This story is disgusting. Two girls in Pompano Beach, Florida, are being threatened with suspension because they were holding hands at their high school. Oh, and the principal, a “Karlton O. Johnson,” thought it was good judgment to call the girls’ parents, which resulted in one of the girls being outed to them before she was ready. It’s pathetic when you can’t rely on the adults to be the adults:
Blanche Ely High School principal Karlton O. Johnson, accused of “outing” a gay student and threatening to suspend her and her gay friend for holding hands on campus, is coming under fire for his actions.
[...]
Attorney Barry Butin, who co-chairs the Broward County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) legal panel, described the situation as “disturbing.”
“Freedom of expression is just one of the things that it may violate. If the students are suspended or disciplined in any way, we would take action if asked,” Butin said. “They are minors and their parents would have to decide.”
Community activist Michael Rajner, who serves on the school district’s diversity committee, is calling for Johnson to be suspended and for a thorough investigation.”
“His actions were reckless and potentially dangerous, without any understanding of the potential harm he may have caused by outing these students. Many gay youth become suicidal after being outed and the school district must intervene and link these families to counseling services,” Rajner said.
The principal is claiming that the school has a policy against hand-holding or kissing of any kind, but he doesn’t seem to enforce it with straight kids. Funny, that.
Another social worker familiar with the situation explains even further:
Kris Drumm, director of Youth and Family for Sunshine Social Service Inc., takes a dim view of Johnson’s rebuke of the students.
[...]
“It’s irresponsible because these kids are literally being put in danger,” she said. “I see it all the time. The parents are not prepared to hear this information and the youths end up abused or homeless after being thrown out of the house. This is serious.”
If anyone understands that, it should be a high school principal. But unfortunately, as I said earlier today, though things are getting better in a lot of places for a lot of kids, it’s still uneven, and it’s basically luck of the draw. These girls in Florida just happen to have to go to a school with a principal who puts his bigotry above his concerns for the kids’ well-being and safety.
Kimberly Daniels, candidate in the runoff for the At-Large Group 1 City Council Seat has the attention of a couple national activist groups. She has been called to end her run by a group called Truth Wins Out because of comments she made regarding homosexuals, Jews and slavery. But a different group, the New Black Panther Party.
“We warn the white community, and other conservative groups, that we won’t sit idly by while another black leader, and especially a black woman is threatened,” said a spokesman for the party during a downtown rally on Friday.
About a dozen people watched as the party announced its endorsement of Daniels. Members also had a direct message for the members of TWO:
“If any harm comes her way, or any other black people, we will definitely respond and the consequences will be severe.”
TWO founder Wayne Besen said, “It just shows that she’s unfit for office if she’s going to align herself with a radical extremist group like the New Black Panther Party.”
Attempts today to reach Daniels were unsuccessful. It is unclear whether she wants or approves of the support from the New Black Panthers The spokesman said she did not reach out to the organization, which had decided to endorse and support her on its own.
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.
Guest post by Bruce Wilson, cross-posted at Talk To Action.
Government funded missionaries in public schools? The idea would flabbergast many of America’s founders, most certainly the architects of the United States Constitution. Here’s the background: As a February 23rd, 2011 story from the Florida Independent, by Andy Kopsa, describes, the American leader of the Florida-based abstinence-only education program Project SOS endorses Martin Ssempa, a leading Uganda backer of the so-called “Kill the gays” bill that may soon come up for a vote in Uganda’s parliament. Project SOS has received over six and a half million dollars in federal funding, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2002, to teach abstinence education in Florida public schools. The funding continues into the present – in September SOS received over $450,000 from HHS.
But the Uganda tie is far from the most controversial aspect–the founder and head of SOS says the program was inspired by God, and her church identifies the Project SOS program as one of the “ministries” it supports, with SOS head Pam Mullarkey as a “missionary”…federally funded, that is.
To begin with, should federal funding still be flowing to a sex ed approach proven to be largely or wholly ineffective, according to a 2007 federally commissioned large scale study by Mathematica Research?
And, what if the program founder says plans for Project SOS came directly from God, advocates child-beating, and suggests that Catholics aren’t truly saved? What if SOS is actually a stealth ministry backed by a right wing church that teaches both anti-labor union ideology and Young-Earth Creationism, and whose longtime pastor is promoting antigay doctrines in Florida prisons?
So, the new Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, thinks that court rulings don’t apply to him, because of His Beliefs probably, so he’s got a new plan to make sure that kids in foster care stay there as long as possible:
Despite a state appellate panel’s ruling last year striking down the Florida ban on adoption by “homosexual” people and the decision by the then-governor and attorney general — Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist and Republican Bill McCullom, respectively — that they would not pursue State Supreme Court review of the decision, the new governor, Republican Rick Scott, is stoking the fire that most had considered extinguished for good.
According to the Associated Press, when Scott appeared before reporters in Tallahassee on January 19 to discussed his newly appointed director of Children and Families, David Wilkins, he said, “Adoption should be by a married couple.”
In response to Scott’s statement, Florida Together, an LGBT equality group, said, “Obviously, this is an end-run around the courts on gay and lesbian-inclusive adoption. It could remove millions of Floridians from the adoption process and leave tens of thousands of children in state foster care who could otherwise be adopted by loving families.”
The article goes on to point out that David Wilkins is the finance chair of Florida Baptist Children’s Homes, which is just like it sounds. How many times does it have to be said: no one cares about your Deeply Held Personal Beliefs, but if you can’t check them at the door when it’s time to go to grown-up work, especially if you are in government, then maybe it’s time to find a new job.
A Florida appeals court Wednesday struck down a state law barring gay men and lesbians from adoption on the basis of equal protection under law.
The Florida 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld a trial court ruling that Florida’s explicit ban was unconstitutional, noting that the state’s adoption law required officials to assess potential adoptive parents in “the best interests of the child.”
“By the time of the trial below, the application of the statutory ban was contrary to both the professional judgment of the Department and the legislative directive to assure ‘the best interest of the child’ in ‘every’ adoption,” wrote Judge Cindy S. Lederman in the 42-page ruling.
Shortly after the unanimous ruling was announced, Gov. Charlie Crist — who is running for a U.S. Senate seat as an independent — said the state would “stop enforcing the ban.” A supporter of the ban earlier in his career, when he was a Republican, Crist added that he was very pleased with the ruling.
It is about time. That law was such an embarrassment to the state of Florida.
It’s fun to watch, though, now that so many cases involving equality are on the move, how truly, our opponents have no rational case for anything they say or believe.
Pander, pander. Charlie Crist has released a new position paper on LGBT rights. It’s mostly good, but stops short of supporting marriage equality, sort of like the President:
Civil Unions
I believe that the government should not make it harder for people to take care of their loved ones. I believe civil unions
that provide the full range of legal protections should be available to gay couples. That includes access to a loved one in
the hospital, inheritance rights, the fundamental things people need to take care of their families.
Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
I support strong anti-discrimination laws including ENDA. Employment and advancement should be based on skill and
merit, not hindered by prejudice of any kind.
Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
I’m a strong supporter of the men and women of our military. Those willing to risk their lives to defend our country should not be compelled to lie to do so. I support the current efforts by Congress and military leadership to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and hold every member of the military to the same standard of professionalism that has made our military the greatest force for good in the world.
Federal Safe Schools Improvement Act
As Commissioner of Education I was the first statewide official to support anti-bullying protections that specifically
enumerated the most frequent manifestations of bullying in our schools. Everyone who has children or who has worked
with students knows that anti-gay taunts are used relentlessly on our campuses. We need to address the epidemic of
bullying and create safe learning environments for every single student.
Every Child Deserves a Family Act
We need to take politics out of adoption decisions. That is why I oppose Florida’s current law that requires Family Law
judges to ignore what is right for a child in order to adhere to what Florida law blindly demands. There is only one
question that matters: What is in the best interest of that child?
The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act
I’ve been a consistent supporter of providing legal protections for gay couples. Like most Americans I believe the
government should make it easier, not harder, for people to take care of their loved ones.
Uniting American Families Act
Family reunification has been the foundation of U.S. immigration law but U.S. citizens who are gay cannot sponsor their
partners for family-based immigration. As a consequence, many same-sex, bi-national couples are kept apart or torn apart sometimes even separating parents from their children. This bill, which I support, humanely addresses a problem that disproportionately impacts Floridians.
Equal Access to COBRA Act
I strongly support this act which mandates that employees, their partners and dependent children be allowed to continue participation in their employer-sponsored health coverage.
Appropriations for HIV/AIDS Programs
I believe we must make combating HIV/AIDS a priority by harnessing all possible resources to prevent new infections,
provide meaningful access to quality care and treatment, boost research to find a cure and address the global crisis.
Sounds to me like somebody has been reading the polls which show that Democrat Kendrick Meek has little chance of winning in a three way race, and is trying to find some gay voters to help him beat wingnut Marco Rubio. These positions are mostly good, of course, but the question, of course, is whether a Senator Charlie Crist would stick to these positions if elected.
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire reported 30 minutes ago:
In a much closer-than-expected race, Rick Scott (R) beat Bill McCollum (R) in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He will face Alex Sink (D) and Bud Chiles (I) in the general election. One caveat: McCollum has refused to concede.
Rick Scott is the winner of the GOP nomination for Governor in Florida, CNN projects.
The Florida Republican Party had expected McCollum, currently the state attorney general, to win easily. That was before it was disclosed that McCollum had paid at least $120,000 in taxpayer money to discredited veteran ex-gay “therapy” quackGeorge Rekers, to testify against gay adoption. On May 6, 2010, Rekers was exposed using that taxpayer money to travel with a male prostitute to Europe.
Rekers resigned as a board member of NARTH, the ex-gay think tank, on May 11.
One day after stating that gay people should be banned from foster parenting, Florida Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum tried to back away from his statements.
This is the latest twist in the scandal involving McCollum giving $120,000 to discredited witness George Rekers, who was later caught with a male escort he’d hired on rentboy.com as the pair returned from a European vacation.
Nadine Smith of Equality Florida has done an amazing job staying on top of this story.
McCollum Was Warned That George Rekers Testimony Was Suspect, Says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out called on Florida Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum to return $120,000 in taxpayer’ money that he used to hire anti-gay activist Dr. George A. Rekers to testify in favor of the state’ gay adoption ban. According to records made public on Thursday, McCollum had been strongly warned against hiring Rekers by the lead attorney in the case to uphold the ban. Yet, he went out of his way to ensure Rekers was placed on the payroll.
According to the Sarasota Tribune, Assistant Attorney General Valerie Martin wrote in a July 2007 e-mail that after talking to Arkansas officials and reviewing the background of the former University of South Carolina professor that she would “recommend NOT using him.” E-mails also show that during a conference call Martin — who said the state considered more than 30 possible expert witnesses — was ordered to hire Rekers “against my strong cautions.”
“Instead of doing the right thing, McCollum was working for the right wing and not serving the citizens of Florida,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “McCollum should immediately refund Florida taxpayers and refrain in the future from abusing his position and spending tax dollars to support his extreme ideology.”
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 
Taegan Goddard’s 
