UPDATE: Maybe, and I say only "maybe," this is already solved. But I don't fully buy it. If you read this article, you see the Bushies now saying there is "no policy" banning any specific words. Well, yeah, there wasn't any "policy" banning words to start with. It was a "suggestion." A suggesetion tied to future funding. So the administration's response that "fixes" this problem may not be a fix at all. I say contact them anyway. You know next time they'll do this again with some other program.
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Please check out the action alert at the end of this article. It's a very good summary article of the entire Guckert scandal, but also the action alert is very important.
But (to continue on the theme of hypocrisy): the administration which boasts that it wants to "leave no child behind," and which pays whorish "journalists" to write that it wants to leave no child behind, announced last week that Charles Curie, the administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA) would not be allowed to attend a conference in Portland, Oregon organized by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) unless some changes were made in the program.
At issue? The title of a workshop on "Suicide Prevention Among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender Individuals." In the workshop, focus would be on gay kids who are often driven to suicide due to homophobic environments. The Bush administration demanded that, as a condition for Curie's participation, the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," and "transgender" be struck from the title. The regime, in deference to its Christian-fundamentalist homophobe-fascist supporters, can't be smeared by such contact, you see. Intimidated, the SPRC changed the title to "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations."
Such are the times we live in. Self-hating gays are welcome in the White House, and equally welcome to commit suicide. But discussion of gayness itself is highly unwelcome. If you'd like to protest this particular stupidity, try:
Charles Curie
Office of the Administrator, SAMHSA
Rockville, MD 20850
Tel: 240-276-2000
charles.curie@samhsa.hhs.gov
Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave. SW
Washington, D.D. 20201
Tel: 202-690-7000
Fax: 202-690-7203
