Senate Stops Funding Abstinence Only Programs!

OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 30, 2009
4:38 PM

CONTACT: ACLU

Rachel Myers, (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

Senate Committee Votes to End Funding for Failed Abstinence-Only Programs
Bill Puts Teens' Health Above Politics and Ideology, Says ACLU
WASHINGTON - July 30 - The Senate Appropriations Committee today voted to end funding for failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and to put resources into programs that can help teens make healthy and responsible decisions about sexuality.

"After more than a decade, Congress has finally begun to put teenagers' health above politics and ideology. By removing funding from abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, the Senate Appropriations Committee showed its willingness to put an end to a sorry chapter in our public health policymaking," said Michael Macleod-Ball, acting Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The Committee's actions represent a looming victory for young people, parents and advocates of science-based approaches."

Today's vote comes on the heels of an equally significant vote in the House of Representatives. Last week, under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), that chamber approved a spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services that also eliminated funding for current abstinence-only programs. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate Appropriations Committee instead supported the president's proposal for a teen pregnancy prevention initiative to fund evidence-based programs shown to positively affect teen behavior.

"Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii should be commended for moving the Senate in this new direction. We are pleased that the Committee has joined President Obama in rejecting ideologically based abstinence-only programs that censor information, promote gender stereotypes, marginalize gay and lesbian youth and jeopardize the well-being of young people," said Vania Leveille, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "The federal government has an obligation to support programs that provide accurate, age-appropriate information that can protect teenagers' health and ability to achieve in school and beyond."

The spending measure next goes to the Senate floor, where misguided efforts to reinsert funding for abstinence-only programs are possible. A vote by the full Senate is not expected until the fall.

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The ACLU conserves America's original civic values working in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in the United States by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

All the horrible things I read on the NYT today

All sorts of new fun laws for gun-lovers in Tennessee - now you can even carry guns in public parks! That's right, let's bring death to our playgrounds. One of my favorite parts:

The new Tennessee laws also include measures that will allow permit holders to carry guns in bars and restaurants, if they are not drinking alcohol, and to carry a loaded rifle or shotgun in their vehicles if the ammunition is in the magazine but not in the chamber, although it can be in the chamber for purposes of self-defense.

Read the full article here

A new ACLU report shows that anti-Muslim extremism in our country is actually preventing Muslims from fulfilling their spiritual duty of zakat. Discriminatory statutes have shut down nine Muslim charities to date, citing concerns that these charities were funding terrorism even without proof or due process. Read the full article here.

Sotomayer is being called discriminatory for being a part of an all-female networking club because there is no place for men in the Belizean Grove club. That is the biggest crock I've heard in a while. Meanwhile, no one is concerned that top executives of Victoria's Secret, a company that uses prison labor, or other major corporations are her co-grovers. Argh. Read full article here

Music and arts education is declining in the U.S. We're headed towards standardization and mediocratization - whooooooo. Read here.

It's time for change - I'm feeling optimistic

In these most desperate of times change may be coming.

Attempts to control youth are failing!! Twelve young people in Mass juvenile prisons may be liberated after the Supreme Judicial Court "struck down a law that allowed the state to keep juvenile offenders in custody for three years after they turned 18, if officials believed they would be "physically dangerous to the public.'"(read more here)
Also, even though youth curfews exist in neighboring cities and towns, a youth curfew has been overturned in Oakland after massive resistance to the mass criminalization of young people. (News report here)

AND KIDS WILL GET HEALTHCARE!! And President Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, expanding the SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program ) health insurance program for children of low-income families and enabling states to provide an additional 4 million children with health insurance.

Senate: Yea-66, Nay-32

House: Yea-290, Nay-135

The bill awaits the president's signature.

In Philadelphia, public schools are considering a new "turnaround” strategy for "chronically underperforming schools, one based on Chicago’s controversial Renaissance 2010 project that closes existing schools and opens new ones under a different management structure." A big part of this proposal involves charter schools which are controversial, but it COULD provide immediate relief to some of the least-resourced schools in the country.
From "The Notebook:

At the proposed “contract schools,” outside managers would have more independence than the private managers currently operating schools under the District’s existing “diverse provider” model – they would be able to employ their own staff, for example.

In addition, some schools – to be called “innovation schools” – would be reconstituted from the ground up with new teachers and leadership, but managed by the District with union teachers.

“Performance schools” would not be reconstituted with new personnel, but like the others would be given more “autonomy” over school management in exchange for “greater accountability."
Complete article here

Women in Iran are protesting for rights and what makes me excited is that this is not imposed from a foreign organization but rather from "the people" themselves:
"Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years." (Full NYT article here)

The Obama administration named three people to posts in its intergovernmental affairs office on Friday, including Jodi Archambault Gillette, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Lakota woman will serve as a deputy associate director in an office that functions as a mediator between the administration and state, tribal and local governments. This is a huge step and the highest position a Native person has held in the U.S. Details here

The Migration Policy Institute’s published a list of 36 recommendations for the Obama administration on immigration. These changes include reassessing the border fence, and ending the criminal prosecution of undocumented immigrants. The hope is that this would give the federal government a chance to look at the actual effectiveness of its enforcement mechanisms. .

From Racewire:
That pragmatism would be a great improvement over the ideologically-driven measures that immigration restrictionists have successfully pushed for the last eight years. The country could stop wasting both resources and human rights credentials in silly projects that distract us from focusing on more serious problems, like human trafficking and terrorism.

The report also recommends a number of changes that would bring due process to the immigration system, including steps that prevent indefinite, unlawful and unsafe detention of migrants. These are mostly administrative, bureaucratic changes, but they will provide relief to real human beings who are now having their border communities torn up by fence construction, being separated from their families, rounded up in raids, and held in detention centers where people are dying. One of the things we should assess is how much these practices generate racial profiling.

[...]

It’s unlikely that the Obama Administration, with enforcement-oriented Janet Napolitano at the helm of Homeland Security, will adopt most of them unless they hear from the call from US residents who aren’t ideologically tied to pushing out immigrants. Conservatives say that they only oppose undocumented immigration, but people on both sides of the debate know that the line between those with papers and without is very thin, that families and communities hold both, and that policies directed at undocumented immigrants inevitably affect the documented too.

LINK to the full RaceWire article

Boston cops may have escorted two gay porn stars to a nightclub - I'm skeptical but if so this might have beeen the most radical police action ... ever? Read about it here

AND MEXICO CITY'S MAYOR IS GIVING OUT VIAGRA TO 'POOR MEN' AGE 60 AND ABOVE. NYT Article here