50 MILL TO TELL YOUNG ADULTS NOT TO SCREW 12/9/06

Well, the government has finally flipped its' lid. And we shoulda seen it coming. For several years now, a friend of mine who has AIDS who has been speaking to high school kids under the auspices of a local agency has not been allowed to address prevention other than through abstinence. No talk of condoms or dental dams. Definitely no talk about sterilizing needles and having your own works. She is not allowed to answer any questions about prevention. I can understand asking parents to sign permission slips granting their permission for their teens to attend a talk about AIDS and effective prevention measures. I can understand having alternative programming for teens whose parents believe that it is their parental responsibility to transmit their values to their teens and not the schools' place to do so. I can't understand not giving high school teenagers the whole story [with signed parental permission].

Beginning in the year 2007, in order for a state to receive Title 5 monies [for Welfare Reform], that state must also preach the say-no-to-sex-outside-of-marriage message to young adults up through the age of 29. That is insane. Somehow, this message of no sex before marriage [to a person of the opposite gender] is supposed to cut down on the welfare rolls. If you are poor and don't have a job, you should not get laid. And marriage just might be your ticket out of poverty. Ignoring the race card, the one that reads "Most poor people on welfare are hispanic or at least they are not white" [because I don't know whether or not that is true and who cares if it is or not and I'm dammed tired of the race card], this proposed solution to cutting back on the illegitimate birthrate just plain is not tenable. Are they going to require unmarried folks age 29 and under to attend a mustn't-have-sex lecture before approving their applications for public assistance?

Tell them instead, every last one of them, that birth control works far better than "pulling it out." And include birth control in their medical benefits. After all, even married folks on welfare can produce lots of babies who grow up on welfare and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. I'm all for fixing the broken system, getting rid of this "I am entitled" mentality or at least stop responding to it by handing out more money for each subsequent pregnancy.

But telling people in their twenties that sex outside of opposite-gendered marriage can hurt them is not a responsible position. I would like to know what the Title 5 programs are going to tell the folks in their audiences who want to have same-gendered relationships. But I digress. Our government's refusal to fund AIDS prevention programs overseas which educate married adults from other cultures about things like use of condoms to prevent spreading of HIV is another thing that makes absolutely no sense. Aw hell, no one ever said that very many of the politicians around these days possess logic or common sense.

No one told Madonna to quit screwing when she was a twenty-something young slut. No one told Madonna that sex outside of marriage can be "psychologically and physically harmful." And somebody really ought to have told her. Oh, I forgot. She is filthy rich so she gets to do whatever she wants.

radical sapphoq


http://www.georgetownnews.com/articles/
2006/11/09/opinion/opinion01.txt

http://www.thetartan.com/vnews/display.v/
ART/2006/11/08/45523803b1f12

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20061117/OPINION01/611170333/1035/OPINION

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/columns/
local_story_318113247.html?keyword=topstory