UPDATE: A TFN Insider reader recorded the robocall noted in this post. Great work! See below. The calls apparently were paid for by Texas Alliance for Life PAC. Because of the late date, it won’t be possible to know before election day tomorrow how much this political action committee has suddenly poured into State Board of Education races. The PAC reported more than $42,000 in cash on hand on Feb. 22.
—
We have a report that Joe Pojman of the far-right Texas Alliance for Life is robocalling voters in the District 10 Texas State Board of Education race today. Pojman is letting voters know that Brian Russell, one of the candidates in tomorrow’s Republican primary for the board seat, is “pro-life.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0uGlJd54s&feature=player_embedded]
What in blazes does the State Board of Education have to do with abortion politics? Nothing — except for religious-right pressure groups and activists, for whom the “culture wars” are all-consuming. Telling voters about Russell’s opposition to abortion is Pojman’s way of letting religious-right voters know who should get their vote in the race for the state board seat currently held by the departing Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond. (Dunbar recruited Russell, an Austin attorney who homeschools his children, to run for the seat.)
We don’t know what Russell’s Republican opponents, Marsha Farney and Rebecca Osborne, think about abortion. But now you know the priorities of Russell and his supporters on the far-right: they have every intention of continuing to drag our children’s schools into senseless and divisive “culture war” battles even on issues that have nothing to do with public education.
Charles was prescient with his previous post. They’re pro-life so they want to ensure more and more teen pregnancies…
That’s politics.
The abortion issue is really the point of the hysteria-spear in right-wing political engagement, and it’s the real reason they want to coerce, force, dictate, etc. a narrow religious doctrine on the rest of the population.
I will explain exactly what abortion politics have to do with the SBOE.
In 2004, the SBOE adopted an abstinence-based sex education curriculum, in accordinance with the state education code.
Planned Parenthood was a substantial lobbyist for the anti-abstinence sex education curriculum demanded by TFN and other members of the education political lobby.
Planned Parenthood requires thousands of sexually active teens in Texas in order to keep its abortion mills profitably humming along.
Thus it supported the curriculum proposal that encourages teen sexual activity.
Abortion politics has lots to do with the SBOE………
It’s not a “report.” I had to quickly cobble together “video” to go with the audio I recorded, but I just uploaded it to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0uGlJd54s
SBOE Rocks:
You must be smoking some sort of really powerful mind-altering drug today.
I do not know of a single person or organization in Texas or anywhere else that is in favor of teenage promiscuity and teenage pregnancy. I say that as the Christian dad of a 15-year-old girl who just had a really bad experience with two of her friends who went with her to a church “abstinence-only” ring pledge night. All three of them made the ring-pledge that night at a local church. Several days later, my daughter’s two friends, who are members of a local fundamentalist church, were caught in the middle of the sexual act by one of their mothers. When questioned, the two unmarried Christian teenagers stated that they were consciously trying to have a baby out of wedlock. So, do not come to me with any of your “abstinence only” garbage. It does not work and Texas has the out-of-control teen pregnancy rate to prove it (2nd in the nation).
I got this one straight from the mouth of the guidance counselor at a local high school in my state. An injured guy on the football team badgered his girlfriend to have sex with him. She refused at first but gave in sometime later when the “facts of life” were explained to her by her boyfriend. He told her that his broken leg altered his male physiology so much that he could not possibly get her pregnant. Do you hear that, “Guys with broken legs cannot impregnate a woman!!!” She believed him. They had sex. She got pregnant first time out.
Texas needs comprehensive sex education to prevent teenage promiscuity, STDs, and abortions. If you want to shut down the abortion mills at Planned Parenthood, there’s your route. It really is that simple, but some people are too simple-minded to understand it.
Attacking women’s freedom of conscience on abortion is part of the package being promoted by the “malignant patriarchalists” of the Religious Right, along with “abstinence only” sex (mis)education, creationism, homeschooling, and David Barton’s “Christian Nation” ideology. Thank heaven for TFN. — Edd Doerr, Pres., Americans for Religious Liberty, http://www.arlinc.org
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/164/2/152
Abstinence only works, trumps abstinence plus
@Nuckols:
What the abstract doesn’t make so clear is “these findings may be misleading—considering only a particular group of participants: students who were virgins when the study began. About 25 percent of the sixth- and seventh- graders had already tried sex” (see article link below).
Accordingly, at least one of the researchers in that study apparently doesn’t think abstinence-only is a panacea:
–quote–
Loretta Jemmott said that abstinence-only education is not a universal prescription for all.
“Abstinence-only interventions are really important for younger school-aged children, especially in middle school, but some people need to have messages about condoms, particularly if they’re already sexually active,” she said. “You must know where teenagers are in their development to know what message to give them.”
–end quote–
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/390/news.aspx?id=155469
Comprehensive sex education works, trumps burying one’s head in sand about normal adolescent and teen-aged human behavior.
I thought abstinence-only is taught in TX public schools, yet TX has one of the highest occurrences of teenage pregnancies.
Abstinence-only sure worked for Bristol Palin, didn’t it?
Yup, abstinence-only works. Oh yeah.