I’ve long believed that the high-profile Bush administration officials who amaze and disturb us — Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Ashcroft, et al — are matched by lower-profile officials who are just as outrageous.
Take, for example, Wade Horn, who is finally on his way out of government service.
[tag]Wade Horn[/tag], the Bush Administration’s point man for welfare reform, Head Start and abstinence education, resigned Monday as assistant secretary for children and families.
In the Department of Health and Human Services, Horn oversaw a $46 billion budget and 65 programs that serve vulnerable children and families. He is best known for his work on issues embraced by social conservatives, such as more money for faith-based groups and organizations that work to help couples improve their marriage.
That’s largely true, but I’ll remember Horn most for his multi-million dollar effort to encourage American adults not to have sex.
For this guy, it wasn’t enough for the administration to push costly, inaccurate, and ineffective [tag]abstinence[/tag]-only policies for teenagers, Horn believed it was his job to use taxpayer funds to encourage unmarried Americans up to the age of 29 to abstain from sex, too.
It was probably right around then that libertarians started asking themselves, “What are we doing with these guys?”
Indeed, it’s also worth noting that Horn’s office was the same one that helped establish HHS guidelines that effectively called for celibacy for everyone except straight married couples.
Earlier this year, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines for organizations applying for grants for abstinence-only education programs.
In addition to being costly, inaccurate, and ineffective, the programs must now operate under a strict new definition of abstinence:
Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: “Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”
And, of course, the same guidelines define marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife.” The result, as Nico explained last year, is that the Bush administration has decided that gays “should be taught to never, ever engage in ‘any type’ of ‘sexual stimulation’ — ever.”
Now, fortunately, Wade is leaving the administration. It gives the Bush gang an opportunity.
“Because [the abstinence funding] is so contrary to public health, our hope is the next assistant secretary there can have a firmer footing on what the evidence says,” said William Smith, vice president for public policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
Raise your hand if you’re optimistic.