Obama’s Evangelical Gravy Train

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/180435/obamas-evangelical-gravy-train?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20%28NEW%29%20-%20Headline%20Nation%20Feed%2020140708&newsletter=email_nation

The Obama administration has not only renewed contracts with groups actively engaged in the culture war but has created new funding streams for them to tap into. Rather than stripping faith-based groups of their funding or subjecting them to oversight, administration officials repackaged and refunded Bush-era programs through amendments to legislation. The Affordable Care Act set aside funds for abstinence-only through state block grants. Competitive abstinence grants to directly fund abstinence-only groups reappeared. And Obama expanded states’ ability to use leftover TANF funds, slotted for work programs, to be funneled instead to marriage promotion and abstinence-only programs.

The abstinence-only funding provision in the ACA was a compromise forged during the pitched battle to pass healthcare legislation, when Senator Orrin Hatch inserted an amendment to give $250 million to abstinence-only programs, funds that would be distributed as state block grants by HHS. But two years later, without such pressure, the Obama administration created another new $5 million pot of money for abstinence-only, so-called “competitive” abstinence grants also administered by HHS. And last year, Hatch inserted yet another $250 million pool of funding for abstinence-only programs into the so-called “Medicare fix” bill, designed to prevent a pay cut to doctors. The result is that since Obama took office his administration has awarded over $170 million in abstinence-only grants, $36.8 million last year alone.

Public health experts have long discounted abstinence-only programs as ineffective. While there is scattered evidence that the approach, used with very young adolescents, can delay adolescents’ first sexual experience, there’s no reliable evidence that it reduces either teen pregnancies or sexual transmitted diseases. A 2005 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that virginity pledges, a staple of religious abstinence-only programming, did not decrease the occurrence of teen sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and resulted in pledge-takers not seeking medical attention once infected. And in 2011, a definitive nine-year study by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that “these programs have no beneficial impact on young people’s sexual behavior.”

Adolescent health advocacy groups have pushed the Obama administration to stop funding these ineffective, ideological programs, asking that such funds be redirected toward comprehensive sex ed instead. In 2012, for example, when materials produced by the evangelical group Heritage Keepers were added to a list of federally approved abstinence-only curricula, Advocates for Youth (AFY), which promotes comprehensive sexuality education, issued a statement saying, “The Obama Administration’s endorsement of this abstinence-only-until marriage program runs in direct contradiction to its stated commitment to the health and well-being of young people and, quite possibly, its promise to uphold science and evidence.” The program, AFY found, uses virginity pledges, fear, sexual shaming and activities like “envisioning your wedding” as teaching tools, and eschews any discussion of condoms or contraception. Yet the funding for such programs has continued.

[theHandpuppet]

1. Wow - this portion was a real eye-opener

...On March 24, just a month after Ugandan President Museveni signed a bill making homosexuality a crime punishable by life in prison, Obama administration officials announced that they were increasing military aid to Uganda in its effort to quell rebel forces. Human rights groups criticized the move, arguing that the aid offered Museveni “legitimacy” after he supported a law that has been widely condemned for violating human rights. The same day, a State Department spokesperson quietly announced that the administration would also “demonstrate our support for the LGBT community in Uganda” by shifting $6.4 million in funding away from the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda, whose actions, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said, “don’t reflect our values.” That may be the understatement of the year.

According to Ugandan AIDS activists, administration officials had been told a year and a half earlier that the Inter-Religious Council and other State Department grantees were actively promoting the antigay bill. In September 2012, several LGBT and AIDS advocates in Uganda were invited to a call with representatives from USAID, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator and other US officials to discuss HIV service delivery to vulnerable communities. According to minutes taken by one of the participants and conversations with others on the call, the US officials were warned that several grantees and subcontractors through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, commonly referred to as PEPFAR, were visibly supporting the bill, undermining service delivery to men who have sex with men, or otherwise fomenting anti-gay activities. US officials asked the Ugandan activists to provide information on these actions by the US government’s so-called “implementing partners,” and told them that such evidence might lead to an investigation by US officials....

[Mnemosyne]

13. Very telling, isn't it? Ugh. nt

[Android3.14]

2. Pathetic

While there are worse Presidents, there are none more disappointing.

[Doctor_J]

3. wonder why a lot of people don't vote?

[NeoNerd]

4. Fappy the tax-funded Xtian anti-wank Dolphin busted for public wankery

...they are saying on FB. Hmmm? Is the tax-paying pubic being wanked off by this "story"? Appears to be parody punditry. But at this point in the Era of the Great Republican Degeneracy, it is - alas - plausible.

Christian Anti-Masturbation Group’s Mascot Arrested For Public Masturbation

Phoenix, AZ — In an ironic twist of a fate, a mascot for a Christian anti-masturbation group was arrested Sunday for masturbating in public. The organization recently finished a federally funded 31-city nationwide school tour which it says focused on educating both children and parents about the dangerous consequences of masturbation.

Fappy The Anti-Masturbation Dolphin, whose real name is 35-year-old Paul Horner, was arrested on Sunday at Metta Yoga in Phoenix after employees notified police about a man with no pants on peering through office windows.



http://nationalreport.net/fappy-the-dolphin-arrested-for-public-masturbation/

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. See, from last year and this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018412901
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/11038333

[Joe Bacon]

8. National Report is a satirical site.

But Fappy is still making me laugh my ass off!

[mopinko]

6. now he's the king of uganda, too.

another header, a more accurate header, would be-US continues to fund.....

obama isnt a king. people who are elected, even from gerrymandered bullshit districts, are still a part of the american democracy, for better or for worse. they still get to lard up a big bill like this for their pals. its how you get votes in a democracy.
sheesh.

[bullwinkle428]

7. K&R. And didn't some of these assholes involved with the "faith-based initiatives"

turn around the other day on the heels of the Hobby Lobby decision to push for more discrimination against LGBTers?

[Bluenorthwest]

9. The Obamas are flat out fundies themselves. During the 08 campaign they employed and endorsed

as surrogates several of the country's most viciously anti gay preachers and 'entertainers' and when they met criticism for that, they basically told us that they were very religious, their religious pals would always come before the rights of others, if we wanted to be 'at the table' we had to kiss the ass of hate preachers for the pleasure of the Obamas.
They never apologized for that they said, never apologized for the hiring of McClurkin who had grown infamous for calling for war on gay people, accusing us of child murders. They never so much as said sorry.
Good people make amends for wrongs they have done.


I am SICK of having to vote for these anti gay 'Moderates' this Party keeps serving up. Sick of it. Now it's Hillary, who spent 17 years publically opposing the basic equality of her fellow Americans while claiming she does this because she's so religious. Yeah, right. She does it because she's a bigot.

[geek tragedy]

12. "the Obamas"

So, are you hating on Sasha and Malia, or just Michelle with that odd choice of phraseology?

Seems pretty obvious that Barack Obama was guilty of cowardly pandering on marriage equality.

The idea that he and Michelle (unclear if you're lumping in Sasha and Malia) are rightwing undies is about as credible as the reports he's affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is 2014, not 2008.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. Michelle Obama, I don't include minor children in politics like you do, that's disgusting to me

Michelle Obama is a grown woman who endorsed the employment of Donnie McClurkin, a hate preacher who says gay people kill children, so Christians have to wage war against us. When asked about her endorsement of him she shouted 'He's my favorite' and that was that. This man, he went on 700 Club with Pat Robertson and declared war on my community, accused us of murder.
Michelle and Barack Obama followed up that insult by selecting Rick Warren for their Inauguration, days after Warren had equated all gay relationships to pedophilia.

Adults who endorse bigots should be held to account. Your contention is that they should not be held to account but you fail to make a case as to why that is the case.

And if you'd like, I can link to you using the term 'the Clintons' to mean Mr and Mr Clinton, not Chelsea because that is a convention of the language. You, I and everyone else do it all the time. As you well know.
If people are not fundamentalists, why would they hire and refuse to apologize for hiring bigoted, raving, fundamentalist hate preachers? Just to get elected? He was already elected when they picked Warren. How do you explain that?

Those events Barack and Michelle produced are the worst things I have seen this Party do to a group of people. Do not think for a moment that any of that is forgotten or that it can be vanished by idiotic word games. The level of shitty discourse you straights engage in around important issues is galling.

[geek tragedy]

16. Not sure why you're responding to a 1 year old post, but

it seems pretty clear that the Obama campaign got caught in a combination of unprincipled pandering and failure to do due diligence with McClurkin.

Warren seemed to be a case of him trying his unity schtick by reaching out to bigots, finding common ground, etc. so, more pandering. I wasn't aware Michelle was responsible for choosing inauguration speakers.

I am not in a position to tell you that you should forgive or let this stuff go. It was shameful.

I can tell you that trying to impute all of the beliefs of every speaker and entertainer a politician hires to that politician's private belief system (and that of his/her spouse) is a turbo logical fallacy. It's faulty analysis to rely upon one or two data points to the exclusion of all others.

[Enthusiast]

10. Kicked and recommended!

[LiberalLoner]

11. I am begging anyone here,

To please give me a reason to believe the Dominionists have not already won the battle.

Please give me a reason to hope, because I feel "the Family" is in charge and won't give up power without basically a war.

[betterdemsonly]

14. It's like how jobs outsourcers continue to get tax breaks

and how Obama's democratic fcc appointments are the ones moving to kill net neutrality. Why does Obama's rhetoric seldom match his actions and why do so few progressives call him on it?