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By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

District Attorney threatens schools teaching sex ed in Wisconsin

Crossposted from Amplify

Scott Southworth wants prosecute educators for teaching young people how to protect their health and lives in the era of AIDS.

In a move meant to terrorize Wisconsin school teachers and scare administrators away from comprehensive sex ed programs, this Republican District Attorney in Juneau County, Wisconsin, has threatened to press charges against sex ed instructors.

At question is The Healthy Youth Act, a measure signed into law this February by Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. The Act mandates that public school students receive comprehensive sex ed that is medically accurate and age appropriate, and leans on science-based methods that have been proven to work at reducing sexually transmitted infections and unintended teen pregnancies.

Republicans in the state legislature failed to block the bill, so Southworth has launched a one man vendetta against any teacher or school system that would dare to actually educate Wisconsin teens.

In a March 24 letter, District Attorney Scott Southworth issued a brazen ultimatum to the County’s teachers, demanding that they end any plans to teach comprehensive sex education during the Fall 2010 school year and beyond. If the teachers refuse, Southworth has signaled that he will pursue criminal charges against them for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

In Utah, Miscarriage = Criminal Homicide

Utah is not a state known for its legislative sanity. This, after all, is a state that recently made headlines for proposing to honor gun manufactures on Martin Luther King Day and for considering the elimination of 12th grade to cut back on education spending.

Well, it just got a whole lot worse.

Utah just became the first state in the U.S. to criminalize miscarriage and punish women for having or seeking an illegal abortion. Utah’s "Criminal Miscarriage" law:

expands the definition of illegal abortion to include miscarriages
removes immunity protections for women who have or seek illegal abortions
assumes women are "guilty of criminal homicide of an unborn child" if a pregnancy ends after ...

Utah is not a state known for its legislative sanity. This, after all, is a state that recently made headlines for proposing to honor gun manufactures on Martin Luther King Day and for

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

Homosexuality: Should We Banish This “Nasty, Clinical-Sounding” Word?

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

Earlier this month John Aravosis at AMERICAblog weighed in on an interesting poll:

"CBS just found that if you ask Americans how they feel about "gay men and lesbians" serving in the military, a large majority support it [about 70%]. But if you ask people whether "homosexuals" should be allowed to serve in the military, support drops %5

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

Washington Post: “Abstinence-Only Suddenly Works?” Reality: Absolutely Not

Crossposted from Amplify

By James Wagoner, Advocates for Youth

It seems that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have been all over progressive blogs in the past few days – from Angry Mouse’s in-depth and much-needed analysis of Bristol Palin’s somewhat surreal role as a teen mom abstinence spokesmodel to Tristero’s rebuttle of Russ Douthat’s inane column in Sunday’s NYT in which he defends Alabama’s right to teach that masturbation is unhealthy.

All this discussion seems remarkably prescient given this morning’s Washington Post article trumpeting “Abstinence-only programs might work, study says.” But as usual, the reality is much more complicated than newspaper headlines or the abstinence-only industry would have us believe.

You must enter an ...

Crossposted from Amplify

By James Wagoner, Advocates for Youth

It seems that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have been all over progressive blogs in the past few days – from Angry Mouse’s in-depth and much-needed analysis of Bristol ...

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

New Poll on Mass. Voters: Too Liberal to vote for Coakley

According to a Research 2000 poll conducted after the election, wherein 500 Obama supporters who voted in the Mass election and 500 Obama supporters who sat out, the supposed "party infidelity" that took place election day was actually due to Dems not being progressive enough and NOT because of Dems are being too progressive on healthcare (the thought would really be a joke at this point).

Via Huffington Post :

A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that "Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street." A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.

The poll also upends the conventional understanding of health care’s ...

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

Bullying Wins in Alameda

The school district of Alameda, California has been in the news because of its elementary school curriculum about bullying prevention.
The problem with the curriculum: its Lesson 9 teaches that some people have same-sex parents and that those students should not be bullied.
Without even the usual lip service to their caring for the sinner but not the sin, anti-gay activists have cried “Indoctrination!” One activist said parents don’t want their kids being “bombarded” with “pro-homosexual messages” at school.
Others say it’s just too early to learn these lessons; when the lesson was introduced a conservative blogger called it “The end of the innocence” – a particularly disturbing formulation as it implies that learning not to taunt ...

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

Jon Stewart grills Democrats for allowing abstinence-only funding to come back from the grave

(crossposted from Amplify)

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart absolutely hammered the Democratic Party and their supposed “Super-Majority” last night. Even though they have the White House and huge filibuster-proof majorities in Congress, they have so far failed to make any progress in reforming our broken healthcare system by creating a public option.

But what have they made progress on? Oh right.... restoring funding for Title V abstinence-only programs.

Check out the awful truth here:
And remember that in order to get rid of this awful amendment, we all need to contact our Senators and let them know that abstinence-only funding has got to go!

(crossposted from Amplify)

By amplify-your-voice • 14 years ago

GACC SafeSite applications are now open!

Last year was the first year that Advocates for Youth ran the Great American Condom Campaign and I’m glad to say it was a HUGE success! Here are some highlights:

–      3,500 college students applied to become a SafeSite.
–      1,500 students were accepted as SafeSites, representing over 800 colleges and universities.
–      SafeSites were located in 49 states and the District of Columbia.
–      50 percent of all accepted SafeSites in 2008/2009 reported limited or no condom access on their campuses.
–      217 SafeSites were Residential Advisors
–      750,000 condoms were distributed

SafeSites were located on every kind of college campus including community colleges, trade and technical schools, music schools, culinary schools, military schools and more!

After ...