“Is the president going to have the authority to decide if the Supreme Court has deliberated too little on a case?” CitizenLink quotes Yoo writing on the matter. “Does Congress have the right to decide whether the president has really thought hard enough about granting a pardon? Under Obama’s approach, he could make a recess appointment anytime he is watching C-SPAN and feels that the senators are not working as hard as he did in the Senate (a fairly low bar).”

CitizenLink identifies Yoo only as “a law professor at the University of California at Berkley, who is well known in legal circles for advocating executive power.”

Yoo is perhaps one of the most controversial figures in U.S. legal history. His torture memos were eventually disavowed by the Bush justice department. The Office of Legal Counsel where Yoo worked repudiated them as unsound and dangerous. After a five year inquiry, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility reported that Yoo had “committed intentional professional misconduct when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques…” During the inquiry, Yoo told investigators the “president… had the constitutional power to order a village to be ‘massacred.’” Three years ago, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón Real launched an investigation of Yoo for war crimes.

By contrast, the Obama appointments this week can be seen in context less as any kind of historic overstep and more as just another strategic move in a Capitol Hill chess game.

The appointments come after three years of deep congressional dysfunction and after the president in recent months vowed to act where he can to use executive orders to bypass congressional obstructionism.

“We’re not going to wait for Congress… Where they won’t act, I will, through a series of executive orders… We’re going to look every day to see what we can do without Congress,” he told a crowd in October gathered on the downtown Denver Auraria Campus.

The argument against the appointments is that the Senate was not in fact in recess when Obama made them. The White House says the Senate was “in session” in name only, opening up for do-nothing 30 second meetings in order mainly to keep the president from appointing Cordray to head the two-year-old leaderless Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB), which was created by Congress over the objection of bank lobbyists to protect credit card holders, for example, from gouging interest rates and fees.

Republican senators have for months blocked confirmation of Cordray, who is a Republican and a former attorney general of Ohio. The senators say they do not object to Cordray but only to how the CPFB is organized. Its financing, for example, comes from the Federal Reserve, which means Congress can’t influence the agency by controlling its budget. Yet, in two years, none of the senators have introduced legislation to rework the CPFB, leading most observers to conclude that, on one hand, the Republicans, acting on behalf of the banks, don’t want the bureau to ever functionally exert its regulatory mission and, on the other, don’t want to go on record with that stand in an election year where the commitment of lawmakers to represent the interests of their constituents instead of the interests of corporations is being seriously called into question.

Jon Stewart on Thursday laid out the controversy in typical succinct and damning fashion:

NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts and its political arm NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts Foundation began investigating Massachusetts CPCs last summer after the state began issuing “Choose Life” license plates, thus creating a new revenue source for CPCs.

According to the resulting report (PDF), undercover, in-person visits were made to 24 of the 30 CPCs operating in Massachusetts; staff researched the centers’ advertising and counseling procedures, as well as where they were getting most of their money. Among the CPCs visited, seven of them were affiliated with two of the country’s largest CPC networks -– Birthright International and Care Net; five belong to the state-wide network Pregnancy Care Center; and four are affiliated with A Woman’s Concern Pregnancy Resource Clinic, the largest CPC network in Massachusetts, which has since 2002 received millions in federal funds to produce an abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education program called “Healthy Futures” (PDF).

What the report aims to prove is that the CPCs’ impact is to “corrupt a pregnant woman’s decision-making process and delay her access to pregnancy-related care, whether she ultimately chooses abortion, adoption, or parenthood.” Much like the 2006 congressional investigation of federally funded pregnancy resource centers (PDF) commissioned by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the Massachusetts report reveals volunteer staff at CPCs often gave women misleading or inaccurate information about pregnancy and abortion. A bulk of NARAL’s findings also deals with how these CPCs are funded and the political ties among their donors.

A snapshot of NARAL’s findings:

• CPCs outnumber women’s health care providers three to one: Western Massachusetts has at least six CPCs but one clinic that provides abortion services; Central Massachusetts has eight CPCs, one abortion clinic; Northeast and Metro Boston has five CPCs, three abortion clinics. ]

• NARAL’s undercover investigators reported that several of the CPCs used tactics to try to delay their decision regarding what to do with their unwanted pregnancies. Examples of such tactics include delaying and rescheduling appointments.

• More than one in four of the CPCs investigated, or 27 percent, told NARAL investigators pretending to be between six and 10 weeks pregnant that 50 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Some investigators reported being told variations of “just because you are pregnant, doesn’t mean you’ll stay pregnant.” (According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15 percent to 20 percent, but the miscarriage rate drops after a baby’s heart beat is detected. NIH also estimates that “up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost – aborted — spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant.”)

• About 46 percent of the CPC websites link abortion with a risk of future infertility. Nearly one in three of the CPC’s websites stated that women are more likely to have a premature delivery in a future pregnancy if they have had an abortion. One in five CPCs investigated the commonly unaccepted idea that abortion is a direct cause of breast cancer.

• Investigators also reported hearing misleading, inaccurate or unfounded information about the ineffectiveness of contraception.

• Two out of three CPCs visited had a “religious influence,” reported investigators.

• Some of the CPCs investigated have been accused of false advertising about what services they offer. For example, Daybreak Pregnancy Resource Center in Boston have advertised for “abortion services” in online advertising, demonstrated in the report with a screen shot.

• Some of the advice given to NARAL investigators was considered “suspect.” One investigator was told, “You don’t need money to raise a child, just time and love.” Another, who told the CPC that she had been drinking heavily throughout her pregnancy, was told “new studies prove alcohol is not too harmful to a fetus.”

According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, a “Choose Life” plate initially costs $40; $28 goes to Choose Life (there are additional costs to swap out an existing plate). The Registry of Motor Vehicles distributed approximately 2,000 plates between June 2010 and April 2011, raising approximately $80,000, according to Massachusetts Choose Life.

NARAL also points out that Natick, Mass.-based private charity Gerard Health Foundation privately funded A Woman’s Concern before the organization began receiving federal money. Gerard Health has also funded organizations that head up anti-abortion initiatives such as Focus on the Family and Live Action.

The NARAL Massachusetts report:

Naral Pcm Cpc Report 2011

CitizenLink leans on high-profile religious-right attorney and Republican National Committeeman James Bopp Jr. to make the case against disclosure.

“We are certainly going to pursue the case vigorously, because the result of the judge’s decision is going to literally be a free-fire zone when we talk about the court sanctioning harassment of people who participate in our democratic process,” Bopp said. “Absent the prospect of protection in future cases, I think the whole idea here by the homosexual lobby is they now have a threat. They [will seek the names of donors] and put them on the Internet. So they already know they’ve got a weapon of intimidation, and without the courts’ protection, they’ll continue to use it.”

The ruling upholding California’s campaign finance disclosure laws was handed down by U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. on Thursday. California requires political campaigns to disclose the identity of anyone who donates more than $100.

During the 2008 heated Prop 8 campaign, gay-rights websites like Californians Against Hate that opposed the ballot initiative posted information such as the names, addresses and employers of donors to the campaign. In Washington state a similar proposal saw the same kind of websites appear. There, the sites included Whosigned.org and Knowthyneighbor.org.

CitizenLink refers readers to the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation’s report on harassment against Prop 8 supporters. Heritage authors placed the harassment into three categories: vandalism, hostility and slurs, and violence and threats of violence.

Vandals also hit houses of worship. Perpetrators used orange paint to vandalize a statue of the Virgin Mary outside one church. Offices at the Cornerstone Church in Fresno were egged. Swastikas and other graffiti were scrawled on the walls of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco, a parish known widely as being “gay-friendly.” In San Luis Obispo, the Assembly of God Church was egged and toilet-papered, and a Mormon church had an adhesive poured onto a doormat and keypad. Signs supporting Prop 8 were twisted into a swastika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Riverside. Someone used a heavy object wrapped with a Yes on 8 sign to smash the window of a pastor’s office at Messiah Lutheran Church in Downey.

In a previous ruling on the matter, Judge England pointed out that, if there were crimes committed by supporters of either side of the debate, they could and should be prosecuted. He said, as for the rest, the heated exchanges were part of the political process and weren’t reason to limit the ability of Californians to fully inform themselves on an issue they were being asked to decide at the ballot box.

Bopp plans to appeal England’s decision once the written version is made available for review.

CitizenLink leans on high-profile religious-right attorney James Bopp to make the case against disclosure.

“We are certainly going to pursue the case vigorously, because the result of the judge’s decision is going to literally be a free-fire zone when we talk about the court sanctioning harassment of people who participate in our democratic process,” Bopp is quoted to say. “Absent the prospect of protection in future cases, I think the whole idea here by the homosexual lobby is they now have a threat. They [will seek the names of donors] and put them on the Internet. So they already know they’ve got a weapon of intimidation, and without the courts’ protection, they’ll continue to use it.”

The ruling upholding California’s campaign finance disclosure laws was handed down by U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr on Thursday. California requires political campaigns to disclose the identity of anyone who donates more than $100.

During the 2008 heated Prop 8 campaign, gay-rights websites like Californians Against Hate that opposed the ballot initiative posted information such as the names, addresses and employers of donors to the campaign. In Washington state a similar proposal saw the same kind of websites appear. There, the sites included Whosigned.org and Knowthyneighbor.org.

CitizenLink refers readers to the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation report on harassment against Prop 8 supporters. The Heritage authors placed the harassment into three categories: vandalism, hostility and slurs, and violence and threats of violence.

Vandals also hit houses of worship. Perpetrators used orange paint to vandalize a statue of the Virgin Mary outside one church. Offices at the Cornerstone Church in Fresno were egged. Swastikas and other graffiti were scrawled on the walls of the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco, a parish known widely as being “gay-friendly.” In San Luis Obispo, the Assembly of God Church was egged and toilet-papered, and a Mormon church had an adhesive poured onto a doormat and keypad. Signs supporting Prop 8 were twisted into a swastika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Riverside. Someone used a heavy object wrapped with a Yes on 8 sign to smash the window of a pastor’s office at Messiah Lutheran Church in Downey.

Fear of harassment on the part of Christian groups has been a marked and ironic aspect of the Prop 8 campaign and its aftermath. At the trial that followed passage of the initiative and that considered whether the new law was constitutional, the team defending the law fought hard to keep the proceedings from being broadcast, fearing that witnesses for the defense would be harassed. Yet LGBT people have been one of the most harassed and discriminated classes of American citizens in the post-slavery era.

In a previous ruling on the matter, Judge England pointed out that, if there were crimes committed by supporters of either side of the debate, they could and should be prosecuted. He said, as for the rest, the heated exchanges were part of the political process and weren’t reason to limit the ability of Californians to fully inform themselves on an issue they were being asked to decide at the ballot box.

Bopp plans to appeal England’s decision once the written version is made available for review.

Bopp recently filed a brief with the US Supreme Court on behalf of Catholic Answers, a nonprofit group that has been penalized by the IRS for performing express advocacy against 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.

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UPDATE: Oct. 6 Amended with a correction.

A new congressional proposal to funnel federal grant money from sex-education programs that instruct in pregnancy and STI-preventive measures into abstinence-only curriculum evokes memories of a similar federally-mandated initiative that emerged during the Bush administration.

The Bush-era Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program received criticism for peddling medical inaccuracies (PDF) and faded upon the advent of the Obama administration. One beneficiary of grant funding was the Palmetto Family Council, whose abstinence-only education curriculum relied heavily on some of the same points criticized throughout the duration of the CBAE program.

In 2008, a government report (PDF) cited the ineffectiveness of CBAE abstinence-only sex-ed programs. At the end of 2009, the Obama administration reduced abstinence-only spending, boosted spending for prevention-oriented programs and totally wiped out the CBAE program, the most controversial of the bunch because funding largely went to anti-abortion-rights organizations and crisis pregnancy centers. Between 2005 and 2009, the federal government expended almost a half-billion dollars in non-matching CBAE grants, according to the federal 2010 budget (PDF).

South Carolina’s Focus on the Family affiliate the Palmetto Family Council (PFC) received $1.2 million in CBAE support in 2008-09 for their abstinence-education project, which went to great lengths in linking sex outside of marriage to depression, according to grant documents recently obtained by The American Independent through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

‘Sex is fire’

Hitting all points of the Bush administration’s eight-point A-H definition of abstinence-only sex education, PFC’s BTrue Youth Leadership Project was designed to dissuade teenagers from having premarital sex by teaching sexual activity within the context of a monogamous marriage is the expected American standard and sex outside of marriage will likely lead to harmful psychological and physical effects.

PFC contracted Charleston, S.C.-based Heritage Community Services to develop the curriculum, which uses a risk-elimination rather than a risk-prevention model, employing the analogy that “sex is fire.” Essentially, the message is that sex, like fire, is safe within the right place but unsafe outside a protected place. In this analogy, the safe, protected place is marriage.

Illustrating this philosophy is a student video on the still-functioning BTrue social-media network (WhyBeTrue.com), in which a boy is shown armed with a helmet and layers of protective gear before he plunges into oncoming traffic; another scene shows the same boy wearing only regular clothes but walking on the shoulder of the highway, out of harm’s way.

To carry out the BTrue program, Palmetto solicited help from church organizations statewide for access to students and meeting spaces. Alex Morales signed a letter saying that his Lino, S.C.-based organization Same Page Ministries would provide access to between 50 and 100 students. Ultimately, Morales provided access to one student, his son, Danny, who serves as the face of the lecture series.

The first lesson of the curriculum begins with Danny explaining the project’s connection to religion:

The message of abstinence of sex until marriage is not a religious message per say. A decision to wait is a decision made every day, by teens of all faiths, and by those who profess no religious faith or belief in God at all. But BTrue is also consistent with the principles of the Christian faith and other religious beliefs. In the BTrue Tube videos, we do not reference the Bible or the teachings of Christ, but we believe that the BTrue cause is a Christian cause.

Organizations such as Washington, D.C.-based Advocates for Youth*, which works for adolescent reproductive and sexual health, and the Sexuality Information Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) have condemned the CBAE program and its biggest curriculum writer, Heritage Community Services, because they claim the program is ineffective at preventing teen pregnancy and STIs, and because it often wields a faith-based component. When asked for comment on Palmetto’s project, Advocates for Life’s Emily Bridges chose to comment on CBAE projects generally.

“We find a ‘one size fits all’ approach to morality to be really problematic,” Bridges said. “Waiting until marriage is a moral goal for many young people, but not ALL young people. Delaying sex until a time when the young person is prepared for safer sex and in a committed relationship is not only a goal that fits within many people’s ideology/moral beliefs, but is also a way the young person can protect themselves from pregnancy, HIV, and STIs. And to do that, they need education about all their options, not just one option.”

Sex outside of marriage = depression

The curriculum, along federal guidelines, focused on the harmful psychological effects of sexual activity outside of marriage.

In PFC’s grant application, curriculum plans were outlined to discuss the “sex related regret & emotional pain” and the “connection between teen sex and depression.” It was encouraged to discuss the importance of beginning the wedding day “regret-free.” The curriculum design also mentioned plans to address “risky behaviors that come with teen sexual activity: alcohol, drugs and violence” and that “marriage decreases such stresses.”

A December 2004 report (PDF) commissioned for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on the efficacy of sex-ed programs such as Palmetto’s outlines specific problems with CBAE, among them medical inaccuracy, such as baseless claims that sex outside of marriage leads to depression and/or mental illness.

Waxman’s report, which evaluated 13 sex-ed curricula, demonstrated that 11 of them included distorted information about the effectiveness of contraceptives and the risks of abortion. The report also found these curricula often blurred religion and science and stereotyped males and females.

In October 2006, the Government Accountability Office released a report (PDF) on the federal government’s efforts to assess the accuracy and effectiveness of federally-funded programs. The report found the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration of Children and Families, which awards CBAE grants, did not review its grantees’ education materials for scientific accuracy. Following this revelation, grantees — including PFC — were forced to sign forms declaring their curricula were “medically accurate.”

In May 2008, both PFC President Oran P. Smith and Heritage Community Services CEO Anne Badgley signed a statement declaring: “I hereby attest and certify that all medical materials proposed in this application and funded during the project period of this grant are medically accurate.”

Stan Weed, director of the Institute for Research & Evaluation (IRE), was identified in grant documents as the “3rd party independent evaluator” tasked to review PFC’s project and curriculum. As TAI reported previously, IRE had a relationship with Heritage; specifically Weed developed the “predictors of adolescent sexual initiation,” which is taught to Heritage educators during their training. In the end Weed did not work on the project; Paul Birch, now a senior research associate at Evans Evaluation, whose name is not mentioned in the grant application, was the evaluator.

Abstinence and marriage

Abstinence and marriage are promoted at seemingly equal rates throughout Palmetto’s curriculum. At the end of the second lesson, there are three videos where participating adult staffers discuss what abstinence means to them. One woman, talking about how she rediscovered abstinence after she first started having sex, emphasized how much fun marriage is.

In another the video, a student says marriage between a man and woman is beautiful, which is in direct compliance with CBAE requirements that mandate a one-man, one-woman definition of marriage.

The only way to prevent STIs and unwanted pregnancy, Palmetto’s programs materials suggested, is through marriage. But as Bridges pointed out, that does not leave a lot of room for people who do not necessarily intend to get married, or for gay men and lesbians, for whom marriage in many states is illegal.

“Any program that asks young people to wait until marriage to have sex is inappropriate for gay and lesbian young people, who can’t get married in most states and at the federal level,” Bridges said in an email. “They are being at best ignored and made to feel invisible. They’re being given a choice to either stop being gay; never have sex in their life; or become shameful, emotionally harmed, etc. … They need sex education that helps them protect themselves, not lectures about abstinence until a marriage they can’t legally enter into.”

An excerpt from PFC’s grant proposal, describing how it will promote “healthy marriage,” reads:

A-H legislation is about healthy marriages. PYN [Palmetto Youth Network] will equip youth and adults with skills/knowledge to [1] abstain from sex until marriage, [2] develop healthy relationships and marriages and [3] remain faithful when married. Since 1994, Palmetto Family Council has worked to strengthen SC’s families. Its mission is to promote a positive marriage/family culture by utilizing media and existing community, business and faith networks to promote an understanding of marriage’s central role to the fabric of society and to provide the skills/knowledge needed to form and sustain healthy marriages. … [Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education] teaches students the differences between lust, infatuation and love and the differences in cohabitation and marriage. Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences is basic to all curricula.

The “Why Marriage Matters” report (PDF) Palmetto referred to as being “basic to all curricula” in the project was produced by the Institute for American Values, and infused with research and editorial assistance by Maggie Gallagher, who recently stepped down as president of the nation’s leading group working against marriage for gay men and lesbians, the National Organization for Marriage. In 2007, PFC was involved in a campaign to amend South Carolina’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The amendment passed in 2007; it was listed as Palmetto Family’s “top priority” the year before.

*Correction: TAI previously mis-identified the organization Advocates for Youth as Advocates for Life. We regret the error.

Care Net, an organization that manages a nationwide network of crisis pregnancy centers, is kicking off a three-day conference in Orlando.

According to Care Net‘s website, the organization stresses a commitment to helping women “facing unplanned pregnancies” and aims to persuade those women to choose “life and hope.” It adds that “the ultimate aim of Care Net and its network of pregnancy centers is to share the love and truth of Jesus Christ.”

The conference will feature some pretty big keynote speakers. Both Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, and Abby Johnson, a former employee of Planned Parenthood turned anti-abortion rights advocate, are scheduled to deliver speeches.

The conference is primarily focused on providing information to individuals that work at CPCs. Workshops include information on “how to begin an abstinence group in [a] center,” how to fund-raise, how to “position [oneself] for media success” and how to establish college outreach from a center, among other information. According to the conference agenda (.pdf), attendees will “hear from center leaders and campus experts who are using unique approaches to reaching and ministering to abortion-minded collegians.”

Care Net has a large presence in Florida, with a number of affiliates that run CPCs.

A number of CPCs in Florida (some of which are subsidized by taxpayer money) use inaccurate medical information to persuade women to not have an abortion. Care Net, in particular, has printed brochures that claim “many studies have shown abortion to be connected to: clinical depression, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Suicide” and cites studies that link abortion to clinical depression, PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide. Psychology experts have said that such claims are not true.

Some Care Net affiliates are also present in schools in Florida. School districts invite the group to teach abstinence-only sex education. While groups that teach comprehensive sex education such as Planned Parenthood are being edged out of schools around the state, Care Net has maintained its presence.

Care Net was most recently embroiled in a battle with NARAL Pro-Choice America over new laws that require CPCs be more transparent about the services they do and do not provide.

The conference is taking place at the Gaylord Palms Resort and ends on Friday.

At the center of the controversy is the recent revelation that the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) might have used taxpayer dollars to wage a campaign against same-sex marriage in the state.

Shorty after The American Independent’s sister site The Iowa Independent began reporting on IFPC’s Marriage Matters program, IFPC announced they had agreed in September 2009 to stop accepting money from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for the counseling operation. Marriage Matters was funded by federal government dollars while the organization carried out a campaign to oust three state Supreme Court judges whose 2009 ruling legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa.

But IFPC did not officially relinquish the grant funding until nearly a year later, The Iowa Independent reported.

In a letter dated Aug. 3, 2010, HHS’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) asked IFPC President Chuck Hurley to submit a formal relinquishment letter explaining the group’s reasoning for rejecting the funds. That was the first step in the process. The next step in the process, as ACF Grants Management Specialist Abangolee J. Caulcrick explained in that initial letter, would be for IFPC to submit a final financial status report and a final progress report.

As to the reason for rejecting additional government money, on Aug. 10, 2010, Hurley wrote:

“While the process has been invigorating, we believe the federal constraints are impeding our progress to help a broader range of couples. We believe organizationally we are in a position to become privately funded.”

After filing a records request with ACF, The American Independent discovered that IFPC never filed the required documentation. On Dec. 30, 2010, Caulcrick sent Hurley a letter stating:

“I am contacting you for the last time to submit your final financial status report and program progress report along with your property inventory and disposition statement. If I do not receive these reports on or before January 7, 2011, I will be left with no alternative but to administratively closeout your grant.”

However, according to the ACF FOIA office, IFPC’s grant file is still open, because that documentation was never received.

The ACF communications department was not forthcoming with further information about the closeout process and would not answer questions as to whether IFPC violated federal policy by not submitting the requested reports.

Even less forthcoming was The Family Leader, who declined to explain why it has not submitted financial documents for the final year that it received funding.

“We have made a decision as an organization not to grant any more interviews on that subject,” Family Leader spokesperson Julie Summa told The American Independent (TAI), referring to the Healthy Marriage grant. “The public records are [available].”

Unanswered questions

While neither ACF nor The Family Leader will answer questions about process, larger ethical questions remain concerning the funding of the grant itself.

In her explanation as to why IFPC will not comment on the Healthy Marriage grant, Summa referenced the Associated Press article that sparked outrage among LGBT-rights groups in Iowa because it showed a funding overlap for the taxpayer-funded program and the political anti-same-sex-marriage campaign. Adding to the ire was the revelation gay and lesbian couples were shut out of the marriage-counseling program. Early this month, LGBT-advocacy group One Iowa launched a petition asking The Family Leader to return the $2.2 million dollars it received in grant funding back to America’s taxpayers.

In a phone interview, University of Iowa Professor Brad Richardson, who was paid to evaluate IFPC’s grant, told TAI he had never heard of an organization turning down a full year’s worth of federal funding for a successful program.

“I’ve never seen anybody turn back money, so they must have had a good reason,” Richardson said.

As a third-party evaluator, Richardson — who also evaluated IFPC’s federally-funded Compassion Capital Fund demonstration grant projects in 2004 and 2005 – reviewed the organization’s proposal and achievements. Richardson’s semiannual evaluation report from October 2010, obtained by TAI, reflects progress: IFPC met each of its goals by about 25 percent, and data from the Iowa health department shows that as of 2005, the state’s divorce rate has been on a steady decline.

What concerned Richardson in the initial proposal, however, was the fact that gay and lesbian couples were explicitly written out of the project.

“Early on in the project, as I was looking at the materials, [I noticed] the materials were implying couples [they would] be serving were male and female,” Richardson said. “I mentioned, ‘What about if they are not male and female?’ They told me that it wasn’t a target population they were focusing on.”

“I don’t know what would happen today,” Richardson continued, referring to fact that in 2009, same-sex marriage was legalized. “Because you’d be excluding people that were legally married. It would be a bigger issue today.”

The question of funding overlap comes from the fact that, according to the AP, IFPC spent $192,000 of the $550,000 it received in 2009 on salaries and employee benefits for five employees, including Hurley. The AP revealed that in April, when the news organization asked Marriage Matters operations manager Chris Nitzschke which IFPC employees were paid through the grant, Nitzschke only mentioned IFPC Vice President Mike Hartwig was paid; he did not mention more than half of his own salary came from the grant.

Additionally, the Healthy Marriage grant money was spent on telephone, Internet and rent for the same building out of which IFPC was operating its campaign to overturn the gay-marriage Supreme Court ruling.

Political connections

One of the paid employees, Matt Reisetter — who was running the Northeast Iowa Marriage Alliance (NIMA) for the Marriage Matters program and is now the Family Leader’s director of development — was running for state political office and working for a presidential candidate at the same time.

In 2006, Reisetter, a Republican, ran a failed bid for Iowa House District 19 seat against the Democratic incumbent Bob Kressig. And in late 2007, he was hired by then-GOP presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Reiseitter’s job as director of coalitions was essentially to help pastors figure out how much political activity they could engage in without violating the law.

Huckabee was publicly endorsed by IFPC President Chuck Hurley.

In IFPC’s grant project abstract, obtained by TAI, IFPC proposed to pay Reisetter for 1,140 hours of work at a rate of $22 an hour, or $25,080. As part of the proposal, $19,100 of Reisetter’s salary would be paid by federal money; the rest would be matched by NIMA funds.

As part of the Healthy Marriage grant conditions, IFPC was required to sign a form “Assurances – Non-Construction Programs” (PDF) drafted by the Office of Management and Budget, which stipulates grant recipients “will comply, as applicable, with provisions of the federal Hatch Act (5 U.S.C. § 1501 and 7324-7328) which limit the political activities of employees whose principal employment activities are funded in whole or in part with Federal funds.”

Richardson told TAI it was not his job to evaluate whether or not there was any improper usage of the federal grant money received by IFPC. He said that would likely be the job of the operations manager, who is not talking.

Randall Wilson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, which is investigating how the IFPC spent the Healthy Marriage federal funds, told TAI the ACLU is trying to determine whether taxpayer funding for this project was diverted as a subsidy for political activity.

“One does not want federal money to be funding religious organizations to be engaging in political activity,” Wilson said.

The investigation, however, is stalled because the ACF has not fulfilled the ACLU’s FOIA request filed months ago.

Emphasizing the role of responsible decision-making among an adult woman is telling. Premarital sex and sex education have been among major policy concerns for PFC, an 18-year-old Focus on the Family affiliate. In recent years, PFC has strived to maintain the state’s pro-abstinence-only sex-education law, which stresses an emphasis on “abstinence and the risks associated with sexual activity outside of marriage.” Through its legislative influence and political connections, the PFC has been able to wield power in South Carolina when it comes to sex education and other social-issue policies. On the national level, that power has translated into federal funding for social-policy-related grants and, potentially, some sway in the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

Federal funding for abstinence-only education

In 2007, PFC commissioned a survey (PDF), polling registered voters about sex education in state public schools and on whether teens’ access to contraception (including condoms) should be restricted. Data for the “South Carolina Youth Sexuality Survey” was collected by the researchers at the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Public Service and Policy Research (IPSPR), but the questions were drafted by PFC staff. Those questions included:

• Do you favor or oppose the current law, which allows teenagers to obtain contraceptives without parental permission? (53 percent opposed)
• Would you favor or oppose a law providing parents with a registry to tell the State Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) whether they want condoms or other contraceptives provided to their children? (58 percent favored)

The survey included the disclaimer: “None of the research contained in this document is intended to advance or defeat any specific federal or state legislation.”

In 2008, the PFC was awarded $3 million in federal funding to implement its premarital-sex philosophy into abstinence-only sex-education curriculum in South Carolina schools. Through President George W. Bush’s controversial Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program — distributed through the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — PFC received about $1.2 million of the award to create a social-networking platform through which to communicate abstinence-only sex-education curriculum. Following government reports (PDF) suggesting the CBAE program was ultimately ineffective and promoted medical inaccuracies (PDF), the Obama administration canceled all CBAE funding at the end of 2009; thus, PFC never received its remaining $1.8 million.

The $1.2 million went to creating a website that relied heavily on the state’s religious community and existing sex-education curriculum produced by a nonprofit with a controversial history that was simultaneously receiving support from CBAE for other projects, according to grant documents obtained by The American Independent under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In its application for the CBAE grant, PFC included an endorsement letter co-signed by 15 state House representatives and another letter co-signed by eight state senators, which stated, in part: “We have come to trust Palmetto Family Council and the members of its board of directors are well known to us.” South Carolina U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Joe Wilson and former Reps. Bob Inglis and James Gresham Barrett, all Republicans, also asked the federal government to fund PFC’s abstinence project.

BTrue: Where the money went

In a youth-produced video, four African-American girls are sitting on a couch, laughing loudly and talking about their day at school. Chatter is interrupted when one of them, staring at her cell phone, says: “Hold on, y’all, we got a text. Oh, she ain’t pregnant! Congratulations! Woo!” The girls start shouting in glee and dancing. Cut to the next scene, the same four girls are walking down the street when they receive another text from their absent friend. The girls gather around the phone to read: “I’m not pregnant but I feel dirty — I hate myself.”

This one-minute-24-second video, titled “Negative,” is an example of the pro-abstinence social media network PFC created through the CBAE grant, the stated purpose of which was to teach “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

In October 2008, PFC began implementing the BTrue Youth Leadership Project, which was originally called Palmetto Youth Network (PYN). The network is still functioning but has not been updated since spring 2010; the 25 videos have on average accrued between five and 25 total hits.

“Though cancelled less than halfway into its project life, the multimedia nature of the curriculum has allowed the outstanding content created by the BTrue students to live on in cyberspace as a unique course in adolescent sexuality,” Smith said in an email.

Aside from the student-made video series, PFC created a Facebook-style network where students sign up and can create personalized profiles. All members have access to the videos and a YouTube-style animated series called BTrueTube, which consists of abstinence-education curriculum created by Heritage Community Services, a 16-year-old nonprofit based in Charleston, S.C., whose Heritage Keepers abstinence-only curriculum was widely used in federally-funded abstinence-education programs. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS) — founded in 1964 by a former Planned Parenthood medical director – has long been a critic of the Heritage Keepers curriculum, claiming it relies on scare tactics over education and shuts out gay and lesbian students by only teaching about sex in the context of heterosexuality.

For the two years PFC received federal dollars to fund this abstinence project, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) granted the majority of PFC’s grant request based on budget justifications PFC submitted to the government each respective funding year. Despite having been awarded $600,000 both years, in 2009, PFC only requested (and received) $570,994 to be spent on a seven-member personnel team ($160,500), fringe benefits ($32,100), travel to project-related conferences ($6,628), supplies ($8,000), contractual ($269,800) and “other” ($93,966).

The largest chunk of money was allocated for contract work from three firms: Heritage Community Services for the curriculum ($160,600); the Institute for Research & Evaluation for a third-party evaluation of the project ($65,000); and McAlister Communications to provide content development, site management, and system management ($44,000).

During 2008 and 2009, Heritage Community Services also received $1.2 million from ACF (separate to the contracting money it was paid by PFC) for CBAE grants. Since its inception, Heritage has received widespread national attention for its message that abstinence is the only reliable way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections, and for receiving most of its funding from the federal government. In 2008, the Post & Courier reported that Heritage had received or been allocated more than $23 million in state and federal money since 1997. In 2009, Heritage received $850,930 in federal abstinence-education and Healthy Marriage grants, according to records from HHS’s Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS).

A separate $12,400 was also requested to outsource maintenance, development and hosting of PFC’s BTrue website, as well as user tracking and “back-end administration.”

Part of the consequences of the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) 2008 assessment of CBAE was a new requirement that all grant recipients would have to include a third-party evaluation of their projects. PFC’s was to be conducted by the Institute for Research & Evaluation’s founder and board chairman Stan Weed, a longtime social policy researcher who has testified before Congress on behalf of various policies. Weed, a Brigham Young University graduate, began his career working as a researcher for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1972 to 1989. Despite the GAO’s call for an independent third-party evaluator, the Institute for Research & Evaluation (IRE) was affiliated with Heritage Community Services. In fact, Weed developed the “predictors of adolescent sexual initiation,” which is taught to Heritage educators during their training.

Though Weed is identified as the project evaluator in the CBAE grant records, it was not Weed but Paul Birch, now a senior research associate at Evans Evaluation, who evaluated the project. Birch, who no longer works for IRE (once the CBAE funding was canceled, IRE lost its main revenue source and now only Weed works there, focusing on AEGIS character education curriculum), told TAI he gave PFC’s project high performance marks.

“The program produced sizeable and significant effects on several proven predictors of youth sexual activity including their belief about the value of abstinence, their efficacy that they could abstain from sex, and their intention to do so,” said Birch in an email. “These initial effects persisted several months after the program. The only weakness noted was the difficulty in getting youth to come to an afterschool program consistently and the fact that we were not able to collect long term behavioral outcome data since the funding was eliminated. Students who came to the program were overwhelmingly positive about it, which is to be expected as they volunteered to come in the first place, but is encouraging that they were not disappointed.”

Heritage Community Services could not be reached for comment. Smith did not comment on any potential conflict of interest but said that Heritage and IRE were selected based on merit and reputation.

“We chose the Heritage curriculum for a number of reasons, including its medical accuracy, its history with the HHS CBAE program, its quality, and its technical support capabilities,” Smith said in an email. “We also felt Heritage Keepers ideal for ease of conversion to a multimedia format. We chose Dr. Weed and his associate Dr. Birch based on their academic and organizational track record and their history with the HHS CBAE program.”

The success of the project was measured by survey answers obtained September 2010 from the approximately 200 South Carolina youth involved in the project. For example:

• The proportion of youth leaders that have never had sexual intercourse and remain abstinent: 95%
• The proportion of youth leaders that have had sexual intercourse but have discontinued having sex: 95%
• The proportion of youth leaders saying they have a strong commitment to wait until marriage to have sex: 100%
• The proportion of youth leaders indicating they would not have sex if someone asked them to: 95%
• The proportion of BTrue youth saying they have a strong commitment to wait until marriage to have sex: 60%

PFC’s grant proposal included letters from churches and Christian academies across the state offering to donate access to meeting space and teenagers. The Rev. Joe Price, board chairman of the Greer Christian Learning Center, told TAI that during the first two years of the BTrue Youth Leadership Project, Greer Christian provided PFC with access to about 600 students from Greer Middle School and Riverside High School. Price, who is an associate pastor at Washington Baptist Church, said PFC’s project was “outstanding” and that it gave students graphic information on STIs. When the curriculum was brought into churches, it was even better, Price said, because “they could actually use the Bible.”

CitizenLink reporter Karla Dial wrote that what she described as the “murkiness of the post-DADT era” is “troubling” and made more troubling by the fact that gay-rights groups she doesn’t identify are “ramping up activism.”

“For the last few months, various organizations have been… seeking to have gay literature distributed on post, gay recruiting quotas, and spousal benefits and on-base housing for soldiers’ same-sex partners as soon as possible.”

Religion and expression

Anxiety over encroachments on free religious practice and expression is a common concern for the nation’s predominantly Christian opponents of gay rights.

One of the main and hotly contested cases made against new school bullying statutes, for example, is that, in teaching children acceptance of homosexuality, schools are practicing a form of indoctrination that goes against church teaching that homosexuality is not acceptable.

Whatever the validity of such an argument, it would be a stretch to apply fears of school-child “indoctrination” to the training of adult soldiers.

Where freedom of expression is concerned, legal analysts (pdf) have argued for years that a policy like DADT that explicitly restricts the expression of all gay soldiers is a considerably greater threat than a policy that prompts some religious soldiers to more carefully state their beliefs so as to not denigrate their comrades.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is the only law in this country that authorizes the firing of an American simply for coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual,” wrote the Georgetown Law School anti-DADT group Solomon Response. “Some Americans view the policy as a benign gentlemen’s agreement, with discretion providing the key to job security. But “discretion” is not a fail-safe mechanism. An honest statement by a servicemember of his or her sexual orientation to anyone, anywhere, anytime may lead to discharge from the armed services. Moreover, discretion in the form of mandated silence is itself a form of oppression and discrimination.”

Military and marriage

The status of the same-sex partners of soldiers and their access to partner rights and benefits does remain an open question, however, at a time when the federal Defense of Marriage Act hangs in legal limbo.

“So much of the [post-DADT] training has been based on the Defense of Marriage Act as being federal law,” Ron Crews, director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, told CitizenLink. “…[B]ut we know this administration has said they think [DOMA] is unconstitutional and won’t defend it. So where does that leave all those [military] PowerPoint slides that say ‘This is our policy on the repeal of DADT because of DOMA’?”

University of Denver Law Professor Geoffrey Bateman, author of a book on the national debate over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, told the Colorado Independent that the repeal certainly does “raise an immediate human resources question.”

“If my memory serves, in other countries where bans on open gay military service have been lifted, this is where the conversation has gone. There will certainly be a new conversation here. But the military is not obliged to lead on the matter [of gay marriage]. It has sometimes led in the realm of social change and sometimes, you know, it stands apart… It depends on military leaders, quite frankly. ”

Bateman said military leaders could well hold out and simply let the partners of gay soldiers gain access to rights and benefits as federal marriage law evolves in response to court or legislative action.

Indra Lusero, director of operations at UCLA’s Palm Center, home to leading research on gender and the military, said the repeal has been viewed as a major step toward full citizenship rights for gay Americans.

“The military is one of the largest employers in the country and, from that perspective, this policy has been discriminatory,” Lusero told the Independent. That’s the good news for LGBT Americans she said. She cautioned against expecting any other major advancements from the military.

“We know that the partners of gay and lesbian soldiers won’t get the same benefits as their straight counterparts. Not at this point. And I can also tell you that military clergy were sort of up in arms about performing marriages for gay service members. So I think that moment of potential recognition has passed.”

Lusero was loath to draw causal connections off the top of her head but said that, in other countries, lifting bans on openly gay military service did signal a larger shift toward marriage equality for gay people.

Colorado US Rep Diana DeGette, for one, seems determined to see that happen.

“While today represents a monumental achievement in the pursuit of full equality for LGBT Americans, we cannot forget the work that is still left to be done,” she said in a release. “Today’s accomplishment proves that progress is unavoidable, and I look forward to working with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to repeal further discriminatory legislation such as the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure that all Americans are treated equally regardless of who they love.”

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The Colorado Springs, Colo.-based, group, which James Dobson founded in 1977, is projected to end the 2011 fiscal year, on Sept. 30, with a $105 million budget; however, Focus only brought in $90 million to $95 million in donations this year. The organization is responding to the funding reduction with a 7-percent staff reduction.

“God has never promised us a certain budget number,” said Gary Schneeberger, vice president of communications for Focus on the Family (FoF), in a statement.  “He’s only called us to spend the money He provides responsibly and to help as many families as possible. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”

In the last 10 years, FoF’s staff has been reduced by more than half. In 2002, FoF had about 1,400 employees; once the layoffs go through, it will have about 650 people on staff.

FoF has blamed reduced donations on the economy.

“Many nonprofit and for-profit organizations have had to close their doors due to the ravages of these tough economic times,” Schneeberger said. ”We’re encouraged by our donors’ trust in us and will continue to honor and earn it.

“Tears have been spilled on both sides of these decisions, because these aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet,” he continued. “These are friends who share our passion to do the Lord’s work. Given economic realities, though, we had to ensure we continue to maximize the resources we have to help spouses in their marriages, help parents raise their kids and help Christians walk out their faith with boldness and joy.”

In the past three years, FoF — along with its Washington, D.C.-based affiliate the Family Research Council – has used its donations to fight initiatives to legalize same-sex marriage at the state level. In 2008 (PDF) and 2009 (PDF), the group contributed about $200,000 to anti-gay-marriage political campaigns in California, Maine and Washington, D.C., according to financial statements submitted to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). FoF donated about $50,000 Exodus International, the country’s larges “ex-gay” ministry. FoF also spends significant funds on donations to crisis pregnancy centers and on supporting anti-abortion-rights ad campaigns throughout the country. This year, FoF paid for a controversial anti-abortion-rights Super Bowl commercial that starred Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.

Many of FoF’s state-based affiliates have benefited from a massive political funding campaign called “Ignite an Enduring Cultural Transformation,” where funds are funneled to states with majority-Republican control to oppose same-sex marriage, abortion rights and transgender rights. As The American Independent has reported, most of the Ignite plans were launched with an anonymous matching-grant donor, and FoF has claimed it has no involvement in the program despite being “fully associated” with its affiliates.

FoF experienced a slight budget surplus in 2008, ending the year with about $130 million in revenue. The following year however, FoF ended the year with $109 million in revenue and a $12 million deficit. Further budget reductions in 2010 led the organization to eliminate more than 100 jobs.