Sex-ed Scare Tactics
The Denver Post
January 12, 2003

If you can't win at the ballot box or in the courts, you can always try intimidation. That's what some anti-choice groups have done in the past, including murders and assaults on family planning clinics. Now, they're mounting an even larger and more organized effort, expanding their intimidation techniques to schools.

This campaign is carefully legal and follows standard bullying practices with threats, incessant and unreasonable demands, and attempts to overwhelm a political process. Schools are to be inundated with freedom of information requests, endless questions at board meetings, and insinuations of wrong-doing with legal liability. The goals are to eliminate sex education and counseling in schools and destroy family planning agencies.

Here's what the "Child Predators Project" (a misnomer if ever there were one, since this is solely an anti-choice organization) reported on its website. In 2001, the organization sent every school district in the country a questionnaire. One of the questions: "If a minor student seeks birth control or an abortion referral, are her parents informed? . . . are local or state authorities informed about the possibility that the student may be the victim of sexual abuse or statutory rape?"

The implication, of course, is that schools are legally required to make these reports. They aren't. The statement goes on, "Our first school system mailing provided some valuable reconnaissance. First, we confirmed our belief that these institutions are very risk-averse when it comes to litigation exposure. Second, the reactions we received proved how effective a direct mail campaign targeted at them can be."

In June of 2002, the organization "raised the stakes." The next mailing was "not asking questions but putting them [schools] on notice that any contact they have with a sexually active child-which is not followed by a report to the state-places the school district at risk for litigation. The tone. . .made it absolutely clear that they are now under a microscope and if they choose to ignore this warning they do so at great risk."

This is blatant intimidation. Like it or not, we know that many teen-agers are sexually active. Schools play an important role in providing sex education aimed at discouraging premarital sex, but also at ensuring that teens who decide to be sexually active avoid unwanted pregnancies and disease. Contact by school personnel with a sexually active child is not a crime. It is not illegal. It is of benefit to a child who may be at great risk.

As the "Project" points out, "this more aggressive tactic will eventually send shock waves through the nation's entire school system, not to mention Planned Parenthood. . .and thereby generate a substantial amount of free exposure for the entire Child Predators campaign."

The point is to so harass schools and school boards that they will no longer offer sex education or counseling to sexually active teens. It's astonishing that some anti-choice groups are also so opposed to sex education and family planning, the only effective means to making abortions unnecessary.

For parents, these tactics should be alarming. School boards need to address our children's educational needs, not the special interest program of a particular organization whose agenda isn't about kids' learning. That means that school boards, parents and schools must be prepared to take on these intimidation efforts.

First, be informed. Read the websites of groups like the Project (www.priestsforlife.com) and STOPP, aimed at crushing Planned Parenthood through the schools, of all places (www.stoppinternational.org). Second, parents and school boards need to focus on the task of educating kids by working together on important educational issues, building trust between the board and the community, and keeping the larger community fully informed of what is happening in the schools.

Third, school boards need to keep control of their meetings. No special interest group has a right to disrupt or dominate the agenda. Next, school districts need to have the legal ammunition to counter intimidation and threats. Finally, parents need to attend school board meetings to make sure education remains the top priority. If we want to keep our schools and our kids healthy, we can't allow bullying from any person or organization to obstruct the agenda of education.