Ah, Dawn Eden. Such a special strain of hypocritical religious nutbag you are.
What’s got Dawn in a lather this time?
Seems that an anti-abortion group in Long Island got its abstinence-only education program defunded after the group’s executive director falsely claimed that Planned Parenthood was promoting bestiality:
In a setback for his program to bring together advocates and foes of abortion rights, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi has rescinded his offer of a county contract to a group whose leader accused another participant of promoting bestiality.
Lorraine Gariboldi, executive director of the Life Center of Long Island in Massapequa, made the comments about Planned Parenthood to Newsday at the county offices in Garden City in February, immediately following a news conference where Suozzi announced grants for eight groups in an effort to cut down on abortions.
Charming, huh? Just a little background on Suozzi: he’s (futilely) challenging Eliot Spitzer in the Dem primary for the governorship of New York. He’s the first Democrat to hold the Nassau County Executive position in a very long time (Al D’Amato held the job), but that maybe has less to do with any serious shift in politics in Nassau County (the LI county closer to NYC) than with corruption scandals involving the Republicans who’d been in charge for years. Still, Republicans in New York tend to be socially liberal.
Here’s more about what happened:
Gariboldi’s organization, which won a $90,000 grant for abstinence-based education, also runs “crisis pregnancy” centers where women are counseled against abortions. Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, which won $95,000 for sex education, counsels women on abortions and performs them.
“Working with Planned Parenthood did not change my opinion of the work that I do,” Gariboldi said on Feb. 7. “Meeting their peer educators and hearing what they had to say confirmed to me that I’m in the right business.”
“They’re teaching young people to teach other young people how to be sexually active using deviant methods, in my opinion, of sexual behavior to avoid pregnancy,” Gariboldi continued. “You can call it outercourse instead of intercourse, and bestiality in some cases, masturbation — those kinds of behaviors they’re promoting as good and healthy.”
In March, Gariboldi also wrote to county lawmakers — and copied her letter to Suozzi — urging them not to fund Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions.
After her remarks were printed in part on July 17, the steering committee for Suozzi’s program, which he calls “Common Sense for the Common Good,” advised withdrawing the Life Center’s contract from the county legislature, where the initiative is stalled. Arda Nazerian, a Suozzi aide, said the group broke a compact to respect others’ views.
JoAnn Smith, Planned Parenthood of Nassau County’s executive director, said the county had made “a wise decision.”
“There is no common ground with any organization or individual who makes outrageous statements as Gariboldi did,” Smith said. She said Planned Parenthood was exploring a lawsuit for slander.
And here’s where the nun comes in:
Sister Mairead Barrett, a nun on Suozzi’s steering committee, said she was in working groups with Gariboldi and heard no discussion of deviance.
“I was quite surprised actually to hear what this woman said and to read it because we were all in the room together,” she said. “To me it shows a lack of openness and lack of insight.”
Like I said, you know it’s bad when a nun defends Planned Parenthood. Must be a Vatican II kind of gal, like my aunt, Sister Mary Louise. Who refused to call the new Pope anything but “Cardinal Ratzinger” when I saw her last, at my nephew’s First Communion, shortly after his installation.
Dawn, incidentally, is calling on her readers to write to Sister Mairead’s order to complain about this comment. I encourage you to go to the link below (it’s at the end of Dawn’s post) to write letters in support of Sister Mairead’s commitment to integrity and open-mindedness.
So, let’s go to Dawn’s site and find out what Gariboldi’s dog whistle was (geez, I feel dirty mentioning dogs and someone who’s obsessed with bestiality in the same sentence — makes me want to start looking for canine chastity belts for Junebug):
The evidence for Planned Parenthood’s promotion of bestiality is not as substantial as it is for Gariboldi’s other accusations. But it is there, and any association with bestiality should disqualify Planned Parenthood from teaching children about sex.
First, as I noted in October 2004, there are two cartoons on Planned Parenthood’s sex-ed Web site, Teenwire, in which humans get a bit too attached to animals. One of them, “Jim Dandy and His Very Gay Day,” even shows, or at least jokingly pretends to show, human-animal relations as a viable sexual option.
As with so many things Dawn says, once you check it out, it’s complete bullshit. I watched the cartoon. It goes through various sexual orientations — hetero, homo, bi and questioning — and while it does use an image of a pig and a plush elephant to illustrate “questioning” (and it’s not terribly clear why they’d do that, if not for an in joke about plushies), there’s no narration to suggest that bestiality is a valid sexual choice.
The other cartoon that has her in a lather is apparently promoting bestiality because there are people having sex in the presence of a cow! Let’s just ignore the fact that the thing is set at a farm, and that the cow provides a handy fig leaf for the copulating couple as the narrator talks about how the STIs that nature provides can invade this couple because they’re having sex without a condom.
I mean, am I engaging in bestiality if my dog is sniffing at the door, or if my cat watches? Cripes.
Dawn also freaks about the inclusion on PP’s website of a book on bestiality:
More telling is the February 2003 “Educator’s Update” on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Web site. Included on the resource list of books that the organization recommends to educators — “for informational use only” — is Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, by Midas Dekkers:
Dawn once again betrays an inability to comprehend the difference between reference and endorsement. But what else is new?
Via Amanda, whose entire post on the dog-whistle meaning of Ann Coulter’s recent seemingly bizarre comments that Bill Clinton’s womanizing actually means he’s gay is worth a read.
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Oh, and just a tip: avoid the word “bestiality” in comments; it trips the spam filter. Try “sex with animals” or “the B word.”
I can’t believe I just had to say that.