Abstinence is not for everybody

From the Oxford (Ohio) Press:

Guest speaker leads to note sent to Mason Middle parents

By Richard Wilson
Staff Writer
Thursday, April 26, 2007

Mason school officials would have preferred that a guest speaker – invited to primarily talk about drugs and alcohol – practiced a little more “abstinence” in his presentation last Thursday.

After Christian speaker Keith Deltano strayed from an agreed format in a seventh-grade assembly, Mason Middle School Principal Tonya McCall said she canceled a second assembly of eighth-graders that was to follow.

The 40-minute April 19 presentation, “Don’t Be Stupid,” was supposed to focus on the consequences of underage drug and alcohol use, McCall said, with a smaller portion focused on an abstinence-only message regarding sex. But the presentation went in the opposite direction, McCall said.

“I don’t think it’s bad to have a conversation about sex, and that’s not why we stopped the conversation,” McCall said. “(Keith Deltano) has a great message. My only concern was that’s not what he was asked to do.”

In an e-mail message sent to about 700 parents of seventh-graders, McCall explained: “I was concerned that some seventh-grade students may not quite have been comfortable with the content without a previous conversation with their parents or access to the curriculum which is covered in eighth-grade health.””¦

Mr. Deltano isn’t the only abstinence-keeper who can’t say no. World Bank president, Iraq war architect, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz negotiated a compensation package for his “girlfriend”. The hypocrisy of this story has me tongue-tied. The World Bank spent $2 billion dollars over the last ten years on sexual and reproductive health, yet their latest family planning policy is “regressive”. While imposing “morals” on the rest of the world, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is under scrutiny for arranging favorable copmensation for a woman to whom he is “romantically linked.”

Does silence no longer mean consent? Suddenly, amidst a brave new world where “values voters” sweep conservatives into office to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote abstinence-only education and the “idea” that sexual relations outside of marriage are sinful, psychologically damaging and wrong, a high-level Bush administration appointee gets caught with his pants down tweaking the salary of his f**k buddy. The silence is deafening. As a matter of fact, he’s being defended.

World Net Daily (WND) produced a story that reported on the President’s defense of Wolfowitz on April 14. Here is an excerpt as Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino answers questions from WND’s correspondent Les Kinsolving:

“Page one of this morning’s New York Times reports that Mr. Wolfowitz’s tenure as president of the World Bank was ‘thrown into turmoil by disclosure that he helped arrange a pay raise for his companion, Shaha Riza, for which he was greeted with, ‘booing, catcalls, and cries for his resignation by staff members.’ “¦ Does the president believe it was right or wrong for Mr. Wolfowitz to do this for what the Times terms ‘his companion?'” Kinsolving asked.

“Paul Wolfowitz apologized for the matter, and has talked to his board about it, and there’s a review under way,” she said.

Kinsolving pressed the issue further, however.

“What definition of this word, ‘companion,’ can the public conclude, other than mistress? Does the president believe that people he nominated to such posts..” he asked.

“I’m not going to go there, Les – not going to do it,” she said.

And then there is former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias’ involvement in the D.C. prostitution scandal. Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon took him to task.

[Tobias] oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.”

Tobias claimed that the prostitutes just “gave him massages” and that it was no big deal, he didn’t remember the girls, “it was like ordering pizza”.