What’s interesting in the news today?
Open thread.
1. This one isn’t surprising. After all, the amount they were funding was a joke anyway. And Obama would much rather direct this money to Planned Parenthood.
From CNSNews “President Barack Obama wants to eliminate funding for abstinence education funding in his 2015 budget, which he sent to Congress on Tuesday.
In the “Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings” portion of the budget, it shows that the $5 million funding to Health and Human Services (HHS) through its Title V Maternal and Child Health Program that was included in the 2014 budget is not part of Obama’s latest budget.
Supporters of “sexual risk avoidance” – or SRA abstinence education programs – expressed the need for such programs and the across-the aisle-approval of them by parents.
“By eliminating SRA (sexual risk avoidance) abstinence programs in his budget, the President has, once again chosen to ignore the wishes of parents and the approach that helps youth avoid all risk associated with teen sex,” Valerie Huber, president of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA), said in a statement on Wednesday.
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2. He’d rather Planned Parenthood receive the money for stuff like this.
From LifeNews “Planned Parenthood’s Elokin CaPece is on a global mission—to make “sexperts” of students across the mid-south and send them forth to indoctrinate the world. The University of Memphis campus newspaper, The Daily Helmsman, is hawking “sexpert” training at Planned Parenthood, “offering students the opportunity to become educators and advocates for sexual health and safety on college campuses throughout the MidSouth.”
CaPece, education director for Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region, is quoted in the article: “I hope sexperts becomes a revolution. . . . That we teach you what you need to know about sex and you go and teach the world.” For a Baptist turned Catholic like me, that sounds a lot like a bastardization of “The Great Commission” found in Matthew 28:18-20.
How do these Planned Parenthood trained “sexperts” see their mission? “I just want everyone to do what they want as long as they’re safe and to destigmatize the idea that sex is bad or wrong, outside of the context of marriage,” a senior University of Memphis sexpert graduate says. Her analysis is much more honest and on point than the explanations given by Planned Parenthood.”
“The culture in the U.S. conveys the negatives of sex to people, emphasizing the risks of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases and infections that can be contracted through skin-to-skin contact or body fluids. Many times, sex creates a list of negative consequences and CaPece shares how Planned Parenthood is breaking that barrier. “Planned Parenthood is a sex-positive place. Sex should be positive and sexuality is a part of everyone no matter how you portray it,” CaPece said.
Why fund abstinence education when you have programs like this? This will obviously work so much better…. 🙄
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3. Warrantless searches and cell-phone tapping. Not from the feds, but from your local PD.
From WatchDog.org “Recent court documents reveal a troubling cell phone surveillance program conducted by a Florida police department against unsuspecting cell phone users.
Attempts to keep the practice secret, even from judges, is raising questions as to just how prevalent police spying is within the Sunshine State.”
“Now on appeal, courtroom deliberations revealed last week that the Tallahassee Police Department used a Stingray 200 times since 2010 without seeking a warrant.
“This record makes it very clear that (Tallahassee Police Department) were not going to get a search warrant because they had never gotten a search warrant for this technology,” an appeals court judge said.”
Welcome to the police state. Please check your rights at the door.
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4. The number of victims of the terrorist group Boko Haram continues to grow.
From TheDailyStar “A Catholic bishop says Islamic insurgents have destroyed 20 churches in northeastern Nigeria in recent attacks.
Bishop Oliver Dashe Dome says more than 500 of his parishioners have been killed since insurgency in the region began in 2009. At least 180 people have been killed in less than two weeks, including 60 children.
Boko Haram insurgents advocate a harsh version of Islamic law and have threatened the Christian minority in northern Nigeria in the past. However, their victims have also been Muslim.”
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Wandering Views 
Excuse me, but I am so confused. Humans have been around for thousand to billions of years depending on what you believe. During all this time I am assuming, since WE are here that they have had sex. When exactly did we lose our inborn knowledge of it and have to have other “experts” teach us about it?
Did it happen when we became more urban than rural and children didn’t grow up watching animals mate? Has it been purged from our psyche? When did this happen? I know it has had to be sometime in my lifetime because I figured it out on my own…well I did have a little help, but mostly I learned as I went.
I told my own child that her friends didn’t know everything and if she wanted the straight scoop she could come to me. I promised her I would never lie to her and I would always tell her the truth.
What we have done is take something that is supposed to be special and made it as mundane as “scratching an itch”.
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It’s to allocate money Kim.
It’s to allocate money.
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A J, do you have anything on the Convention of the States? I got an email saying it passed in Georgia and wanting me to sign in on its group.
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1. Abstinence only education doesn’t work and is a waste of money. Simply write sexual health in the health curriculum and leave other groups out of it. Give kids (and parents) information and let it go. The rite rote and ritual that have been attached to sex by religion and custom have gone missing as we have been urbanized (as Kim notes) but to replace it with lobby groups of one sort or an other is hardly a solution. Give the information and hope parents stress the need for good decisions based on the information.
2. University students need sex-ed?? Similar to my previous point, its a waste of money to replace the rite rote and ritual of sex with a lobby group’s ideas of one type or another.
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Kim – The young friend (YF) I often mention posted on Facebook a while back that maybe she should be a sex ed teacher (she already has a Bachelor’s degree) or write a book about the subject. She is horrified by the ignorance she encounters among other young women her age. She was aghast when one friend told her she had just lost her virginity, without using any contraception, but the friend said that was okay, because a girl can’t get pregnant her first time.
(YF claimed that the horror she felt upon hearing that statement took several years off her life. YF exaggerates a lot.)
YF also wrote that young people need more education on the mechanics of sex, like losing one’s virginity the right way, which supposedly should never result in the shedding of a little blood or be painful at all. That may be true, but I don’t think schools should be getting that explicit about it. (In fact, I know what she means, but I wouldn’t spell it out here on the blog because it would be inappropriate, so how much more inappropriate would it be in school?)
(YF is still a virgin, BTW, but knows all this stuff from her reading & research.)
So YF thinks there is a lot of that kind of ignorance out there that needs to be addressed, & maybe she is the one who needs to address it. She also asserts that conservatives fight to keep any kind of sex ed out of the schools, & are to be blamed for all that ignorance.
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I had the same question in my grade eight health class. ie Is it true you don’t get pregnant from the first time? My answer was simple; There are no freebies no free passes. And yes these are types of questions or myths which need to be addressed through health education. There are, however, enough books out there, its the lack of reading that is the problem.
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