This is so typical.  Let’s get out our Right Wing Smear paint-by-numbers kit and see if this one fits:

1.  Find honest statement by liberal.

2.  Twist the meaning of the statement.

3.  Repurpose the statement to make it look like an attack.  Bonus points if you can add dogwhistles!

4.  Raise a bunch of whining hell over nothing and try to draw blood.  Bonus points for directly misquoting the liberal!

Yep, this fits!  John Boehner, Brent Bozell, and some other minor figures are having a public sad over the fact that Harry Knox correctly stated that the Pope is hurting people in the name of Jesus by actively working against honest sex and contraception education in sub-Saharan Africa, and is thus contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS on that continent: (Read More)

At The Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal calls the Obama administration on the carpet for affirming Rick Warren and allies’ efforts to deny access to condoms and prevent Africa’s heterosexual and LGBT people from protecting themselves against HIV/AIDS.

Blumenthal notes that Warren has never been required to prove the efficacy of his anti-condom program. Instead, independent investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa revealed alliances with Christian Right clergy who sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education.

These clergy sabotaged Uganda’s once highly successful initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive sex education — consisting of lessons in abstinence, monogamy, and condom use — slashed HIV infection rates during the 1990s and up until 2003, when Christian Rightists in the Bush State Department and Congress began to sabotage the initiative. By 2005, Blumenthal notes, federal aid was being redirected to deny access to condoms and to discourage their use. Progress against HIV infection rates then halted. (Read More)

New cases of sexually transmitted infections are rising among women and African-American heterosexuals, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

CNN reports:

The CDC began a national syphilis elimination program in the late 1990s, targeted at African-American heterosexuals, especially women and their babies. As a result, the condition was nearly eradicated as an ongoing health problem in the United States.

But in the last two years, the trend has reversed, said Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.

“The success we’ve been experiencing for a number of years in African-American heterosexual populations, particularly women, is beginning to be eroded,” he said.

Syphilis resurfaced as a danger in 2001, and cases went up by 15.2 percent between 2006 and 2007, the CDC said.

Reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea together surpassed 1.4 million in 2007, the report said. Both of these conditions can cause infertility when left untreated. The CDC will address HIV rates in the United States in a later report.

The rise happens to coincide with the growth of federally funded, abstinence-only programs which claim to promote abstinence by denying teen-agers access to information about disease and pregnancy prevention. Instead, these programs result in unsafe sex and an increased risk of pregnancy and abortion.

Whatever the role of abstinence-only “education,” experts say shame surrounding sexual behavior appears to be contributing to an atmosphere of silence and ignorance among youths-at-risk, parents, and doctors.

According to Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention:

If the parents assume that’s the doctor’s business, or the teacher’s business, and don’t roll up their sleeves and get in there themselves, and if our schools aren’t giving comprehensive education, and if our clergy and other community leaders who are interested in youth well-being aren’t including sexual health on the agenda, we’re going to create missed opportunities.

Amid news of the widespread failure of antisex education and virginity pledges to reduce sexual activity and pregnancies, recent discussions have asked whether “abstinence-only” advocacy actually forces more teen-agers and young adults to have abortions than would have been necessary with comprehensive sex education.

Having suffered spikes in youth sexual activity and unwanted pregnancies as a result of “abstinence only” programs, at least 15 states now refuse federal funding to pay for outside groups to teach “abstinence only” in school.

But hard research into any correlation between abstinence-only advocacy and abortion is still lacking.

If the empty mantra, “Just Say No,” failed to keep teenagers off of drugs, it certainly is not going to work for sex. Yet, our government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “abstinence only” programs that promote ignorance over education, while offering a warped view of sexuality. Like all programs steeped in religious extremism, these are fear-based, anti-science and prone to great exaggerations.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a report in 2004 that found 11 out of 13 curriculums that preached “abstinence only” were rampant with scientific errors. In another study, researchers found that those who took so-called “virginity pledges” refrained from sex merely eighteen months longer than those who had not made such a pledge. However, the pledge-takers were six times more likely to engage in oral sex. “ The Values Virgins” were also much less likely to engage in protected sex when they finally broke their pledge or to be tested for an STD. Disease rates between the two groups were similar.

Unfortunately, the New York Times Magazine reports that “condemn the condom” clubs are taking root at premier universities. As usual, they rely on breathless, overblown tales of breaking condoms, saying, “safe sex is not safe.” Well, actually, condoms are pretty effective for those of us who had comprehensive sex education and know how to use them. I’ve yet to find one Bible-waving fanatic who can show me an HIV epidemic that broke out among people consistently wearing condoms. (Read More)