A Call for Action!
Jul. 1st, 2004 10:33 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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transAccording to LA Weekly, the CDC, under pressure from President Bush, and being run by a Bush appointee has finally crossed the line. On June 16th, they announced new guidelines that state that any organization that teaches AIDS prevention and recieves federal funds for any portion of their budget, must teach that condom uses does not prevent the spread of AIDS and other STD's or have their federal funding yanked. This is a further spread of the absitinence only education boondoggle that the Christian Right has been trying to foist off on America. Meanwhile, federal funds earmarked for HIV prevention is being sent to Christian Organizations (not Jewish or Muslim) as pork for them to distribute bibles and stage anti-abortion rallies as part of Bush's "Faith Based Initiatives." But the battle is not lost, the guidlines to not go into effect without a chance for the public to comment. We have until August 16th to tell the CDC that these guidlines are unacceptable. Comments can be email to HIVComments@cdc.gov or faxed to 404-639-3125.
You can view the full text of the article HERE
Published on June 16 in the Federal Register, the censorious new CDC guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that does HIV-prevention work and also receives federal funds — whether or not any federal money is directly spent on their programs designed to fight the spread of the epidemic.
And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they’d have to slash programs or even close their doors.
the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work.
Moreover, the CDC will now take the decisions on which AIDS-fighting educational materials actually work away from those on the frontlines of the combat against the epidemic, and hand them over to political appointees.
under the new regs, political appointees will have a veto and be able to ban anything in those educational materials they deem “obscene” or lacking in anti-condom propaganda.
Under the new regs, it will be impossible even to track the spread of unsafe sexual practices — because the CDC’s politically inspired censorship includes “questionnaires and survey materials” and thus would forbid asking people if they engage in specific sexual acts without protection against HIV. For that too would be “obscene.” (Questions about gay kids have already disappeared from the CDC’s national Youth Risk Survey after Christian-right pressure).
So what will be left? Why, the abstinence-only ed programs dear to Bush’s heart and to the Christian right. A third of all federal HIV-education money — some $270 million more in Bush’s latest budget — now goes to abstinence-only programs, almost universally to Christian groups as part of Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” (no Jewish or Muslim groups receive any funds). This is a brilliant maneuver — Bush has turned money earmarked for fighting AIDS into political pork for his Christer base. Much of this money goes to anti-abortion groups masquerading as “women’s health” or “crisis-pregnancy” centers. Others receiving such funds engage in religious propaganda — a federal judge found that Louisiana’s federally funded Governor’s Program on Abstinence illegally handed out Bibles, staged anti-abortion prayer rallies outside women’s clinics, and had students perform Bible-based skits.
Yet Bush’s Health and Human Services Department refused demands to audit the Louisiana program, while at the same time conducting repeated harassing audits of effective AIDS-fighting groups that have vigorously protested Bush policies on AIDS, like New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis and San Francisco’s Stop AIDS Project. (The latter lost its federal funding earlier this year for sex-ed thought crimes similar to those banned in the new CDC regs
For example, a Minnesota Department of Health study of the state’s five-year, abstinence-only program found last year that sexual activity by students taking the program actually doubled, from 5.8 percent to 12.4 percent.
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, showed that while 59 percent of teenage males who did not pledge abstinence used a condom during sex, only 40 percent of abstinence-pledging boys used a condom.
“Kids are being taught that condoms don’t work, while real life-saving HIV education is being eviscerated across the board,” fumes Sean Strub
There’s only a tiny window of opportunity to try to get the new CDC censorship rules changed before they go into effect (the deadline for public comments is August 16 — they may be e-mailed to HIVComments@cdc.gov or faxed to 404-639-3125.) But when the regs begin to be felt, just watch already-rising AIDS infection rates really soar.
You can view the full text of the article HERE
Published on June 16 in the Federal Register, the censorious new CDC guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that does HIV-prevention work and also receives federal funds — whether or not any federal money is directly spent on their programs designed to fight the spread of the epidemic.
And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they’d have to slash programs or even close their doors.
the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don’t work.
Moreover, the CDC will now take the decisions on which AIDS-fighting educational materials actually work away from those on the frontlines of the combat against the epidemic, and hand them over to political appointees.
under the new regs, political appointees will have a veto and be able to ban anything in those educational materials they deem “obscene” or lacking in anti-condom propaganda.
Under the new regs, it will be impossible even to track the spread of unsafe sexual practices — because the CDC’s politically inspired censorship includes “questionnaires and survey materials” and thus would forbid asking people if they engage in specific sexual acts without protection against HIV. For that too would be “obscene.” (Questions about gay kids have already disappeared from the CDC’s national Youth Risk Survey after Christian-right pressure).
So what will be left? Why, the abstinence-only ed programs dear to Bush’s heart and to the Christian right. A third of all federal HIV-education money — some $270 million more in Bush’s latest budget — now goes to abstinence-only programs, almost universally to Christian groups as part of Bush’s “faith-based initiatives” (no Jewish or Muslim groups receive any funds). This is a brilliant maneuver — Bush has turned money earmarked for fighting AIDS into political pork for his Christer base. Much of this money goes to anti-abortion groups masquerading as “women’s health” or “crisis-pregnancy” centers. Others receiving such funds engage in religious propaganda — a federal judge found that Louisiana’s federally funded Governor’s Program on Abstinence illegally handed out Bibles, staged anti-abortion prayer rallies outside women’s clinics, and had students perform Bible-based skits.
Yet Bush’s Health and Human Services Department refused demands to audit the Louisiana program, while at the same time conducting repeated harassing audits of effective AIDS-fighting groups that have vigorously protested Bush policies on AIDS, like New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis and San Francisco’s Stop AIDS Project. (The latter lost its federal funding earlier this year for sex-ed thought crimes similar to those banned in the new CDC regs
For example, a Minnesota Department of Health study of the state’s five-year, abstinence-only program found last year that sexual activity by students taking the program actually doubled, from 5.8 percent to 12.4 percent.
the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, showed that while 59 percent of teenage males who did not pledge abstinence used a condom during sex, only 40 percent of abstinence-pledging boys used a condom.
“Kids are being taught that condoms don’t work, while real life-saving HIV education is being eviscerated across the board,” fumes Sean Strub
There’s only a tiny window of opportunity to try to get the new CDC censorship rules changed before they go into effect (the deadline for public comments is August 16 — they may be e-mailed to HIVComments@cdc.gov or faxed to 404-639-3125.) But when the regs begin to be felt, just watch already-rising AIDS infection rates really soar.
