(Weekly Column)
It was mid-afternoon and I was driving into Stillwater to speak at Oklahoma State University. Hungry, I saw a gleaming red Chick-fil-A restaurant in the distance. Now, I had never eaten at this restaurant because of its alleged anti-gay policies. Needless to say, the prohibition only heightened my curiosity and against my better judgment I slinked inside for a forbidden chicken sandwich.
I simply had to try this place!
This scenario, of course, helps explain why abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Sex is much better than a chicken sandwich (if not, find a new partner) and making it taboo only invites rule breaking. The main difference is, eating a sandwich does not lead to life-long consequences such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
The very notion of abstinence-only education is absurd. It is founded on the bizarre idea of telling rebellious teens not to have sex until marriage and believing that they will actually listen. Any honest parent would tell you that teenagers aren’t the best at following the commands of stuffy adults. Yet, on the crucial subject of sex education, many school districts have policies that presume teens will almost always obey preachers posing as teachers.
Clearly, abstinence-only programs are ineffective and not about public health or preparing students for responsible sexual relations. Instead, they exist so ambitious politicians can funnel public money to ideologues who want to craftily inculcate students with religious propaganda.
Project SOS in Jacksonville, Florida is one example of this slippery attempt to evangelize on the public’s dime. Despite the group’s curriculum being called “unacceptable” and inaccurate by health experts, SOS has received $6.5 million in federal funding through the Department of Health and Human services since 2002 – including $454,000 in September 2010, according to The Florida Independent.
In a special report for Truth Wins Out, researcher Bruce Wilson discovered that Pam Mullarkey, the founder and director of SOS (pictured), says God inspired her program. Her church, Beaches Chapel Church, (Not the one with Bette Midler) identifies SOS as one of its “ministries” and calls Mullarkey a “missionary”.
SOS is cunning in the way it disseminates sectarian messages to captive student audiences. For example, in one video, an actor has a tattoo on his forearm with large letters, “God is my judge.”
“In functional terms, they amount to government-backed covert religious indoctrination programs,” says Bruce Wilson in his report.
The program preaches no sex until marriage, which by design excludes LGBT teenagers who can’t legally marry. Of course, this is no surprise, considering Mullarkey’s church has an “ex-gay” ministry, “Laughter from Purity,” which teaches inmates at a faith-based prison to resist homosexuality through Jesus Christ. According to the ministry’s web-site, God loves homosexuals, but the homosexual must be set free from a “bondage of lies and deception that come from being wounded and sexually broken.”
Most disturbing is SOS’s endorsement of Martin Ssempa who presides over condom burning bonfires at a university in Kampala and is a leading backer of the “kill the gays” bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda’s parliament.
Referring to the fact that several of Ssempa’s family members have died of AIDS, Mullarkey told the Florida Independent that homosexuals in Africa “have destroyed people’s lives.”
Sadly, this useless program has reached more than 300,000 Florida students. SOS has at least 40 full-time and part time government-funded employees who are surreptitiously evangelizing.
At a time when Republican blowhards are obsessed with trimming government spending, why is such foolishness still being funded? According to an ACLU Florida study, “Sex Education in The Sunshine State”, Mullarkey’s SOS programs, “Employ fear and shame- based tactics” and some “Teach misinformation on HIV/AIDS.” Such ridiculous and futile programs should be the first on the chopping block if Republicans are serious about reducing wasteful spending.
But, I doubt that will happen given the Religious Right’s stranglehold on the GOP – particularly in Florida, which is quickly becoming the new Mississippi. Republicans will pretend they are funding such programs to uphold virtue, when they are really just fishing for votes.
The disastrous Faith-based Initiative has intertwined church and state, with indoctrination slowly replacing education. Religious programs like SOS are ensuring that students don’t stand a prayer when faced with key decisions affecting their health. It is time to quit the nonsense and abstain from funding programs that are wasteful, unconstitutional and a transparent attempt to illegally raid public coffers to evangelize in public schools.
“Referring to the fact that several of Ssempa’s family members have died of AIDS, Mullarkey told the Florida Independent that homosexuals in Africa ‘have destroyed people’s lives’.”
Gee, did anyone ever stop to think the AIDS deaths in Africa aren’t connected to Teh Gays, but to the anti-condom, pro-stupidity positions of the Catholic and Fundamentalist churches? Of course these are the same positions pimped by the “abstinence-only” sex ed groups so I’m not surprised they’d ignore, if not blatantly deny, this fact.
Her name is eerily appropriate given that the word her last name sounds like is also the perfect one-word description of what she’s peddling; complete and utter MALARKEY.
I didn’t read anything past the first paragraph. If you’re that freakin’ shallow that you “just had to try this place” (Chick-Fil-A) knowing their horrid policies and the millions they funnel to anti-gay groups – then I can’t expect you to be a very thoughtful writer.
It also probably saves you a lot of hard time sounding out words, Buck.
[...] Forbidden Sex and Chicken Sandwiches. Read more [...]
Buck:
Way to make a point about shallowness by only reading one paragraph. By doing so, you missed the entire point of the piece. Sad, really.
Sex Ed & Condoms do work:
“The success brought about by today’s figures revealing we’re seeing the lowest teenage pregnancy in England and Wales for 30 years is down to a dedicated strategy in England with a tried and tested formula of sex and relationships education, contraception and information services and local services working together. ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12537912
Mullarkey looks like June Cleaver–but, of course, without the beaver. :O My apologies to the late Barbara Billingsley.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but how was the chicken sandwich???
The sandwich wasn’t bad. The fries were good.
I prefer The Waffle House and Popeyes.
Her name couldn’t be more apropos. Mullarkey indeed.
Wayne, you missed the target in your article. You ate a sandwich, and claimed that was why abstinence education can’t work? Sure beats solid research facts. By the way, I took the time to look at research on the S.O.S. page as to how it actually is working, and so far they beat you badly on that one. And even though you published on March first, you still decided to bring up the old rag that they endorse Martin Ssempa in Uganda when they have been very public in pointing out that they are not related — what gives with that? Do I smell a little bias? And then you have “health experts” calling the program unacceptable and inaccurate, but make no effort to quote any or to mention health experts who consider it acceptable and accurate. So my conclusion is you are just stuck in your own mud, and to hell with facts, coming together, or, for that matter, the rest of the world.
You’re taking “research” from a Christian organization which has a stake in abstinence-only working and believing it as true?
Pathetic. Why don’t you check with grown-ups?
And indeed, the leader of SOS, in a very curious way, distanced herself from what people were saying about the connection with Ssempa later the afternoon this was published.
[...] Why are our taxpayer dollars going to fund ineffective abstinence-only don’t-have-sex education programs? Smartly written/asked, here. [...]