* Note: Alexandria City Schools School Board Meeting tonight!

As a taxpaying citizen of Alexandria, VA, a former educator, and a person who values our young people and wants them to have the best options available, I am outraged that the public school system in Alexandria is funding a local “teen health center,” with a primary focus on family planning. Moreover, I strongly disagree with the planned move of the center from its current location in a trailer outside a nearby shopping center, directly into T.C. Williams High School so that center workers will have unlimited access to students.

Not only do I not want my hard-earned tax dollars supporting this endeavor, but more importantly, I am convinced that this move undermines parental authority, is costly to our city, and most importantly does a huge disservice to young people.

The center provides services for youth aged 12-19 years old, dispenses contraception and refers for abortion without parental permission. The teen center also provides other services, interestingly, all which require parental permission, such as routine physical exams, vaccinations, treatment of minor illnesses. However the primary focus of the center is family planning, STD treatment and abortion referral.

Continue reading »

Tags: Abstinence, Alexandria, Public Schools, Virginia

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Lt. Dan Choi is back training with his National Guard unit.

Conventionally, this would be about as newsworthy as saying that paint dries: officers serve with their units all the time. But Lt. Choi is, by his own definition, different – he is openly homosexual. He has been appearing in the media, actively calling for a reversal of the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy concerning homosexuality.

According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, homosexuality is incompatible with military service. This is not a statement of preference, but a law. All members of the Armed Forces are required to take an oath to uphold it. Yet here we have a situation where an openly gay man, in violation of the law and, according to news accounts, with the support of his commanding officer, is wearing the uniform of our nation.

Let us say for the sake of argument that homosexuality is a moral good and that those who practice homosexual conduct should actively be recruited to serve in the country’s military (of course, Family Research Council and I personally disavow these arguments). I would still be calling for Lt. Choi’s dismissal from the service and his superior’s discipline. The military code is not a set of arcane rules that can be followed at the personal discretion of those serving. It is the ironclad law of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. It is enacted by the United States Congress and signed into effect by the Commander in Chief.

Lt. Choi is flaunting the law, showing contempt for it for the sake of his personal philosophical agenda. In doing so, he is demonstrating his unfitnes as “an officer and gentleman.” What if his peers choose to obey only those orders they want? “Well, sir – and by the way, I don’t like calling you sir – taking that hill right now seems like a bad idea to me. Think I’ll go take a nap.” Order, discipline, duty, respect, achievement of mission: all are, by virtue of Dan Choi’s continued role in the Army, placed at grave risk.

Men and women in uniform do not serve at their pleasure or under the human resources regulations of civilian life. Of necessity, for the sake of the life and death circumstances intrinsic to being part of the Armed Forces, they operate under a different, particularly crafted set of rules – rules that are the law.

No American, whether in the military or not, has the right to obey only those laws he or she wishes. This is the path to moral chaos and political anarchy. It is the road to collapse.

Tags: Don't Ask Don't Tell

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One thing I have noticed in the debate over homosexuals in the military is that roughly 99.5% of the American public, including 99.5% of long-time Washington political reporters and 99.5% of members of Congress, believe three key things about the issue.

1. The current policy regarding homosexuals in the military is governed by a law known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
2. Under current law, homosexuals are allowed to serve in the military as long as they are not open about their sexual orientation.
3. Doing away with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military.

Each of these three statements is false.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is not the law of the land. It was a compromise policy announced by the Clinton Administration in July of 1993, after their original proposal to simply open the military to homosexuals was widely rejected.[i]

When Congress adopted legislation on this issue in November of 1993, they did not say that homosexuals were welcome to serve in the military. On the contrary, they declared, “The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”[ii]

Doing away with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy would only allow more consistent enforcement of the current law against homosexuality in the military, unless Congress were to also repeal the law that they adopted in 1993.

For the record, here are the findings that Congress made—and that President Clinton signed into law—in 1993. This is the current law regarding homosexuality in the military:

Congress makes the following findings:

`(1) Section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States commits exclusively to the Congress the powers to raise and support armies, provide and maintain a Navy, and make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.

`(2) There is no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces.

`(3) Pursuant to the powers conferred by section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States, it lies within the discretion of the Congress to establish qualifications for and conditions of service in the armed forces.

`(4) The primary purpose of the armed forces is to prepare for and to prevail in combat should the need arise.

`(5) The conduct of military operations requires members of the armed forces to make extraordinary sacrifices, including the ultimate sacrifice, in order to provide for the common defense.

`(6) Success in combat requires military units that are characterized by high morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.

`(7) One of the most critical elements in combat capability is unit cohesion, that is, the bonds of trust among individual service members that make the combat effectiveness of a military unit greater than the sum of the combat effectiveness of the individual unit members.

`(8) Military life is fundamentally different from civilian life in that–

`(A) the extraordinary responsibilities of the armed forces, the unique conditions of military service, and the critical role of unit cohesion, require that the military community, while subject to civilian control, exist as a specialized society; and

`(B) the military society is characterized by its own laws, rules, customs, and traditions, including numerous restrictions on personal behavior, that would not be acceptable in civilian society.

`(9) The standards of conduct for members of the armed forces regulate a member’s life for 24 hours each day beginning at the moment the member enters military status and not ending until that person is discharged or otherwise separated from the armed forces.

`(10) Those standards of conduct, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice, apply to a member of the armed forces at all times that the member has a military status, whether the member is on base or off base, and whether the member is on duty or off duty.

`(11) The pervasive application of the standards of conduct is necessary because members of the armed forces must be ready at all times for worldwide deployment to a combat environment.

`(12) The worldwide deployment of United States military forces, the international responsibilities of the United States, and the potential for involvement of the armed forces in actual combat routinely make it necessary for members of the armed forces involuntarily to accept living conditions and working conditions that are often spartan, primitive, and characterized by forced intimacy with little or no privacy.

`(13) The prohibition against homosexual conduct is a longstanding element of military law that continues to be necessary in the unique circumstances of military service.

`(14) The armed forces must maintain personnel policies that exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create an unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.

`(15) The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.

---

[i] Susan Yoachum and Carolyn Lochhead, “Clinton Orders New Gay-GI Policy: He concedes few will like compromise,” The San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 1993, p. A1.

[ii] National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994, Public Law 103-160, November 30, 1993, Title V, Subtitle G, Sec. 571, “Policy Concerning Homosexuality in the Armed Forces” (10 U.S.C. 654); online at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c103:5:./temp/~c103HPMAIr:e399464:

Tags: Don't Ask Don't Tell

Comments: 17 |

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 1, 2010
CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Darin Miller, (866) FRC-NEWS

FRC Responds to New Study Showing Abstinence Education is Most Effective

Washington, D.C. – Family Research Council (FRC) released the following statement in response to the release of a new study demonstrating the effectiveness of abstinence education. The study was compiled and released by Drs. John and Loretta Jemmott from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Waterloo, Ontario.

Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins made the following comments:

“This study tells us clearly that abstinence education, not the promotion of high-risk sexual behavior among teens, is needed. The study reports that abstinence education successfully reduced self-reported sexual involvement among African American students in grades six and seven.

“In light of this study and others showing the positive health benefits of abstinence education, it is unfortunate that this Congress and administration has zeroed out abstinence education in favor of sex-ed programs that advocate high-risk sexual behavior when it is children and young teens who suffer the consequences.

“Despite an enormous amount of money going to comprehensive sex-ed programs dating much earlier than abstinence education programs, recent CDC data show that an alarming 40 percent of teen girls who are sexually active are infected with an STD.

“The government does not promote drug use or underage drinking, and it should not promote high-risk sexual behavior either. The evidence shows clearly that sexual abstinence is the healthiest behavior for youth.”

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I have watched with horror over the last few months stories of the most heinous crimes committed against young girls. Two that come to mind include the story of Shaniya Davis, a five-year-old in North Carolina who was sex trafficked by her mother and then allegedly kidnapped and killed by a friend of the mother. America watched the grim video, taken from hotel security cameras, of the accused man carrying Shaniya into a room. A similar dark story involves the kidnapping and death of Sarah Haley Foxwell, an eleven year-old from Salisbury, Maryland, who was taken from her bedroom by a registered sex offender on December 22. Her body was found in nearby woods on Christmas Day.

As an aunt to two young girls, the horrific nature of these crimes haunts me. I wonder how and why these kinds of disgusting acts seem to be occurring with more regularity in our culture and assume that major components involve an increase in child pornography, an overall depiction of the ideal beautiful woman in popular media as being very young, and a general insensitivity to the seriousness of sexualizing young children.

Onto this backdrop I want to draw attention to the deeply offensive statement recently made by Washington Post TV Critic Tom Shales. Ironically, Shales was in the process of an online discussion about the cultural impact of TV when he made the following comment in defense of Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old, “There is, apparently, more to this crime than it would seem, and it may sound like a hollow defense, but in Hollywood I am not sure a 13-year-old is really a 13-year-old.”

Comments such as Tom Shales’ are not funny and are definitely not harmless. Quite to the contrary, attitudes such as this create a culture in which young women are objectified as sexual objects, not as human beings with inherent dignity.

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It seems so long ago now, but Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal wrote a terrific commentary piece before Christmas entitled “The Adam Lambert Problem.”  In it Noonan discusses the alienation and sense of pessimism that Americans now have about the primary institutions of this nation.

She opines that the national disquiet isn’t only about money, jobs, health insurance and material security.  Noonan writes, “Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture.”

For those of you lucky enough to not know much about Adam Lambert – go to Wikipedia – or read Noonan’s description:

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and—again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening—uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed “faux oral sex” featuring “S&M play,” “bondage gear,” “same-sex makeouts” and “walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash.”

People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot’s logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can’t a gay man do it? ….

Enough said about the former American Idol finalist, but the background sets up Noonan’s theme of alienation:

It is one thing to grouse that dreadful people who don’t care about us control our economy, but another, and in a way more personal, thing to say that people who don’t care about us control our culture. In 2009 this was perhaps most vividly expressed in the Adam Lambert Problem.

Here Noonan seems entirely correct.  While there used to be an unwritten pact by the artistic elites and the entertainment-industrial complex to refrain from assaulting American families in their homes, that norm is rapidly breaking down.  And the sorts of folks who run Comcast-GE-Universal-Disney-CBS-whatever don’t care about staying in their boxes.  Now they are going to make you watch smut (and pay for it) on your TV and in your house, on your new TV-iphone-GPS-camcorder, and on whatever else they can force on you.  Let’s be honest: unless something changes it is only a matter of time before basic cable has soft porn and then real porn on it.  The “FX” channel is only a stone’s throw away now.

And, yet the libertarian conservative political class in Washington doesn’t get what Noonan does – that there is political gold in the hills for the political leaders who understand that being free entails not being compelled to buy things that offend us morally.  Why is that?  Too many political contributions from the cable industry probably.

But note this: NONE of the libertarians who founded this country would have disagreed with the proposition that freedom rests on the ability to reject morally objectionable ideas and art.  Anything less is tyranny.  A man’s house is his castle, Mr. Otis observed.

Perhaps, it will take a woman, a mother, to ride this political horse to victory – someone like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann.  When she’s ready, she should call Peggy Noonan to write the speech.  There is a nation waiting to hear it.

Tags: Bachmann, Lambert, Noonan, Palin

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Several weeks after radical homosexual activist Kevin Jennings was appointed to head the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools in the Department of Education, FRC released a detailed paper listing seven reasons why Mr. Jennings is unfit for this post. One of those seven charges was, “By his own account, Jennings failed to protect the ‘safety’ of a homosexual student he once counseled when working as a teacher”—a student who told Jennings (according to Jennings’ own account) that “I met somebody in the bus station bathroom and went home with him.”

Even though Jennings himself issued a statement in September admitting, “I should have handled the situation differently,” the liberal website Media Matters seems determined to keep arguing that Jennings did nothing wrong. In particular, they have focused on the very narrow issue (which has been raised by Jennings’ own account of the incident) of whether Jennings might have violated “mandatory reporting” laws, which impose a legal requirement upon teachers to report suspected sexual abuse of minors to the authorities.

Media Matters appears to be operating on the assumption that consensual sexual relations between a teenaged boy and a much older adult man can only be considered “abuse” if they violate statutory rape laws—that is, if the teen is below the legal “age of consent,” which in Massachusetts is 16. Media Matters claims to have located the actual boy (now a grown man) involved in the incident, and to have proven that he was 16 years old at the time. This is the very thin reed on which Media Matters is resting its defense of Jennings—an argument, in essence, that “the boy was 16 so everything’s OK!”

Yesterday, they attacked a new video about Jennings that FRC recently released. I would point out that in the narration of the film (as Media Matters even quoted), we said the boy was “believed to be 15 or 16.” But, as was carefully documented in our June paper, the source of the information that the boy was 15 was—Kevin Jennings! How do we know he said this? There is a recording of his voice saying that the boy was 15. Jennings has told other versions of the story in which he says the boy was 16, but the fact that his several versions of this story are mutually incompatible proves only one thing with absolute certainty—Jennings is a liar (or to put it more generously—he has fictionalized the story for dramatic effect). And Jennings has refused to answer questions or clarify the inconsistencies in his accounts of the incident.

Continue reading »

Tags: Kevin Jennings, Media Matters

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Prostitution has long been legal and regulated in the state of Nevada, but a technicality in the law—a health code requirement for “cervical” exams to check for STD’s—had prevented males from serving as prostitutes. The state’s board of health has now lifted that barrier (by allowing urethral exams as well), and Bobbi Davis, owner of a brothel called the Shady Lady Ranch, plans “to add male prostitutes to her stable of sex workers” (in the words of the Las Vegas Sun).

The principal opposition to this step came from an odd source—the lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Owners Association, George Flint, whom the Sun describes as a “former Assemblies of God minister.” Flint went on record despite the fact that, as the Sun reported, “the [brothel] industry has previously tried to avoid any controversy.”

Flint apparently worries that homosexual male hookers will give the industry a bad name. “We’ve worked hard for years to make the traditional brothel business in this state socially acceptable [and] something we can be proud of that most Nevadans accept.” That struck me as one of the most bizarre quotes of the year—but apparently there are at least a few hundred people in Las Vegas who agree, since the Sun’s online poll showed 475 readers (84% of those voting) affirmed that “brothels are socially acceptable,” while only 85 (15%) disagreed.

Flint’s specific concern is the risk of transmitting HIV between prostitutes and clients—something that he claims the “traditional” brothels have been effective at preventing. “Now we’re getting into an [area] that doesn’t enjoy the same track record.”

This does not mean that there has never been homosexual prostitution in Nevada. The female prostitutes have long been free to accept either male or female clients, according to the report, and male prostitutes will have the same right.

This raises serious questions about gender equity, however. If a Christian psychologist or a fertility doctor is not free to turn away a homosexual client for fear of “discrimination” charges, how can a homosexual male prostitute be allowed to turn away a female client? Isn’t that discrimination, too? On the other hand, if you require them to take all clients, then maybe that would effectively mean that only bisexuals can work as prostitutes in Nevada. Wouldn’t that be discrimination, too?

Such are thickets in which the sexual revolution and political correctness entrap us. In the meantime, if you want to know how to get to Las Vegas—just climb in a handbasket and travel toward the heat as far as you can go.

Las Vegas Sun: New era: Health authorities open brothels to male prostitutes [with poll]

Tags: Nevada, Prostitution

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New video exposé of U.S. Department of Education Safe & Drug-Free Schools “Czar” Kevin Jennings:

Read more at stopjennings.org.

Tags: Education, Kevin Jennings, Safe Schools

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Advocates of same-sex “marriage” assert that the “fundamental right” of homosexual individuals to marry is infringed if they are not free to marry “the person of their choice” (and they often cite the elimination of laws which once banned interracial marriage as precedent for this principle). However, everyone still faces restrictions upon whom they may marry. No one is permitted to marry a child, a close blood relative, a person who is already married, or (in most states and countries) a person of the same sex.

However, if the restriction against marrying someone of the same sex is lifted, based on the assertion of a right to marry whomever you wish, what principled reason will there be to maintain the other restrictions upon one’s choice of marriage partner? This is the “slippery slope” argument—that legalization of homosexual “marriage” would make it more difficult to maintain laws against pedophile, incestuous, and (especially) polygamous marriages, as well.

Yet there are people who would willingly slide even further down the slippery slope. In my book Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage, I noted news stories about an Indian girl who was married to a dog, a French woman who married a dead man, and a Canadian professor, Stephen Bertman, who “foresees the possibility of marriage between humans and their household pets or even inanimate objects such as a beloved car or computer.”

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Washington D.C. – Family Research Council (FRC) released a new study today that comprehensively details the effects of pornography on marriages, children, communities and individuals. Pat Fagan, Ph.D. authored the study and serves as FRC’s Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Research on Marriage and Religion.

Dr. Fagan made the following comments:

“This is a ground-breaking review of what pornography costs families trying to create a life together. Men, women and sometimes even children are saturated by sexual content, and more significantly, are told that it has no real effect. It’s just a little amusement.

“Pornography corrodes the conscience, promotes distrust between husbands and wives and debases untold thousands of young women. It is not harmless escapism but relational and emotional poison.

“The fact that marriage rates are dropping steadily is well known. But the impact of pornography use and its correlation to fractured families has been little discussed. The data show that as pornography sales increase, the marriage rate drops.

“As this academic review reveals, pornography is creating a debt of the spirit and a cost in the lives of family members that rivals any deficit the federal government is producing.

“The science is clear: children from families without married parents have much higher poverty rates as well as poorer health and other socio-economic difficulties. Nations with low marriage rates suffer the same fates. And underlying the social trends is the impact of pornography on family formation. It’s a quiet family killer.”

Among the study’s findings:

“Men who view pornography regularly have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexuality, including rape, sexual aggression, and sexual promiscuity.

“Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.

“Pornography engenders greater sexual permissiveness, which in turn leads to a greater risk of out-of-wedlock births and STDs, which in turn lead to still more weaknesses and debilities.

“The presence of sexually oriented businesses significantly harms the surrounding community, leading to increases in crime and decreases in property values.

“Child-sex offenders are more likely to view pornography regularly or to be involved in its distribution.

“Pornography eliminates the warmth of affectionate family life, which is the natural social nutrient for the growing child.

Click here to download the full study.

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Tags: Pornography

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A recent survey of 1,000 adults by Harris Interactive found that 76% of Americans disagree with the proposition that “viewing hardcore adult pornography on the Internet is morally acceptable” and 74% disagree that it is “harmless entertainment.”  The survey was commissioned by Morality in Media in connection with the White Ribbon Against Pornography week this week.

“There is a perception held by many that hardcore adult pornography has become acceptable in American society.  But the perception is false,” according to Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media.  This is evidence that, “what primarily fuels the market is sexual addiction, not casual viewing,” said Peters in a press release.  For full survey results and more information about WRAP week, contact Bob Peters at Morality in Media.

Tags: Pornography

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According to Bob Peters of Morality in Media, our nation is facing a moral crisis, including, among other things, teen promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), abortion, illegitimacy, divorce, sexual abuse of children, rape, trafficking in women and children, on-the-job sexual harassment and lost worker productivity.  And what is fueling this crisis is the spread of hardcore pornography, on the Internet and elsewhere.

That’s why one week every October we observe White Ribbon Against Pornography week, where people display white ribbons and inform their public officials about the harms of pornography and the need to enforce our obscenity laws.

The 22^nd annual WRAP week runs Sunday, October 25 through Sunday, November 1^st, and its chief promoter is Morality in Media.  (Resources for individuals and groups can be found at www.moralityinmedia.org under “WRAP Campaign” and include information about ordering white ribbons, sample letters to Attorney General Holder and state prosecutors, and sample prayers and sermons.

If you think about it, someone is going to define the culture.  The Porn Industry and their friends at the ACLU seek an America where there are no legal limits on pornography – no limit to how graphic it may be, no limit to the people it can exploit for profit, including children.

And they’re winning, not because what they’re doing is legal, but because they’re getting away with it.  But the Supreme Court has ruled that obscenity laws can be enforced against “hardcore pornography” when a jury finds the material appeals to the prurient interest, is patently offensive, and lacks serious value.

So it doesn’t matter what the Porn Industry or the ACLU thinks.  All that matters is what a jury thinks, and that means ultimately it’s up to the American people to decide what’s illegal or not. 

But the people become disenfranchised when obscenity laws are not vigorously enforced.

Our voice is the jury verdict.  Without obscenity prosecutions there are no juries, and no juries mean no verdicts, and no verdicts mean the people have no voice.  And that leaves the Porn Industry to set the standards for the culture.

An important way to attack the moral crisis is so simple it’s deceptive:  enforcement of our already-existing obscenity laws.

We call on President Obama and Attorney General Holder give us back our voice, and to vigorously enforce this nation’s obscenity laws.

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[Clips and footage courtesy of Mass Resistance]

For more information on Kevin Jennings’ radical past, and how you can take action, visit: stopjennings.org

Tags: Act UP, Kevin Jennings, Safe Schools, Tony Perkins

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It seems that homosexual activist groups can’t even raise money without using sexual innuendo.

I happen to be on the email list for “Equality Maryland,” the state homosexual activist organization (it’s always good to know what the opposition is doing). They are planning to raise money with a “Jazz Brunch and Silent Auction” on Sunday, October 18 in Baltimore.

But I was startled by the poor taste (and the poor proofreading) of the subject line for an email invitation to this event that I received on September 28. It read: “Care to engage is [sic] some ‘Four Play’?” (The gimmick was that you would get a discount when purchasing four tickets.)

I wondered if they would be embarrassed or get any negative reaction—but apparently not. On October 7, I received a follow-up email with this subject line: “Forget ‘Four Play’ . . . how about a ‘Threesome’?” Offering a discount for the purchase of only three tickets this time, the message came complete with a publicity photo from the old “Three’s Company” TV show.

When homosexuals promote their political agenda in the public square, they argue that it’s not about sex. It’s about love, families, equality, justice, etc., etc. They don’t want people thinking about two men or two women having sex. (This is why they prefer the term “gay” rather than “homosexual.”)

But when talking to each other, the agenda becomes more clear.

It’s about sex.

Tags: Equality Maryland, Homosexuality, Same-sex marriage

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The state of morality on the American college campus seems to be in perpetual decline, and I have shuddered to think about what it will be like in a dozen years when my own daughters will be getting ready for college.  But from a liberal college in a liberal state comes a small ray of hope.  Tufts University has revised its “guest policy” for dorm visitors for the new school year to include the following new rule:  “You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room.”

Shouldn’t this be obvious?  Word from my friends with kids in college is that, shockingly, it’s not.  Nor is it a problem unique to Tufts.

So a tip of the hat to the Tufts’ administration for having the courage to draw a line.  And if Tufts can do it, any school can.

Tags: College, Education, Tufts

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It was January, 1998, nearly 12 years ago, and a terrible time for our country. Bill Bennett was invited to address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. Bennett appeared just days after the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal had splashed all over the front pages of the Washington Post.

Clinton had no friends among the CPAC attendees. Out in the hotel exhibit area, some of the tables were hawking crude, rude bumper stickers and tee shirts, all poking fun at the embattled Philanderer-in-Chief.

Bennett looked unusually stern. He grasped the podium and scowled out at the audience.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bill Bennett, Bill Clinton, CPAC

Comments: 2 |

It’s not that unusual for me to have fellow worshipers come up to me after church, over coffee. Normally, however, we swap family stories, talk about children, grandchildren, hobbies, and common interests in our town. Yesterday, however, two friends sought me out with some urgency.

My first friend of the coffee hour was in anguish over his daughter’s decision to live the gay lifestyle. He and his wife had raised two daughters in their loving Christian home. Their younger daughter married and has blessed them with grandchildren. Their elder daughter pursued an academic career. He described this daughter as a brilliant scholar, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at a major university. But he and his wife are heartbroken over their daughter’s decision not only to live in a lesbian relationship with another woman, but also her plan to change her sex. Their daughter is beginning hormone treatments soon. Distraught over their daughter’s choices, he appealed to me for help.

Continue reading »

Comments: 8 |

After 30 years of implementation and evaluation, there is no compelling evidence of contraceptive distribution and instruction programs having had a sustained and meaningful effect on “protective” behaviors-that is, “consistent and correct condom use” in classroom-type settings. As a public health intervention method, contraceptive programs have simply failed American youth: An STD epidemic currently exists amongst young people. One in four teenage girls nationwide has an STD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the U.S. continues to have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world; and the toll from the negative psychological sequelae associated with adolescent sex is having an impact on mental health and the pursuit of life-goals.

Continue reading »

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The May 2009 newsletter from the Medical Institute contains valuable information for parents about “Sexting” – meaning the posting or sending of sexually suggestive electronic images and messages:

A recent survey of a nationally representative sample of 653 teens, aged 13 to 19, and 627 young adults, aged 20 to 26, compiles information on ’sexting.’ The survey reported that one in five teens and one in three young adults have sent or posted semi-nude or nude images of themselves in cyberspace. Half of the teens and young adults have sent or posted sexually suggestive messages. This trend is surprising since nearly 3/4 of teens and young adults acknowledged that sending such images and messages “can have serious negative consequences.” The most commonly listed negative consequences were regret (79%), potential embarrassment (73%), bad reputation (69%), and disappointing family (57%).

This edition of the Medical Institute’s newsletter also discusses new research underscoring previous research findings that sexual activity in adolescents is influenced by what they watch on TV. Read the whole thing.

Tags: sexting, teens

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