Clowns who teach middle schoolers sex education!

I wonder when the ACLU will get involved....Isn't teaching waiting until marriage to have sex a religious viewpoint and what's it doing in public schools?

Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvCvw...erallyi-CLOWNS

As clownish as Dye�s words may sound to you, they are unfortunately not rare ones for young people to hear in classrooms all over the country. Thanks to George W. Bush and a complicit Congress, we currently spend $1.5 billion a year to fund abstinence-only until marriage sex education in our public schools. And yes, that money goes to people like Derek Dye, as he is employed by the Elizabeth New Life Center that received a $800,000 CBAE grant in 2007 to promote abstinence until marriage. His qualifications? A �Bachelor of Fun Arts� from Barnum Bailey Clown College, and an abstinence educator certification that can be purchased for $50.

So� what�s wrong with abstinence-only until marriage sex education? Abstinence-only programs censor information about contraception and condoms; make moral judgments students may not share; stigmatize and shame students who have already had sex; and discriminate against GLBTQ students who can�t legally marry. These programs often encourage stereotypical gender roles, use scare tactics, blur religion and science, and contain factual errors, like saying that HIV can be spread through sweat and tears.

And using condoms is like juggling machetes�

What�s more, abstinence-only programs don�t work � independent study after study has shown that students who receive them don�t have lower pregnancy, HIV, or STI rates. And worse, students who receive abstinence-only programs are less likely to use contraception and condoms when they do have sex.

Then again, as one colleague told me today, nothing wants to make her have sex less than a clown� so maybe they�re on to something.

So� what can we do to make sure that abstinence-only programs like this one are not funded with our tax dollars? First of all, contact the Obama transition team to make sure that they ZERO OUT these programs in their first budget. Also, ending abstinence-only funding is currently 3rd place on Change.gov's user rankings, so you can go there and vote for it, too.

Secondly, we must contact all of our representatives to let them know that we do not want this waste of money being snuck back into the budget through the appropriations process. Send them that message here.

For those of you living in Ohio, call or email your Ohio State Senator today and urge them to co-sponsor the Act For Our Children�s Future, a bill to establish standards for comprehensive sexual health education in Ohio�s public schools.

LET�S SEND OUT THE CLOWNS!!!

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child about it and explain to them that even though this lifestyle is not acceptable, they are people too and we should not treat them poorly. If parents don't teach their children and they bully gay people, dorks, dweebs, smelly kids, etc........the school has every right to punish them for acting that way whether it be writing sentences over and over, calling the parents, etc. You do not have to single out homosexuality and teach this to children as an example of tolerance.

Besides, I said below that on the news they keep talking about how same sex marriage is more accepted by people.....particularly younger people and yet here you are saying that this should be taught in schools because younger people aren't tolerant? So which is it?

different than you without talking about homosexuality. I find that story of the penguins to read to 5 year old children particularly upsetting.

If you can't pray in school and share the word of God in schools.....find another way to teach tolerance without bringing the gay issue into it.

Like I said before, how hard is it to tell kids that we should all be kind to each other because we are all different and that is what makes us all special. What else is there to be said? Treat others as you would have them treat you. It is pretty easy to say it and kids get it.

because you LOVE them. A Christian who tries to help a person overcome alcoholism, drug addictions or whatever, they do this because they have love for this person as a child of God and as a brother or sister in the eyes of the Lord and they want to HELP them overcome whatever is burdening them to help them be right with the Lord and it is ALL IN LOVE, which is how it should be.

If what you are saying is true and you seriously are concerned about homosexuality on a Christianity level, then take your Bible and WITNESS to people about it. SHOW them where you find it wrong and explain to them that God loves them anyway and YOU love them anyway, but that you just want to make sure that they see the right path to God.

Coming at it from an angle that it is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG and you will NOT tolerate it and such is that, how is that helping anything? How are you being a supportive Christian and making yourself a person that others would want to model after and look up to? How about telling them that despite their sins that God loves them anyway. If you believe it is a sin, according to the Bible, do you also believe that God still loves them, according to the Bible? God does hate the sin, he doesn't hate the person.

to protect them against advances of sexual predators. It's all how you twist the words. Remember, too much twisting and you cut off the blood supply and wither away. watch out mcc.

I have heard so much about our education system and I'm sure some of it is true. However, I would like to relay a recent experience I had......

Living in a small community that is loaded with history, I and a couple of other "older" ladies hosted the local 4th and 5th grades on a field trip regarding the history of a couple of landmarks.......anyone interested can visit my website http://www.ozarkmountainmemories.com and read about them.

I was to do the historical presentation on the Cane Hill College Building. My good friend was to do the presentation on the Old Mill. Before I knew that there were 212 students plus teachers and parents, I opened my big mouth and said I would make cookies and Kool-Aid for the kid's field trip. I ended up having a lot of help there!!!

Both my friend and I were very apprehensive about this field trip. Well, I want to tell you that those were the best behaved kids I have seen in a long time. This field trip was to prepare them to write an essay for the Arkansas Historical Society. They were attentive and, asked very pertinent and intelligent questions.

One of the teachers called me yesterday and said that she was going to bring me some of the essays the kids had written. She read one to me and it started out with "You may think the Cane Hill College is just a 2-story brick building...." and the student proceeded to write what I would consider a very excellent essay. I will post some of these on my website when I have them in hand.

I might also say that there were a good many parents present for the field trip. I came away from that field trip with a whole different perspective on the local school, which is reputed to be one of the worst school districts in the state with the highest teen pregnancy rate. I think if these 4th and 5th graders continue through high school with teachers such as I met and parents who are involved in their education, each and every one of them will be just A-okay.

The Centers for Disease Control released a new report today that found that Mississippi �now has the nation�s highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title.� The report found that in 2006, the Mississippi teen pregnancy rate was over 60 percent higher than the national average and increased 13 percent since the year before.
While the new report does not explain why the state�s teen pregnancy rate is increasing, one reason may be the poor quality of its sex ed programs. As the Sexuality Information and Education Center explains, Mississippi focuses heavily on abstinence education and teachers are prohibited from demonstrating how to use contraceptives:

Mississippi schools are not required to teach sexuality education or sexually transmitted disease (STD)/HIV education. If schools choose to teach either or both forms of education, they must stress abstinence-until-marriage, including �the likely negative psychological and physical effects of not abstaining.� [�]
If the school board authorizes the teaching of contraception, state law dictates that the failure rates and risks of each contraceptive method must be included and �in no case shall the instruction or program include any demonstration of how condoms or other contraceptives are applied.�

A reporter for ABC News�s Jackson, MS affiliate explained, �The Mississippi Department of Human Services says abstinence is the only birth control that is 100 percent effective. And that�s the only message teens need to hear.� Unfortunately, numerous studies show that abstinence-only education is not effective. As one study found:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

Further, a review by the House Oversight Committee found that �80% of the abstinence-only curricula�contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.�
Pregnant teens in Mississippi face few options. Access to facilities that provide abortions in that state is extremely limited. Indeed, because of an unusually effective anti-choice campaign in the legislature, only a single abortion clinic remains open in the state.

UpdateThe report also found that the teen pregnancy rate is rising fastest in Alaska, where Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is a strong proponent of abstinence-only sex ed.

know that it scares the heck outta me and others, Obama.......his middle name is hussein.....

one of the bibles say something to the effect of when the *stuff* happens (the bad stuff) - it's going to happen from the *inside out* -

Then my income will just push us into that bracket. I wonder if that will negate my entire income? If so, I guess we may be better off if I just quit? Right now I work because I can't afford to quit. I won't be able to afford it then either so what will I do? I wonder how many others will be in my situation?

FYI, we live in a small older home that we are trying to pay off so that when our two children are college-age, maybe we can afford it. We don't live extravagently by any means. What will happen to people like us?

Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.

All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.

We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.

Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.

And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.

Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.