Saturday, June 14, 2008

The sleazy underside of abstinence-only sex ed

When it comes to sucking out some government funding for useless, ineffective programs like abstinence-only sex education, it's not who ya know, it's who ya blow:
"An organization that promotes sexual abstinence for teens received a federal grant of over a million dollars, twice what it had requested, despite the skepticism Department of Justice staffers had about the group and the fact that it refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study.

So why did the Best Friends Foundation receive the grant from the Justice Department's juvenile justice office even though dozens of competing organizations were rated higher by the office's own reviewers? Current and former staffers say it was because of Best Friends' powerful president and founder, Elayne Bennett.

Not only is Bennett the wife of Bill Bennett, a former Reagan and Bush administration official and conservative political commentator, but she is also personally close to the chief administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), J. Robert Flores." (emphasis mine)

Twice what it requested? It shouldn't have even gotten once what it requested. Way to slip some tax-free dough right into someone's pocket (also known as "stealing"). Are these anti-sex people all degenerate liars, thieves and scam artists?