum,” I explained as I wrote on the board. “That inside the female on the extreme right are lesbians. That inside the male on the extreme left are homosexual men, and than in the middle are ‘transgender’ people who go either way.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A lesbian is still female. She’s not another gender.”

“That’s crazy,” said a boy.

“To them,” I explained, “it’s another battle in the Sexual Revolution.”

“Well I hope they lose,” another girl said.

“Remember last month when a speaker came in to discuss bullying at an assembly in the gym?” I asked.

There were nods all around. “Last year it was a football player,” said a boy.

“Yes,” I said. “What did you think of those lectures?”

“They were good,” he said.

“What do the rest of you think?”

Most indicated the lectures had been interesting.Joel Baum Fox News

“Well, in Oakland, California, students get different kinds of bullying lessons,” I said, wheeling the LCD projector into position and plugging in my laptop. “Watch this.”

It was a “bullying” lesson on “gender diversity” in which the lecturer told fourth grade students they could be a girl or a boy or both. Joel Baum told students: “They can feel like girls. They can feel like boys. They can feel like both, and they can feel like, as I said, kinda like neither.”

Baum is educational director for Gender Spectrum, an activist group pushing the idea that the two sexes - male and female - are too rigid. Students can move around on the “gender spectrum” depending on how they feel. They can change whenever they want.

“They’re way too young to be listening to that stuff in the fourth grade,” said another girl.

“They shouldn’t teach that stuff,” said a boy. “It’s crazy. Those kids are going to believe it now. They believe anything the teacher tells them.”

“Would you think it was all right to teach this,” I asked the the girl, “if the students were older?”

“Yes,” she said.

“At what age then?”

“I don’t know - high school maybe.”

“It’s mandatory for all students in Oakland to take it from kindergarten to twelfth grade,” I said. “Mandatory means they have no choice.”

“That’s brainwashing,” said a the boy. “Those schools shouldn’t be doing that. It hasn't got much to do with bullying.”

“What if it were taught only in high school and students could choose to take the 'gender spectrum' course or not to take it?”

“That would be okay,” he said.

“The California Teachers’ Association, the CTA, is paying for this. That’s the teachers’ union,” I explained.

“Why?” he asked.

“Teachers’ unions all over the country are very left-wing,” I said. “They think this stuff is wonderful, and teachers’ unions are the most powerful groups in the Democrat Party.”

“You’re not left-wing,” said a girl.

“I’m unusual,” I said. “There are very few conservatives in this profession.”

“And you’re retiring.”

“Yup.” “This kind of gender-bending stuff is happening all over the country,” I explained. “The Maine legislature, for example, is about to vote on a bill that would prevent males who claim to be females from suing when they’re not allowed to use the ladies’ room in middle school or in a restaurant. In two cases, a boy’s parents and a man have sued a school and a restaurant and the Maine Human Rights Commission has agreed with them. Now the Orono Middle School is being forced to allow a boy to use the girls’ bathroom. A Denny’s Restaurant was forced to allow a man dressed as a woman to use the ladies’ room there.”

“In both cases here, the newspaper article refers to the boy and the man with the personal pronouns of ‘she’ and ‘her’ as if they were indeed females,’” I explained. “I don’t do that.”

“If you were in the Maine Legislature, how would you vote?” I asked. “How many of you would vote ‘yes,’ which would allow schools and restaurants to prevent males from using female bathrooms or locker rooms?”

Five or six hands went up.

“Who would vote ‘no’?”

Two hands.

“Who isn’t sure?”

Another five or six hands went up.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll see what the legislature does.”


Pressure Is Building

Is America is at risk of boiling over? Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for the President Reagan, now columnist for The Wall Street Journal, believes it is. I don’t like to think about it but the danger is there. Noonan is not the alarmist type. She’s even-tempered and intuitive about Americans, and that’s why she was able to write speeches for President Reagan that tapped the American psyche. When she writes something like this, I pay attention.

She says “Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.” Do Americans think we’ve peaked? That we’re going downhill now?

She identified a gap between what our elites think our country needs and what ordinary Americans believe it needs. She claims there’s a “growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.”

She’s absolutely right. Americans have voted over and over on referenda that they want the federal government to control illegal immigration, but elites call them “xenophobic.” When citizens in the states vote against supporting illegal aliens in schools, hospitals, welfare offices, in bilingual programs and so forth, they’re called “racists.” She cites the situation in Arizona: “The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation's future, however, is different, more like: ‘We live in a welfare state and we've just expanded health care. Unemployment's up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we've got?’ No is, in essence, the answer.”
Nogales, Arizona border

Rather than closing the border, the Obama Administration sued Arizona for usurping the authority of Washington even though Washington was refusing to exercise that authority. Then a federal judge ruled that the Arizona law - even though it mirrors federal law - violates the US Constitution. Unbelievable.

Then there’s California’s Proposition 8. The elites say homosexuals have a constitutional right to marry each other. California’s citizens passed Proposition 8 in 2008 - an amendment to their state constitution restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Then a homosexual federal judge ruled last week that the amended California Constitution violates the US Constitution. As if George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson believed men had a right “marry” each other? As if ordinary Americans who have voted in thirty-four state referenda to preserve a basic, 5000-year-old human concept are “homophobic”?

Last week, the State of Missouri voted 71% that Washington cannot force them to buy health insurance from anyone. Congressional Democrats knew most Americans felt that way, but they voted to ram it down our throats anyway. US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pooh-poohed the Missouri vote, insisting that the “trend is turning” and Americans will soon embrace Obamacare.


You’re in La-La Land Harry.

Back in March of 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry talked about secession in the face of the encroaching power of Washington. Several other states are discussing nullification - ignoring dictates from Washington - because they believe the Constitution doesn’t grant Congress or the President power to do what they want. Democrat Congressman Pete Stark told people at a “townhall” meeting in his district last week that “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”
Pampered radical students from the 60s ad 70s are now running not only our universities and our mainstream media, but also our government. These dedicated followers of Saul Alinsky have taken over Washington. As Victor Davis Hanson puts it: “One walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power.” They’re smugly imposing their bankrupt socialist policies on states and the states are rebelling.

There is indeed the “chasm” existing between the elites and the rest of us on the ground as Noonan describes. Ordinary Americans who know how things work in the real world because they actually keep the country running on the job sites every day have had enough. If citizens cannot use the democratic process to express their will without being thwarted and insulted by screwball federal judges at every turn, America will indeed boil over.

Hateful? Who Is?

Last October I made a TV commercial for “Stand For Marriage Maine,” the Catholic-led organization to repeal the gay “marriage” law passed by the Maine’s legislature. We won, and it was a setback for homosexual activists nationally as liberal Maine became the seventeenth state in a row to vote against it. Wherever citizens vote, it loses, but fallout from bitter homosexual activists continues.

Three of us made the same commercial. My version was rejected, but Nokomis High School guidance counselor Don Mendell’s version ran for weeks. Now his job is threatened because two other guidance counselors filed complaints with Maine’s licensing board claiming he violated the NASW (National Association of Social Workers) code of ethics by appearing in the ad.

If there’s an occupation with more homosexuals than hairdressing or interior decorating, it’s social work. In the first complaint, social worker and guidance counselor Ann Sullivan claimed “Don [Mendell] has a history of being unsupportive of GLTBQ issues.” That long acronym would mean “Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Bisexual, and Questioning.” Sullivan complained that “When Nokomis High staff assisted students in beginning the Gay Straight Alliance [GSA], Don was very vocal in his opposition to this group.”

Mendell should be commended for opposing a GSA at his high school, considering that President Obama’s embattled Safe Schools Czar, Kevin Jennings was “the faculty advisor to the nation's first Gay-Straight Alliance” Jennings then founded GLSEN - the “Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network” - and used taxpayer money to teach fourteen-year-olds sexual techniques like “fisting” - too perverted to describe or this column couldn’t be printed in family newspapers. Jennings also passed out guides to gay bars in Boston, pointing out which ones specialized in “leather” fetishes. That’s code for homosexuals who prefer sick, sadomasochist practices such as those favored by Maine gay “marriage” activist Bruce LaVallee-Davidson, recently convicted of manslaughter. GLSEN gives such literature to students all over the country. Instead of being praised for trying to protect Maine students from depravity, Mendell is harassed by the state.

Days before the vote, I was invited to appear at a press conference where I spoke about some of this. Private school, and retired public school teachers were there, but I was the only active public school teacher present. Why? Mendell’s ordeal is a good example of what we can expect if we speak out against homosexual propaganda in school or even in private life.

In December, the Baldacci Administration ramped up pressure. According to the Sebasticook Valley Weekly: “Maine Assistant Attorney General Robert Perkins . . . has requested that Mendell turn over transcripts of the video commercial he made in support of a YES vote on the recent gay marriage referendum [and] provide copies of any ‘letters to the editor’ that he may have written in the past year concerning the gay marriage issue.”

That’s chilling.

Mendell says his First Amendment rights protect him from charges other counselors made to shut him up. Clearly, they’re supportive of propaganda groups like GSA and GLSEN who actively recruit students to their miscreant subcultures. Considering the average life expectancy of homosexual men is twenty years shorter than other men, it is the two complainants’ ethics which should be questioned, not Mendell’s.

Twenty years ago, homosexual activists jumped on the civil rights bandwagon with the dubious claim that homosexual orientation is biological or “in the genes,” for which there’s absolutely no scientific proof. Nonetheless, the majority of psychotherapists and social workers, like the two complainants, believe homosexuality is inborn and immutable. That’s the kind of propaganda GSA and GLSEN pushes in Maine and in thousands of schools across the nation.

But what if they’re wrong? What if schoolchildren are malleable and can be steered toward homosexual or transgender inclinations by exposure to GLSEN propaganda? It’s one thing for Maine public schools to provide “transgender bathrooms” (which some do), but it would be quite another if they should refer children to newly-opened “transgender clinics.” Children’s Hospital in Boston offers hormone treatments to prevent the onset of puberty in children as young as seven! According to Foxnews.com: “The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the [surgical] change.”

“‘Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it compounds their confusion,’ said Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University. ‘Trying to delay puberty or change someone’s gender is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature. . . . At some point in childhood,’ McHugh said, ‘many children role play as the opposite sex, but it is a social, not a medical issue.’”

Especially when they’re only seven.

That’s one direction in which homosexual activists are heading. Maine voters set them back and Don Mendell is feeling their wrath.

Opposing Forces

For decades I figured people would wake up and raise hell before things got this bad, but I’ve been wrong. Last summer, however, I noticed stirrings and wrote “Something Big is Brewing Out There.” Democrat congressmen were shocked by constituent anger when they returned to their home districts during the August recess. Citizens back home knew more than their congressmen in Washington did about the various versions of the Obamacare bill under consideration and they were ripped. Our congressional representatives became so afraid, they wouldn’t meet with people except in the most controlled environments. Now something else is brewing that could be just as troubling for big-government liberals who are running our country into the ground.

When Speaker Pelosi cracked the whip on Democrats during the late-Saturday night vote on the multi-trillion-dollar Obamacare bill, an unforeseen element presented itself: Pelosi got her arm twisted by representatives of the American Conference of Catholic Bishops. She was told that unless she took taxpayer funding for abortion out of the House bill, the Catholic Church would actively oppose it. She buckled and pushed through the Stupak Amendment. Since then, Catholics have teamed up with Orthodox Christians and evangelical Protestants to file the “Manhattan Declaration” just two weeks ago, which declares in part:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them.

Catholics are teaming up with conservative Protestant Calvinists? Who would have predicted this twenty years ago? It’s happening because they’re both “under assault from powerful forces in our culture” and in our government - like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi - two of the most pro-abortion and pro-homosexual politicians ever to hold office. When they and their ilk pushed the disingenuously-named “Freedom Of Choice Act” or FOCA that would force conservative Christian doctors, nurses and hospitals to perform abortions, that was bad. When Pelosi, a Catholic, said the Catholic Church isn’t sure when human life begins, she was not only stating a falsehood, she was throwing down the gauntlet to the bishops. They could either slink away as they have been for decades in the face of leftist “Catholic” politicians, or they could accept the challenge. I’m very pleased to see that they’ve summoned some courage at long last. Now, leftist Democrat Senators promise they won’t sign an Obamacare bill with the Stupak Amendment in it. Moderate Democrat Senators say they won’t sign a bill without it. President Obama went up to Capitol Hill last weekend to try to work out what would seem to be an impossible impasse. I hope he fails.

The downside of the Catholic bishops’ position is that they would support Obamacare absent the abortion funding, even if it’s going to cost $2 trillion we don’t have. In that, they’re not on the same page with the Tea Party protesters. Both groups are against Obamacare, but for different reasons.

As a young Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat I was foolish in many ways, but my opinions about what are now called “social issues” of abortion and homosexuality were the same then as they are now: Abortion killed babies and homosexuality was a perversion. Neither deserved sanction by government. Though I was liberal on other issues, I’ve never been convinced that either abortion or homosexuality warrants government protection. The Democrat Party had a strong conservative wing in the fifties and even in most of the notorious sixties. There were lots of members with views like mine, but then Democrats moved hopelessly leftward on every issue. Now it barely tolerates any members who oppose abortion or homosexual “marriage.”

Unduly influenced by homosexual priests and bishops for the past thirty or forty years, Catholic leaders in New England and elsewhere shrank away from political battles against “gay rights” legislation - even after being ripped apart by the altar boy rape scandals of 2002. I was disgusted, and like many Catholics, cut back drastically on my donations and even considered leaving the church. Recently, however, the Portland Diocese led a successful fight against homosexual “marriage” here in Maine this year, and that defeat of the “powerful forces in our culture” caused a domino effect in New York and New Jersey immediately after.

Neither Tea Party activists nor signers of the Manhattan Declaration were foreseen by the liberal Democrat machine when they swept to power late last year, but both will be formidable enemies in 2010 against Democrats and the “powerful forces in our culture” with whom they’re so closely allied. They’ve seen their enemies lately, however, and that’s why they’re trying so hard to jam through Obamacare and Climate change fixes before too many more people wise up.

The 2010 election will be very interesting.

Addendum: The Senate rejected an amendment last night that would have blocked abortion funding from its version of the Obamacare bill on a vote of 54-45. Let's see what the Catholic Church does now. Time is very short.

Thought Police Tribunals

Gay “marriage” doesn’t disturb me as much as “hate crime” laws. Both are driven by pressure groups such as Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the Human Rights Campaign, and countless others pushing the Homosexual Agenda. All swear there’s no such agenda, of course, but then the first item on it is to claim it doesn’t exist. When activists pushed “gay rights” and opponents like this writer said gay “marriage” is next, they called it fear-mongering. So what’s next on the Homosexual Agenda?

State and Federal Hate Crime Laws, that’s what. Unleash the Thought Police.

Let’s say J. Edgar Hoover walked into the room wearing a dress. Would we call him “her”? Evidently, Hoover and his lover/assistant Clyde Tolson attended secret parties dressed as a woman and liked to be called “Mary.” Fine for him, but must the rest of us pretend also? If someone thinks he’s Napoleon, we don’t have to call him “Emperor” do we? It’s one thing to wink and play along, but quite another to accept neurotic/psychotic behavior as normal. If we do, aren’t we crazy too? Better not say anything though. With “hate crime” laws, you could go to jail.

After Bruce Freeman of Lewiston, Maine started calling himself “Brianna” and wearing women’s clothes, he used the ladies’ room in a public restaurant. According to the Bangor Daily News, “Another customer complained to the manager about sharing a public restroom with a man . . . ‘The customer was very upset, was irate, had threatened to call police [said the manager]. A few days later, management decided that it would be in the best interest of Denny’s to ask [Freeman] to use the men’s room until sex reassignment surgery.’”

Throughout, the Bangor Daily News referred to Bruce/Brianna as “she” or “her” or “woman.” The lead was: “The Maine Human Rights Commission decided Monday that a transgender woman was discriminated against at a Denny’s restaurant in Auburn when management would not let her use the ladies room until she had sex reassignment surgery.”

If I write an opinion that the plaintiff is a neurotic about to mutilate himself surgically, could I be found guilty of “hate speech” by government entities like the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC)? Maybe I already have by calling the plaintiff “he” and “him.” Could it be ruled “harassment” by the MHRC if he files a complaint? Did the BDN play along because it was afraid Bruce/Brianna would sue?

GLAD’s website quotes Maine Law on this: “As a general matter, if a person has filed with the MHRC, completed the process there, and later files his or her case in court, then a full range of compensatory and injunctive relief is available.”

So Bruce/Brianna can sue now. Will he?

A spokesman for the homosexual activist group “Equality Maine,” arguing for Bruce/Brianna before the MHRC, said: “This company needs diversity training to understand what it means to be gender-nonconforming.” Denny’s has already paid legal fees defending itself unsuccessfully. Will it have to pay for “diversity training” too? Will it have to pay Bruce/Brianna for pain and suffering? Will it be forced to build new bathrooms in its restaurants? What will their final cost be for telling a man to stay out of the ladies’ room?

All this has a chilling effect on others who think the world is going crazy and want to speak up about it - and that’s what “gay rights” laws are meant to do. According to the GLAD website again: “The definition of sexual orientation in the [Maine Gay Rights] law includes a person’s ‘actual or perceived…gender identity or expression.’” Gender expression? Anyone can be a man one day and a woman the next and we all have to adjust. You think that’s crazy? You’re worried that any man now has the right to put on a dress, hang out in the ladies’ room, and wait there for your ten-year-old daughter? If you say anything, you’re a bigot, and you better have a good lawyer and deep pockets. The “gender non-conforming” don’t have a problem. You do.

You think the Maine ruling is no big deal? A similar so-called “Human Rights Commission” in Alberta, Canada ordered a minister to pay thousands to homosexual activists for writing a letter to the editor outlining the Christian case against homosexuality and purportedly causing them “pain and suffering.” They further ordered Minister Stephen Boisson to apologize and: “[C]ease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”

The Canadian government ordered a Christian minister to shut up. That’s chilling.

Can’t happen here you say? The First Amendment would protect us? Well, consider this: President Obama vows to appoint judges like Breyer and Ginsburg to the Supreme Court - judges who look to foreign law for guidance and believe our Constitution should be an “evolving document.” Both voted to overturn “Bowers vs Hardwick” because they believe sodomy is a constitutional right. Now he’s appointed Sotomayor, who believes “policy is made” in our courts. Will liberal judges uphold radical-leftist “human rights” tribunals who dictate who can and cannot speak and what they can or cannot say?

As Justice Antonin Scalia puts it: “If [an evolving Constitution] is to mean whatever the current society wants it to mean, sometimes it will give you more liberties, sometimes it will take away liberties.”

The EUnuchs Are At It Again

There’ll be no more “Misters” in Europe. No more “Madames” or “Mademoiselles,” “Fraus” or “Frauleins,” “Senoras” or “Senoritas” either. The European Union issued a booklet for EU Parliamentary Staff instructing them to eliminate all “gender-specific” terms from its literature. According to Lifesitenews.com: “. . . terms, such as ‘statesman,’ are to be replaced with gender-free alternatives, such as ‘political leader.’”

The article didn’t say if this resulted from a vote in the EU Parliament, but if that’s what Europeans want, fine. As long as the United States is a sovereign nation and isn’t controlled by liberal EUnuchs or the United Nations, they can do whatever they want over there.

Feminists are a strong force in the UN and many of their proposals are bizarre. At several UN Conferences on women, they suggest eliminating all references to gender in humans. They think gender a social construct with no biological basis. They would eliminate men’s rooms and ladies’ rooms and replace them with unisex rest rooms. Others would force public buildings to add a “transgendered” restroom because persons whose “gender” changes from day to day would feel uncomfortable in a men’s room or ladies’ room. I don’t care whether they feel comfortable or uncomfortable, and I certainly don’t want my tax money being used to construct special bathrooms for them, but let the EUnuchs do whatever they want with their own money.

Other feminists disagree with the unisex approach. Instead, they would expand the number of sexes from two to five. Anne Falso-Sterling wrote an article entitled "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." She (and she’s not alone) thinks the five are: male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, and bisexual.

The United Nations takes this stuff seriously. I’d be happier if my country resigned from the UN and evicted them from New York City. Let them to go Europe where they can build as many bathrooms as they like.

Some of this stuff is happening here too. The New Hampshire legislature votes this week on HB-415, which would allow “transgender” people to use whatever bathroom they choose on a given day, depending on how they feel. You don’t like that? Then you’re the problem, not the cross-dresser. Etransgender.com claims: “Employers facing the restroom issue for the first time are legally inclined to apply the ‘Principle of Least Astonishment,’ which is that a person who presents as a woman will be less astonishing using the women's restroom than the men's, vice versa for a person presenting as a man. If a concern arises, from the corporate legal department or another employee, the employer must provide alternative solutions for the employee complaining - NOT the transgender individual.”

You’re astonished by the drag queen next to you? You’re homophobic and you need Sensitivity Classes.

Feminists see men like me as members of the Evil Patriarchy that oppresses women everywhere. They don’t like the Catholic Church either because it teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” and it insists that only men can be priests. If women want to become priests, they can join the Episcopal Church, where they can be openly homosexual too, and even be promoted to bishop. Episcopalians are fading away, but they’ll probably hang on for a few more decades.

The Roman Catholic Church has resisted fads for thousands of years. We’re not without our feminists though, and they’re making inroads. While singing hymns at mass lately, it bugs me to notice that the lyrics have been changed on some of my favorites. One is “Be Not Afraid,” by John Foley SJ, which used to go: “. . . and if wicked men insult and hate you, all because of Me, blessed, blessed are you.” Having read and heard plenty of insults, and not a little hatred for my opinion columns over the years, I related to that line. Now, however, “wicked men” has been replaced by “wicked tongues.” Now I’m distracted by visions of disembodied tongues floating in the air and uttering nasty things about me.

Another is “Turn to Me,” also by Foley, with the lyrics “Turn to Me, oh man and be saved, says the Lord for I am God.” Now, however, it goes: “Turn to Me, oh turn and be saved,” and that bugs me. Did Foley agree to the changes? If he did, well, they’re his songs and he can do what he wants with them. But if it’s stealth feminists playing with my mind, I don’t like it. Those hymns became special when I learned them at a men’s retreat called “Cursillo” twenty-five years ago. They were written by a man; Jesus Christ was a man; but feminist Christians have a hard time with all that. Women can certainly enjoy the hymns if they want, but no one has the right to change them except John Foley.

In spite of what they claim in their academic treatises at university Women’s Studies Departments, men and women are quite different and they always will be. Confused men and women can change their language and cross-dress every other day. They can cut off and sew on genitals and take all the hormones they want. Just don’t ask me to pay for any of it, and don’t send out the PC Thought Police to arrest me when I call attention to their foolishness in this space. This is still America, and we still have a Constitution with a First Amendment - for the time being at least.

AIDS And Our Tax Money

Originally, it was called GRID - Gay Related Immune Deficiency. Homosexual men, who were the first to acquire the disease in the United States, didn’t like that name. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control changed it to AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and so began the sustained effort by homosexual activists to separate male homosexual practices from the disease in the public mind. This they largely accomplished by orchestrating a fear campaign about a world-wide heterosexual AIDS epidemic. That epidemic, however, never materialized. Last week, the UK’s Independent reported that: “Threat of world AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits.” AIDS continues to spread among men having sex with men.

The fellow making that announcement has the unfortunate name of Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of the WHO’s Department of HIV/AIDS. He said, that except for some peculiar circumstances in sub-Saharan Africa, “It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries.”

The article went on to say that “AIDS organisations, including the WHO, UN Aids and the Global Fund, have come under attack for inflating estimates of the number of people infected, diverting funds from other health needs such as malaria . . .” This seems to be a general pattern when it comes to AIDS. According to a Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) report: “Since the first federal resources were made available to state and local health agencies for AIDS prevention in 1985, federal funding, which now includes money for research, treatment, and housing, has skyrocketed to $13 billion for fiscal 2003. As a result of the work of highly mobilized lobbying forces, more is spent per patient on AIDS than on any other disease, though it does not even currently rank among the top 15 causes of death in the United States.”

What do you suppose are the chances that those “highly mobilized lobbying forces” were homosexual activists who early-on got themselves appointed to key decision-making positions governing taxpayer expenditures for AIDS? I’m willing to cover any bets here.

The CAGW report went on to say: “Research expenditures at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) demonstrate the uneven use of federal resources. In 1996, NIH spent an average of $1,160 for every heart disease death, $4,700 for every cancer death, and a whopping $43,000 for every AIDS death.”

AIDS is unique in that it became a political disease. Public health measures such as contact tracing - used effectively for decades to fight syphilis and gonorrhea - were abandoned with AIDS. With contact tracing, nurses would contact the sexual partners of people reporting to clinics for treatment of STDs to inform them of their exposure, encourage them to seek treatment, and avoid spreading the disease to others. Homosexual activists fought contact tracing because it would lead to the closure of San Francisco and New York City “bathhouses” in which promiscuous anal sex proliferated. That, of course, remains the most dangerous vector for spread of AIDS.

Ever hear about that development? Probably not. To take the focus off their own behavior, homosexual AIDS activists staged demonstrations around the country in which they blamed President Reagan for spreading the disease. That’s what the media reported on. And those bathhouses? They didn’t close. Instead, they got federal government subsidies. According to the CAGW: “In 1998, CDC approved a $338,000 grant to Hollywood Spa in Los Angeles, a gay bathhouse. The upscale spa is complete with strobe lights and club music. Patrons check each other out while wrapped in tiny gym towels. Is AIDS likely to spread in such an environment? As a 1997 Los Angeles Times article noted, ‘Local AIDS prevention workers do not pretend that all the sex is safe in bathhouses.’”

That’s the tamest of many nauseating examples of taxpayer money squandered on outrageous “AIDS prevention” activities in the CAGW study. If I wrote about the others, the family newspapers in which this column runs could not publish them. They’re that bad.

Under the original pretext of AIDS prevention, homosexual activists have gotten access to public schools as well, where for years now homosexuality is presented as a positive alternative lifestyle. Not mentioned in their seminars is data from the Family Research Institute indicating that, since the outbreak of AIDS, the average life expectancy for a homosexual man is only thirty-eight, and only about 2% live past age sixty-five. Yet, taxpayer-funded seminars continue for middle school and high school boys such as : “Queer, Questioning, Quiet: Developing Gender Identity & Male Sexual Orientation.” It was promoted by a Portland organization called “Boys to Men” for its 2008 conference at the University of Southern Maine. The conference cancelled that particular seminar when a representative from Maine’s Christian Civic League signed up to attend. Were they afraid taxpayers would discover what our middle school boys are being taught with their money?

Nah. You’d have to be homophobic to think that.

Hate Crime Absurdity

Our media is hypersensitive when it comes to reporting perceived insults to Muslim students in our schools, but downright obtuse when it comes to whatever may trouble Christian or Jewish students.

It was big news in Lewiston, Maine when a kid left a bag containing a piece of ham on a table in the lunch room where a group of Somalian immigrant students were sitting. The story made front page headlines in the Sun Journal, the city’s daily newspaper. It also ran on WMTW, the local TV station. The Boston Globe picked it up too. The April 19th Sun Journal reported:

One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan. . . . Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing" said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It’s extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It’s important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

There have been no reports I know of about how Muslims may be offended by classes teaching that homosexual behavior is normal and natural. Several public schools sponsor assemblies in which homosexual and transgender behaviors are natural too. Certainly there have been no front page headlines. Jews and Christians may be offended by such material also but our media is virtually silent about it. They must know that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality itself is “intrinsically disordered” and homosexual behavior is sinful. Under Islam a homosexual act is punished with death by stoning. Orthodox Jews consider it an abomination. None of this comes up to leaving a bag containing a piece of ham on a table though.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish students must accept homosexuality in the schools even though it offends their religious beliefs. It’s legal in Maine and every other state since the recent Supreme Court ruling in “Lawrence vs Texas.” Muslim (and Jewish) students have to accept students in the lunch room who eat ham sandwiches even though it offends their religious beliefs because it’s legal too and always has been. The boy who left the bag with ham on the table was suspended because he was flaunting his dietary behavior around students who considered it offensive. It was “an awful thing . . . extraordinarily hurtful and degrading,” and the Sun Journal strongly suggested his suspension didn’t go far enough and more punishment was warranted because of an alleged “hate crime.”

A week after the ham incident, over five thousand public schools across the country observed a “Day of Silence” in support of homosexuality. Students at all these schools were encouraged to be silent for a day to protest purported harassment of gay and lesbian students. They were also encouraged to wear T-shirts and buttons supporting homosexuality. Events of this nature have been sponsored by public schools for more than ten years. Though no homosexuals were harassed that day, Christian students who were offended by the school’s orchestration of homosexual propaganda were. After peacefully expressing their opposition to what they consider brainwashing, dozens were suspended in several districts around California. In the Sacramento area, more than three thousand students stayed home to avoid exposure to pro-homosexual indoctrination. According to the Catholic news service lifesitenews.com:

Other students concerned about the one-sided messages determined to wear clothing and distribute literature which peacefully highlighted the dangers of homosexuality. Dozens of religious students were disciplined for expressing their viewpoints at Inderkum, Rio Linda and San Juan high schools.

Did you hear anything about this anti-Christian harassment? Probably not. The same media outlets that trumpet “hate crimes” involving their pet minorities ignore similar incidents involving groups of which they disapprove. None of this comes up to leaving a piece of ham on a table, I guess. Anything that would make a particular group feel uncomfortable is a possible “hate crime” - unless that group is Christian.

American students have been disciplined for using the word “gay” as a pejorative. Our media regularly trumpets so-called hate crimes, many of which are later discovered to have been staged. The new Democratic Congress is pushing a beefed-up “hate crimes” bill adding sexual orientation to the list of potentially aggrieved minorities. Attempted enforcement of similar laws in the UK illustrate their absurdity. An 11-year-old boy, for example, was visited in his home by two policemen for calling another boy “gay” in an email. He was using the word to mean “stupid” as many children do, but in the UK it’s a hate crime. In another case, the Daily Mail reported last October:

14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class. Teachers reported the youngster . . . after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class ‘discussion’ because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English. She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.

Mark Steyn, in his recent book American Alone reported on a UK homosexual charging a Muslim cleric with “homophobia” for preaching against homosexuality and the Muslim countercharging the homosexual with “Islamophobia” for criticizing Islam. UK Thought Police were having a difficult time sorting it out.

I can’t help but wonder what George Orwell would say about all this.

Distress Signals

We’re in trouble. As evidence, I saved four related articles with a common thread. Three are from lifesitenews.com - a Canadian Catholic newsletter, and one from the Boston Herald.

The first is about Spain. Last winter, the new Socialist government banned use of the terms “mother” and “father” on birth certificates. The father was to be listed as “Parent (progenitor) A” and mother as “Parent (progenitor) B.” Lesbian groups objected immediately, complaining that “progenitor” is a masculine term. They wanted “progenitora” which is feminine.

The second is from Ontario, Canada. The provincial government there is banning use of the terms “man,” “woman,” “wife,” “husband,” “widow” and “widower” from all Ontario law. The changes are an outgrowth of legalizing homosexual “marriage.”

The third is from Prince Edward Island, which is also banning traditional terms referring to members of families the way Ontario did. In PEI, there will be no more references to “bride” or “groom” on legal documents either, only the generic “spouse.”

The fourth is from The Boston Herald which reported last month that: “A Quincy [Massachusetts] mother says she was humiliated when an employee of the [Victoria’s Secret] lingerie franchise’s Faneuil Hall store flatly refused to allow her to breast-feed her daughter, directing her to a public restroom outside.”

All four articles represent disturbing, deconstructionist efforts to separate western perceptions of heterosexuality from reproduction, and from marriage and family. The story of a breast-feeding woman being shooed from Victoria’s Secret is telling, and not an isolated incident according to the Herald: “Last year, a woman was told she couldn’t breast-feed her baby in a Victoria’s Secret in South Carolina” and “[last month], sales associates at a Wisconsin Victoria’s Secret told a mother her exposed breast might offend some customers.” Can you believe this? Exposed breasts considered offensive by Victoria’s Secret?

Victoria’s Secret profits from the sensual display of women’s anatomy, especially breasts. While some may think such display immoral, I’m not necessarily one of them. As a lifelong heterosexual male, I’ve always appreciated women’s breasts. Even as an aging one whose other faculties are in decline, that appreciation doesn’t seem to diminish. Attracting male attention is one of the functions of the female breast and not an unhealthy one. Victoria’s Secret’s lingerie business is based on this fundamental human fact. However, to suggest that the other function of the breast - the nurturing function - could be offensive, is a dangerous bellwether for our time.

First Amendment cases adjudicated over several decades claim the display of women’s breasts can be protected speech, but according to the Herald article: “Massachusetts is one of the few states that doesn’t have laws to protect breast-feeding women. Women who breast-feed in public in Massachusetts can be charged with indecent exposure or lewd and lascivious conduct. A bill that would prevent people from booting breast-feeding mothers from public places and police from charging them has been stalled at the State House.” Yet, ultra-liberal Massachusetts is the only state to have legalized homosexual “marriage.” Maddening.

The US Supreme Court in “Lawrence vs Texas” somehow found a Constitutional right to sodomy. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court somehow found a state constitutional right for homosexuals to “marry.” The Socialist government of Spain and the Liberal Party government of Canada established similar rights. The reader has figured out by now that I consider these developments preposterous. They’re part of a concerted effort by the left to dissociate sexuality from reproduction, and to uncouple heterosexuality from its natural role in reproduction, marriage and family. Such intrinsic connections are “offensive,” they claim, and “heterosexist.” Homosexual activists lead the charge, relentlessly pressuring governments across the western world to cave in to their petulant demands.

What about the rest of us? What if we’re offended when we can’t be referred to as husbands and wives on marriage documents or as mothers and fathers on birth certificates? Why do we give in so timidly to bizarre demands from radical sexual minorities? What’s next? Abolishing Fathers’ Day and Mothers’ Day? Will we instead be forced to celebrate “Progenitors’ Day”?

I shouldn’t have to spell this out, but listen up: Forget what they told you in college. Men and women are different and they’re supposed to be. Most men are aggressive. Most women are nurturing. Women attract men, get them to commit, and tame them. We call this marriage. Sex is a tool for this - heterosexual only. Homosexuality has no place here. When men see women use their breasts to nurse their children, it taps instincts in them to stick around, be fathers to their children - especially their sons - and to use their aggressiveness for the protection of their families and communities. This is an important part of our cultural glue. To the extent that we follow this plan, our culture is strengthened. To the extent we deviate from it, our culture is weakened. The last four decades are testament to this.

I’ve been watching with alarm as the left eats away at that glue and puts us all in trouble. I’ve had enough. Have you?

Heterosexual White Guy

I don’t feel guilty being a heterosexual white guy, but evidently there are many people who think I should. Three years ago, a friend working in the mental health field showed me an essay entitled: “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” distributed to everyone, every year, at the agency where she worked. Written by Peggy MacIntosh, Associate Director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, it was full of the usual leftist, victim-group buzzwords, like: empowered, outraged, systemic, consciousness, heterosexism, etc. MacIntosh said that while spending years bringing materials from Women’s Studies into the regular curriculum at Wellesley, she “often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over-privileged . . .”

My reaction is: thank God that back in 1988 there were still some men expressing that unwillingness among the Birkenstock-wearing, tofu-eating, tree-hugging, bicycle-riding, sensitive he/shes MacIntosh be likely to encounter around the Wellesley College campus. But that was nearly two decades ago and I fear there are fewer men left who are willing to to tell MacIntosh she’s crazy in those trendy, blue-state, Boston suburbs. Twenty years of mandatory sensitivity training in universities and work places have done a lot of damage to men down there. Testosterone is ebbing dangerously in the region that gave us Michael Dukakis back in 1988, and then John Kerry in 2004. At least those two had an excuse, catering to their coo-coo constituency in Massachusetts. But what about Al Gore in 2000? He wasn’t sure how to be a man either and he came from Tennessee. Then again, he did go to Harvard for four years. That time in Cambridge must have damaged him so much that, during his presidential campaign, he had to hire feminist Naomi Wolfe at $30,000 a month to tell him what a man should be like. And it didn’t work, did it Al. All that money wasted.

Speaking of Naomi Wolfe, I saw her on Book TV last week giving Harvey Mansfield a hard time about his recent book “Manliness.” I was gratified that Mansfield wrote such a book in spite of having taught at Harvard, where he was the only faculty member to vote against establishing a Women’s Studies Department there. I watched the whole interview waiting for him to bring up Wolfe’s work with Gore, but he never did. It’s good to know there’s at least one person left to represent the male sex down there in Cambridge now that Larry Summers has been run out of town.

But back to MacIntosh’s essay. I asked my friend if there were any objections at her agency when it was passed out. She said there weren’t and that disappointed me. “No one spoke up?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “And nobody laughed either the way you did.” That surprised me and made me wonder what kind of men she worked with.

A couple of years passed and I had nearly forgotten the essay when a student-teacher in my classroom said, “Tom, check this out,” as he handed me another copy of MacIntosh’s diatribe. There it was with its list of twenty-six white “privileges,” such as #12: “I can swear or dress in second hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.” Not answering letters? Is this the kind of thing they’re outraged about at the Wellesley College Women’s Studies Department? How much does it cost to send a kid to that school? Isn’t that where Hillary Clinton went?

After we read sections like that aloud and chuckled about them, I asked the intern if anyone spoke up about the essay to the instructor. “No,” he said. “We have to pass the course if we want to become teachers.”

Trying to hide my disappointment, I asked, “Well, do you mind if I write about it?”

“Not until I graduate, okay?” he said. “I really need this course. We get these kinds of things a lot and I have to keep my mouth shut or I won’t make it through. After I get my certificate, I won’t care. Write about it then.”

“Okay,” I said. “What will you do if you should get a testosterone surge before June? How will you handle it?”

“I’ll get a muzzle,” he said. “I’m in enough trouble now.”

That’s how it is on campus nowadays for a heterosexual white guy who is unwilling to grant that he’s overprivileged. If he spoke up, he’d be a racist, misogynist, heterosexist oppressor.

Number 22 on MacIntosh’s list of white privileges said: “I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.”

Excuse me? Affirmative action puts women, blacks, hispanics, Eskimos, and just about everyone else ahead of heterosexual white guys in hiring, awarding contracts and admission to colleges and universities, awarding scholarships, etc. HWGs are last on the list and we’re supposed to be overprivileged?

No. I don’t feel guilty being a HWG. And I don’t feel guilty about not feeling guilty either.

Sex Education Paradox

Published 1-05-06

Anyone who read my “Sex Education Controversy” column here last week didn’t see the whole thing. Editors of two newspapers removed sections about controversial “workshops” presented to fourteen-year-olds in Massachusetts by state agencies. The workshops exposed students to sexual practices so bizarre that they couldn’t be printed here. The Boston Globe ignored those workshops, but it reported in a front-page, above-the-fold headline last month that teaching abstinence in school was “controversial.”

One editor emailed me, explaining: “I wanted to let you know I removed the portion of your column regarding “-------” While I see why you included it, it crossed the line regarding good taste and appropriateness for a community newspaper.” I understand the editor’s action, but it presents a paradox. I can’t name the practice here, even though it can be favorably described to fourteen-year-old public school students by state education officials paid with public funds. A search of the Globe’s archives showed no coverage of sex lessons anyone but the Marquis de Sade would consider outrageous. If you want to read an account, Google: “City Journal”; “Tufts” and “teach out” and you’ll hit on a comprehensive article describing what the Massachusetts Department of Education, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are pushing in schools across the country. Be prepared for a shock.

As usual, I gathered more material for the column than I could use in an 800-word piece. For example, sex education the way we know it originated with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. PP is the biggest abortion provider in the United States - performing nearly a quarter million in 2004, sixteen percent of the total and not including chemical abortions resulting from PP’s distribution of the “morning after pill” to teenagers at their clinics.
Although Margaret Sanger is a feminist hero, few realize that she was also a major promoter of eugenics - the selective breeding of human beings as if they were dogs, horses or cattle. Planned Parenthood is just a new name for the first organization Sanger founded in the 1930s - the “American Birth Control League.” To the governing board of her ABCL she appointed fellow eugenicists and admirers of Adolf Hitler like Lothrop Stoddard. In his book “The Nazi Connection,” Stephan Kuhl writes of him:

“[Stoddard] even met personally with Adolf Hitler. William L. Shirer, an American colleague who had been in Germany since 1934, complained that the Reich minister for propaganda [Joseph Goebbels] gave special preference to Stoddard because his writings on racial subjects were ‘featured in Nazi school textbooks.’ . . . Stoddard claimed in 1940 that the ‘Jew problem’ is ‘already settled in principle and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.’”

Stoddard was referring to the Holocaust - the ultimate eugenics program. In 1942, The ABCL changed its name to the “Planned Parenthood Federation of America” over Sanger’s objections. As Kuhl put it, the ABCL had a strong Nazi smell.
In the late 1960s, our two biggest teachers’ unions joined Planned Parenthood to push sex education in public schools. In last week’s column, I wrote that teen pregnancy rates have been skyrocketing ever since. Actually, it’s unwed teen pregnancies that have skyrocketed while total teen pregnancies have been declining. Up to about 1970, many teenagers tended to get married and raise their children in nuclear families. In 1970, only about 30% of all teenage births were to unwed mothers, but in 1990 about 70% were.

Thirteen-year-old girls show up at Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions after being impregnated by men several years older. State laws obligate Planned Parenthood to report such cases to human services agencies as sexual abuse or statutory rapes, but it seldom does. It also lobbies against laws in every state requiring them to notify parents when teenage girls seek abortions. This is the agency public schools across the country trust to design their sex education programs.

In spite of, or perhaps partly because of these programs, American teenagers are having sex more often, with more different partners, and at much younger ages than ever before. Consequently, sexually-transmitted diseases among teens are epidemic. Should we be surprised? Teens are bombarded with sex on television, in movies, in music and in advertising everywhere. When dancing, they simulate sex. The instruction they get at school is scrupulously values-neutral. They hear, “You really shouldn’t be having sex at your age, but we know you’re doing to anyway. So, here are several different ways it’s done, and here are some ways you can avoid getting pregnant while you’re doing it. Oh, and here’s how you put a condom on. Now I want you all to practice on these bananas until the bell rings.”

Teaching sex in a moral vacuum strongly implies to kids that morality has no place in sexual behavior. If that’s the only way it’s delivered, perhaps the schools would be better off not teaching it at all. Or, maybe it should be an extra-curricular, after-school activity that parents could choose for their children if they didn’t want to teach it at home. If schools continue to teach it during the regular school day, how about using at least half the time to teach them some effective abstinence strategies along with all the “how tos”?

Nah, too controversial.

Sex Education Controversy

First published 12-27-05

It was an amazing sign of the times and it jumped off the page at me. In the first paragraph of it’s front-page, above-the-fold, headline story for Wednesday, December 21st, The Boston Globe said, “[it was] the state’s most aggressive effort yet to use a controversial method of teaching Bay State teenagers about sex.” What was this controversial method of teaching children about sex, you’re wondering? It must be really out there, huh? Nope. It’s not the least bit kinky. Nobody, not even my grandmother, would blush if I were to explain it in detail. The headline read: “State to push abstinence in schools.” According to the Globe’s way of looking at the world, teaching kids not to have sex is controversial. However, using public tax money to instruct Massachusetts teenagers in bizarre ways to “do it” is no big deal, not even worth mentioning.

The Globe featured this “controversy” as the most important thing that had happened in the world the previous day for its 500,000 readers. It reminded me of another kind of Massachusetts public school sex instruction a few years ago I considered vastly more controversial than the “Don’t do it” program. Public school students and teachers attended a “teach out” at Tufts University at which the Massachusetts Department of Education and other state employees led a workshop in which the bizarre sexual practice of “fisting” - inserting one’s fist into the anus or vagina of a sex partner - was described. When students at this workshop asked why anybody would want to do anything like that, the Massachusetts Department of Education official said, “[it’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be close and intimate with.”

Now that’s what I call controversial, so I searched the Globe’s archives for how they covered the story. In their search engine, I typed “fisting, public school, students, Newton” because I knew there were fourteen-year-olds (the age I teach) from Newton’s school system in attendance. Guess how many hits I got? Zero, zilch, none. Evidently, the Globe didn’t think that grotesque workshop controversial enough to even mention - certainly not the lead story of the day. However, when I typed the same five words into Google, I got 108,000 hits. What does that tell us about The Boston Globe’s manipulation of news? And more importantly: what is happening to us?

In spite of the Globe’s best efforts to prevent it, at least Massachusetts is going to use the federal money offered for teaching sexual abstinence. My state, Maine, is one of only three (all blue states) in the country which chose not to accept the funds. “This money is more harmful than it is good,” said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, Maine’s Public Health Director. According to an article by Paul Carrier in Augusta’s Morning Sentinel, “In the past, the state has used the [$165,000] to run public-service announcements on television that encouraged young people to avoid having sex prematurely . . . that used the recurring tag line ‘not me, not now.’” We all remember those. But now Mills claims that Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have declined and the state doesn’t need the money. I guess teen sex just isn’t a problem anymore here in Maine, huh Dr. Mills?

Mills claimed the federal money has to be spent on “abstinence only” programs which instruct children that the only appropriate place for sex is within marriage. But that would discriminate against gay and lesbian students who can’t marry here in Maine. And, she said it would prevent the state from providing “comprehensive information” for sexually-active teens. It’s strange for Mills to make that claim because, according to Massachusetts Governor Romney’s communications director who is quoted in the Globe, “the [Massachusetts abstinence] program will be taught in addition to comprehensive sex education programs already in place, and that students will learn about contraception methods.” I can’t believe the feds are going to allow it in Massachusetts and disallow it in Maine.

Ever since “comprehensive sex education” has been taught in the nation’s public schools, pregnancy, abortion, and sexually-transmitted diseases among teenagers have been skyrocketing. Proponents argue that correlation is not causation and that it would have been even worse had sex education not been taught. Hmm. When the results of your program are just the opposite of what were intended, it’s not exactly a vote of confidence in its effectiveness.

Now consider that Maine has been spending federal abstinence money for ten years and Maine’s teen pregnancy and teen abortion rates have been going down - so much so that Dr. Mills is now claiming we don’t need to spend any more. Instead, she wants to protect and renew the “comprehensive” approach regardless of its dismal long-term results nationally, and trash the one which seems to have been much more effective.

Why not take the lead from Governor Romney in Massachusetts and do both? Or is that too controversial here in Maine also?