Some fear and smear from the abstinence industry

The WaPo's Rob Stein reports U.S. Campaign to Promote Abstinence Begins: Groups Are Enlisting Parents in Effort to Lobby for Changes in Sex Education. The National Abstinence Education Association is attempting to recruit a large number of parents in an effort to stave off presumed reverses in Congress and certainly in the White House. I also note that part of the effort is to lobby local schools to adopt curriculum that these profiteers will be situated to provide. Looking at DC primarily we get ...

"The campaign comes as Congress is debating whether to authorize about $190 million in federal funding for such programs, which have come under increasing criticism because of a series of reports that concluded they are ineffective."

Evidence suggest that abstinence only programs fail so the providers decide to scare the hell out of Mom and Dad. Classy!

They hope they've got St. John in their corner yet his conservative credentials are hardly without concern to the Dobsonites and their type. Under their "action alerts" portion NAEA has the following:

May 20, 2008: Organizations: Sign your name to this letter asking Presidential Candidate John McCain to support abstinence education.

So maybe they aren't certain they have Huggy Bear, despite his May 2007 effort to reach out to the Bible Thumpers via CBN. Let's recall John McSame had yet another "stumble" on yet another issue. Here's Johnny from back in March of 2007:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

How can you stump someone on their own position? Does St. John really think he can run with and against Bu$hCo? This and other "stumbles" really give me hope yet I digress.

These abstinence only "educators" surely don't want their millions from the government teat to dry up. So they are willing to just downright twist and lie? Are they? Check out their video effort via the WaPo coverage. Here's how low they will go:

The three-minute video depicts a mother of a 13-year-old girl becoming alarmed after learning details about sex ed curriculum being used in her school, including suggestions that teenagers can take showers together and give each other condoms.

Proponents of comprehensive sex ed condemned the campaign as misleading, noting that the "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" curriculum cited in the video was developed to reduce the spread of the AIDS virus among African American males ages 13 to 19. Showering was cited as an example of a behavior that entailed a low risk of transmitting the virus.

"It's a classic fear and smear campaign," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a private, nonprofit Washington advocacy group. "It's absolutely misleading."

Mercy! The "truthiness" of this video will likely be close enough for those parents that the NAEA will be e-mailing. Still, I'm wondering if this stretch might not supply a wonderful opportunity to totally embarrass these abstinence only hucksters and the pandering politicians that fall for their foolishness. John Gunn