http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/welcome.htmlLUFFt Newsenmeszaroe@lawrence.eduCopyright 2006 LU Forum for Freethought2007-01-10T20:50:48-06:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:41:42 -0600meszaroe@lawrence.eduEvents2007-01-10T20:50:48-06:00http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/f87b2a28830fafa75821d6991c848f2b-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/f87b2a28830fafa75821d6991c848f2b-4.html#unique-entry-id-4Hi everyone. So I had an idea for a topic for this Friday. We seem to be having a lot of religion related discussions and I thought maybe we could try something new (we are after all about Freethought, skepticism, etc.) so here’s what I was thinking we could turn a critical eye towards:

Sex education (as in what we all had to go through in middle school/high school).

There’s a lot we could look at. For example, in 1997 the Title V Abstinence Education Program was put in place. Congress authorized $50 million of federally funds annually to promote abstinence education programs.

So some possible questions are: is abstinence only education the best choice? What about alternative approaches? Does it seem like there is a religious motivation for the abstinence only programs? What if an alternative program were introduced that did not touch on the “detriments” of pre-marital sex and discussed prophylactics? Is this even something that should be covered in school or left to parents? I don’t know, people can probably come up with things to discuss/debate about this. Here are some websites to get you started (I had trouble finding non-abstinence only websites. Hopefully people will be able to come up with arguments anyway?):

1) Whitehouse's website - Abstinence plan:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/welfare-book-06.html

2) Pro-Abstinence Website:

http://www.choosingthebest.org/about_us/index.html

3) (Biased) description of Title V Abstinence Education Program - National

Coalition for Abstinence Education:

http://www.sexrespect.com/FundInfo.html

4) Website promoting abstinence (Apparently boys 12- 16 are 4 times likelier to smoke and 6 times likelier to use alcohol than virgins! Girls are 7 times likelier to smoke and 10 times likelier to use marijuana! Yeah, it would be interesting to look over their sources and see how much of this is actually true):

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/BG1533.cfm

5) China - Sexual ignorance article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4572859.stm


Anyway, if people really prefer a different topic for this Friday and send out enough emails saying as much, then we can just pick something else. Either way, hope to see you all at 7:00 this Friday in Riverview!

-Monica
]]>meszaroe@lawrence.eduEvents2006-10-20T15:04:52-05:00http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/a0c74c533cfd056e0637479552d7c58c-2.html#unique-entry-id-2http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/a0c74c533cfd056e0637479552d7c58c-2.html#unique-entry-id-2But wait – there’s more! To make it even more legitimate looking, we’ll hold a brief discussion before the film as well as a somewhat more lengthy one after the film on the topic of… the film! (Which is, by the way, the so-called “Monkey Trial”… although, as Brandon mentioned, our discussion will span the teaching of evolution/creationism in American schools as well.) Some other campus orgs have apparently gotten away with showing movies via this method, so I figured we’d give it a try!
 
Oh, and we're *almost* to having a working Lawrence email addy (lufft@lawrence.edu)... but not *quite* yet!
 
And that’s all I have time for! Again: get back to me on the Bjørklunden stuff (esp. if you’re one of the aforementioned above), and come to the meeting (7:00 in Riverview) as prepared as you can to watch a movie and talk about evolution, creationism, education…. and all that good stuff!
 
See you then!
 
-Eva]]>meszaroe@lawrence.eduUpcoming Events2006-09-12T14:43:43-05:00http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/4b5191bf745931eda4fb4fb38af4b9f5-0.html#unique-entry-id-0http://www.lawrence.edu/sorg/luffy/events/files/4b5191bf745931eda4fb4fb38af4b9f5-0.html#unique-entry-id-0We will be tabling at the Activities Fair at 9:30pm, September 19, 2006.]]>