Commentary by Joey Kerlin
When we are children, our parents instruct us about life. Why the grass is green. How to shop for groceries. Why we have to pay taxes. How to drive a car. But of all the things that parents teach their children, instilling in them a sense of morality is the most important.
But there comes a day in a child's life which puts all those years of instruction to a test; a day when parents must simply have faith that they have taught their children well enough. This is the day that children leave home and go to college. In college, these young adults no longer have the immediate example of their parents to witness. And almost immediately, college students are approached by people offering all kinds of opportunities. Clubs to join. Protests to attend. Sports to participate in. Sadly, many of the things they will be approached with will not be so wholesome.
How unwholesome? Here's just one example: "Live music! Guest speakers, games, sex toys, condoms, lube and a raffle for great prizes!"
This is the kind of message you might expect from an advertisement for the premier of a pornographic film at a tawdry theater in the bad part of town. One would assume that an advertisement for a sex fair decorated with phallic balloons and condom roses is a promotion for a seedy night club or perhaps a porn shop.
However, these statements weren't obtained from the red light district of town, but instead from fliers at college campuses across the nation. The fliers advertise educational fairs and "safe sex" benefits organized by a group that claims to be a health care organization. These events and activities are brought to our children's campuses by none other than America's number one abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
On Valentine's Day at Tufts University, Planned Parenthood encouraged students to mark on a map the places in which they have had sex. A similar map asked students, "Where have you touched yourself at Tufts?" Several games were also featured, including a phallic ring toss and a station for students to decorate "suggestively-shaped cookies."
The Planned Parenthood group at Colorado State University ran an event that, as the school's newspaper reported, featured a "throng of tables covered in condoms, candy and other bedroom fare." One table prominently featured whips and handcuffs and free sex toys were given out as prizes.
Even more recently, at the University of Central Florida, Planned Parenthood ran an event that was sponsored by sex toy manufacturers and pornography shops. Gift bags were filled with free condoms, sexual lubricants and coupons from these businesses. The event featured games such as vibrator races.
As sex fairs continue to spread across college campuses, rates of abortion and sexually transmitted disease continue to increase. Currently 52 percent of women in the United States who abort their children are younger than 25. Nearly half of all new STD diagnoses in the country involve young people ages 14-24. Among sexually experienced people in their twenties, 31 percent of men and 20 percent of women had more than one sexual partner in the past year alone. If this behavior continues, the ramifications are dire.
So why does Planned Parenthood go to college campuses to instruct students about sexual activity, sex toys and masturbation? What does any of this kind of behavior have to do with Planned Parenthood's health care goals? The answer is: Nothing. Clearly, teaching such behavior has nothing to do with health or safety. This is all part of Planned Parenthood's marketing program. According to its own reports, 70 percent of Planned Parenthood's customer base is composed of people 25 or younger. Planned Parenthood knows that it can't sell its contraceptives or abortions unless people are engaging in uninhibited sexual activity.
The web site for the school newspaper of Colorado State University featured a poll for students that asked, "What do you hope to experience most on spring break?" More than half of the students who replied said they were hoping to have sex. This poll was taken only one week after Planned Parenthood hosted a sex fair on the campus. It seems the marketing campaign is working like a charm.
Not only is Planned Parenthood allowed to market its business by pushing sex on campus, but schools are using tuition and student fee money to pay it to do so. Just last year, Virginia Commonwealth University funded Planned Parenthood's VOX college group to the tune of over $18,000, the fourth highest funding level for non-student government organizations on the campus.
Many people think Planned Parenthood is a benevolent health care organization that is just interested in teaching "medically accurate" sex education. In reality, Planned Parenthood is a business that will lie and exploit our nation's young people just as long as it can continue to pay its administrators six-figure salaries and make millions of dollars in profit every year. It is time that the truth be revealed and that people stop believing its lies.
It is a parent's role to protect; when children are in grade school, one of a parent's biggest fears is that some pervert may exploit the innocence of a child. And yet this is exactly what is going on at colleges every year.
However, Planned Parenthood has its VOX chapters on over 200 college campuses across the country. Protecting students from this organization is a bigger job than one set of parents can accomplish. It is a job for all of us. College students will not be safe from these sexual predators until Planned Parenthood is no longer able to ply its sex trade.
Now is the time for:
- Parents of college students to alert school administrators that they do not want Planned Parenthood invited onto the campus, much less funded
- College students, themselves, to publicly oppose the influence of Planned Parenthood by protesting its events and choosing to live chaste lives
- Citizens in every community to oppose government funding of Planned Parenthood
- Educators to stop believing the lies of so-called medically accurate sex education and rise up to expose Planned Parenthood for what it is
- The entire Christian community to pray for the total demise of Planned Parenthood.
It is only by all of us working together that we can hope to stop Planned Parenthood. We must begin today before more of our nation's innocence is lost.
Release issued: 30 Mar 07
