ANTIs and Abstinence

Our ANTI friends wanted to force public school districts like VUSD to give up fact based full and complete sex education. They believe in abstinence ONLY sex education with no information on preventing pregnancies with contraceptive devices. Pro-education members of our community understand that fact based education leads to fully informed young adults who are far less likely to make costly mistakes.

Rob Walter, one of the many losing ANTI school board candidates (1996?) told me personally in a conversation that, "Information once give, can never be taken back."

He meant by his ANTI education statement that if our children found out a way to not get pregnant, they would have sex without limits. Our ANTI friends never trust our children to do the right thing or make good decisions. Rational adult members of our community understand that, yes, young adults do make errors, but they also are rational actors who make better decisions when given all the information.

(By the way Walters son applied for and was granted a substantial VTA college scholarship from our VTA fund even though Walters made very negative statements about teachers unions in general and the VTA in particular. I remember talking with a scholarship committee member about it. The committee member said the father's political views had nothing to do with the son's qualifications. I wonder if the shoe had been on the other foot it the ANTI's would have been as considerate.)

In Alaska in the district where Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, attended high school, the ANTI forces control the district and instituted a ABSTINENCE ONLY sex ed curriculum. Bristol did not have access to a full and comprehensive sex education curriculum (according to Keith Olbermann--February 17, 2009 MSNBC).

Bristol in an interview now says the ABSTINENCE ONLY is not realistic. I hope our local ANTI friends read and understand what she is saying.

The VTA Executive Board voted NOT to join the movement to recall the ANTI majority on the VUSD board(1992-94) at least once (or was it twice?). that's right the first time the idea was brought up, VTA voted AGAINST JOINING THE RECALL. The vote total changed in favor of recall only after the ANTI board decided to junk our comprehensive sex education program and to forbid the teaching of information about condoms and contraceptives.

I was one of those who first voted against joining the recall. I was afraid that if we lost, the VTA would be destroyed and the community would be fractured. Mostly I thought that the VTA had no business being involved with removing elected school board members. I took some convincing to join the side in favor of recall.

It was only when the ANTI board decided to interfere with giving crucial and appropriate information to our students, when the ANTIS decided to remove relevant contraceptive facts from our VUSD classrooms and interfere in the performance of a teacher's duty to teach--only then did the majority on the Executive Board vote to bring the idea of joining the ongoing recall to the governing board of the VTA, the Representative Assembly. The Rep Assembly agreed with Executive Board bringing VTA into the community coalition for recall. Let's made it clear, the VTA did not initiate the recall and did not immediately join the recall. The Spring 1993 Executive Board and Representative Assembly meeting minutes will so verify. Any one who says differently is a liar and a propagandist (or ignorant).

Of course our ANTI friends lie and say that the VTA started the recall the night the ANTIs were elected in November 1992. Two lies in one. I know of no credible (non ANTI source) that says there was any recall meeting that night in November or any night in November. The Vista Teachers Association joined the already existing community based recall MONTHS after the first petitions were circulated.

I first heard murmurings of recall after the December 1992 VUSD school board meeting when the ANTI's on the board decided to explore the possibility of teaching the unscientific and anti-Christian fiction of young earth (6-10,000 year old earth and universe) creationism in our schools. The three ANTI board members at that meeting decided to elect as president of our VUSD school board, John Tyndall, who worked at the Institute of Creation Research--an anti-scientific and anti God young earth propaganda mill located in Santee, California.

At that time and probably today as well, no one was allowed to work at ICR if they publicly stated that they thought the world was older than 10,000 years. A radio dating expert was fired from ICR only months before the 1992 ANTI election because he thought the earth might be as much as 20,000 years old. Apparently to work there employees have to sign a "young earth" pledge written by the founder, Henry Morris author of The Genesis Flood. John Tyndall had to agree with these really crazy, completely illogical rantings of the founder in order to keep his job, yet our 1992-94 ANTI board members thought he was the best one of the five board members to be the VUSD board president.

(I had a couple of discussions with John during a trip to Chicago where we appeared on a nationally syndicated television talk show to discuss the VUSD ANTI's nuttiness. John, who was educated by the fake facts disseminated by ICR, did not know that humans (actually all bony animals) are bilaterally symmetrical, so that if we had 40% of the bones of an ancestral form like Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) we really have closer to 80% because each side of our body is a mirror image of the other--left hand/right hand, left leg bones/right leg bones, left ribs/right ribs etc. Having a bone from the right hand meant we could infer from that bone that the left hand bone would be exactly the same except a mirror image. Nor did he understand the difference between pyroclastic flow deposits from a volcano full of sharply pointed tiny grains of "sand" (at Mt St Helens) and water deposited rounded grains of sand (at the Grand Canyon). More on the ignorance of 'little god' young earthism in a later blog.

The VTA did not join the movement until at least March 1993. (or was it April? I will have to check the notes of the Rep Assembly meetings.) The Recall, however, had been well started before we joined. The community started it over creationism in the classroom. Our ANTI board members seriously explored including the crazy, young earth, denial of easily checked facts and rational thought, ICR creationism in our VUSD science classroom curriculums. The creationist book of lies called Of Pandas and People was presented by the ANTI board members as a possible "science" resource in our VUSD science classrooms!

Creationism was the first step in the (1992-94) ANTI school board's attack on FACT based education in VUSD. The second step a couple of months later was the attack on FACT based sex education and the elimination of FACTS about preventing unwanted pregnancies from our VUSD classroom curriculum. Only then did VTA join.

A good thing we did. How many more Bristol Palins would we have in Vista if VUSD had continued with the abstinence only sex education curriculum of Sex Respect? Sex Respect was the racist tinged, fact challenged, and fact deficient program our ANTI friends wanted to force VUSD teachers to use.

Here is the article about Bristol Palin:

Bristol Palin: Abstinence for all teens 'not realistic'
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/bristol.palin.interview/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

(CNN) -- In her first interview since giving birth, the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said having a child is not "glamorous," and that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all."

Bristol Palin says "everyone should just wait 10 years" to have a baby, rather than when you're young.

"It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different," Bristol Palin told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "And just you're up all night. And it's not glamorous at all," she said. "Like, your whole priorities change after having a baby."

The 18-year-old, who gave birth in late December, said she is being helped tremendously by her mother, grandmother, cousins and other family members. She is engaged to teen father Levi Johnston, who is now working for his father and trying to complete school, but said she wishes that she waited another 10 years to have a baby.

It was "harder than labor" telling her parents she was pregnant.

"Well, we were sitting on the couch, my best friend and Levi, and we had my parents come and sit on the couch, too. And we had my sisters go upstairs," Bristol said. "And we just sat them down, and I just -- I couldn't even say it. I was just sick to my stomach.

"And so finally, my best friend just, like, blurted it out. And it was just, like -- I don't even remember it because it was just, like, something I don't want to remember."
Todd and Sarah Palin were "scared just because I have to -- I had to grow up a lot faster than they ever would have imagined," Bristol said.

Her parents insisted that she and her boyfriend hash out a "game plan" immediately. And now her parents and relatives are all pitching in to help take care of the child, particularly when Bristol is at school during the day.

Van Susteren was delicate with the teenager but pointedly asked if "contraception is an issue here."

"Is that something that you were just lazy about or not interested, or do you have philosophical or religious opposition to it," Van Susteren asked.

Bristol quickly answered that she didn't want to get into specifics. The best option is abstinence, the teen said, but added that she didn't think that was "realistic."

While her mother was running for vice president, the teenager said her treatment in the media was "evil." She said she read some of the tabloids that wrote about her. People didn't understand, she said, and some media reports perpetuated falsehoods about her experience.

"They thought that, like, my mom was going to make me have the baby, and it was my choice to have the baby," she said. "And it's just -- that kind of stuff just bothered me."

(Blog editor's note: Interesting Bristol got a choice when it was her mother's position that no girl should have a choice even in case of rape or incest.)

Van Susteren asked, "But this is your issue? This is your decision?"

Bristol answered yes. "(It) doesn't matter what my mom's views are on it. It was my decision, and I wish people would realize that, too," she said.

The network interview was Bristol's idea, the teen said. And she apparently sprung the news to her parents that she was going to speak publicly the day before the network taping. The teen said she wanted to tell her story so that other young people might think twice about having sex.

"I'd love to [be] an advocate to prevent teen pregnancy because it's not, like, a situation that you would want to strive for, I guess," Bristol said.

Gov. Palin made an unexpected appearance during the interview in Alaska, and Van Susteren asked her about her daughter's pregnancy.

"Not the most ideal situation, certainly you make the most of it," the governor said.

Bristol is a "strong and bold woman, and she is an amazing mom," Palin said. "And this little baby is very lucky to have her as a mama. He's going to be just fine."