Candidate for US Senate Harold Ford Jr. talked with Stephen Colbert last night about abortion and gay marriage.  Harold Ford is a Democrat, and a former congressman from Tennessee.  He recently moved to NY, and has come under heat for changing his position on some important issues.  Tennessee is much more conservative than New York, and for the most part you have to be a moderate democrat to win in the south.  Most congressmen in the south are anti-choice and anti-gay marriage.   In the past, Ford had said that he is opposed to gay marriage and opposed to abortion.  Now, he spins his abortion argument differently, and sounds pro-choice.  Ford recently said that he was now FOR gay marriage, and explained his change in stance on the Colbert Report:

I've been out of politics for the last four years, and I've thought long and hard about it.  I've had some different thoughts.  I've got a wife that believes in it (gay marriage), I've had friends and others who have helped educate me on this. It's a changed position.  

Here in the United States, youth face many challenges with regards to sexual health and reproductive rights.  I have been involved in the fight for accurate sex education where I live, because I have seen the damaging affects of abstinence-only sex education and wanted to help change this ineffective program.  The challenges that youth face in the United States are NOTHING compared to the challenges that youth face in the developing world.  

In Bangladesh, a 16-year-old girl was raped, became pregnant, and was sentenced to a cruel and harsh punishment. The Young Turks covered this story:

(The first three minutes are the facts of what happened, the remaining time covers the reaction and opinion to the story.  If you don't want to watch the whole thing, just check out the beginning.)



This story is heartbreaking. I cannot imagine how hard this is for the girl, she did NOTHING wrong and she is treated like a criminal. Imagine if this happened to you. It is so terrible and so upsetting that I do not know how to express it in words. For me, this puts my "first world problems" in perspective.  We youth face challenges everyday here in America, but compared to this story, we have it relatively easy.

Rights are universal, cultures are different. This type of religious fundamentalism needs to stop. Like the man said in the above video, people who commit evils like this and justify their actions with God are bad people that need to be stopped. I do not believe that the United States should go to other countries and attempt push western style modern democracy on them, and I have a lot of respect for Islam and traditional cultures all over the world. However, the Untied States has immense power in the international community. Who we trade with, who we give aide to, and what international programs we fund have a huge impact in countries like Bangladesh. While we should NOT try to get every village to look like a town in the USA, we have a responsibility to protect the rights of people like this girl who was raped. Complications of pregnancy (including unsafe abortions) are the number 1 cause of death among young women in the developing world. Female genital mutilation happens at an alarmingly high rate. This practice is evil, disgusting, and wrong, and needs to be stopped.  

You can take action and sign the petition to US congress to increase family planning assistance in developing nations.  

Rights are universal, but cultures are different. Activism in countries where the culture is radically different is very complicated and difficult, but we have a responsibility to end such practices as victim blaming, unsafe abortions, and FGM in developing countries. To read more, check out Amplify's page about sexual reproductive health and rights in South Asia (which includes Bangladesh), as well as this great article on culture and sexuality called "Youth and State of Culture" on the Advocates For Youth website.
 

A year or two ago, the thought of going into NC public schools and training teachers how to teach comprehensive sex education would have seemed crazy.  Schools were required to adhere to a strict abstinence-only policy, unless they went through a long, complicated, messy public hearing process

Last June, youth activists in North Carolina helped pass a law that mandates schools to teach "all FDA-approved methods of contraception."  The law also requires schools to teach about STD's and sexual assault, and requires that schools provide opportunities for students and parents to have a dialogue about sexual health.  This is a GREAT opportunity for all schools in North Carolina to step up their sex education, and start teaching students the skills and information we need to stay safe.  

The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina (APPCNC) is hosting trainings in public schools all around the state aimed at helping teachers and administrators implement a new curriculum or comprehensive sex education.  I was able to help out at one of these trainings, and I was so impressed!  About 30 teachers and administrators showed up, and  all were committed to helping teens learn about sexuality and sexual health.  We went over in detail what schools need to teach in the next school year in sex education, programs that are proven to work, funds that are available, and shared strategies for creating a safe space to talk about sex and sexual health.  

In the past, teachers were not allowed to talk honestly about sexual health.  One teacher said that she constantly heard rumors froms students about ways to stay "safe", such as washing or exercising after unprotected sex.  She could only talk about abstinence in the classroom, and could not encourage students who were sexually active to use protection.  Now, this is all changing, and it is really great news for NC's young people.  

I talked about why youth deserve accurate information and why youth should be involved in creating curriculum for sex education.  Young people both want and need this information in order to be safe. It is really important that we get accurate information from informed adults, because if we don’t, we will only get misinformation from the media, the internet, and our peers.  Unlike history or math, which are relatively uncontrovertail topics, sex education involes our values, our social lives, and our personal health. These can be difficult topics to talk about, but there it is so important that we do.   

I was so happy to see 30 adults come together to learn about these issues, it is clear that they are committed to young peoples sexual reproductive health.  All schools in North Carolina have an unprecedented opportunity to overhaul sex education.  First, they are now required to by law to include more information.  Second, groups like the APPCNC are providing FREE trainings to schools and teachers so that everyone can learn how to better teach sex ed.  Third, the federal government is now funding comprehensive sex education under the new budget, and a lot of that money goes directly to local school boards.  

Youth and adults have worked side by side to help solve the problems of teen pregnancy and soaring STD rates, and we are making great progress.  I am confident that all NC public schools will put in place better, comprehensive sex ed programs and that we will see a decrease in teen pregnancy as teens learn valuable information about sexual health.

 Last Tuesday, Republican Scott Brown was elected to the Senate seat left vacant by the tragic death of Senator Ted Kennedy.  Leah627 wrote a great post about the Massachusetts (Massastupids?) meltdown, and how Scott was able to win the election.  

In his victory speech, Scott Brown said that his two daughters are available.  It was pretty bad.  Check out this video:  

Feministing has a post up about this, but I wanted to go into it in a little more detail.  Sure, Scott Brown was just making a joke about his daughter (clearly an attractive woman) being single, but it was very not cool with me.  He clearly embarrassed his daughter, and acted like a total jerk by saying something inappropriate.  He also made it clear that he views the sexuality of women as things to be given up to another man, which goes against a vision of healthy sexuality where people are free to do with their bodies what they want.

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On last nights show, Colbert covered the invention of a sex robot that has touch sensors and the ability to download different personalities.  (Note, the above video above is short and hilarious, please watch it.  IF you cannot get the embedded video to work, you can watch the clip here).  Because, as Colbert said,

When you're talking about a sex robot, the first question most guys as is 'how is her personality?' 

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I wrote earlier this week about the homophobic legislation being considered in Uganda, the one the gives a death sentence to LGBTQ people.  I have some more news about how United States politicians are affecting this legislation, through a group called “The Family”, which runs The C-Street house in Washington DC. On ‘Fresh Air’ on NPR, Terry Gross did an interview with Jeff Sharlet, who is the author of the bestseller The Family, “about the secretive fundamentalist group that promotes its anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-free market ideas with the help of several Congressman and Senators who are connected to the group, including John Ensign, Bart Stupak, Joe Pitts, James Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Charles Grassley and Zach Wamp. The Family is active in America and around the world.”

The Family has been heavily involved the Uganda anti-homosexuality bill.  They lend political and economic aide to proponents of the bill, and the person who introduced the anti-homosexuality law is a member of The Family in Uganda.  

According the Jeff Sharlet’s book and his appearances on the Daily Show, Rachael Maddow, and Fresh Air, The Family believes in a different teaching of jesus Christ.  Rather than help for the masses, the poor, and the meek, The Family believes that Jesus’ message was meant for an elite group of people.  I recommend listening to the Fresh Air interview with Sharlet, as it was fascinating. 

Some of these ‘select few’ people live in the C Street house in DC and have become very powerful in American politics.  The C-street house is a tax-exempt church in DC that provides below market priced housing for congressmen. Governor Mark Sanford and Senator Ensign are members of this group, as well as Representatives Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts.  The Family prides itself on being bipartisan, Bart Stupak and Bill Nelson are among its Democrat members.  Having extramarital affairs is excused, because chosen leaders do not have to follow the rules.  The Family also believes that Hitler, Stalin and Mao understood the New Testament the best, and the Family studies these leaders carefully.  The Family teaches that Jesus’ message was not about peace, mercy, and justice; it was about power.  More power for powerful people, not peace and love for the masses.  The idea is that the powerful have the right to pass blessings onto the poor, kindof like  trickle down theory for love, peace and justice. 

The Family does not sound like a fundamentalist Christian group, but a different interpretation of Jesus teachings altogether. They apply this to politics.  They believe in biblical capitalism, which opposes all regulation of markets because it interferes with the “invisible hand” idea, which they literally believe to be God. According to Jeff Sharlet, the Family has been involved in international affairs for the last 50 years.   The Family identifies leaders of countries where they think God chose the leader, and they try to get that person to focus on very traditional, conservative values.  United States Senator Inhofe has traveled to Africa more than 20 times on missionary trips, using tax payer dollars, to promote the political philosophy of Jesus as taught by the Family.  

This group is pretty scary.  They oppose gay rights, women’s rights, abortion, programs to help the poor, and comprehensive sex education.  They identify leaders and sometimes dictators of foreign countries and they lend political and economic aide in promoting these policies.  The Family also believes in what is called “male headship,” and women in The Family act like a maid service for the males in the group.  They believe women should live their lives submissively and in service to men.

Sharlet promoted his book In a recent interview with NPR's Terry Gross, and he broke the news that The Family has significant influence in the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. Terry Gross asked him about the Uganda anti-homosexuality bill:

The legislator that introduced the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family," he said. "He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda.

When asked how he found all this out, Sharlet said,   

You follow [the] money.  You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It's not so invisible anymore. So that's how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family's work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni's kind of right-hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family's National Prayer Breakfast. And here's a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda's executive office and has been very vocal about what he's doing, in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.”

This is shocking.  The Family, who seems to control dozens of American congressmen, also has incredible power in Africa.  More from the interview:

"The Family identified [Museveni] back in 1986 as a key man for Africa. They wanted to steer him away from neutrality or leftist sympathies and bring him into conservative American alliances, and they were able to do so. They've since promoted Uganda as this bright spot - as I say, as this bright spot for African democracy, despite the fact that under their tutelage, Museveni has slowly shifted away from any even veneer of democracy: imprisoning journalists, tampering with elections, supporting - strongly supporting this Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009.”

This, of course, is the bill that would KILL any HIV positive gay person for having sex, and imprison people for life for having any homosexual sex.

The Family scares me, and we all need to be aware of what they are doing.  As a young person, I am shocked that a semi-secret organization like this has existed (since the 1930’s) and has not been stopped. Taxpayer funded missionary trips to Africa to promote the political philosophy of Jesus Christ is wrong, no matter what your religious beliefs are.  Promoting a bill that would kill some gay people is disgusting and horrific, even if you hold the belief that gays should not be allowed to marry.  The Family is not a crazy conspiracy theory, everything I wrote about has been fact checked  by many major news outlet and experts who study The Family.  Evangelical influence in Uganda got attention from the New York Times on Monday, and Advocates for Youth has also written about this on their website

If your congressmen is a member of the family, please do everything you can where you live to help stop reelection. We young people need to ask ourselves, “Do we want to live in a world where a group like this wields such immense power over domestic and international affairs?” The answer to this is NO. What the Family is doing is wrong, and it needs to be stopped.   

 I am shocked by the recent happenings in Uganda.  The African country  Uganda is considering a bill that would impose the death penalty on HIV positive men who have committed what is called "aggravated homosexuality," which basically means having gay sex if you are HIV positive.  Lemme make this clear: you will be PUT TO DEATH for having sex with someone of the same gender if you test positive for HIV, if this bill becomes law.  The punishment for having gay sex in Uganda if you are not HIV positive IS LIFE IMPRISONMENT.

Also, according to this Times Online article, The bill proposes a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. And it would impose a sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.

This, my friends, is the most homophobic piece of legislation I have ever heard of in my life.  It is scary.  It makes me angry. If this bill passes, it would be the largest step back for gay rights in a long time.  From this excellent NYT article this morning, 

Anti-gay sentiments are one thing, and hardly unique to Uganda. But what seems different here is the level of official, government-sponsored anti-gay hate speech.

"I detest gays in my heart", said Kassiano E. Wadri, a member of Parliament and the chief whip of the opposition. “When I see a gay, I think that person needs psychotherapy. You need to break him."

A policeman jabbed a finger in his eye, he said, someone threw a beer in his face at a bar, and a security guard at a minimarket pistol-whipped him simply for trying to buy groceries.

The President strongly opposes efforts, such as the draft law pending in Uganda, that would criminalize homosexuality and move against the tide of history,” (via The Advocate) 

The Health Care debate is getting pretty messed up. Want proof?

Majority Leader Reid is using the health-care bill to restore funding for abstinence-only sex education programs that liberals (such as Mr. Reid himself) have spent the past three years trying to zero out.  (via WJS)

 What! Senator Ried, WHY!   This is bad news. 

 Senator Harry Ried fought ab-only education for years during the Bush administration, and introduced the Prevention First Act to redirect money from ab-only programs to comprehensive sex ed. 

My question is why is ab-only back in the health care bill!?

The answer is that Harry Ried wants the bill to pass, no matter what, even if it sacrifices the public option and restores abstinence-only sex education.  He put back ab-only because he wants to get Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln and North Dakota's Kent Conrad to vote for the trillion dollar Health Care Reform overhaul.  In a political move, Harry Ried traded $50 million dollars in abstinence-only funding for the hope of Senator Lincoln and Conrad voting for HCR overhaul. This is not the way I want my government to work.

Ab-only is (almost always) a republicans issue, and Marcela Howell of Advocates For Youth said:

If Republicans aren't going to vote for this bill, I can't see why it should include their provision (WJS)
 

Once again Colbert has proven to be the man.  Check out this clip from Thursday's show about William Phillips choosing not to say the Pledge of Allegiance because gays cannot marry.

Both hilarious and insightful, this made me feel some hope about the future of youth activism when those like Will take our place.  Will, you are NOT a gay-wad, and you should feel very proud of what you did.

Great satire from my man Stephen Colbert on DC gay marraige and the church, and he asks the question "How is the governor of Rhode Island supposed to rest in peace knowing that a couple of plots over two dudes are being gay dead?"  -Enjoy 
-D

You can’t talk about sex without talking about condoms,” says Marcia Brown, director of Worth Waiting 4, an abstinence education program in Rocky Mount, which is a ministry of the local Pregnancy Care Center. She teaches the AUM (Abstinence until marriage) program in all middle and high schools in Rocky Mount-Nash County. “While I do talk about contraception in the context of failure rates, I never encourage the use of contraceptives,” says Brown, “and I never show them how to use contraceptives.”³⁵

We would NOT be willing to discuss emergency contraception as a choice,” Honeycutt emphasizes, “as there is medical evidence substantiating that this method acts as an abortifacient.”³⁸

The real question raised by the enactment of the HYA is not whether AUM education is dead in North Carolina, but who is best suited to teach reproductive health education going forward. Will it continue to be taught by well-trained AUM educators, who are able to factually present the contraceptive information without promoting teen sexual activity? Or will it be taught by condom distributors and abortion providers, who believe that adolescent sexual activity is acceptable and who stand to gain the most from the negative consequences associated with it?

 I want to share this great article from Alex at UNC Asheville's The Blue Banner

"Sex education in North Carolina just legally changed for the better, but the economy might force that change to wait. The problem is that teenagers won’t wait, and the result is an economical and social disadvantage for women statewide.

Teenagers in the United States have sex. Realizing this, legislators in North Carolina recently passed a bill changing statewide sex education standards. Now sex education won’t just be about abstinence.

There are questions about where to cut money in the state budget, though, and these new changes are one of the bits of spending that might get cut. Despite the cuts, the new law requires that sex education “teaches about the effectiveness and safety of all FDA-approved contraceptive methods in preventing pregnancy,” according to the General Assembly.

It cost the state $324 million in 2006, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, to pay for the 14,701 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 who got pregnant.

Compare that cost to North Carolina’s sex education efforts. This year the federal government supplied $1.13 million of our abstinence-only spending efforts, according to a letter sent in March to state superintendents from the Department of Public Instruction.

That’s under the now-expired “Title V” federal abstinence-only funding scheme, which President Obama let lapse. We didn’t quite match it. We never have.

For a more local perspective, Buncombe County has records 60 unintended teenage pregnancies for every 1,000 girls in that age range. Last year, the estimate was 419 teenage pregnancies, 130 of which were repeats, which are two pregnancies before ages 19.

That’s 130 girls in Buncombe County last year who got pregnant twice before even getting within a year of the legal drinking age. It’s an estimate, but it’s still shocking. It simply should not happen.

Two unintended pregnancies in the span of four years indicates that perhaps these young women are uneducated in proper birth control methods.

This can and should be fixed.

On a per-pregnancy basis, based on the above numbers, every teen pregnancy costs the state just a little more than $22,000. It would take more than 100 pregnancies worth of money to pay for the state sex education budgeting.

If Buncombe County had 319 teenage pregnancies in a year instead of 419, we could pay for the state’s entire outlay. If Buncombe County stopped not the first, but only the second unwanted pregnancy for teenagers in this county alone, it would recoup more money than is spent on sex education statewide.

Nationally, teen pregnancy costs more than $7 billion each year. A rough estimate puts annual teenage pregnancies at 750,000. Nationally, North Carolina is around average, just a little bit better maybe, in raw teen-pregnancy rates.

Not only is this not something we should try to be average in, it’s not something for which any state should settle.

The only problem is, when compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is a leader in teenage motherhood.

Approximately 50 in every 1,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are teenage mothers. In the Netherlands, four teenagers out of every 1,000 are mothers.

In other words, more than 12 times as many teenage girls get pregnant in the United States than in the Netherlands.

Their sex education is better and more comprehensive. The connection is clear.

Teenage motherhood is self-perpetuating, too. Only one-third of teenage mothers get a high school diploma or an equivalent degree. Daughters of teenage mothers are also 22 percent more likely to be teenage mothers.

When a daughter of a teenage mother becomes a teenage mother, what are the chances she’s becoming pregnant for the second time?

Abstinence-only sex education advocates might say teaching teenagers how to use a condom would be like giving them a free pass to go out and have sex.

The fatal flaw in this argument is that these teenagers don’t need a pass to have sex. It’s obvious that they don’t because if they did, there wouldn’t be any teen pregnancies.

Abstinence-only sex education does not work. It’s a costly enterprise that tries to ignore America’s youth is having sex. Ignoring the obvious won’t make it go away. Ignoring the consequences won’t make them go away. Trying to prevent sex from happening will only make teenagers have more sex. After all, it’s easy for two people to rebel with just their bodies.

It’s just a good idea to try to put a barrier between them.

 I always love hearing what Michele Obama has to say, she is so intelligent, charming, and well spoken.  

This morning the White House put out this video with Michele Obama talking about the importance of Health Care Reform, especially for women:



Enjoy!
-Dan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a pathetic excuse about why Obama hasn't followed through on his promise to end Don't Ask Don't Tell-

The president and I feel like we've got a lot on our plates right now, and uh lets push that one [reffering to dont ask dont tell] down the road a little bit.

All that stuff you've been putting on your plate? It's F***ing chow time, brother.

Since earlier this year, the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina (APPCNC) began providing an awesome service for teenagers called the BrdsNBz Text Message Warm Line. BrdsNBz is a free service that allows teens in North Carolina to text a question about sex, sexual health, and relationships – receiving a response within 24 hours. APPCNC's overall goal for the BrdsNBz is summarized below:

Through the BrdsNBz Text Message Warmline, APPCNC will provide North Carolina teens with a personalized, nonjudgmental, medically accurate answer to those hard-to ask questions about sex, love, health and dating.

On the facebook page, they market the service to us teenagers:

Teens: Text your question to 36263 today. Be sure to put "nc" in front of your question - like, "nc How do I put on a condom?" We will provide you with a confidential, accurate, personalized answer within 24 hours. Sex, love, dating problems, sexuality, STDs, pregnancy, anatomy - we've heard it all! The only thing we can't tell you is "how-to..." Answers are free, but your phone's text message rates might apply.

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 Trojan Evolve is, as far as I can tell, a marketing concept by Trojan to sell more condoms.They want to make using condoms seem very cool and hip, which in general is great.  Their main message (played at the end of most videos they make) is "Evolve.  Use a Condom Every Time."  They advertise for Amplify (on the bottom left of their website), which is awesome!  

They sponsor Warped Tour, Spring Break '09, and other events that look very young and hip.  I don't know much about what these are, but check out these pictures from their Spring Break 09 event:









I'm not sure how I feel about these photos.  Trojans efforts seem to only focus on heterosexual sex and sexual health, and they seem to reinforce many traditional gender roles in some of their material (check out the above photos of the girls on the bar).  Part of me thinks that   anytime anyone tells people to use condoms it is a good thing.  Another part of me thinks that Trojan needs to be more inclusive, and that they should not hypersexualize the roles of women in the way that they do.  What do you think?  Is making condoms seem cool a good thing automatically, even if they don't do it in the most culturally competent ways?  

There is another important question I find myself asking: Is Trojan Evolve just a shameless marketing ploy, or is is a substantive and legitimate attempt to increase condom use and protect people's sexual health?   I guess, because they are a condom company, it can be both.  


On trojanvideos.com they have funny videos also aimed at making condoms seem cool.  This was my favorite:





Also, they have one called "How to make condoms suck less"





Again, I have mixed feelings about these videos.  They are sex-positive, and make using condoms seem cool, but they sometimes seem like they are shamelessly promoting a product, and using sex to sell.  What do you think?

-Dan

I read an article today in the Daily Tar Heel (The University of North Carolina’s college newspaper) titled Virgins not alone at UNC.  The article talked about hook-up culture on college campuses, and how it is often exaggerated and overblown. 

The survey, started in fall of 2008 and concluded in February 2009, also found that approximately 38 percent of students at UNC have never had sex.

 So, 38 percent of UNC students are virgins.  I have no problem with that fact, but it sounded pretty high to me.  It turns out that the study only had an 11.5% response rate, which makes me wonder what type of people actually contributed to that data. I bet the 11.5% of people who respond to the survey are not the ones who are hooking up.  Regardless of the methodology of the survey, I am not opposed to people remaining virgins until they are married, or until they are out of college. I DO have a problem with is some of the reasons stated in the article for why people decide not to have sex:

“I’m not embarrassed by my decision to be a virgin,” Eskridge said. “When you have sex with someone, you’re giving a big part of yourself to them.”

Giving away a big part of yourself to your partner?  I don’t think that ones worth or value  is dependant on if you have or have not had sex, and you having sex doesn't mean that you give anything up. Hooking up and having sex in college does not damage anyone, as long as it is done safely and responsibly.  Jessica Valenti talks a lot about this in her book The Purity Myth, which I encourage everyone to read if you have not done so already.  She argues that there is nothing wrong, immoral, evil, or dirty about having pre-marital sex, as long as protection is used and there is active consent from both people.

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Last week CNN reporter Carol Costello came to Durham, NC to interview several North Carolina State Activists about a story about the Healthy Youth Act in North Carolina.

The story aired last Thursday on American Morning, and it is now Online:


 

Overall, I really liked the story, but only a very small segment from our interview was included.  I realize this is the way that TV media works, that you can talk for an hour but only 10 seconds will air, but I was still hoping for more of our interview to be featured.   It was great to see our state-wide campaign on the national news, however!

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Last Tuesday, North Carolina State Activists Lee, Joe, Eli, Emilio, Me, and Wake Teen peer education Gabi were interviewed by CNN for a story about sex education. When I first heard the news, I didn’t know what to expect. I have been extremely frustrated with TV news coverage for quite sometime because it has been shallow, inaccurate, playing to people emotions rather than peoples minds, and in FOX News’s case, coverage has been racist, full of lies, etc.  Most coverage of sex education that I have seen hasn’t been very accurate and the stories have been super short (usually 20 seconds-1 minute), and the reporters never really seem to get it. When I heard that our NC efforts were going to be on CNN I was very excited, but skeptical that the story would be any good. 

Here is our group on the CNN set:



When I met the reporter, Carol Costello, I recognized her immediately from seeing her on TV quite a lot. The Daily Show made fun of her “just sayin’” segment on American Morning, and we had a really cool conversation about what reporters think of Jon Stewart and Colbert, because many people view them as reporters, when in fact they are comedians.

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Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen used an example from Archie comic books to make a pretty profound comment on gender roles. He mentioned Hillary Clinton, and her "meltdown" in the Congo (which Jill wrote about so eloquently), and he ended with a pretty good quote:

If I can't have one, unrealistic cartoonish depiction of female relationships, I'll have the other.

I think that Planned Parenthood is amazing, and they do a lot more then you might realize. Planned Parenthood combines health centers all over the country with amazing national and local advocacy and education. Planned Parenthood is running TV ads on Health Care, and running really great campaigns like this one where you can send a letter to your elected officials telling them not be let anti-choice activists hijack health care reform. The DC office attends White House meetings advocating for young people and advocating for choice and women’s rights and comprehensive sex education.

The health centers provide affordable and sometimes free birth control to literally millions of people, and they provide safe, affordable abortion services to women all over the country. If a friend tells me that they want to get on birth control, I tell them to go to Planned Parenthood and I know that they will be taken care of, treated with respect, and that everything will be confidential. If I know someone who has had unprotected sex and is scared and needs advice, information and tests, I know that I can tell them to go to Planned Parenthood and trust that they will get everything they need. I am so grateful that this organization has invested so much providing services to young people and Planned Parenthood is a great example of living up to the message of Rights, Respect, Responsibility message that Advocates For Youth talks about. Check out this video of Planned Parenthood supporters, patients, and staff talk about why reproductive health care services are important in their lives and communities:

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This video from the Onion make me laugh, and I wanted to share it on Amplify.

This is a real issue however.  Many of PETAS ad campaigns are very sexist, and Feministing has a post about this.  Enjoy!



Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

In Joes post earlier today, he noted that in the United States of America, 13,200,000 young people do not have health insurance. This is double the rate of uninsured in the 45-64 age
range.  I’m 16 years old. If healthcare reform does not happen in this country, what will happen to me in 10-15 years? What will my care be like? Perhaps I will be so fortunate as to have an employer who gives me health insurance. Then, if I get cancer and need treatment or if I go to the emergency room and need surgery I won’t go bankrupt, right? Wrong. The fictional “death-panels” that Sarah Palin mentioned on her facebook page are not in Obama’s plan, rather they are the doctors that work for insurance companies that deny coverage to people everyday by calling them “pre-existing conditions”. 

In Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”, he interviewed a doctor who used to work for an insurance company. She was REQUIRED to deny coverage to a certain number of people every month, and if she didn’t do it she would lose her job. This leaves countless Americans facing the choice of foregoing medical care or going bankrupt. This will continue to happen, unless something gets done. Every person has the right to medical care, and we need health care reform. With 13.2 million young Americans uninsured, we are facing a healthcare crisis. 

As Joe also wrote earlier today, abortion is legal in this country, and for many women it is a necessary medical procedure. For this reason, it should ABSOLUTELY be covered both under a public option and by private insurance companies. It looks right now like that is not going to happen, and this is absolutely wrong. If you are pro-life, then that’s fine. We can agree to disagree. However, this is a country where a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, and because it is a necessary medical procedure it should be covered. No excuses. Now of course, in reality it might be impossible to pass a plan that includes federal funding for abortions, and TIME did a great article on the pros and cons with this issue.

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10,000 people went to the Pride Charlotte festival in North Carolina, and it looked like a really awesome event. One group, called God Has a Better Way, released a statement on the day of the pride festival that began with this:

We are here today to reach out and resist –– to reach out to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community with compassion, as neighbors and friends and fellow-workers, and to declare God’s great love for GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] people.

We acknowledge the fact that homophobia is alive and well in some churches, and we renounce and repudiate that hateful and destructive attitude.

Our love also compels us to speak the truth, and we do not believe that all sexual orientations should be celebrated.

We do not celebrate the fact that some people believe they are women trapped in men’s bodies;

We do not celebrate the fact that two men or two women cannot reproduce their own unique offspring and that same-sex families guarantee that a child will never have either a mother or a father;

We do not celebrate the fact that some people choose to surgically mutilate their God-given organs and must take hormones for the rest of their lives just to be at peace with themselves;

We do not celebrate the sexual confusion that exists in many young people today, to the point that they can only identify themselves “as genderqueer”;
We do not celebrate the pain and brokenness that exists in the lives of many of those attending Pride Charlotte today –– completely apart from societal rejection –– and we proclaim to our GLBT friends that God has a better way, that there is a place of wholeness and transformation to be found in Jesus. And we are here for the long-term to help them on that journey.

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I spent a month in China this summer, and on my 3rd day I stumbled into a hotel in Beijing looking for a restroom. Inside, I came across this condom machine:

I think that it is interesting that there is NO MENTION of preventing pregnancy, only preventing STD’s and HIV/AIDS.  This doesn’t make much sense, because with the one-child policy in place you really must have a population that knows how to use condoms and other types of contraception.  However, this is not exactly the case.  The day that I left, China Daily (the state-run English language newspaper) ran a story on the front page titled “Abortion statistics cause for concern” (Note: The New York Times also ran a similar story the same day, you can read that here)

Inadequate knowledge about contraception is a major factor in the 13 million abortions performed in China every year, research shows.

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