Sixth Grade Contraception

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Pupils at a city middle school will be able to get birth control pills and patches at their student health center after the local school board approved the proposal Wednesday evening.

The plan, offered by city health officials, makes King Middle School the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available to students in grades 6 through 8, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

There are no national figures on how many middle schools, where most students range in age from 11 to 13, provide such services. [source]

There is an excellent discussion about this story underway at the Crunchy Con blog. I've never seen so many people from all political and religious viewpoints agree on anything like the do on this. The consensus: it is a monumentally stupid idea.

Set aside for a moment the question of whether schools should be in the business of enabling or encouraging, however tacitly, sexual activity by middle school students. The plan is medically dangerous.

Students treated at the centers must first get written parental permission, but under state law such treatment is confidential, and students decide for themselves whether to tell their parents about the services they receive.

It is a small comfort that parental permission is required, though I wonder how closely the clinic workers will scrutinize whatever signatures or forms the kids bring from home. Nevertheless, exactly how feasible is it to expect an 11-13 year old to provide accurate medical information to the clinic?

Birth control pills and patches are prescription medicines. They have risks, side effects, interactions with other medications. You can overdose on them. They have to taken on a precise schedule in order to work. Yet "students decide for themselves" whether to tell their parents about any medicines they receive. Any parent who lets their kid go to this clinic, as well as any physician or nurse who works there, is taking a huge risk.

The very same public schools that are terrified a kid with a headache might take a Tylenol are now happy to administer birth control pills. The logic behind this escapes me. We know that school-administered sex education isn't preventing sexually transmitted diseases, even as the states outlaw the one technique that actually is effective: abstinence. Is there a method to this madness?

I can only think of one thing that fits: school administrators (and the parents who cooperate with them) must want the kids to be sexually active, as early and often as possible, and are willing to risk medical complications in order to achieve this. The plan in Maine makes perfect sense if that is their motivation. So far, they seem to be succeeding.

The DC Madam

This will be interesting. The so-called "DC Madam", Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is threatening to reveal her customer list and the first of what may be many highly-placed cads just resigned.

Palfrey is alleged to have run a prostitution ring for 13 years before her retirement in 2006 and supposedly has records reflecting "transactions" with thousands of highly-placed officials.

Palfrey has denied she ran a prostitution ring. Her company, Pamela Martin and Associates, was simply a "high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior and did so without incident during its 13 year tenure," she said.

Palfrey contends her escort service provided university educated women to engage in legal game-playing of a sexual nature at 275 dollars an hour for a 90 minute session, the Washington Post reported.

But Palfrey has also hinted that she has a record of the phone numbers of thousands of more than 10,000 customers that could embarrass more the a few of the US capital's high-fliers.

Friday, the US State Department announced that Randall Tobias, the embattled head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was resigning for unspecified personal reasons.

However ABC News, which said Palfrey has provided it with a record of the numbers of calls to her private cell phone, reported that Tobias stepped down after they spoke to him about his allegedly contacting her number.

Tobias since 2003 also was President George W. Bush's first global AIDS coordinator, a job which drew criticism for his emphasis on faithfulness to partners and abstinence over condom use in trying to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus.

Before entering government he was chairman, president and chief executive of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, and also, from 1997-2000, chairman of the board of trustees at Duke University. MORE

Mr. Tobias sounds like a very wealthy and powerful man. ABC News has a little more detail on the "services" he purchased from Palfrey.

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage."

Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages. MORE

Hmmm, "no sex," Mr. Tobias says. Where have we heard that before? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he is being truthful. It still seems pretty stupid to call an escort service that offers "legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior" and have a woman come to his home for a private massage. What does he expect people to think?

Here's the problem, and I said this same thing in my pre-blog days about Bill Clinton and Gary Condit: People who live double lives like this make themselves vulnerable to blackmail. This is very dangerous for government officials who possess national secrets and are in position to make important decisions that affect many people. Even if we forget the morality of it, those we place in high office need to above reproach for purely practical reasons.

Mr. Tobias at least did the honorable thing by resigning. I feel sorry for his family and others that will be torn apart if more names are revealed by Palfrey. I also have to wonder why the background checks that are supposedly done on administration appointees did not reveal his proclivities - this sort of activity probably did not start recently. Either the FBI is doing incomplete investigations, or the White House know about it and appointed him anyway. Neither possibility is good. Another good question is whether the boards at Eli Lillyand Duke University knew what their chairman was doing to relax.

The saddest part is that I'm probably in the minority in being bothered by this. When other men are exposed like Tobias, the public reaction will probably be a big yawn. The Clinton scandal demonstrated that most of the American public doesn't really care if the president fools around as long as the economy is booming and his wife stands by him.

I look at it another way: any man who will lie and cheat on his own wife will not think twice about doing the same to the rest of us, whether he is the president of deputy undersecretary of whatever. People will say "he's only human like the rest of us." True enough, and I don't expect perfection. Still, is basic honesty is too much to ask of our leaders? Apparently so.

Banned in Beijing

Apparently I've said a few things that the Chinese government didn't appreciate. How do I know? According to this site, Driving Out The Snakes has been blocked from public access in China.

I don't know exactly when I got on the Forbidden List. My traffic stats show visits from several different cities in China recently, so somebody is getting through. It may just be the censors checking up on me.

I'm sorry people in China aren't being allowed to read my pithy thoughts. On the other hand, I'm pleased to be an officially designated Enemy of the State. I must be doing something right.

Treating The Sick

If any good comes from the Virginia Tech killings, it may be a heightened awareness of the way we neglect mentally ill people. Americans have endless sympathy for those with physical disabilities. Yet when someone has a problem in the brain, they are usually ignored, sometimes ridiculed, and all too often left to live on the streets. It is far easier for a mentally ill person to get a gun than it is to get treatment.

Cho Seung-Hui had obvious problems. He came to the U.S. from South Korea at age 9 and apparently had trouble adjusting. Classmates from middle school and high school recalled him as painfully shy and unable to speak. The video he sent to NBC shows a person with the kind of rage and anger that is familiar to relatives of the mentally ill.

At Virginia Tech, Cho was referred for psychiatric evaluation over a year ago due to his bizarre and frightening behavior. A judge ruled he was a danger to himself, but not so dangerous as to require hospitalization. He was ordered to receive outpatient treatment; it is not yet clear if he did so, or what kind of treatment he received.

This is where it gets difficult. People with schizophrenia, bipolar, or other serious mental illnesses often seem perfectly normal at first glance. Their condition becomes clear only after lengthy observation. Courts are reluctant to confine people long enough to get a fair evaluation - as they should be. Fake charges of psychiatric illness are a favorite weapon of totalitarian regimes against opponents.

Even if courts would confine people, the question then becomes where? Private psychiatric hospitals are increasingly rare and expensive. State hospitals are often nothing more than prisons with a few extra doctors.

If they can somehow get help, many people with these conditions will show dramatic improvement with proper medications. Unfortunately, finding the right medicine involves a long trial-and-error process. With an infection, you can take antibiotics and a blood test will confirm the germs are gone. Mental illness is not so simple. Even doctors don't understand how the various medicines work. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about how our own brains function. The same treatment can have different results in different people, and there are often troublesome physical side effects.

When someone goes over the edge like Cho, it seems clear in hindsight someone should have done something. But the legal-medical-political complex that we all think should have helped him did not. In fact, it probably could not help him, thanks to a thick web of laws and a serious lack of resources.

I recently ran across an organization called the Treatment Advocacy Center that promotes solutions to this dilemma. Mentally ill people will usually not seek treatment on their own; often they are convinced there is nothing wrong with them. TAC argues that the courts must step in and force these people into treatment. That is what was done until a movement in the 1970s to "de-institutionalize" mentally ill people.

With proper support, TAC believes most psychiatric patients can be helped on an outpatient basis. They have found that with proper support from the judicial system, these people can have much better outcomes , and families and communities will be safer from potential violence.

After what happened this week, this may seem like an obvious solution. Unfortunately it is not always so clear. The line between people who should be expected to take care of themselves, and those who need help whether they want it or not, can be hard to draw. We have a system that makes treatment optional for those who need it most. Here's how one psychiatrist sees it:

A lot of times, a family will say: 'Please treat our son. He's ill.' And I say: 'I'm sorry. I can't.' I know it's the best thing for him medically. But as a society we have decided you have the constitutional right to be very psychotic and medically ill — and miserable."

We must find ways to distinguish between people who are simply evil, and people who are mentally ill. Sometime both exist in the same person. What drove Cho Seung-Hui to murder and suicide? We may never know. By helping others like him, we will help everyone. Now is a great time to start.

Bikini Firefighter

Here is a story that is amusing on the surface. Dig a little deeper and it's disturbing.

Of course we all find it easy to laugh at the guy - but what makes someone do these things? What demons drove him into such self-destructive behavior? What happens to him now that his private quirks are national news? And most important, why do we all get such pleasure from seeing another human being humiliated?

Obviously people who drive under the influence have to be stopped. People who allow children to see things they shouldn't have to be prevented from doing so again. Yet who among us hasn't done things we would rather keep hidden?

I feel sorry for this person. After justice is done, I hope he gets some help.

Modern Day Exile

My last post inspired several comments, including one anonymous person who wrote at length about the idea of making released sex offenders live in so-called "safe zones" away from children. The broader question is what to do with child predators who have served their sentence - assuming of course the sentence is something less than death.

We should first note that not all offenders are equal. For example, it is not uncommon for a young male of 16 or 17 to be convicted of sexual contact with a girl of 13 or 14. This is not ideal behavior by any means, but is it equivalent to a man in his 40s preying on young girls? Hardly. Yet in the eyes of the law both are "child predators" and will be labeled as such for life. Our laws need to make better distinctions about the type and degree of sex crimes.

The second thing to remember is that many, and perhaps most, child predators are mentally ill. This is common sense - normal adults do not seek out young children for sexual purposes. Yes, there are people who are simply evil and must be treated as such. However many offenders have some kind of disorder. Sadly, our society has simply turned its back on these people. Fifty years ago they were institutionalized, cared for humanely, and kept away from opportunities to act on their impulses. Now, in the name of "equality" we leave mentally ill people to fend for themselves. They fill our homeless shelters, beg for money on the streets, and sometimes commit horrible crimes. This is a shameful situation that must be addressed soon.

Another cause of the apparent increase in sex crimes is that the internet now makes pornography easily available. There have always been magazines and such, but online material is never-ending, easily accessible and very private. It serves to encourage harmful fantasies and, for some people who are already weak, can push them into acting on their impulses. Since a lot of this material comes from overseas, it is not easily stopped. The temptation attacks even otherwise strong Christian men - as we see in the frequent stories of clergymen caught in sexual affairs. True Knights is a good resource for anyone who needs help with this problem.

In any case, the reaction in many states and localities to the release of child predators is to tell them "go somewhere else." A patchwork of laws forbid registered offenders from living within certain distances of schools, churches, parks, bus stops, or other places where children congregate. 2,000 feet is a common limit.

Here's an exercise for you. Try finding a spot in any city or suburb that is not within 2,000 feet (almost a half-mile) of a school, church, park, or bus stop. It isn't easy. So one of two things happens: the predators simply drop out of sight, or they are exiled into isolated rural areas. Does this accomplish anything toward the goal of preventing future offenses? Not really. Most sexual deviants are happy to travel if that's what it takes to find what they want.

It does, however, mean that they are spread out over vast areas and become that much harder to track. It also makes it harder for them to stay in touch with family, friends, therapists, and others who can help them live a normal life and not repeat their offenses.

It's also a fair question to ask why we don't apply this logic to other types of criminals. Should arsonists be forbidden to own matches or enter wooden structures? Should shoplifters be banned from malls? Should tax evaders be sold into slavery until their debt is paid? It's easy to say that punishment should fit the crime, but not always easy to do so in practice.

Of course, if one takes the position that all sex offenders should be executed or imprisoned for life, none of this matters. However anything short of that extreme leaves us with a problem to solve. How do we make sure these people do not hurt more children?

I don't have any simple answers. Maybe there are none, other than to continue all efforts to recover a general sense of faith and morality in our culture. Tougher penalties do not seem to be helping. This isn't surprising since, as noted above, many offenders are mentally ill and are forced to live in the fringes of society. Doing something about this (something more humane than prison or execution) would help a lot.

At the end of the day, the real question is whether we believe people who commit these crimes can change their ways. If they can, then society will benefit from having them return to productive lives. If not, then they have to be separated somehow so they do not harm anyone else. I don't think there is a blanket answer to this question - each case has to be considered individually. That's why broad-brush legislation that reduces the discretion of judges, juries, and parole boards is probably not the best solution.

Do YOU have an answer? If so, I'd like to hear it. Post your comment and we'll talk about it.

Inspector Clouseau is Reading Your Mail

In the name of fighting terror, the Bush Administration has made it clear nothing will stop it from monitoring our internet usage, reading our e-mail or eavesdropping on our phone calls. (You think not? Show me a clear, unhedged, on-the-record denial from any senior official that they are doing these things right now. You won't get it.)

So now we learn they are not above steaming open envelopes to read our snail-mail too. This is from the New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. MORE

Bush loves these "signing statements, " and well he should. In them he claims for himself and all future presidents nothing less than the right to ignore the law. And we're letting him get away with it!

All you conservatives out there who were so up in arms about "the rule of law" when Bill Clinton lied about his affair with Monica need to show some consistency. Otherwise you'll have no grounds to complain when all this new power lands in Hillary's lap.

We have a president, not a king. Or at least we used to.