Moral Guidelines Will Cost Boy Scouts $200,000 in Rent

Philadelphia has decided the local Boy Scouts chapter must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it does not allow gay-identified Scout leaders. The Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay the increased amount to remain in its downtown building past May 31, Fox News reported.

City officials say they cannot rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates.

Jeff Jubelirer, spokesman for the council, said the higher rent money “would have to come from programs. That’s 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp. It’s disappointing, and it’s certainly a threat.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gay-identified individuals from membership.

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said:

“Since the homosexual lobby couldn’t get the courts to do their bidding for them, they are now searching for liberal city councils that will make the Boy Scouts pay dearly for their uncompromising stand for righteousness.

“The lesson here for all Americans is that any statute or ordinance labeled as a ‘nondiscrimination’ law will be used as a club to silence all moral opposition to homosexual behavior.”

 

 

Station Pulls Planned Parenthood Ads

A public radio station has pulled Planned Parenthood advertising and returned more than $5,000 donated after the station’s license holder, Duquesne University, said the organization did not share the school’s Catholic mission.

WDUQ began airing the Planned Parenthood messages Oct. 8. Two days later, officials were ordered by Duquesne to yank the broadcasts.

Duquesne spokeswoman Bridget Fare, citing Planned Parenthood’s support of abortion, said the organization was not aligned with the university’s Catholic mission and identity. The ads didn’t mention abortion services.

One of the messages said: “Support for DUQ comes from Planned Parenthood, providing comprehensive sexuality education, including lessons on abstinence. Planned Parenthood: Their mission is prevention.”

Scott Hanley, the station’s general manager, said he received a call from the university’s president, Charles J. Dougherty, on Oct. 10, saying he was concerned that it was inappropriate to accept a gift from Planned Parenthood.

“And on reflection, I had to respect his opinion,” Hanley told The New York Times in Wednesday’s edition.

The university holds the broadcast license for the radio station’s 25,000-watt signal. Duquesne provides the radio station with six percent of its cash funding, and the WDUQ raises the rest of the money from outside the university, according to the station’s Web site.

Kimberlee Evert, a Planned Parenthood representative, questioned whether the station’s news content is independent and whether the station should relocate off the university’s campus.

“Our concern is that we didn’t realize to be an underwriter that you had to agree with Catholic doctrine,” Evert told The New York Times.

Anti-abstinence sex-ed policy fails to prevent STD explosion in California

According to a study published last month in the Californian Journal of Health Promotion, there were 1.1 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young Californians in 2005, the California Catholic reports.

The figure is ten times higher than previously believed. If the study is accurate, diseases such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, HPV, and HIV now infect almost one out of four Californians in the 15-24 age group.

The authors believe that their figures are underestimated because of incomplete screening of sexually active young people and failures in follow-up testing.

The California Department of Education reports that 96 percent of California school districts provide comprehensive sexual health education. All California schools have been required to teach HIV/AIDS prevention since 1992.

According to Chris Weinkopf, editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, state law prohibits ‘abstinence-only’ education in public schools. California has also refused to accept millions of dollars in federal funding for abstinence education.

Linda Klepacki, sexual health analyst for Focus on the Family Action, thought the dramatic increase was unsurprising. “California has insisted on teaching contraceptive-based sex education in their schools all along. They expect teens to be sexually active. They don’t raise the health standard to abstinence… It’s clear California supports sexually active teens, and STI rates will naturally explode with these policies,” she wrote in an on-line press release.

Plan B, the so-called “morning-after pill,” could be another factor contributing to the increase in STIs. Sexually transmitted infections soared in the British Isles when Plan B was made available without prescription in 2000. California was one of the first states to permit the sale of Plan B over-the-counter without an age limit.

Along with the increase in sexually transmitted infections, there has also been a striking increase in the suicide rates among young people. UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman has argued that promiscuity is the root cause of much depression. She believes the promiscuity-depression-suicide link is being ignored by doctors who fail to caution students about the dangers of the “hook-up” culture.