The program has already come under fire for being booked and presented in probable violation of Michigan laws related to sex-education programming. A Michigan Messenger investigation found that two districts — Homer and Olivet — failed to get the program approved by the sex-education advisory board and the school board, while Marshall schools failed to get approval of the state board of education. All three district failed to provide parents the opportunity to opt their youth from the school assembly, as required by Michigan law.

Based on a review of the presentation, called Wise Choices and presented by Barb and Rick Wise, Michigan Messenger was able to identify a series of pieces of misinformation about HIV as well as a statement mis-characterizing a University of Chicago study on sex and relationships. A video of the presentation is available at Access Vision, the Battle Creek cable access station. It is listed as Wise Choices and was uploaded to the site on Oct. 17 at 4:47 p.m.

The program reported that all forms of sexual behavior transmit HIV, that only four body fluids transmit the virus, that HIV can survive in general human environments outside of the body and that saliva only can be infectious.

In addition, Barb told students that the University of Chicago study (PDF) found that married couples had more gratifying sex lives than couples in dating relationships or those co-habitating. But the study says the exact opposite:

“An unexpected finding, contrary to prior research, was that non-marital relationships, such as cohabitation and dating, were associated with higher levels of subjective sexual well-being than marriages, particularly for men.”

The Wises did not return an email seeking comment about the alleged misinformation.

The training of Barb Wise in abstinence-only education is also under scrutiny. She is certified by a program called W.A.I.T. Training in Colorado. That program was blasted by a 2004 report (PDF) from U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman of California for providing false information about HIV.

But experts who Michigan Messenger shared the video of the presentation with generally condemned the presentation.

“Distorting scientific data is, unfortunately, the way of all cynical politicians,” said Gloria Brame, a certified clinical sexologist who holds a doctorate in human sexuality. “However, in this case, it could simply be the blind leading the blind, as one must assume that the very people who are lobbying for abstinence ed are themselves ignorant on the science of sex, and thus the most likely people to misunderstand or misuse scientific data. I realize there may well be physicians and psychologists on board with the abstinence issue in Michigan but, again, I’ll say that this is about religious belief dictating opinion, and not the facts.

“Again, abstinence ed programs omit the scientific data and replace it with religion-based beliefs about how God expects people to behave. That should not be taught in public schools, but in churches.”

Jeff Montgomery, a spokesperson for the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance, also condemned the presentation.

“I agree that if her audience are high school students, this is awful. Especially those who are coming to terms with their sexual identity. They are left feeling, perhaps, like freaks. Not to mention the misinterpretation of the HIV information,” the Detroit based activist said, noting that the program excluded messages for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, focusing only on no sex before marriage messaging. “The implied (if not overt) demonizing of unmarried sexual activity and the promotion of strict monogamy does nothing to promote healthy, informed sexual choices. This woman’s presentation is not helpful or healthy. Sexual discussion is far too important to be left to inexperienced, subjective hands. We know more today about sexual development and sexual diversity than at any time in history. We should encourage serious, comprehensive and intelligent sex education. The health and safety of generations are on the line.”

Marshall Public Schools issued a statement saying the concerns raised were something they would take into account in future considerations of the program.

But Olivet School officials did not take well to the concerns and criticisms raised. In a letter to Messenger, Olivet Interim Assistant Superintendent Brooke Judd wrote:

For the most part, everyone I spoke to felt as if the decision to bring in the Wise presentation was in line with our community values. I acknowledge that we did not follow proper procedures in bringing them to present to our students, and if the opportunity ever arises again, we will be sure to meet all legal obligations prior to their presentation.

Olivet High School Health Instructor Gabe Priddy went further. In an email to Michigan Messenger, he alleged the questions about the misinformation — which were documented with links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the University of Chicago study itself — were “loaded.”

“The questions you raise have more to do with your political agenda against Mr. and Mrs. Wise than they are based on facts,” Priddy said. “In my professional opinion the information given was accurate according the training I have received from the State of Michigan. It was also a very powerful and responsible message for teenagers to hear.”

Priddy also claimed the information presented by the Wises was in line with the health education text book used in Olivet Schools.

Michigan Department of Education officials did not return multiple emails seeking clarification of what information should be taught in Michigan schools.

“If he was educated in reproductive health, then he knows the number one method of prevention of HIV is condoms. If they don’t educate about condoms, they are not educating about how to prevent HIV. It’s that simple,” says sexologist Brame. “It has no basis in science or fact as an effective approach to adolescent sexuality. Of all the things that those speakers addressed, actually almost none of it addressed core issues in sexual health. Rather, it was a personal narrative, telling the stories of their lives as a way of proving to gullible teenagers that sex leads to disease and death. It is a negative and hateful message to send young people who are struggling to control and deal with new feelings and desires.”

The law, if passed, would repeal a one-year-old law that requires schools that teach sexual-health courses to teach both abstinence and contraception. Abstinence-only education was banned while Democrats controlled both state chambers, but in 2010, House and Senate control flipped to the Republicans.

Under Senate Bill 237, schools would be required to teach abstinence is the preferred choice for unmarried students and would have to discuss the socioeconomic benefits of marriage. The bill would allow schools to teach about birth control, but it is not a recommended topic of discussion. The Senate also adopted an amendment preventing schools from discriminating against students based on their race, gender, sexual orientation or if they have disabilities or are already sexually active.

From the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

Its chief sponsor, Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), said her proposal would give school districts more of a say in writing their curricula.

“This is about small government at its best,” she said. “This is about local control.”

But Democrats said changing the law could lead to spikes in sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancies.

“What’s before us is whether we want children to learn sex education … from our schools or from a Google search,” said Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee).

Democrats noted Milwaukee’s teen birthrate dropped after the city and the United Way of Greater Milwaukee launched a 2008 program that teaches young people about both abstinence and contraception. The city’s birthrate dropped from 52 per 1,000 teens in 2006 to 35.7 per 1,000 in 2010.

But Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) argued the drop in the city’s teen birthrate was because Milwaukee Public Schools had put more of an emphasis on abstinence.

A federal sex-education bill introduced to Congress on Wednesday, would prohibit federal funding to all programs that enforce abstinence-only instruction without offering students “age-appropriate” information about “life-saving” prevention methods. State schools only offering abstinence-only education would thus be ineligible for federal sex-education dollars.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduced House Resolution 3324, or the “Real Education for Healthy Youth Act” into both chambers of Congress on Wednesday. The bill would require student instruction on both abstinence and contraception. Information taught to youth and young adults will have to be “medically accurate and complete,” meaning the information provided to students will have been verified and supported by scientific research. This bill also prevents federally funded programs from withholding “life-saving” information about the efficacy of using condoms and other contraceptives correctly and consistently.

“Research has shown programs that combine information about abstinence and contraception effectively delay the onset of sexual intercourse, reduce the number of sexual partners, and increase contraceptive use among teens,” said Lee in a statement introducing the bill. “These programs also reduce unintended pregnancy and the transmission of STIs, including HIV.”

“Growing up isn’t easy and our kids find themselves in tough situations every day,” said Lautenberg.  “They need all the information to make smart choices and ‘abstinence-only’ programs don’t work.  It’s time to bring sex education up-to-date to reflect the real life situations facing young Americans.”

The “Real Education for Healthy Youth Act” is a follow-up to H.R. 1085, or the “Repealing Ineffective and Incomplete Abstinence-Only Program Funding Act of 2011,” which was introduced by Lee and Lautenberg earlier this year. That bill, which has 44 co-sponsors in the House and 10 in the Senate, would simply eliminate funding for abstinence-only education programs, while the “Real Education” bill goes into great detail about what sex-ed programs will have to address in order to receive federal money.

Specifically, the bill would prevent federal dollars from funding health-education programs that:

• “deliberately withhold life-saving information about HIV”;
• “are medically inaccurate or have been scientifically shown to be ineffective”;
• “promote gender stereotypes”;
• “are insensitive and unresponsive to the needs of sexually active youth or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender youth”; or
• “are inconsistent with the ethical imperatives of medicine and public health.”

Grant proposals would be evaluated by the the Office of Adolescent Health and would be rewarded to groups proposing “comprehensive sex education,” defined as a program that includes age- and developmentally-appropriate information on a range of topics related to sexuality and human development, including: relationships, decision-making, communication, abstinence, contraception, disease, pregnancy-prevention, gender identity, sexual orientation, dating violence and bullying. All information must be inclusive of lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and straight people. Sex-education under this bill would be extended to university-age people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would be involved establishing a common set of performance measures to evaluate the effectiveness of grant projects funded through this legislation.

The bill makes note of the “rights of young people to information in order to make healthy and responsible decisions about their sexual health.”

In September, Lee introduced legislation aimed at addressing the ongoing criminalization of persons living with HIV infection. Monica Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), told The American Independent Lee and Lautenberg’s new bill attempts to address the stigma that many persons infected with HIV face in our society.

“It’s problematic when we put the burden on others and it’s dis-empowering … to HIV-infected or people infected with other sexually transmitted diseases,” said Rodriguez, a sexuality educator. “Good sexuality helps people to understand their responsibility to protect themselves.”

SIECUS is among several reproductive-rights and LGBT-advocacy groups that are supporting the “Real Education” bill, including Advocates for Youth, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Chocie America, the Guttmacher Institute, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rodriguez said the bill will likely see opposition from organizations that support and benefit from abstinence-only education funding, but certain provisions, she said, should not be negotiable.

“It is unethical not to provide young people with life saving information” Rodriguez said. “Sexual education needs to be based on science and data and reality as opposed to our fantasy about how we wish the world was. We have issues and this bill attempts to address some of them.”

HB 3027 would amend the state school code and require that each class that teaches sex education and/or discusses sexual intercourse in sixth through 12th grades must include instruction on both abstinence and contraception as preventative methods against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Additionally, the sex-ed instruction would need to be evidenced-based and medically accurate; however, school districts that do not currently provide sex education will not be required to teach it.

In districts that do provide classes or courses on sex ed, teachers will have to teach students abstaining from sexual intercourse ”is a responsible and positive decision and is the only protection that is 100% effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) when transmitted sexually.” This is a departure from current sex-ed instruction, which emphasizes that “abstinence until marriage” is the “expected norm” and gives no information on contraception.

The Chicago-based Illinois Right to Life is urging state representatives to oppose HB 3027, calling it a “dangerous sex education bill.” The Illinois Family Institute, based in Carol Stream, Ill., has similarly called on all Illinois senators to oppose the bill, because the group says this bill is “yet another attempt by legislator-ideologues to use public money to normalize sexual immorality and perversion by inculcating children and teens with subjectivist, relativist assumptions about sexuality.”

The Lake County Right to Life, based in Grayslake, Ill., recently had an editorial published in the Chicago blog Chicago Now, claiming HB 3027 will promote abortion:

It mandates curriculum promoting abortion, stating that it is legal, safe, and parents don’t have to know about it.

It calls for “medically accurate” sex education, but the curriculum misinforms students by telling them that “morning after pills” don’t cause abortion.

It will force abstinence programs out of the public schools by taking away local control and mandating the teaching of contraception and condoms.

In addition to support from reproductive-rights groups such as Planned Parenthood and National Organization for Women, LGBT-rights and HIV/AIDS activists have also promoted the revised sex-education law. Early this month, the Chicago Urban League hosted a community forum for groups including the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Black Women Reproductive Justice and  Chicago Black Gay Men Caucus to promote the bill in light of recent rising cases of STDs among Illinois’ black population.

One of the speakers at the event, dubbed “Stop Transmitting Silence,” was Rush Medical Center’s Dr. Kimberly Smith, who was quoted
href=”http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=34184″>by the Windy City Times saying:

“I think we have to get past all this moral crap, and really focus on the reality: Kids are having sex, and they’re experimenting. We can stem the tide of future [HIV] infections by identifying who’s infected now and making sure they’re on therapy. If you’re on therapy, not only are you living a long life, but you don’t have to worry about passing it on to your partner.”

In the run-up to the debt ceiling vote earlier this month, FRC president Tony Perkins penned a column urging cuts to government spending.

“It is easy to lose sight of the spiritual and moral implications of our current debt crisis,” Perkins wrote. “Christians must stand up against an immoral political regime which indebts us to such foreign powers as the anti-Christian Communist Chinese. Our leaders must cut spending, cut the debt, and end fiscal obligations to oppressive regimes.”

The group opposes an increase in tax revenues, especially allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. The group has repeatedly decried “government waste.” And earlier this week in a “memo the movement,” the group launched an effort to pressure the “Super Committee,” a group of Congress members charged with reducing the federal deficit to cut programs instead of enacting “job-killing tax increases.”

But the group’s affiliates have raked in government funds for controversial programs such as abstinence-only until marriage and healthy-marriage initiatives over the past decade, state and federal records show.

The Family Action Council of Tennessee received $10,000 from the state of Tennessee to host anti-pornography workshop in 2008. FACT supports cutting government spending. They also insinuate that the poor should pay more. “It seems to me that a major problem in Washington is that right at 50 percent of Americans no longer pay federal taxes,” wrote the group’s head David Fowler.

“Sexually oriented businesses often prey upon urban communities and those located along interstate routes and major state highways, especially where there are few zoning restrictions,” the group said on the event invite. “Adult businesses are now pursuing their agenda through their own state association and have a lobbyist promoting their interests at the state Capitol. This is not an ‘industry’ your community can afford to ignore.”

The Georgia Family Council has received about $165,000 a year from the Georgia Department of Human Services as part of a healthy-marriage initiative. The initiative is funded through a five-year, $960,000 grant from the federal Administration on Children and Families to the state of Georgia. The grant began in 2005 and ran through June of this year.

The organization acknowledges some good from government programs, but its president Randy Hicks notes in a recent blog post, “Big government may also hinder compassionate collaboration at the community level when its ubiquitous, taxpayer-funded programs role into town and crowd out private charitable organizations who are working to meet, not just material needs, but often emotional and spiritual needs as well.”

The Oklahoma Family Policy Council, which closed in March of this year for lack of funds, took in $100,000 a year through 2008 beginning as recently as 2005.

The American Independent News Network has also previously identified government funding for family policy councils in Indiana, Iowa and South Carolina.

The Indiana Family Institute received $50,000 from the Administration for Children and Families in 2005.

The Iowa Family Policy Center is part of the FAMiLY Leader, a group that has become heavily involved in the Republican presidential race. The group received $3 million in federal funding between 2004 and 2011. The FAMiLY Leader asked presidential candidates to sign a pledge that included a “commitment to downsizing government.”

The Palmetto Family Council in South Carolina received $1.2 million between 2008 and 2010 as part of the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program through the Administration of Children and Families.

Some state affiliates gain access to state and federal funds more indirectly, as well.

The Wisconsin Family Council, now called Wisconsin Family Action, partnered with the Foundation for a Great Marriage under a healthy-marriage initiative grant in the late-2000s.

“We recently worked with Foundation for a Great Marriage to kick off a ‘Think Marriage’ campaign by mailing to nearly 90,000 Wisconsin households a ‘Marriage Myth-Buster Guide,’” wrote the group’s Julaine Appling. “This 14-page publication busts 5 common marriage myths to smithereens, based on solid social-science research—research that continues to show that God’s plan for marriage and family is the very best plan for all of us. The challenge is for each of us to become, as the guide says, a Marriage Champion! The ‘Marriage Myth-Buster Guides’ are especially useful because they can be used with so many audiences. Wisconsin Family Council has already received numerous requests from pastors who want to use it in their churches, public-school teachers who want to use it in their classrooms, and just last week we had an individual contact us about using it in a crisis pregnancy center.”

Foundation for a Great Marriage has also been blogging in support of WFC, particularly around an anti-gay marriage amendment in the state.

Both groups were part of a lobbying campaignin 2005 to get $200 million from the federal government for marriage initiatives. The Foundation for a Great Marriage got $5.5 million in federal marriage grants between 2006 and 2010. While Wisconsin Family Action benefited from government funds, it calls for cuts to programs in Wisconsin.

The Center for Arizona Policy received a $210,000 settlement with the state of Arizona in 2009. The state settled on an abortion-related case where some abortion clinic regulations enacted by the state were ruled constitutional and others ruled unconstitutional. CAP was allowed to recoup “operating expenditures, insurance and related charges, and gross proceeds and payments to attorneys.”

Correction, August 22, 4:00 p.m.: This article originally included Rocky Mountain Family Council as an FRC affiliate. RMFC is an independent organization not affiliated with FRC. The story has been updated to reflect these changes.

Austin LifeGuard — the education arm of Austin LifeCare, a Christian faith-based nonprofit CPC operator — offers four-hour “abstinence-based comprehensive” presentations for middle and high school students. The program has something of a checkered reputation since 2009, when the Austin Chronicle highlighted the program’s flaws and a study of sex education in Texas by the watchdog organization Texas Freedom Network found holes in the curriculum when referring to STDs.

David Wiley, a professor of health education at Texas State University and co-author of the TFN report, says the Austin LifeGuard curriculum generally casts sexual activity before marriage in a negative light, exaggerates the failure rates of contraception and discusses STDs but not how to get tested.

“There is clearly a lot of obfuscating, dodging of words, manipulating statistics, and use of nuanced semantics,” said Wiley, a former president of the American School Health Association. “It is essentially political posturing.”

According to the TFN report, the curriculum’s flaws include:

- ALG incorrectly tells students that “condoms provide little to no benefit in preventing the spread of HPV.”

- The curriculum states, “there were only two STD’s before 1960,” when in fact there were only two STDs commonly tested for before the 1960s, though there were plenty of others out there.

- When discussing failure rates of condoms, ALG fails to point out that operator error is the most common reason for failure, not faulty condoms.

- An ominous reference to “post-abortion effects,” without specifying what those may be.

‘A health issue’

Pam Cobern, executive director of Austin LifeCare, dismissed the criticisms of the ALG program. “This is a health issue, not a political issue, and not even a religious issue,” she said.

“We talk about abstinence but also about contraception, which not everyone does,” Cobern said. “We show them the condom box and let them read it. We try to help them make their own case for abstinence, we feel kids are intelligent enough to make the right choice when given all the information.”

Around the time LifeGuard came under criticism in 2009, the Austin Independent School District developed a review process for its outside sex education speakers and ended its relationship with ALG.

That happened for a few reasons, said AISD’s School Health Coordinator Tracy Lunoff, chief among them the medical inaccuracies and lack of evidence-based information in the LifeGuard program. Lunoff said AISD heard concerns about ALG’s religious and faith-based content.

Today, three organizations work with the district to offer supplementary sex education, including the City of Austin’s Maternal and Child Health Department and Planned Parenthood.

But even when aware of LifeGuard’s medical inaccuracies, some school districts have not rid themselves of the flawed curriculum. That’s the case in Liberty Hill Independent School District, 30 miles northwest of Austin.

The district’s School Health Advisory Committee (SHAC) recently reexamined the ALG presentation against other sex ed programs and opted for a different one, but Liberty Hill ISD curriculum director Claudeane Braun said they plan to keep ALG in the mix as supplemental instruction.

Braun said the SHAC is aware of the bad science in LifeGuard’s presentation — including “skewed” numbers regarding condom failure rates and “overstating” the negative consequences of sex, she said.

“When we went over the curriculum carefully, we felt like it didn’t go far enough in informing our students,” Braun said. “It skirted around some of the important issues and the dangers of having sex with multiple partners. Their program numbers look inflated over some of the others, but we didn’t think anything was too far off base.”

The district maintains its relationship with ALG because students respond well to the program’s speakers, who tend to be relatively young and relatable, she said. “We are a conservative, Church-based community,” said Braun. “The pastor of one of our largest churches is on our SHAC.”

“What’s really important to us is just making sure the kids listen and respond,” she said.

Lax oversight, uninvolved communities

The Texas Independent previously reported on Austin LifeCare’s violations for mingling religious and educational materials, and found the state-funded nonprofit’s leaders made overt references to Christianity during an informational training session.

CPC reviews are typically pre-announced and conducted by the state contractor in charge with running the program. Oversight over Texas’ sex education curriculum is lax as well.

Evaluations rest with the SHACs, composed of concerned parents with little to no training on how to evaluate health curricula, said the TFN report co-author Wiley — but he found that most districts don’t even bother consulting with the community groups. Some 81 percent of districts were unable to produce any formal SHAC recommendation on sex education, bypassing a Texas law requiring input on sex education from the SHACs.

Monica Rodriguez, president of the Sexuality Information and Education Center of the United States (SIECUS), says Austin LifeGuard’s factual holes are in keeping with a national trend among CPC-backed sex-ed programs.

“Most often crisis pregnancy centers teach abstinence-only until marriage, and when they do attempt some sort of sexual education, more often than not, what they do is leave out critical information,” she said.

According to the TFN study, more than 95 percent of Texas public school districts teach abstinence-only or nothing at all when it comes to sex education. Texas receives more federal dollars for abstinence-based sex education than any other state.

In conjunction with Gov. Rick Perry, the Department of State Health Services opted out of applying for $4.4 million from the federally administered State Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which helps finance evidence-based sex education — both abstinence and contraception — to prevent teen pregnancy, the Texas Tribune reported in 2010.

Meanwhile, Texas did apply for $5.4 million in federal funding for abstinence-only education. But the federal pot for abstinence-based funding has dwindled, Rodriguez said, leaving the majority of CPC sex-ed programs, like LifeGuard, to rely on private funds. (ALC director Cobern agrees: since Community-Based Abstinence Education funding was cut last year, she said they’ve been getting by on donations.)

That’s a trend that further decreases oversight on the curriculum, Rodriguez said. It’s up to school districts, parents and students to “step up efforts and hold these groups accountable” for medical inaccuracies and mistruths, she said.

“It’s critical for local advocates to play a role. It’s incumbent upon them to make sure these program are medically accurate, not biased toward a particular philosophy and are rounded in adolescent reality, rather than the reality some adults operate under­,” she said.

Mississippi has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in the U.S., according to a Guttmacher Institute (PDF) report on national and state trends of pregnancies, births and abortions, released in January 2010. According to the report, in 2005, Mississippi ranked fifth among states, with a rate of 85 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19. The state was behind New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas.

Up to this point, no Mississippi schools have been required to teach any type of sex ed, according to the AP. Schools that elected to provide information on sex could only offer abstinence-only education.

The education bill, authored by Rep. Alyce G. Clarke (D-69th District), would amend the Mississippi Constitution to require each local school board to adopt a sex-related education policy, giving them the option to teach abstinence-only education or “abstinence-plus” education.

Districts who choose the latter form of sex ed would provide education that emphasizes abstinence until marriage but also includes health information on contraceptives. Districts with abstinence-plus education policies would be required to teach about the risk and failure rates of contraceptives, according to changes the Senate made to the bill.

The government distributed funds to organizations protesting gay marriage and homosexuality. (Flickr/Dan the Webmaster)

An obscure branch of the federal government responsible for distributing millions of tax dollars to religious organizations is drawing criticism for poor oversight over how federal grant money is spent and an overall lack of transparency. Good-government advocates warn that without rigorous transparency, the likelihood for corruption, ethics violations and unconstitutional spending of tax dollars is high.

[Congress1] The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is a sub-agency of the Department of Human Services. The programs administered by the ACF that religious organizations most often use — Healthy Marriage, Abstinence Only and The Compassion Capital Fund — cost more than $255 million in 2008, according to the most recent annual report on file.

To critics of these programs, this amounts to a dangerous recipe for potential abuse, thanks to the political activities of many of the groups receiving funding.

In South Carolina, the Palmetto Family Council, a local affiliate of the Family Research Council (FRC), was awarded $1.2 million through Healthy Marriage and Abstinence Only grants from 2004 to 2009. According to its blog, the “top priority” for the group in 2006 was South Carolina’s anti-gay marriage amendment. Earlier this month, Palmetto’s president, Oran Smith, condemned public funding of a gay and lesbian group’s annual statewide festival, citing concerns about using “public funds for a festival that is political or indecent or both.”

The Indiana Family Institute, another local FRC affiliate, received $50,000 in direct federal funding and is listed as a third party contractor for the Abstinence Singles/Lake County Marriage Coalition. The Abstinence Singles grant award is $941,000 per year through 2011. Also known as Hoosier Family, the Indiana Family Institute is advocating for an anti-gay marriage amendment in 2010.

The Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) received more than $3 million in federal funds to pay for a marriage-mentoring program. The program, called Marriage Matters, was found not to be a third-party contractor but rather a trademark of the outspoken anti-gay group. IFPC has garnered headlines for its opposition to same-sex marriage, including public allegations that homosexuality poses a greater public health risk than second-hand smoke.

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s acceptance of federal funds, coupled with its religious political agenda, prompted the ACLU of Iowa to announce it would investigate whether the funding violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Potential abuses of ACF funding can be difficult to monitor, because the ACF relies on self-reporting by grant recipients to track their own spending. It relies on citizen complaints of wrongdoing to launch an investigation into misuse of funds. And all the while, proactive follow-up by ACF is rare.

President George W. Bush announced the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives after he took office in January 2001. Separation of church and state advocates were outraged when President Barack Obama elected to continue the program under the name Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The day after taking office, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of executive agencies calling for new vigor in fulfilling the public’s need for transparency and openness in government. But for all the authority allotted the ACF, there remains considerable mystery surrounding how grant money is awarded and spent.

Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of New York, said, “I have started using the opening line ‘the promise of transparency is illusory’ in all my Freedom of Information Act requests because it is.”

Amiri has filed more than a half-dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the HHS in the last few years. In a recent case, Amiri waited 8 months for a partial FOIA response from the ACF and is still waiting, two years later, for a complete report.

According to the Freedom of Information Act, governmental agencies are required to respond to a FOIA request within 30 days.

“We can’t sit and wait [for a FOIA] while money is continuing to be spent unconstitutionally, so we sue,” Amiri said. “We [ACLU] have the ability to sue for the information we need, but what about the average citizen? They aren’t going to be able to sue in order to get what is already supposed to be public.”

The Iowa Independent had a similar experience during its investigation of Iowa Family Policy Center. After filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the ACF regarding IFPC, The Iowa Independent waited four months for a partial response and was forced to file a second request – called a reconsideration — for information that was omitted. The ACF has only three full-time Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) specialists on staff, which creates staggering wait times for fulfillment of information requests.

ACF spokesman Kenneth Wolfe never responded to dozens of e-mails and phone calls requesting comment regarding award payment schedules and specifics on the role of the ACF in policing faith-based awards. Wolfe was also asked if a so-called clawback provision exists as a way for the government to recoup money spent inappropriately by faith-based and other grant recipients, another question that was ignored.

These requests for information were included in a certified letter mailed to former Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Carmen Nazario, and then hand delivered to Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families David Hansell after Nazario stepped down in July. Again, the agency failed to respond.

The Assistant Secretary for Children and Families is a politically appointed position.

Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), shares Amiri’s concerns about lack of transparency. CREW was responsible for gaining the release of more than five million “lost” Bush era e-mails, and recently filed a Freedom of Information Act requesting John Yoo’s torture memos.

Weismann said she wishes she could be more optimistic about the Obama mandate for transparency, but the policy isn’t being put into practice.

“Phone calls, faxes and e-mails to executive agencies go unanswered, redactions continue to happen,” she said. “We end up suing the government over and over again for the same type of public information, and the American people end up spending money on unnecessary litigation.”

Wolfe’s refusal to respond to requests for information from The Iowa Independent is not an isolated incident, observers say, as his office has typically been a roadblock to information on taxpayer money to religious organizations instead of an advocate for transparency.

In addition to his former role as a Republican Congressional staffer, Wolfe has been outspoken in his social conservative positions. In response to a lawsuit over abortion assistance given to a minor by Catholic Charities in 2008, he made an official statement in his role as ACF spokesman, “Our agency is one that supports human life, and we take that responsibility seriously.” Catholic Charities organizations throughout the United States receive millions in federal funding.

No matter what the roadblock inside the ACF, limited access to public information regarding federal grant money and lack of transparency remain the norm. Addressing what can be done about continued government opacity, CREW’s Wiesman said, “People need to speak out and continue to speak out about the continued lack of transparency because the administration isn’t getting the point.”

From Bloomberg:

The pledges, made orally or in writing, are viewed by advocates as buttressing federally funded education programs that say avoiding pre-marital sex rather than using protection will curb pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. President George W. Bush’s administration more than doubled the budget for abstinence-only education programs since 1999 to $204 million this fiscal year. More than a dozen states have rejected federal money rather than limit what is taught.

“The results suggest that the virginity pledge does not change sexual behavior,” wrote author Janet Rosenbaum, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially abstinence-only sex education participants.”

A 2007 congressional study (PDF) found that abstinence-only programs have “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence,” and students who participate in them become sexually active at the same age and have as many partners as students who participate in more comprehensive sex-ed programs. With Democrats set to control the presidency and both houses of Congress, these studies should spell the end for abstinence-only education.

Ironically, that could be good news for conservatives who are honest about their desire to decrease the number of abortions and curb the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases.