Jan. 13, 2003 - 22:01 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Coincidence ?

I guess the thing that gets my nanny is not a group having certain convictions and openly stating their cause. It does get to me when they propagandize, distort facts and attempt threatening actions to achieve their goals.

In a column in The Rocky Mountain News this morning Gail Schoettler a former U.S. ambassador, Colorado Lieutenant Governor and treasurer, Democratic nominee for governor and Douglas County school board member starts her column, "Sex-ed scare tactics"

Her first paragraph essentially says in better wording the thing I just wrote. She says, "If you can't win at the ballot box or in the courts, you can always try intimidation. That's what some anti-choice groups have done in the past, including murders and assaults at family-planning clinics. Now, they're mounting an even larger and more organized effort, expanding their intimidation technique to schools."

I remember the days of back alley abortions, the coat hanger surgeries, I remember, most every week reading in the papers the results of such things too. Women dying because that is the only way they could get one. Abortions to my way of thinking are like, asking for alms or work from the street corners, gambling, prostitution and consumption of alcholic beverages -- those things no matter how repulsive, have been with us since the beginning of history and will probably always be there.

I will not try to say that I am pro or against abortion any more than I will say I am pro or against bankruptcy.

Both are legal but the anti's have been using every tactic since abortion became legal to reverse that.

I see nothing wrong in any group campaigning fairly to change the law. However to me it appears that if the law had the majority on its side, then the effort to re-educate, and intimidate people and organizations into abandoning their work and change things to the opposite way is to say the least unethical.

Case in point, Gail Schoettler in her column says, "This campaign is carefully legal and follows standard bullying practices with threats, incessant and uneasonable demands, and attempts to overwhelm a political process. Schools are to be inundated with freedom-of-information requests, endless questions at board meetings and insinuations of wrongdoing with legal liability. The goals are to eliminate sex education and counseling in schools and destroy family-planning agencies."

It looks bad to me, separation between church and state is under attack and the Supreme Court seems to be backing the move. Religious right seems in this instance moving into the Catholic fold. I wonder if the body of Clarence Darrow is spinning in his grave at the success in places in the elimination of teaching evolution ?

Gail Schoettler further says, "Here's what the Child Predators Project (a misnomer if ever there were one, since this is solely an anti-choice organization) reported on its website: In 2001, the organization sent every school district in the country a questionnaire. One of he questions: "If a minor student seeks birth control or an abortion referral, are her parents informed ? ... Are local or state authorities informed about the possibility that the student may be the victim of sexual abuse or statuatory rape ?" The implication of course is that schools are legally required to make these reports. They aren't.

Then Gale Schoettler goes on to say, "In June 2002, the organization raised the stakes. The next mailing was not "asking questions but putting schools on notice that any contact they have with a sexually active child -- which is not followed by a report to the state -- places the school district at risk for litigation. The tone . . . made it absolutely clear that they are now under a microsope and if they choose to ignore this warning they do so at their own risk."

I agree with her, she says, "This is blatant intimidation. Like it or not, many teens are sexually active. Schools play an important role in providing sex education aimed at discouraging premarital sex, but also at ensuring that teens who decide to be sexually active avoid unwanted pregnancies and disease." She further emphasizes the situation, "As the Project points out, "This more aggressive tactic will eventually send shock waves through the nation's entire school system, not to mention Planned Parenthood ... and there by generate a substantioal amount of free exposure for the entire Child Predators campaign."

So my words now, it seems as if they will say anything to totally scare education facilities from teaching sex education, providing condoms, even teaching them methods of birth control. They want to eliminate Planned Parenthood down to the last splinter in their floors. This is not a fair campaign, these insinuations and threats !

She gives the url of one very active organization and I won't try to link it this late but just type it out: http://stoppinternational.org I will try to get the url of Child Predators Project by Google and show it in my notify.

To move on to another very confusing subject, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says, "Campaign against use of condoms far-reaching." In the column he says to the effect that over the last few years some conservative groups have declared war on condoms, in a campaign that is downright weird -- but that, if successful could lead to millions of deaths from AIDS around the world. Mr Kristof says, "I first noticed this campaign last year, when I began to get e-mails from evangelical Christians insisting that condoms have pores about 10 microns in diameter, while the AIDS virus measures only about 0.1 micron. This is junk science (electron microscopes haven't found these pores), but the disinformation campaign turns out to be a far-reaching effort to discredit condoms, squelch any mention of them in schools and discourage their use abroad."

It is insidious it seems, this campaign. Gail Schoettler says, "Yet the United States is now donating 300 million condoms annually, down from about 800 million at the end of the first President Bush's term. In another paragraph Mr. Kristof indicates, "So far Bush has not fully signed on to the campaign agains condoms, there are alarming signs that he is clambering on board. Last month at an international conference in Bangkok, U.S. officials demanded the deletion of a rcommendation for "consistent condom use" to fight AIDS and sexual diseases."

Mr. Kristof brings out this gem, "Then there was the Condom Caper on the web site of the Centers for Disease Control. A fact sheet on condoms was removed and, eventually, replaced by one that emphasized THAT THEY MIGHT NOT WORK." (Caps mine)

So now how are things ? We dare not teach sex education in schools, popular poop touts that condoms aren't worth a damn and the administration seems to back the whole shebang. I guess the next thing they will do is make it illegal to use a condom during the sex act, no ?

All these campaigns and restrictions zooming in at us all at one time . . . . is that a quirk of fate or a Coincidence ? . . . . . . . . . .

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