Parents beware. Planned Parenthood is stepping into your Girl Scout troops now.
UPDATE: Here is the brochure, "Happy, Healthy and Hot" that was distributed.
From the Washington Times:
Sharon Slater, a mother of seven, innocently walked into a panel sponsored by the Girl Scouts USA at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women a few weeks ago. Almost immediately she was asked to leave. All non-Scout adults were kicked out of the room, which was packed with adolescent girls.
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Slater found a stack of brochures produced by Planned Parenthood called "Healthy, Happy and Hot" that among other things explained to the girls, "Some people have sex when they have been drinking or using drugs. That is your choice."
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But it gets worse. The sex guide explains, "Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse. But there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. Sex can include kissing, touching, licking, tickling, sucking and cuddling. Some people like to have aggressive sex, while others like to have soft sex and slow sex with their partners.
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Besides advice about the prostate, the brochure, subtitled "Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV," also gives incorrect and even dangerous information about rights and responsibilities.
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At the same UN meeting, which ended last Friday, the World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides produced a document saying young women "demand their sexual and reproductive rights including access to comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual and reproductive services including contraception and emergency contraception, in order to avoid unintended pregnancies" and also called for access to "safe abortion."
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At a Girl Scout conference in 2004, co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood, the Girl Scouts handed out a brochure to 700 grade-school girls with the title "It's Perfectly Normal," a guide that celebrated masturbation and that featured explicit drawings of couples having sex and a boy putting on a condom. It also listed, no surprise here, the top ten reasons for having an abortion.
11 comments:
This article seems awfully misleading. It mentions "dangerous and incorrect information," yet the examples given are either correct or subject to opinion.
I'd like to see the whole pamphlet, do you know if it's availible for download or viewing somewhere?
Meghan, See the update I just added at the top of this post.
Thanks for the link, I really appreciate it.
The article is indeed, very misleading. The entire pamphlet is about and directed at youth with HIV. Which I think is a good idea, because HIV can be very, very frightening. And it's hard to come across accurate information on living with HIV, especially when it comes to safe sex and parenthood. The information in this pamphlet is very accurate. As for the sections on masturbation and abortion, if a person didn't agree with those things, those sections would be completely moot to them.
The section about having sex while drunk or high says at the end of the paragraph: "Your partner must be able to freely consent to sexual activity. It is not okay to have sex with someone who is so drunk or high that they are staggering, incoherent or have passed out." Also, it is indeed a choice. People, youths included, must make their own choices. They're the only ones who can step back from a situation, evaluate the consequences and make a decision for themselves.
The pamphlet does not state that anyone's rights are violated when they are required to tell their HIV status to their partners. It does mention that some health care workers and service providers don't believe that HIV-positive people should have sex and may not provide good information and services, and they have a right to report it if it happens to them.
I said before, HIV is a scary disease, it is surrounded in a fog of myths and misconceptions. We need this sort of accurate, helpful information out there.
Meghan, Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Mr. Ruse explains the incorrect information in this, "Sexual rights are hardly recognized around the world. They are not even recognized here in the sexual paradise of the United States. The brochure tells the kids that their rights are violated when governments require them to tell their HIV status to their sex partners."
While I do agree that HIV is very dangerous and needs to be addressed. However, you must remember this pamphlet is directed at adolescents, not college-age men/women. If you read the entire pamphlet, it goes much further than HIV information. It enters the realm of how to have sex in detailed format.
I agree that the part about sexual rights being recognized required more detail, that was a bit of over-generalization.
Yes, but they need this information before they become adults and become sexually active. When you go to driver's ed, you don't start out in the car. You read the manual and you take the written test first. I don't think this pamphlet will encourage youth to become sexually active. In fact, unless they're HIV positive already, I doubt they'll even bother reading it, they'll probably just skim and toss it. It's pretty irrelevant to them.
I would agree that if they are HIV positive, they probably would not take interest in the pamphlet. Shotgunning it out to Girl Scouts in a generalized manner, however, is completely inappropriate. Planned Parenthood has no business in the Girl Scouts, sexualizing minor children. I doubt that when parents sign their daughters up for a local GS troop, they didn't bargain on PP sex talks.
Perhaps, but it would be equally inappropriate to pull a "Could everyone with HIV please stand up?"
Parents are the ones who should be giving their children information on sex. I do realize that not all of them do. That's one of the dangers of living in a free society, sometimes people don't live up to their responsibilities.
For this to be presented to Girl Scouts, and to not allow "non-Scouting" adults into the presentation, even though the presentation is being given to the children of those non-scouting adults is absolutely wrong. I assume, from the write-up, that Mrs. Slater had no idea what was going to be presented at that meeting, so, no parental permission for this presentation was obtained or what? Schools give parents the option of keeping their child out of health class for such subjects, how do the Girl Scouts justify this?
In my opinion, this is simply part of Planned Parenthood's plan to drum up business for their sales of contraceptives and abortions. Perhaps that's overly cynical of me. Would it be appropriate for Southern Comfort or Jim Beam to make a similar presentation telling young people about the pleasures of responsible drinking? Something saying that they need to demand their right to consume alcoholic beverages? Could they claim that they are just informing youth how to imbibe responsibly? I think folks would object to that.
But then Jim Beam and Southern Comfort wouldn't be pretending to be alcoholics anonymous either.
As for the Girl Scouts, what else would I expect from an organization that was willing to cut God out of their pledge?
I also noticed that the brochure mentions the right to have a "safe abortion".
No mention of the psychological toll of an abortion or the link between breast cancer and abortions nor any mention of the surgical/health(in the case of RU-487 or similar measures)risks of the abortion procedure.
I like how everyone brings up all these supposed health risks to abortions. Yes, there are some health risks, but the simple fact is that abortion is far, far safer than giving birth.
As far as the pamphlet goes, it seems to give more or less accurate information in a frank manner. I see no "dangerous" or incorrect information in it, and it doesn't "sexualize" children. Information about sex doesn't make people have sex. Studies on the matter are clear. Abstinence only sex education, for instance, doesn't make children/teens any less likely to have sex, for instance. It just makes them less likely to be prepared for it.
Information, as it turns out, isn't dangerous.
I tend to agree with the more conservative on this one, I would absolutely NOT want my children to be given this pamphlet. My daughter was a Girl Scout this past year and that is because they say they will do their best to honor god. Partnering with Planned Parenthood is NOT a way to do that. There are some things that they do at PP that are good, but for the most part, I disagree with almost all of what they do there. I will not be enrolling my daughter in Girl Scouts again. I feel that educating her about "safe sex" is telling her that I dont believe that she has the willpower or strength to remain abstinent until marriage. I know that God is in her and will help her to remain pure until marriage. I believe that this article correctly points out things that I do NOT want my child to learn because they were in a social club, I will stick to youth group from now on. I do believe that people with AIDS need education to help them through, however I do not think that this pamphlet is a good one at all, it encourages a very loose lifestyle which I do not agree with. All of this is my opinion however and I do not expect everyone to agree, I just know that I have researched this story and I agree with the writers opinions and facts about this topic.
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