Abstinence Clearinghouse shifting from public to private dollars
From today’s Argus Leader, it appears that South Dakota’s leader in abstinence education is preparing for a shift from federal dollars to private funding:
Abstinence Clearinghouse and the Alpha Center, a Sioux Falls crisis pregnancy center, received $635,000 this year to take their Truth 4 Youth program into schools such as Edgerton Public. They’ve reached 2,000 to 3,000 students this year through one-day assemblies or weeklong lessons.
and…
The Alpha Center was to get another $600,000 for Truth 4 Youth each of the next four years, but Obama’s budget would eliminate those grants.
Leslee Unruh, Abstinence Clearinghouse director and Alpha Center founder, said she’d rather pay for Truth 4 Youth with private donations.
“I’ve never liked federal money,” she said, decrying the restrictions attached to such grants. “If I had my way, I’d want no federal money going for this.”
Instead, Unruh will turn to donors who believe in the abstinence message and to the schools that now get the Truth 4 Youth message for free.
and…
Federal money for Abstinence Clearinghouse fell from a little more than $1 million in 2005 to $25,000 in 2007.
At the same time, private donations increased from $220,000 to $625,000, according to tax filings.
Read it all here in today’s Argus Leader.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Todd, the federal gravy may have dried up, but . . . will be real interesting to look up the IRS Form 990’s on the two organizations after this fiscal year and see if she’s still paying herself as much (over $150k annually in 2006 alone) from private money as she did from public money. Find them yourselves at Guidestar.org.
Let’s face it, abstinence education was the Republican version of ACORN money: milking the taxpayers to advocate political causes. Now the pendulum is just swinging back the other way.
I’m curious. After “abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy and STD’s, what else do these folks have to share with students?
I wonder if by receiving federal money, the feds will put twists and turns on what can and cannot be done and thus hinder their mission statement.
I am really serious and not trying to preach. I have seen in the school system where sex is common. It hurts to see young people’s minds so distraught where they aren’t able to function in school.
I am proud of the organization that tries to help out kids. Does anybody know of other organizations that help children out in this way?
Somebody is trying to help students do the right and moral thing by staying pure.
of course she’d rather use private fuñds; easy to say now that the gravy train has ended. truth is that too many “conservatives” have themselves become addicted to our tax dollars.
they should never have taken the grants in the first place. shut down all taxpayer-funded sex ed programs, i say.
Private funds? Ah, but she still wants the public schools to keep her program alive. Good luck with that.
Look, the parents can’t keep the teenagers pure! The Church and their religion can’t keep the teenagers pure!
We owe it to Leslee Unruh to let her take a shot at it!
Who knows? In the next few years Leslee Unruh may be looked upon as the “pure miracle lady”!
Is Leslee Catholic? If so, we Catholics might even make her a Saint some day!
I’m curious. After “abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy and STD’s, what else do these folks have to share with students?”
Though the only people I have taught about the concept of purity is my own children (and a few of their friends)I will offer a shot at answering this question.
To the girls I taught the concept of “Why buy the cow if you can milk the neighbor’s through the fence.” I explained that many young boys don’t really have any understanding of what it takes to manage a marriage and a family–they only want what physically makes them feel good right now. This means that they generally don’t care so much about you as they care about their own selfish wants. As long as they “can milk the cow through the fence” they think that they have no need to consider the consequences of their actions. You, as a beautiful young woman, can get left with emotional attachments to a man who one day may be a great husband and father–but who also may never grow up and contribute well to society– you can be forever linked to him by having his child, you can be stuck with diseases that he got from making himself feel good with someone else. There is always the possibility that this young man who disrespects your body will have other young women who are emotionally attached to him as well and they will hate you–in this generation they may physically harm you.
When you believe that you are beautiful and you are confident in who you are and where you are going–then you don’t need a man to tell you that you are “somebody”. You are free to look at the men around you and make choices for your future that are good for both of you.
When you meet someone that you really think that you could love for the rest of your life, one of the biggest tests is does he respect you enough to respect your choices about your own body? If he doesn’t then you need to consider what other things, which are important to you, that he might not respect your choices about.
Never allow yourself to be placed in a situation where “the heat of the moment” causes you to forgo the choices that you have made that are important to you. Avoid situations where you can be pressured until you know the young man well enough to believe that you won’t be pressured. Then if he pressures you–think about that and decide if you want to live the rest of your life with that kind of pressure–not just about sex but also about where you will live, how many children you will have–the list goes on.
Allowing someone to touch your body is like shaking the feathers out of a pillow and then trying to pick them all up. Once you cross that line then going back becomes more and more difficult. The Bible says “Don’t awaken love too soon.” Decide young that your first kiss isn’t going to be just because you’ve never been kissed. Your first kiss should be when you are old enough to appreciate its significance. Think of it as a feather that you can never recapture. First only happens once–make choices about what you want and don’t just let it happen to you.
When you are getting to know someone recognize that once you have a physical relationship with them it becomes far more difficult to see and know them as they really are– because the physical relationship tends to color everything else. When you have sex right away you will miss some of the red flags that you would otherwise easily see.
The Lakota Native American’s believed that when you are infatuated and your heart is beating quickly–that is the worse time to chose a life’s mate and they are right! Wait until your emotions have calmed down–and don’t give away ANYTHING until you are sure of whom you are giving it.
Finally, never date anyone that you wouldn’t potentially want to marry.
OK—so that is what I told the girls—it empowers them to chose and not just let things happen—when they did chose to have sex it was a uniting force—that will, hopefully, last a life time. They carry far less baggage, they are far more free, and they understand trust better than those who weren’t taught why respect for their body and themselves pays a lifetime of dividends.
That is so long and took up so much time and space that I will have to do what I told the boys some other time
Kids have been having sex since time began. And abstaining from sex is the best solution. But it is naive to think all or even most kids will. I’d rather be upfront about human nature and teach them if they can’t keep it in their pants there are ways to prevent pregnancy and disease. Let mom and dad and the churches/temples/synagogues lecture and educate about the morality. Like that’s worked but it makes us old folks feel better about ourselves.
Todd,
I think you may be, and I certainly am, old enough to remember when most kids probably didn’t actually “go all the way” until they had at least finished high school. If they did engage in intercourse, they were most likely involved in a long term relationship when they did. Most of my friends and acquaintances that experienced an “early pregnancy” got married and most still are. Of course, getting married at 18 or so wasn’t considered out of the ordinary then, either.
Sure, some did and many boys that hadn’t claimed they did anyway, but birth control, legalized abortion and the “if it feels good do it” attitude that came out of the late 60s and early 70s paved the way to the “kids are going to do it anyway” mentality we have today.
There had never really been the concept of “consequence free” sexual behavior before the 70s. Of course, there are still consequences, but far too many kids and far too many adults don’t think about those consequences like they did before. The fact is, using the “right to choose” is usually the result of making a bad choice to begin with.
The fear of pregnancy and the shame of unwed motherhood, if nothing else, prevented the high levels of young teenagers having sex that we have today.
“Kids have been having sex since time began”
I don’t knowwhat world YOU live in–but there was a time not so long ago that we protected our children from growing up too fast.
When young people are TAUGHT the benefits of waiting–MANY of them WAIT! When young women are given permission to SAY NO! a good share of them do.
I don’t like the kool=aid that you are drinking Todd–and please don’t serve it up to our children in our public schools. It is not nearly as much about morality as it is about safty and emotional health for future husbands, wives and children.
Todd–maybe you just couldn’t keep them zipped and saying that every kid does it is just your way of making your own bad behavior OK.
Comparing the abstinence money with voter fraud.
ACORN CONTRACTORS were caught doing FRAUDULENT REGISTRATIONS>. ACORN fired the contractors, but was required BY LAW to report all registrations, including those known to be invalid. The invalid registrations were never accepted, so none of those registrations could be used to vote.
ACORN DID NOT COMMIT VOTER FRAUD, and was FUNDED BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION for their work in registering voters. The ACORN tinfoil hat stuff is just part of a long pattern of Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters.
BTW William and Mom should probably read up on the current research.
Almost all Americans have sex before marrying, according to premarital sex research that shows such behavior is the norm in the U.S. and has been for the past 50 years.
Just saying it so or aint so don’t make it true!
rradical,
I’m fully aware that most Americans have sex before marriage, I was only addressing the AGE at which most Americans began having intercourse.
Most Americans now get married at a later age than they used to, as well. Far fewer teenagers are getting married than there were 50 years ago.
I for one am pleased to see tax dollars get cut from such a worthless program.
And it doesn’t surprise me even a little bit that people like Leslie pay themselves a huge salary – three times the national average, roughly four times the average in South Dakota.
Sanctimony pays itself well, traditionally.
I remember one day during session a long time ago the senate was debating a bill sponsored by Ed Glassgow to mandate abstinence education in high school. I was sittiing with a lobbyist who in addition to being a freind was the same age as me (high school in the mid 60″s). After listening to the debate for a while we both commented that such a law was totally unnecessary when we were in high school, at least in our cases. Times have indeed changed.
And thus ends the gravy train.