From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/abstinence-speakers-public-schools-lookadoo
By Dana Liebelson
Mon Nov. 18, 2013
I went to public high school in Montana, where at least once a year we were shuffled into the gymnasium for lectures from abstinence-only educational speakers on how to make “good choices.” Young, sprightly twentysomethings, who often resembled Ken and Barbie, would dance around the auditorium playing Christian rock and trying to convince us that having sex wasn’t cool. In between all the jokes and music, I learned that condoms cause cancer and that sex is a bad deal for women. Turns out, I wasn’t alone. Across the the United States, public schools—even ones that teach comprehensive sex education—invite religious abstinence speakers to come in to talk to students about sex, and sometimes spread information that is factually inaccurate in the process. Here are five such speakers, many of whom have generated local headlines for their controversial presentations. And they might be coming to a school near you—they’re all still active on the sex-is-bad circuit.
Justin Lookadoo: “God made guys as leaders.”
Lookadoo is a spiky-haired Christian lecturer who bills himself as a “professional Speaker who CONNECTS with the audience.” He is on the road 200 days a year and on his website, he lists his age as “legal in every state.” Lookadoo’s presentations can be paid for ”under many federal programs, including Safe and Drug Free Schools, Campus Improvement, Title I [and] Title IV.” Last week, he caused controversy at Richardson High School in Texas when he gave a presentation for teenagers in which he said: “Girls, the reason it’s so hard for you to succeed these days is not because of guys…You’re doing it to yourselves,” according to the Dallas Morning News. His online dating recommendations have also drawn ire from students and parents: “Men of God are wild…They keep women covered up” and “dateable girls know how to shut up.” The Richardson High School principal apologized to students and parents, promising that “we will not invite this speaker back to RHS.” Responding to the widespread media criticism, Lookadoo wrote on his Facebook page that “the complaints are based on relationship stuff [posted] on a website that I don’t even talk about in schools.”
Jason Evert: “Girls…only lift the veil over your body to the spouse who is worthy.”
Evert has two theology degrees and tours the country promoting abstinence with his wife, Crystalina Evert, with whom he runs the Chastity Project. According to Evert’s bio, he speaks to over 100,000 teens each year. Evert tells Mother Jones he speaks to “lots of public schools” and his upcoming schedule shows that he’s speaking next month at several in Texas. He says, however, that he removes all religious content from his public school presentations and is not paid personally for these events. Half of his honorarium for each event is spent on giving the students free copies of his pro-abstinence books and CDs.
Evert is passionate about women dressing modestly (or as he puts it, “Girls…only lift the veil over your body to the spouse who is worthy to see the glory of that unveiled mystery.”) In this 2008 YouTube video, he says: “A culture of immodest women will necessarily be a culture of uncommitted men.” He elaborated on those remarks for Mother Jones, saying that “true feminine liberation isn’t about having the ‘freedom’ to dress like Miley Cyrus” and that that his views “could be judged as misogynist, but I think this would be an unfair assessment.” He adds, “It’s a joke to think the girl needs to be the chastity cop…but to reach [a] level of mutual respect in society, I don’t think Daisy Duke shorts are going to expedite the process.” Evert also maintains that birth control pills cause abortions. (In reality, they prevent conception, and if an egg is fertilized, they make the uterine lining inhospitable for implantation. The Code of Federal Regulations and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists define pregnancy as beginning at implantation.)
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/11/abstinence-speakers-public-schools-lookadoo
