TEMPE, AZ, January 9, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents and community leaders in Tempe, Arizona, are outraged after learning that their school district is considering implementing a sexual education curriculum written by Planned Parenthood. The other two sex ed curricula being considered equally promote abortion.

At Tuesday’s meeting of a Tempe Union High School District school board committee tasked with choosing a new sex-ed program for the district’s seven high schools drew a standing-room-only crowd of angry parents after word got out that the committee had invited a Planned Parenthood employee to give a 90-minute presentation to review and recommend potential options.

Arizona Planned Parenthood education director Vicki Hadd-Wissler was asked to evaluate three free and/or low-cost programs the district is said to be considering for use beginning next year, after issuing a directive last spring that schools adopt a “comprehensive, uniform sex-ed curriculum” to replace the abstinence-based programs they had been using.

The three programs Hadd-Wissler reviewed for the committee were Family Life and Sexual Health (FLASH), It’s All One, and Our Whole Lives (OWL) – produced by the Seattle and King County, Washington, schools; International Planned Parenthood Federation; and the Unitarian Universalist Church, respectively.

Arizona Right to Life president Jason Walsh, who attended the committee meeting, told LifeSiteNews that parents and community activists alike looked into all three programs prior to the meeting, and were appalled at what they saw as an ideologically driven, radical approach to sex education that seems custom-designed to create future clients for Planned Parenthood by fostering promiscuity.

All three programs promote promiscuity, abortion, contraceptives, and alternative sexualities such as homosexuality as morally neutral “human rights,” and encourage children to actively seek “reproductive justice” and “equality” by opposing restrictions on abortion and promoting same-sex “marriage” and adoption.

“It’s really an ideology of ‘anything goes, whatever feels natural to you, just roll with it,” Walsh told LifeSiteNews. “Anything goes, as long as it feels right, and if anything doesn’t feel right, explore it.”

Walsh especially objected to the “endless amounts of roleplaying” featured in the curricula, rehearsed scenes acted out by children in order to "practice" things like making or rejecting sexual advances, which he said are geared toward getting kids to “open up and untie their natural modesty and get them to think ‘oh, this might be normal, this may be acceptable.’”

While the district rushed to assure parents that Planned Parenthood’s education director was only serving in an advisory role for the committee and that any sex-ed program recommended will be voted on by the school board and taught by faculty, not Planned Parenthood staff, many parents and pro-life activists objected to the abortion giant being involved in any part of the selection process.

Walsh told LifeSiteNews that he and the vast majority of parents in attendance were incredulous that TUHSD would trust a Planned Parenthood representative to give an unbiased analysis of sexual education materials in the first place.

“Planned Parenthood [is] the number one elective abortion provider in America,” Walsh told LifeSiteNews. “What’s really important is that Tempe area high school students typically will feed into ASU/Arizona State University, which every year is number one or number two in terms of the largest student enrollment. So a very critical point is that of course Planned Parenthood wants to have a curriculum that creates that type of promiscuity, because they benefit from it from the huge amount of students that they see at their abortion mill, just about a mile from the university.”

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a pro-life legal foundation, said that not only was Tuesday’s presentation by Planned Parenthood’s Vicki Hadd-Wissler morally offensive, it might have been illegal.

According to Senate Bill 1009, which went into effect in April 2012, “no Arizona school district ‘may allow any presentation during instructional time or furnish any materials to pupils as part of any instruction that does not give preference, encouragement and support to childbirth and adoption as preferred options to elective abortion.’”

But Planned Parenthood is “pro-abortion, not pro-childbirth/adoption” according to ADF.

“The problem is the wisdom of a school district bringing in Planned Parenthood to consult them on their sex education program. It's is an organization they shouldn't be getting their advice from,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for ADF.

While Hadd-Wissler confirmed for Fox 10 Phoenix that she had been invited to the school board meeting, Superintendent Kenneth Baca downplayed her connection to Planned Parenthood.

“The committee did not invite Planned Parenthood as an organization to promote any program,” Baca told ABC 15. “A person on the committee knew a person that was familiar with the programs that were being considered and they asked that person to speak. That person happens to work at Planned Parenthood [as its state education director].”

The superintendent posted a letter to the school’s website assuring parents that Planned Parenthood would not be teaching any classes at the district’s high schools, and said Hadd-Wissler’s endorsement of the three programs was only a “recommendation.”

But at least one of the programs being considered, “It’s All One,” was written directly by Planned Parenthood and is offered for free at the organization’s website. In the section on “Sexual and Reproductive Rights,” the curriculum calls romantic and sexual license a “human rights issue” and says that access to abortion is a “basic right.”

“Only when our basic rights are honored (both by governments and by other individuals) can we make meaningful choices about intimate relationships, sex, and childbearing,” the authors argue. “For example, individuals can make decisions about if, when, and with whom they will form a romance, a long-term relationship, or a marriage. They can avoid being married too young or against their will. Or they can have an intimate relationship with someone of the same sex.”

The Planned Parenthood course teaches teens that basic human reproductive rights include the right to “negotiate condom use to prevent infection,” the right to “have sex with someone of the same sex,” the right to “have a safe abortion,” and the right to “adopt a child regardless of marital status or sexual identity.”

A second curriculum, “Our Whole Lives” (OWL), was developed by the liberal Unitarian Universalist Church to meet guidelines written with input from Planned Parenthood. Like Planned Parenthood’s own materials, the guidelines promote extramarital sex, abortion, contraception, masturbation, homosexuality and “gender expression” as morally neutral human rights.

The independent Vermont newspaper Seven Days once described OWL as “28 hour-and-a-half-long … no-nonsense lessons in human sexuality that would make some adults blush.” According to their report, “The discussions, films, role-playing exercises and, yes, even overnight sleepovers covered such sensitive and usually taboo topics as abortion, masturbation, sexual fantasies, incest, rape and gender-reassignment surgery.”

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The third curriculum, FLASH, published by Seattle and King County Schools, also promotes abortion as a morally neutral option, and goes out of its way to tell teens that it is “the most common surgical procedure performed in the United States,” ending nearly 25 percent of all American pregnancies, in contrast to adoption, which occurs in less than one percent of all U.S. pregnancies.

FLASH advises students that most abortion procedures take only 5-10 minutes – the rest of the time spent at the facility is used for paperwork and “rest.”

It makes no mention of the potentially life-threatening complications of abortion, instead repeating dubious claims that, “Abortions performed in the first trimester pose virtually no long-term risk of such problems as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or birth defect; there is no association between abortion and breast cancer or any other type of cancer; and abortion does not pose a hazard to women’s mental health.”

WASHINGTON – The New Jersey Assembly today voted to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in the state. The so-called "Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act" passed the Assembly 41-31 and now goes to the state Senate for consideration. Gov. Chris Christie has previously stated he opposed efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in New Jersey.

"Today's vote represents another instance of society turning its back on the medically vulnerable who are at risk because they are either depressed or worried about what their future holds," said Burke Balch, J.D., director of National Right to Life's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. "Contrary to what we're told by assisted suicide advocates, these laws do not offer a patient 'dignity,' but only abandonment from health care workers and family who are supposed to be caring for patients and loved ones."

While doctor-prescribed suicide is against the law in nearly every state, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont have laws that authorize the practice under certain circumstances. Additionally, the Supreme Court of Montana interpreted its law to make "consent" of the victim a defense in cases of homicide. A lower court judge in New Mexico struck its existing protective law. The New Mexico case is currently being appealed.

Advocates promote these dangerous laws, which are riddled with legal problems surrounding enforcement. In the states where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal and records are kept, most people seek suicide not because they are experiencing pain from illness, but because they feel like they are becoming a "burden" or losing autonomy. The "right to die" rapidly becomes a "duty to die.

The head of the international Courage apostolate says that the voice of persons who have struggled with same-sex attraction but who now practice chastity was missing from last month’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome.

Courage International is a Vatican-approved apostolate ministering to people with same-sex attraction by helping them to live chaste, God-centered lives.

“That voice was absent from the Synod,” Father Paul Check, the organization’s executive director, said in a televised interview with EWTN October 29. “That voice has not yet been heard.”

He said members of Courage have experienced “anxiety and unsteadiness” over the Synod seeming to come close to compromising on Catholic sexual moral teaching regarding homosexuality.

“They look to the Church, they look to Rome for that strength, that wisdom, that charity, that clarity that says, here is the path, persevere, stay on that path.”

According to Check, the Church offers to people struggling with homosexual inclinations the same things she offers every single person in existence struggling with human brokenness, woundedness, and sinfulness, namely clarity in teaching followed by mercy, compassion, repentance, and restoration.

It is the Catholic Church safeguarding her clear teaching on the nature of the human person and sexuality that offers a light to people struggling with same-sex attraction, he said.  

The Church “properly” directs compassion towards same-sex attracted persons, not by supporting the inclination the person is experiencing — which is a “symptom” — but by focusing on the person and helping them to understand the “story” of their life better, he said.

Check said compassion is “counterfeit” when it remains simply on the level of accepting the sinner without the “call to conversion.”

“This is something that looks like compassion, but it’s really a counterfeit. It does a terrible disservice to people because it doesn’t acknowledge the truth [that Christ calls us to ‘go and sin no more’],” he said.

Noting that same-sex attracted persons likely “suffer disproportionately” when compared with the general population, Check said that what the Church specifically offers to these people is the “redemptive character” of suffering achieved through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago.

Check said the Catholic Church is “well equipped” for helping people struggling with same-sex attraction to come to a deeper knowledge of self “in Christ” so that they can move away from a “misperception of identity” as they come to see who they truly are — and how much they are valued — in God’s eyes. 

If you're confused by the legal status of marriage in Kansas right now, you're not alone. Legal analysts, state officials, and more than 100 county clerks charged with issuing state marriage licenses are grappling with how to proceed after the Supreme Court lifted a temporary stay that allowed the state to continue defining marriage for itself.

On Wednesday afternoon, a divided court effectively allowed gay “marriage” to go forward in the state of Kansas. The three-sentence-long document noted, “Justice [Antonin] Scalia and Justice [Clarence] Thomas would grant the application for stay.” But what happens next is far from clear.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted the state of Kansas a temporary exemption in the case of two lesbian couples who wanted to obtain marriage licenses, Marie, et al., v. Moser, et al. U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree, an Obama appointee, ruled in their favor and ordered that marriage licenses be distributed to homosexuals beginning on Tuesday. Sotomayor momentarily delayed the order and asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to respond to the state's arguments.

The ACLU responded by saying, "While this case remains pending in this Court, children will be born, people will die, and loved ones will fall unexpectedly ill." They added that the “substantive legal protections afforded by marriage can be critical, if not life-changing, during such major life events.”

The deeply religious state's leadership reacted with a mix of outrage and determination. Congressman Timothy Huelskamp, who represents much of western Kansas, tweeted:

#SCOTUS undermines will of KS voters and undermines KS constitution. #JudicialActivismhttp://goo.gl/pWbbxP

— Cong. Tim Huelskamp (@CongHuelskamp) November 13, 2014

Gov. Sam Brownback promised to work with Schmidt to uphold marriage. “I swore an oath to support the Constitution of the State of Kansas," Gov. Brownback said. "I will review this ruling with the attorney general and see how best we continue those efforts." Brownback, who won an upset re-election last week, stressed his fidelity to traditional marriage in the waning days of the campaign.

Yet homosexual activists rejoiced at the legal imposition. “Now, this is a day to celebrate," said Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, an organization dedicated to redefining marriage and normalizing homosexuality.

Regardless of their political views, everyone agrees on one thing: Allowing same-sex “marriage” to go forward has thrown the state's county clerks into confusion.

Differences of interpretation pose one problem. The ACLU, which brought the case, believes the court case applies to all Kansas' 105 counties. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt believes the order is limited to only two: Douglas and Sedgwick counties, where the plaintiffs sued.

"Until I hear something from the Kansas Supreme Court, I'm not issuing any marriage licenses,” Johnson County Court Clerk Sandra McCurdy told the Associated Press.

Potentially conflicting rulings from within Kansas are another. The ACLU filed suit with Crabtree approximately one hour after Attorney General Schmidt filed another case before the Kansas Supreme Court. That case, which is still pending, could uphold state law, further muddying the legal waters.

At stake is the fate of the voter-approved Kansas Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage as a "civil contract between one man and one woman only.” Kansas voters adopted the amendment in 2005 with a whopping 70 percent of the vote.

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Kansas is under the jurisdiction of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has struck down marriage protection amendments in other states. So far, the Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals brought by states seeking to protect marriage, although the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling may open the door for a new hearing.

With yesterday's motion, same-sex “marriage” has been imposed in 33 states, 23 by judicial fiat. A total of 12 states and the District of Columbia have democratically passed laws to change the meaning of marriage, including two states where marriage had already been imposed by court order (California and Connecticut). In only three states – Maryland, Maine, and Washington – have voters directly chosen to redefine marriage by referendum.