Dear Laura Bush
Dear Laura Bush:
Quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself. Touting the role of faith based organizations in combating disease in Africa. Speaking before a group of Zambian women and girls who are providing care to family and friends infected with HIV. They are looking to you for real advice that will make the difference between life and death. And you are not telling them the truth.
Condom usage has been shown to be the most effective and realistic prevention for AIDS. Faith based organizations do not promote their use. Their message is based on abstinence and fidelity.
In the United States, 10 states didn't even apply for funding for abstinence only programs, because they don't work. You can read the latest GAO report .
Among other things, results show that the US has high rates of pregnancy and birth among female adolscents when compared to other industrialized nations. And adolescents and young adults ranging in age from 15-24 make up half of the more than 19M new cases of STDs each year. President Bush is requesting that Congress fund another $242 million of taxpayer dollars for his discredited abstinence-only initiative.
Let's stop this handout of taxpayer dollars to religious organizations to promote their own agendas even those that have been discredited. People are dying of AIDS every day, young people are contracting STDs that will adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. Let's get real and promote the real solutions through programs that really work.
Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive
Comments
Here, here!
It's time they start to figure out that prayer isn't the cure for everything. Although it certainly provides hope and comfort to many people suffering, I'd yet to see a trip to church remove a cancerous tumor. Prayer hasn't even reduced my menstral cramps, so I hardly think it can cure AIDS.
And although the Millennial generation in the U.S. is less sexually active than the Boomers and GenXers were, and our teen abortion rate is the lowest it has been in 3 decades (although the Boomer and GenX-driven media makes today's teens and young adults look like sex crazed maniacs), asking for total abstinence is a joke.
I'm so tired of hearing "church this, prayer that" when it comes to REAL issues in our country and world. And the fact this lame ass administration has so grossly mixed church and state is amazing to me. It's screwing us out of stem cell research and many other things.
Oh, but wait. If I pray hard enough Grandpa's Alzheimer's will go away and my friend that suffers from MS will be cured.
And to think all these idiots have been suffering from these horrible diseases when simply "being born again" would have cured them.
Keep up the good work!
I say President Parillo in '08!
Lisa Orrell
Chickonomics Blog & Podcast:
www.Chickonomics.com
Posted by: Lisa Orrell | June 29, 2007 10:30 AM
And Laura, it is an insult to think that we can export our morality to another country without understanding the culture of that country. It seems easy for you to stand up there and tell young African girls "Just say no." Do you even have any idea of what their lives are really like? Why don't you dispense practical advice instead of spouting from your podium?
Posted by: Susan Wheeler | July 1, 2007 6:32 PM