by Kortney Blythe

While watching “American Idol,” a commercial came on that caught my attention. An amateurish-looking home video showed two giddy, laughing teenage girls jumping on a trampoline, acting goofy. Then a voiceover said:

“I love my life. I’m not gonna mess it up with a pregnancy.”

And a web site flashed on the screen: Stayteen.org.

Being the abortion abolitionist I am, I immediately opened my laptop to check it out. At first, I was pleasantly surprised. The web site, which is funded by a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, strongly advised waiting to have sex.

Among the various messages were myths about sex, lists of compelling reasons why abstinence is best and even a mention of how TV and movies portray sex as having no repercussions. In addition, they impressively differentiated between lust and love, and recognized the physical and emotional consequences attached to sex.

According to their bullet points, not everybody is doing it. Nearly 70 percent of teens wish they had waited to have sex and 94 percent want a strong abstinence message.

But, as I expected, that was the end of the good news. After leaving the “abstinence” section and perusing the rest of the site, I came upon the “help and advice” section. Who took the top spot under the first three resource topics?

Planned Parenthood.

Yes, that bastion of abortion, libertine sex (for the young and old) and the undermining of parents and purity. To appease parents and the general public, Planned Parenthood occasionally uses the word abstinence in their propaganda. But when mentioned, it is nearly always followed with a “but” and some nonsense about realizing how unrealistic it is; thus undermining the whole purpose of promoting it. 

It’s disturbingly contradictory for a web site that claims to want to prevent teen pregnancy and promote abstinence to send young people to Planned Parenthood for questions about “sex, protection, contraception…STDs…[and] emergency contraception.”

Once again, our government (and whoever else was involved in this site) fails to grasp the mixed messages they are sending to kids when they view such a web site.

A show like “American Idol” is watched by families with kids of varying ages. Many of them will visit StayTeen.org because of the captivating commercial. Unfortunately, the site perpetuates the false message that “abstinence is good, but since it’s probably not realistic, use contraception.” Until parents start consistently teaching their children and teens lifelong chastity, the rates of teen pregnancy, STDs and premarital sex at younger and younger ages will continue to rise.

No amount of confusing web sites will change the statistics.

Source:  OpposingViews.com

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100302/atheist-group-trade-your-bibles-in-for-porn/index.html

Tue, Mar. 02 2010

By Ethan Cole

A campus atheist group began its attention-seeking holy book-for-porn program on Monday at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

For three days, members of Atheist Agenda will give students pornographic magazines in exchange for any religious texts as part of their annual “Smut for Smut” campaign. Leaders of the atheist group argue that religious books contain violence, spark religious wars, advocate for the mistreatment of women and are therefore no better than pornography.

“It’s a First Amendment right,” said Bradley Lewis, 18, who plans to join the Atheist Agenda, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “If religious groups can put out missionaries and go knock on my door and wake me up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I can put a table outside of the college.”

As expected, the group’s action has offended religious students. A group of Christians gathered to protest the event and in the afternoon a Christian student debated the Atheist Agenda president, Carlos Morales.

The event attracted hundreds of students to the university’s main plaza Monday. Some of the students were seen carrying signs with messages such as, “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus loves the Atheist Agenda,” while others sang hymns, according to the UTSA student newspaper The Paisano.

Robin Lorkovic, 18, who held the sign, “God Loves You! Keep your Bible and learn from it!,” said, “I don’t really feel like that is appropriate at all,” according to the Express-News.

“I am a Christian, I believe in God’s love and I am here to stand my ground and stand up for what I believe in.”

University officials admit that the atheist event is controversial and the majority of students do not agree with it. But they also said the event is legal and students have the right to freedom of speech and assembly.

“They (Atheist Agenda) admitted it’s a publicity stunt,” said Michelle Brossart, a UTSA student who is offended by the event, to The Paisano. “They want to evoke crazy emotions out of people because they want to make their agenda known.”

“But only very, very few people are actually gaining anything from this,” she said.

Atheist Agenda began the “Smut for Smut” campaign at UTSA in 2005. The first campaign gained major media attention across the nation. Subsequent events have also attracted national coverage, but to a lesser extent.

Predators must be punished, but what about good kids who make a bad decision?

By Emily Bazelon

A teenager in Wisconsin named Anthony Stancl set up a fake Facebook profile, pretending to be a girl. Seventeen or 18 at the time, Stancl used the profile to lure 30 of the boys he went to high school with to send him nude pictures or videos of themselves. Then Stancl threatened to post the material on the Internet unless they performed sex acts with him. Seven of them say they did—and that Stancl took pictures of them with his cell-phone camera.Last week, Stancl was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to repeated sexual assault of a child. This is the kind of lurid sexting story that gets the prosecutorial blood flowing. But if Stancl is at the scary end of the teen sexting spectrum, at the other end are a 12-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl in Valparaiso, Ind., who reportedly exchanged nude photos of themselves. The kids were in school when they were caught in this new form of “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” When a teacher confronted the girl, she started to cry. What’s the best way to handle an incident like this? Should the police and prosecutors be involved, or should schools and parents handle the fallout? How can states draft laws that protect against Anthony Stancl without sweeping in more innocent behavior, like that of the students in Valparaiso?

These questions are popping up around the country. And while there’s no consensus yet about the right legislative response, the wrong one is starting to become clear. Increasingly, district attorneys agree with children’s advocacy groups that hard-charging laws and prosecutions can do real damage. They can land teens on sex offender lists for decades. And they can backfire, harming kids instead of protecting them. For example, a sexting crackdown could give a guy who talked his girlfriend into texting him a nude photo a means of threatening her—he says he’ll go to the police with the photo she sent unless she has sex with him. The harder question is whether law enforcement has any role at all to play when sexting doesn’t lead to a worse crime like the one committed by the predatory Anthony Stancl.

Consider another case, in which prosecutors went after an 18-year-old for sexting by charging him with the dissemination of child pornography. Phillip Alpert e-mailed a smutty picture of his ex-girlfriend, which she’d sent him when they were together, to more than 70 people. She was 16. He is now a registered sex offender, required to stay on that list in Florida until he is 43. That means reporting not just changes of address but also e-mail addresses and instant-messaging names.

Is this harsh but fair—or way too heavy-handed? The states that have weighed in so far are split. In a bill passed last year, Vermont shielded teens from criminal prosecution for sexting. Illinois, by contrast, created a specific misdemeanor offense for putting a nude picture on the Internet without consent and did not exempt teens. Utah and Ohio took a middle road, passing bills in 2009 that create separate juvenile misdemeanor offenses for teens who send sexts. This means they won’t be prosecuted as adults.

But it could also mean that they’re more likely to be caught up in the juvenile justice system. The 12-year-old and 13-year-old in Indiana who sent pictures to each other haven’t been criminally charged, despite a misleading headline in the local paper that naturally found its way into the blogosphere via the Huffington Post. Still, the kids were sent to juvenile probation, according to prosecutor Brian Gensel. This means a preliminary inquiry in which juvenile probation authorities make an appointment to meet with the kids and their families. The law-enforcement part of the affair could end there, or the kids could be deemed delinquent and sent for counseling or punished.

Is juvenile court the best place to handle this kind of relatively innocent behavior? Or is discipline for kids in a situation like this better left to their parents and, perhaps, their schools? The ACLU and the Juvenile Law Center argue against bringing these cases in juvenile court in a brief for a Pennsylvania sexting case that’s before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. A juvenile record “may hinder a juvenile’s future plans to seek higher education, obtain employment, or enlist in the military,” the groups argue. They oppose a Pennsylvania bill that would treat teen sexting as a misdemeanor rather than a felony on the grounds that it will do more harm than good.

This is where the child advocates and the National District Attorneys Association part company, to a degree. “If you have two consenting teens who make a mistake in sending a compromising photo to another person, that’s something you don’t want to prosecute,” the NDAA’s Justin Fitzsimmons says. But in terms of the underlying statute: “We’re in favor of having state prosecutors have the discretion to charge it as a juvenile or not charge it at all.” It’s a subtle but important difference: Give prosecutors the discretion to charge sexting as a juvenile offense and trust them to use it wisely—or don’t give them this new tool for fear it will be misused and a lot of more or less good kids will end up with a record.

The argument against sending all those teen sexters to juvenile court is that at the moment what they’re doing is a weird form of “everyone’s doing it.” Polls show that upward of 15 percent or 20 percent of teens saying they’ve received or (less often) sent a suggestive picture. A lot of kids don’t seem to understand yet that sexts are like digital tattoos—that you can’t make them go away, however hard you scrub, and so you are stuck with them. Parents and teachers and anyone else with a megaphone surely have more work to do to impress on kids that it is the opposite of wise to send into the ether a compromising photo of yourself—or anyone else. But does it make sense to criminalize behavior—even if it’s by moving teens into juvenile proceedings—when so many kids are doing it?

Maybe not, especially when some kids see it, however misguidedly, as fun. Psychologist Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M International University surveyed Hispanic women between the ages of 16 and 30 and found that “the majority were not being coerced. They viewed this as flirty and fun, as exciting,” he says. This doesn’t cancel out the problem of the girl who inadvertently gives her ex-boyfriend a weapon to blackmail her with, as Nancy Willard of the Center for Safe Internet Use worries in this report. But it complicates the picture. In the end, teen sexting is like teen sex. Some of it is scary and assaultive and some of it is more like spin the bottle—stupid, maybe, but pretty innocent, even if alarming in its permanence.

If all of this seems too tricky and nuanced for legislators or prosecutors—or parents—to get right anytime soon, Ferguson offers some reassurance. “You know, I don’t think adults realize it, but kids today are doing well for the most part,” he says. “We’ve been keeping consistent records in the U.S. since the 1960s, and they show that teens now are less violent, use drugs less, smoke less, and drink less. They stay in school more and take more AP classes. Their suicide rate is lower, and so is the teen pregnancy rate.” (There was a slight uptick in teen pregnancy in 2006, the latest year reported, but that was from a 30-year low.) Amid all the fear about sexting, it’s good to know that kids aren’t in dire trouble, relatively speaking. Too many of them have digital tattoos. But they’re in better shape than a lot of their parents were at the same age.

Source:  Slate.com

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2246371/

If you think for one minute that abstinence education gets a lot of funding, think again.  There are dozens of condom conventions done on your dime - with no shame!  From lube-tasting to condom games, the condom promoters are in full force.  This next one coming up is Sex Tech - basically finding new ways to make sex promotion and “safer-sex” practices better known and communicated through technology.

The conference is sponsored by the usuals, Planned Parenthood, National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, MTV and apparently the Condom Man. 

Ironically, it was National Campaign that hosted an informational conference call about the new Teen Pregnancy Prevention funding from the White House.  The same funding that will be replacing abstinence funding.

Hmmm…wonder if that will be abstinence friendly?

By Dr. Allen Unruh

In the state of Iowa a Judge ruled that it is legal for a drunk minor to be led to a stage in a strip club in front of a bunch of drunk men and strip because according to his opinion and the way the laws are written in Iowa it’s nothing more than an expression of art. The same rule would apply to a 9 year old or anyone.

An ounce of common sense would cause anybody to rule against this nonsense.  We are being desensitized to the reprehensible.  Too many judges think they are thinking, when they are really out to lunch.  Nothing is harder for them to see than the naked truth.  If their eyes have blinders on, they won’t see the writing on the wall.  Vices are learned without a master.     

For too long the subject of sex has been left to playboy philosophers, pornographers, perverts, and powerful people without principle.  It’s time this subject is approached by parents, and preachers, and people of principle.  Christians often meet, greet, eat and retreat.  It’s time we come out of the closet, because in times of moral crisis, silence is not golden,  IT’S YELLOW!     

Character development is the great, if not the sole aim of education.  John Adams said, “Freedom without virtue is madness.”   A person’s character is his fate.  Character is revealed by your actions in an unguarded moment.   Character is the result of 1000’s of small daily strivings.  Blaming your faults upon nature does not change the nature of your faults.  If a man finds his politics and religion don’t mix, there is something wrong with his politics.   Anything that is morally wrong cannot be politically correct.   

We are changing our moral code to match our behavior rather than trying to change our behavior to meet a fixed moral code.  Sometimes the cream in our society needs a little whipping.   Who so neglects learning in his youth,  loses the past and is dead for the future.   

It appears that law school nowadays is the opposite of sex.  Even when it’s good, it’s lousy.  If you can’t be a good example, at least try to be a horrible warning.  The legacy of Tiger Woods should be a warning to young people everywhere where that road will eventually lead.    

It’s time Christians draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough.  It’s time we stand up in righteous indignation.  It’s time we clean out the cesspool and start planting some flowers.  We’ve reached the stomach turning point in America.  Young people may be 25% of the population, but they are 100% of the future.  Thoughts are the seeds of action.  It’s time we raise the standard.  For the very future of freedom and civilization are at stake if we don’t.  I challenge everyone to call the legislators in Iowa, to write to this judge.  To find out what it will take to restore moral sanity to the culture right here in the heartland.  

Great information from Jennifer Roback Morse:

I note with interest that Reuters interviewed representatives of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research wing of Planned Parenthood. “Its all the fault of those Big Bad Social Conservatives.”  Oddly enough, Reuters did not interview anyone from the abstinence education movement. I wonder why? Perhaps they dont’ know where to find Leslee Unruh at the Abstinence Clearinghouse. I guess they have never heard of David Mahan, hip, urban African-American married father, who gives inspiring, dynamic presentations through his organization, Frontline Youth Communications. Maybe Reuters doesn’t know about Luis Galdamez, Hispanic Abstinence Educator in Southern California and beyond.  Perhaps Reuters is unaware that many African Americans and Hispanics are involved in the Abstinence Eduation movement, precisely because they have seen first hand in their own communities, that early sexual activity creates problems that contraception cannot solve.

Maybe you can help Reuters. Go and post links to these groups, in the comments section of the Reuters article where it appears in your newspaper. Maybe, the next Reuters story on this subject won’t sounds so much like a Planned Parenthood press release.

Better yet, remember Leslee and David and Luis when your group plans its next event.

By Jennifer Roback Morse

Source:Ruth Institute Blog

As a parent, I have been concerned for some time about some of the material that teens can find on YouTube; postings with sex, nudity, pornographic images and violence just to name a few.

I am so thankful to learn that starting yesterday, YouTube is adding a parental control that enables parents to block their children from viewing such videos; this feature is called Safety Mode.

 Go to this link to read all about it:

 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/10/earlyshow/leisure/gamesgadgetsgizmos/main6193508.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionsArea.4    

 Source:  CBS Early Show.com

Recently we received a report from The Abstinence Kenya Forum, “Upholding the Youth’s Dignity” held on January 9, 2010.  Here is a synopsis of this report:

The participants of the forum were invited by Abstinence Kenya by virtue of being in the category of ‘youth’.  They were drawn from different parts of Nairobi, Kenya.  While most of those attending were members of Abstinence Kenya, other participants were friends of Abstinence Kenya.

According to attendance and participation, the forum was a success.   There was much discussion on how it is possible for a male and a female in a relationship to abstain from sex until marriage.

Some of the brief points brought out and discussed during the forum were:

            Factors contributing to pre-marital sex:

·        Media influence

·        Technology

·        Curiosity

·        Peer Pressure

Ways of promoting Abstinence

·        Know the importance of Abstinence

·        Develop mind control (for sex is in the mind)

·        Be busy (avoid idleness)

·        Define boundaries in relationships

·        Avoid bad company

It was concluded that Abstinence might be hard for a young unmarried couple but it is possible if the young people are exposed to pro-abstinence information and activities. If the young people develop a purpose in their lives, they would be able to define the kind of relationship they wanted to be in and thus they would understand the importance of abstaining from premarital sex.

NOTE:  Abstinence Kenya is a youth friendly non-governmental organization which was established in the year 2008 with the main objective being: Empower and enlighten the youth and the community in general as to create a better & informed youth on the importance to abstain from pre-marital sex and drug abuse.”  Since then, the organization has bee implementing different programs aimed to achieve Abstinence from pre-marital sex and drug/substance use and abuse.

Bring Keith Deltano in to perform dynamic life changing school assemblies!

For more information on Keith Deltano go to  www.VirginityRocks.com

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

This mom is not buying Planned Parenthood’s B.S. for one minute.

Homeschool Mom: Planned Parenthood has decreed that 10-year-olds have a fundamental right to be taught about contraception, to have comprehensive sex education, and also to be treated as sexual beings. It’s their right, right? Now, I’m sure I’m not alone here in thinking that this is the most ridiculous thing I have read in a long time. But the scary thing is, some of you will absolutely agree with Planned Parenthood — and those of you who do are probably not all pedophiles (who right now are rubbing their sweaty palms together in glee). Some of you just are misguided enough to think, “Kids are ‘doing it’ younger anyway, so why not prepare them for it?” I’ll tell you why: Because it’s not safe — emotionally, physically or morally. It is not acceptable or beneficial in any way, shape or form for 10-year-olds — or 14-year-olds, for that matter — to be having sex.

I hear all the time that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. People say there’s been a rise in teen pregnancies, etc., and that abstinence-only sex ed is the reason why. “Look,” they say, “Bristol Palin got pregnant, and she says abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work.” Well, I just want to point you all to a little study that says abstinence-only sex ed  is not the complete failure that people paint it to be. The study appears in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, and on Feb. 2, 2010, Ashley Hayes wrote about it on CNN.com. Hayes’ piece reports that the study was conducted over a two-year period with African-American girls who averaged about 12 years in age. Two thirds of the girls who received abstinence-only sex education delayed having sexual intercourse within the two year period, while almost half the girls who received either abstinence-and-condom education or just condom education had intercourse in that same two-year span. So: Can you delay first-time sexual intercourse? It appears that you can. Can you make teen sex obsolete? Probably not — but you can’t make a lot of social problems obsolete. You can definitely make them less prevalent, though.

I believe that parents actively telling their kids “Don’t have sex” goes a long way. It’s the same with drug use: What’s the biggest deterrent? Parents saying, “Don’t do drugs.” But telling a kid, “Well, having sex is normal when you’re 14 or 12 or even 10 — so use this and be safe” doesn’t strike me as a way to curtail the unwanted behavior. Teen pregnancy is on the rise, along with sexually transmitted diseases — and so is drug use, teen violence and teen suicide. So where does all that leave us? Do we say, “Well, let’s teach them to use drugs safely,” or “Let’s teach them to kill themselves less lethally,” or “Let’s teach them to beat the snot out of each other in a safer way”? No. We say, “That is unacceptable and we don’t want you to use drugs or kill yourself or hurt someone else.”

So why is it so bad to say, “Don’t have sex until you are in a committed, adult, legally binding relationship — or at the very least, older”? I have a 14-year-old son who recently entered a private full-time high school, and I have told him, “You may not date until you are older.” I informed him that while I cannot control his liking a girl or spending time in school with a girl he feels romantically attached to, I will not aid and abet any kind of romantic relationship. She is not coming over, he’s not going to her house, there will be no movies, etc. I’m just not going there.

To a 14-year-old boy, girls are only a source of distraction and trouble — so my son’s pretty cool with my rule. His friends who do date have proven to him that I’m not talking smack. In fact, he has advised them, “You’re better off waiting” — because he has seen the drama that accompanies young teen romantic relationships. Maybe he won’t wait until he’s married to have sex. (I’d like him to, because I have seen couples in my church who did wait, and who now have extremely fulfilling and wonderful marriages.) But at the very least, I’d like to keep him safe while he’s 14. I am not ready to give up the battle, as Planned Parenthood would like me to. We may not be able to eliminate teen sex, but maybe we can delay it — and that is an improvement.

By Pam Heilman

Source:  MomLogic.com