that are part of our charter program, they are using evidence-based information about contraceptives, teen pregnancy, sdss andmakering sure teens know how to set boundaries, communicate boundaries and respect the boundaries that other people set. joan? yes, karen. here s the thing. i hadn t heard the one about toothpaste but there are we kind of checked this out. it is not just mississippi. it is not just chocolate. other things that they ve used not they specifically mississippi but that have been used around the country in abstinence-only curricula used tape, chewed up gum, a cup of spit and a rose with no petals. essentially the rose is passed around, everybody pulls off the petals and you are left with this ugly, thorny thing. how is it in 2014 we don t feel comfortable making sure that teens have being a is the information? we are talking about medical information here. we know that many many places in the country they do.
even many places we are learning it in mississippi i want to thank mr. johnson for his really hard work on this tough issue because it is so important to be there. the other side of the coin, is that there is this known desire to stigmatize women. it is all about shaming women, not men. the men aren t the dirty peppermint paul or whatever. and then the other part of it is that it is so tragic. we ve had great success in this country bringing down the teen birth rate. we ve had great success. mr. johnson and many educators across the country, even in mississippi, we know what it takes to provide comprehensive sex education that includes some abstinence training and it really works. we know when, where and how to do it and we are deliberately not doing it and we are consigning these kids to shame, to poverty, to sexually transmitted diseases. it is so immoral. yet, james, as joan was say, it is essentially the girl, the woman who gets blamed. right?
article was part of the initial and only state approved plot pilot three years ago. we ve been teaching an entirely different curriculum in the last two years. okay. but that does not change the fact that someone actually thought it would be a good idea to pass around a dirty chocolate to demonstrate abstinence, nor does it change the fact that according to the latest cdc numbers, mississippi ranks third in the nation in teen birth rates. joan james and viviana are back joining us. communities director of advocacy, sanford johnson. thanks so much for joining us. thank you so much. very happy to be here. so tell us a little bit about what s going on in mississippi. i have to say, i was initially the idea of teaching kids that gay sex is illegal, which is obviously not true, and then we saw i know the peppermint patty is not currently being used but it sounds like there are some real
been told the truth about what happened at the irs. only tea party and conservative groups were targeted. whether there was white house involvement has not been proven true. this is about 2014 elections and 2016 elections. across the country republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote. protect being the right to vote. the action that truly makes our nation an exceptional one will continue to be a priority. to those two men, race has been both a shield and a sword. we re not going to go into november with people not understanding the restrictions that are being placed on their right to vote. we all know what this is about. this is a way of restricting the franchise after 50 years of expanding it. in your forecast today, two contentious topics that will heat up as we head into the 2014 elections. republicans played to their base with efforts to ramp up their investigation into the so-called irs scald, while democr