News of Note

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART II

“As many as 11% of U.S. women ages 15-44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used a "morning after" pill at least once, or 5.8 million women. Half say they used it because they feared their birth control method may have failed, and the rest say they had unprotected sex.”

–First Federal Report on Emergency Contraception

The report also found that only 14% of sexually experienced females ages 15–19 had ever used emergency contraception, compared to 23% of women ages 20-24 and 16% of women ages 25–29. Moreover, the report showed that emergency contraception was most ...

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in News of Note / Public Information / Sex Education  by Alifa Watkins 0 comments

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART I

In 2011, the secretary of health and human services’ banned over-the-counter sales of emergency birth control to girls under age 17... in 2013, a federal judge challenged this decision. When Kathleen Sebelius, former health secretary of President Obama, blocked the sale of emergency birth control (commonly referred as the “morning after pill” or by its name bran of “Plan B”) to girls under the age of 17, President Obama endorsed her decision, saying that “the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be ...

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in News of Note / Public Information / Sex Education  by Alifa Watkins 0 comments

Donate: The New Center Against Religious Extremism

CC-hiv-abstinence-propaganda

I was so heartened to see yesterday's press release issued by Wayne Besen's Truth Wins Out (TWO) regarding the funding of TWO's new Center Against Religious Extremism (CARE, or TWOCARE). “If you’re like me, you are tired of American extremists literally getting away with murder from Uganda to Russia,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The Center Against Religious Extremism is designed to monitor, counter, and ultimately serve as a bulwark against an ignoble enterprise designed to drag the world back into the Dark Ages.” It would be a wonderful service to humankind if TWOCARE can ...

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in Campaigns / Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Net Neutrality: Who is minding our store?

Susan Striech, WikiCommons Fair Use/Educational

FCC's Reported Capitulation around Open Internet Protections is a Major Step Backward "If true, this proposal is a huge step backwards and just must be stopped,” said Michael Copps, a former FCC commissioner who now serves as a special adviser to Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. “If the Commission subverts the Open Internet by creating a fast lane for the 1 percent and slow lanes for the 99 percent, it would be an insult to both citizens and to the promise of the Net." Technologists, activists, and regular people like you have been trying to get the rest ...

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in Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Thousands of drug offenders to receive clemency

Step by step, month by month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, as left us breathless as he and the Obama Administration have begun to heal America by destroying some of the malignant tentacles of the 40-year-old War on Drugs. April 2013 will become one of the greatest landmark in establishing human rights in our own country because Holder's most recent efforts will expand the eligibility for clemency to the 20% of all current prisoners who are serving sentences for marijuana possession, eventually freeing tens of thousands of people and improving the future for just as many families. He's hiring more lawyers ...

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in End Police Bias / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Videos  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Dan Massey Memorial Service: Eulogy

Dan, 1977

Additional material from this February 28, 2013 Memorial Service: Introduction, Mayor's Proclamation, Dan The Activist, Upcoming Book Excerpt, and Printed Program. Also see: Wikipedia, The Advocate, Huffington Post, and MetroWeekly.

I am Joan Wentworth, a friend with a long history with Dan and his family. Within the embrace of that friendship, loyalty, love, and service are themes in this story.

I have always had a deeply intuitive trust that Dan and Alison were innately loyal people. Dan was loyal ...

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in Dan Massey / Events / News of Note / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

Not Your Typical “Driving While Black” Story

Black Youths Attending Princeton Conference Pulled Over by Police, Then This Happened   You are riding in a car with some friends, and you get pulled over by a cop. What do you do? A group of members from the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) responded to this predicament by exercising transformative justice, when they engaged in an enlightening conversation with the officer who stopped them as they left a campus event at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ). It was supposedly for a broken taillight that turned out not to be broken at all. When confronted by the carful of ...

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in News of Note  by Kwani 0 comments

¡También en Español!

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Con la vuelta de VenusPlusX después del relanzamiento de su nuevo look y navegación, ya estamos listos para planear el relanzamiento de VenusMasX. Mientras tanto, éste sigue manteniendo la función del hogar de numerosas traducciones del material de VenusPlusX. VenusMasX está lista para entrar en su segunda fase de vida, por lo cual, este año estamos buscando a un nuevo Webmaster y Editor de VenusMasX, quién la llevará a esta segunda fase, aumentándola en publicar material original y exclusivo dedicado al mundo Latino. (Si interesado, póngase en contacto con columbia@venusplusx.org.) Actualmente estamos aceptando aplicaciones para becarios-estudiantes/asistentes al Webmaster-Editor de VenusMasX. Por el ...

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in Español / News of Note / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Until we meet again . . .

Dan and I have just spent the last a couple months retooling our website to focus more directly on the campaigns that have become the most important to us, and finishing our book on erotic communion that we have been researching and writing for the last 3 years. Look for more info on both. For now, we have to report that Dan at 70 put down his keyboard on January 28, and after a short and painless illness took his last breath on this earth. He arose anew to carry on with the joyful immortality he and his ...

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in Dan Massey / Events / News of Note / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

Trevor Project Working for a Better Future for All Youth

The Trevor Project was founded in 1998 by the creators of the film "Trevor": James Lecense, Peggy Rajeskim and Randy Stone. The Academy Award-winning film is about a young boy dealing with being bullied while undergoing self-discovery about his sexual identity. The three creators soon found out that there was little (if any) support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth facing the same types of crisis as Trevor. In response to this, the filmmakers founded The Trevor Project., now a leader  in providing crises intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBT youth. TREVORSPACE is ...

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in Grassroots / News of Note / Public Information  by Brenda 0 comments