From Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council:

As if parents did not have enough to contend with in protecting their children from the evils for pornography, they now have to face government-funded projects. Unfortunately, that's the "net" effect of Planned Parenthood's online venture, teenwire.com. The site, which is so offensive that FRC's Internet filter blocked it, was supposedly created as a resource for kids seeking "medically accurate" information. According to the nation's biggest abortion merchant, that information now includes normalizing pornography. Although Planned Parenthood is careful to state that it's illegal to ply children under 18 with sexually explicit images, that doesn't stop its "advice columnists" from telling kids that "many people use pornography as part of sex play."

On the "Ask the Experts" page, one young visitor says, "I look at porno sites... but people say looking at those sites affects your school work... Should I stop it? If I should, how?"

An "expert" responds, "There is no correlation between using pornography and getting bad grades in school."

Among other things, kids are encouraged to play games about issues from bisexuality to birth control. Another page gives teens the lowdown on having an abortion without their parents' consent. To teens struggling with homosexuality, Planned Parenthood says, "Having sex with girls and boys is normal and healthy." With over $300 million in taxpayer funds, the organization has the U.S. government to thank for helping to promote these messages. Contact your leaders and urge them to support Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. David Vitter's bills to zero out funding for groups like Planned Parenthood--else Title X programs may soon mean triple X!

Perkins isn't exaggerating. The pictures on the site are all drawings and graphics - not photographs, but some are very explicit, and, in my opinion, the material is not appropriate for unsupervised young teens. Much of the information provided is quite objectionable, like that warning about the "dangers" to homosexual and transgender students which are supposedly promoted by "abstinence only" programs, the "dangers" to students of parental notification laws in some states, requiring parents of young girls to be notified prior to their daughter getting an abortion.

Masturbation is encouraged, and tips are given for arousal. An enormous amount of information is provided for exploring whether or not a student is homosexual...students are told that if they're thinking about it, they might be "questioning," as opposed to being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.

All of this "information" and more is easily surfable to anyone who can locate the site - regardless of age. According to their "Terms of Use" page, users "registering as a member of teenwire.com to use certain features like Talk Back and Ask the Experts, sending an e-mail question, joining an e-mail mailing list, or submitting an article or a story" may be asked for information including "your sex, your age, and your city/state or part of the world you are from."

Cybercast News Service quotes Cris Clapp, congressional liaison for Enough is Enough, a nonprofit group that works to protect children and families from online pornography:

Although teenwire.com does make the point that pornography is illegal in the United States for people under 18, and although the editors mention that some may struggle with compulsive access to this content, overall teenwire.com has painted a picture that pornography is harmless fun...Unfortunately, parents are outsourcing their responsibility to talk to their kids about healthy sexuality to teachers, the culture and sites like teenwire.com, without any understanding about the sort of misguided messages that our children are hearing.

Also on Ft. Hard Knox

Labels: Planned Parenthood

Posted at 2/26/2008 07:06:00 PM