‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Sponsor: ‘The Act Of Homosexuality Is Very Dangerous’

TN Sen. Stacey Campfield (R)

Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) has reintroduced his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which not only prevents public school educators from discussing the existence of LGBT people, but now also would mandate teachers and counselors out LGBT students to their parents without their consent. Campfield’s views on homosexuality live up to the threat of his odious bill, according to Nashville Public Radio:

CAMPFIELD: I can’t speak from personal experience, but being homosexual in and of itself is not deadly or dangerous. The act of homosexuality is very dangerous.

He made similar comments in a video interview with The Tennessean, blaming the likelihood of getting AIDS for his “deadly” condemnation. Watch it:

Campfield is borrowing his narrative from the “love the sinner, hate the sin” motto adopted by the Catholic Church and other religious groups to sugarcoat their continued stigmatization of gays and lesbians. A person’s sexual orientation is a core part of their identity that transcends any sexual behavior they might engage in. To separate the two is to erase the community entirely.

But Campfield’s views are more absurd than that. He doesn’t just believe that homosexuality is “dangerous” because of the potential spread of HIV, he actually believes that AIDS “came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.” He also believes that homosexuality is a “learned behavior” comparable to bestiality. Defending his bill, Campfield has described any teacher who might mention the existence of gay people as “radical,” because they ought to “spend more time on arithmetic.”

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Federal Appeals Court Won’t Change Marijuana’s ‘Dangerous Drug’ Classification

In the debate over the legal status of marijuana, one of the major obstacles to more lenient federal treatment is the Drug Enforcement Administration’s classification of cannabis as a dangerous drug with no medical use. A federal appeals panel declined Tuesday to change that classification, finding that the DEA’s decision not to reschedule marijuana was not so improper that it warranted court invalidation:

On the merits, the question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits. Rather, the limited question that we address is whether the DEA’s decision declining to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana under the CSA was arbitrary and capricious. [...]

Petitioners … are left with the difficult task of showing that the DEA has misapplied its own regulations. [...]

[W]e are obliged to defer to the agency’s interpretation of “adequate and well-controlled studies.” Judged against the DEA’s standard, we find nothing in the record that could move us to conclude that the agency failed to prove by substantial evidence that such studies confirming marijuana’s medical efficacy do not exist.

Since the Controlled Substances Act was first passed in 1970, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive of the five schedules. The initial House of Representatives report recommended that Congress classify marijuana as Schedule I at least temporarily “until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue,” reasoning that uncertainty remained about the effects of the drug. But multiple requests that the DEA reconsider its decision have failed, on the grounds that there is still insufficient research to make a determination.

Plaintiffs in this case had cited more than 200 peer-reviewed studies, and argued that larger-scale studies are precluded precisely because the government doesn’t support research on Schedule I drugs. The Schedule I designation also means no prescriptions can be written for the drug, and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee cited the designation as the reason for blocking that state’s medical marijuana law. Both Chafee and Washington Gov. Christie Gregoire have called for the drug to be rescheduled.

In a deferential and unsurprising ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said it was bound by the DEA’s determination about what types of studies constitute “adequate and well-controlled.” But as the court explains, this decision represents courts’ extreme hesitance to disturb the determinations that agencies make, rather than any assessment of the medical benefits of the drug.

Nonetheless, it signifies the intractable battle to remove one of the major hurdles in reforming federal marijuana law. The classification of marijuana as a drug with no medical value appears increasingly at odds with the opinions of many doctors who attest to the medical benefits of the drug, and of patients, who take advantage of dispensaries in the 18 states where they are now legal.

A number of highly addictive and potent drugs, such as cocaine, opium poppy, morphine and codeine, are listed as Schedule II, designated for those drugs that have a high potential for abuse and dependence, but which have “a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions.” And the synthetic version of THC, known as dronabinol, is listed as Schedule III, even though THC is the ingredient in cannabis that causes psychoactive effects.

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The Dangerous Consequences Of Right-Wing Scaremongering Around The HPV Vaccine

CBS News reports that cancers related to human papillomavirus (HPV) has been on the rise over the last two years, largely because not enough people are getting vaccinated against HPV. Even though fewer numbers of Americans have been dying from cancer over the last two decades, a annual joint report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute finds that HPV-related cancers have ballooned:

The new report found increases in rates for HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer (throat cancer) among white men and women, in addition to rises in anal cancer rates among white and black men and women.

Alcohol and smoking can also lead to these cancers, however, HPV accounts for about 70 percent of the cancers in this area, [Dr. Michael B. Prsytowsky] said.[...]

“We need to get adolescent children — both boys and girls — vaccinated before they’re sexually active,” Prsytowsky said. “Parents need to understand the vaccine is safe and effective and prevents disease down the road.”

The report found that less than half of girls ages 13 to 17 got at least one dose of the recommended HPV vaccine. The government’s Healthy People 2020 campaign aims to have 80 percent of eligible girls vaccinated by the next decade.

While Obamacare provides support for wellness initiatives and eliminates co-pays for HPV screenings, such provisions are useless if Americans buy into the widely-debunked conservative hysteria that the HPV vaccine is unsafe. 2012 GOP presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) went as far as to claim that the vaccine causes “mental retardation” in girls, and other Republicans have falsely asserted that it somehow leads to sexual promiscuity.

Conversely, medical professionals urge Americans to safeguard their health by receiving their recommended vaccinations. “We must face these hurdles head on, without distraction, and without delay, by expanding access to proven strategies to prevent and control cancer,” Dr. John R. Seffrin, the chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society explained in response to the rising rates of HPV-related diseases.

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Our Dangerous Dependence on Foreign Chocolate

From the diaries.

America is addicted to chocolate.  Foreign chocolate.

A majority of us consume chocolate each day.  Although the U.S. produces only 6% of the world’s cocoa, we consume more than 20%.

The threat is obvious.  It’s time for government to step in and promote alternatives.

Any day, President Obama will be barnstorming the country to tell us, “If we really want chocolate security and chocolate independence, we’ve got to start looking at how we use less cocoa and use sources that we can renew and that we can control, so we are not subject to the whims of what’s happening in other countries.”

Today, we are at the mercy of Africa, which produces over 75% of the world’s cocoa.  That’s an unstable source, which means our chocolate dependency undermines national security.

Each of us probably began with that first innocent M&M but now it’s an unsustainable $13-billion a year habit.  The average American eats 11 pounds of chocolate per year.  We gain weight from chocolate.  Pimples get blamed on chocolate.

Fortunately, alternatives exist.  With proper federal loans and subsidies these can relieve our cravings and wean us from our addiction to chocolate.

Every member of Congress should be ready to spend on Spree.  (And it’s a lot easier to pronounce than Solyndra.)  The economy would be stimulated by the outpouring of government-subsidized alternatives to chocolate.

Subsidizing LifeSavers is another way to demonstrate our commitment to health care.

We can re-affirm our commitment to children if we provide Dots for Tots.

Others would pull for taffy.  The ag sector might prefer Jolly Ranchers.

And why not switch over our ethanol subsidies to candy corn?

Some chocolate alternatives are no-no’s, however.  Promoting Sweet Tarts risks offending the National Organization for Women.  And no self-respecting Democrat would mimic Ronald Reagan by providing Jelly Bellies.

President Obama can lead the way by explaining how we should not rely on foreign chocolate anymore than we should rely on foreign oil.  Of course, we’ll hope he doesn’t mess up his chocolate numbers as he does when he claims we have “only 2%” of global oil reserves.  But he’s using the most restrictive definition possible.  Obama’s own Department of Energy reports that, “Proved reserves are a small subset of recoverable resources.”

As noted by Investors Business Daily, America’s actual oil reserves are 60 times higher than the President’s carefully-chosen number:  “The figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the USA is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all our country’s oil needs for hundreds of years.”

Mr. Obama is using flimsy and misleading numbers to justify his anti-oil and gas energy policy, and his mega-billion dollar subsidies for “green energy” and “green jobs.”

So perhaps it’s time for him to pivot to another basic necessity, like chocolate.  If that goes well, he could move on to coffee, because we consume 16% of the world’s coffee but grow less than 1%.  And we manufacture less than 1% of the world’s TV sets, yet use 17% of them.  Then there’s olive oil:  We produce a tenth of one percent but use 8% of the world’s supply.  There are plenty of other examples of how we are dependent on trading with other nations,  just as they are dependent on trading with us.

But we have an over-abundance of politicians who are addicted to government subsidies and regulation but allergic to free markets.  After all, the free market could not have produced the $50 light bulb.  It took government to come up with that bright idea.

Former Congressman Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. 

  Follow Ernest on Twitter:  @ErnestIstook

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The Republican Party is playing a dangerous game

From the diaries.

There’s a lot to like about Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. It cuts some spending. It flattens the tax code down to just two individual marginal tax rates. It also includes some innovative policies designed to halt the unsustainable growth of health care entitlement spending. However, on balance, the budget is disappointing for fiscal conservatives for two main reasons: It waives the spending restraint that was agreed to in last year’s debt limit deal, and it doesn’t balance the budget until 2040. Broken promises and unbalanced budgets as far as the eye can see are neither good policy nor a good campaign rallying cry.

Last year, an agreement was reached in which Republicans gave President Obama a massive increase in the debt ceiling, in exchange for promised spending cuts that supposedly had “real teeth.” As part of the deal, Congressman Ryan and most Republicans voted to require an annual spending cap and $110 billion in automatic spending cuts for next year – otherwise known as “sequestration” – if the so-called “super-committee” failed to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Since the predictable collapse of the super-committee, the House GOP should have been working toward a budget proposal that allows for the sequester to take place for the coming year. Such a budget would include the $110 billion in reductions. Ryan’s budget achieves vastly less. It contains $19 billion in discretionary savings and, at most, $53 billion in cuts to mandatory spending — $38 billion short. Thus, it leaves House Republicans breaking the terms of the deal they agreed to just seven months ago.

That debt ceiling agreement provided that half of those cuts would come from defense spending, and half from non-defense spending. Some conservatives object to that level of defense cuts. Fine. The key to the agreement was securing the total $110 billion reduction in spending, not which part of the budget was cut. If some want to rearrange the location of the cuts, that would be fine, as long as the overall magnitude of the spending restraint was sustained.

House leaders claim they are making more overall cuts. However, they are clearly short of the requirements for next year and are pushing the deepest cuts out into the future. We’ve seen this movie before. Lots of times. In other words, they are kicking the can down the road . . . again. No matter how you slice it, the Ryan budget breaks the promise of spending restraint that was agreed to in exchange for raising the debt limit. And make no mistake, we’re not just arguing over $38 billion. Now that this budget breaks that deal, both parties will work to unravel the entire $1.2 trillion in sequestered cuts. Don’t be surprised if the full unraveling happens later this year.

A group of fiscal conservatives in the House, the Republican Study Committee, has proposed a budget that balances in five years. It contains strong tax reform and spending restraint. In addition, the RSC deals with Social Security, an entitlement program left untouched by the Ryan budget. And just like the Ryan budget, the RSC plan shifts the burden of the sequester away from defense, but preserves, and in fact exceeds, the overall spending reduction level agreed to last year. That is the right way forward.

By waiving the sequester and refusing to balance the budget until 2040, the Ryan budget and the Republican Party are playing a dangerous game. It is hard to have confidence that our long-term fiscal challenges will be met responsibly when the same Congress that passed the August debt deal wants to ignore it less than one year later.

America does not have thirty years to balance the budget. We may not have ten. We hope that fiscal conservatives will take a harder look at the House GOP budget, and ask themselves if they can and should demand more.

Chris Chocola
President – Club for Growth

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