The Allen Almanac

Back in August I posted about the corruption in the faith-based initiative programs. Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette there was an article on an abstinence-only group located in Fort Smith, AR called Tree of Life Preventive Health Maintenance Inc., the #1 abstinence promoter in the state. This company is completely entwined with a religious group and illustrates the obvious conflicts that occur with faith-based programs.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has doled out $ 781 million to programs that discourage teenagers from having premarital sex. The steadily increasing grants, many of them to faith-based charities, are making virginity a growth industry and creating a boom for abstinence promoters like Cindy Crawford of Fort Smith.

$781 million to programs that according the Washington Post have taught, “that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person’s genitals can result in pregnancy.”

Crawford, 48, also administers Hannah House, a faithbased haven for pregnant girls. Federal dollars awarded for the abstinence program are paying for an apartment house that Tree of Life bought with the idea to expand Hannah House.

She also co-owns a Christian employment agency called Go Ye that supplies workers to carry the abstinence program’s message into classrooms.

What a lovely racket. Your faith-based charity gets to rent a house to you Christian pregnancy crisis center and its workers are supplied by your Christian employment agency.

While Tree of Life’s abstinence program is bringing in seven-figure grants, Hannah House doesn’t draw any federal support, and isn’t likely to qualify for any. Although President Bush’s faith-based initiatives opened the door for religious charities to compete for federal grants, funded programs cannot use tax dollars to proselytize. Hannah House requires its residents to attend church services twice a week at a church of Crawford’s choosing. The girls’ daily schedule includes biblical counseling and Bible studies.

On admission applications, girls must circle any occult activities in which they have been involved — including horoscopes, Ouija boards and yoga — and explain any involvement in eastern religions or groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Gotta love the fundies. These girls have much bigger problems than reading horoscopes. “Instead of teaching these girls how to have safe sex, let’s hope we can scare the sex out of them.” This despite the fact that less than half of the people who sign those virginity pledges will even admit that they ever signed them one year later. And the fact that those who take a virginity pledge and those who don’t have the same rate of STDs. People are going to have sex whether you tell them not to or not. If we taught them to do it safely we’d have a heck of a lot less AIDS infected pregnant 15 year olds.

In a report delivered to Tree of Life earlier this month, the Institute for Research and Evaluation in Salt Lake City found that the charity has “a highly effective program” that is delivering “strong short-term effects.” Tree of Life paid $ 48,913 for the 10-page evaluation.

CLASSROOM LESSONS In a sixth-grade class in Scranton, Reality Check presenter Demetri Mendoza, 19, went over the homework and then clicked on a video: soundbites from a hip-looking teenage boy and teenage girl discussing the boundaries they had set on dating and strategies for avoiding the temptations to have sex.

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I wouldn’t think it would be that hard to have “strong short-term effects” convincing sixth graders not to have sex.

Henrietta Johnston, the school nurse, said the abstinence training, which takes up a week of one-hour classes in the lower grades and two weeks in high school, is needed in the district, where one 10th-grader recently delivered a baby.

And obviously abstinence is the only thing that could have possibly prevented that. Do I overestimate the average Arkansas-ian’s intelligence or is it gross waste of time to spend two weeks telling people that not having sex will keep them from getting pregnant? What’s next, two weeks on not drinking antifreeze as a way to avoid death or how not to shoot yourself in the foot with a nail gun? Two weeks isn’t too long for an actual sex education message, but abstinence-only isn’t sex education. It is sex ignorance. Abstinence is to birth control as not eating is to weight control.

With the abstinence staff fast outgrowing its rent-free temporary quarters in Hannah House, Tree of Life requested federal funding for bigger offices. In its successful grant application, Tree of Life said that an office suite had recently become available that offered “an ideal configuration of space” for the abstinence program.

Tree of Life did not disclose that it owned the 3, 200-squarefoot apartment house itself or that it intends to use it to expand the pregnancy center. The rent, covered by the abstinence grant, was $ 900 a month until this month, when the abstinence staff expanded to a second apartment and the rent rose to $ 1, 300, Crawford said. The mortgage payments on the house, which Tree of Life bought with no money down for $ 103, 000, are $ 830.

Though Tree of Life is both the landlord and the tenant of its new property, Crawford insisted that it is not paying itself the rent in a circular arrangement to buy a building, which government regulations prohibit.

Instead, she said, Tree of Life pays the rent to a separate entity with a separate taxpayer number, the Tree of Life Foundation. The foundation, created by Crawford, collects the rent because it manages the building, Crawford said.

Whatever you say, liar. “I don’t collect the money. It goes to this foundation I created and am probably the head of.” But, hey, your doing God’s work so the ends justify the means, right? What’s fudging the details on a grant application when eternal souls are in jeopardy? And if you can make a little money off the deal that’s just more funds you use to glorify God!

I’m all for educating kids about abstinence. It is still the only 100% effective way to prevent STDs and pregnancy (assuming you don’t get raped). But for the vast majority of us, it just isn’t a realistic option. And when you aren’t educating the vast majority of sexually active people as to the risks and preventative measures you can use, it is evil. Risking peoples lives and health just to fulfill your personal moral code is evil. There is no other word for it. It is the same selfish arrogance that the religious have used repeatedly through-out history. And time and time again, it creates the evil it is supposedly fighting against. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said, ” with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil; - that takes religion.” And that is exactly what abstinence-only education is. In the absence of religion it has no logical reason to exist. No one would think that this is a reasonable position to take without some ulterior motive. It’s the equivalent of telling someone who doesn’t want to get gray hair their only option is to shave their head everyday.