Everyone has heard about the 4parents.gov debacle, where the Bush Administration pushed its abstinence-only agenda under the guise of "information for parents" and told parents who think their kids may be gay to go to a therapist to fix them.
You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Next month, the Bush Administration will introduce an online clearinghouse on marriage research and resources. The National Council on Family Relations will be building the website and supplying the research. The Bush White House gave NCFR one condition -- absolutely no information on gay marriage, civil unions, or gay families. None. Nada. Don't even think about it. Marriage is great -- as long as you're straight.
Small problem -- NCFR has rules. Their rules say that NCFR's Executive Director shall NOT allow:
Practices, activites, decisions, or organizational circumstances which violate the Board's value that NCFR provide a context supportive of diversity by race, ethnicity, culture, age, gender, religion, physical ability, country of origin, and sexual orientation.So you'd think, given their very clear rules, NCFR would say thanks, Bush White House, but no thanks.
You'd be wrong.
NCFR's Board of Directors -- the one with the "value" -- and its Executive Director decided back in September to take nearly $5 million (900K per year for 5 years) of your tax money to break its own rules and make sure everyone has the information they need to have healthy marriages, except gay people -- even though gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, civil unions are the norm in Vermont, and we're almost there in Connecticut. But they never bothered to mention they're breaking their own rules to do it.
So the NCFR has shown us their "values" aren't values when a sweet government contract is in play. And members is MA, VT, and CT - go screw. Oh wait, that violates the Bush abstinence-only policy.
We have an opportunity to let NCFR know we're not going to stand for this. NCFR lists contact information for their Executive Director and Board. Tell them to enforce their own rules, stand up for the values they claim to have, and reject this contract.
Executive Director: Michael Benjamin mbenjamin@ncfr.org 763-231-2891
President: Gay Kitson kitson@uakron.edu 330-972-6863
President-elect: Pamela A. Monroe pmonroe@lsu.edu 225-578-3885
Martha Farrell Erickson mferick@umn.edu 612-825-9496
Lawrence H. Ganong ganongl@missouri.edu 573-882-6852
Deborah B. Gentry dgentry@ilstu.edu 309-438-8748
Robert Reyes rreyes@messiah.edu 717-766-2511 x7297
Jane B. Tornatore jbtornatore@comcast.net 206-706-7714
Marcie J. Brooke marcie.brooke@spps.org 651-293-5330
Julie K. Kohler kohler@knightfdn.org 305-908-2638
We also should ask where the advocates stand on this, and what they'll say to NCFR.
