With Administration for Children and Families head Wade Horn's resignation effective Sunday, groups like the Abstinence Clearinghouse and the Family Research Council are sad to say goodbye.
“We would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Horn,� said Leslee Unruh, Founder of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. “He has spent his time proving himself a true friend of abstinence education, and has shown a real understanding of the importance of marriage and responsible fatherhood in particular.�
Horn has indeed been cozy with hardline social conservatives. His achievements include:
- overseeing multi-million-dollar funding increases for abstinence-only education programs and crisis-pregnancy centers
- promoting abstinence-only programs for not just teens, but for adults, too
- running the National Fatherhood Initiative before he became a government employee, and then funding his organization with millions of federal dollars
- shunting federal dollars toward various other religious groups and right-wing organizations he is personally affiliated with, such as Marriage Savers
- deciding that low-income women need a husband more than they need job training, and funding "marriage promotion" programs with welfare dollars
- once arguing that Head Start programs should only admit children of married couples
(See Talk2Action for the complete lowdown.)
Horn's temporary replacement, Daniel Schneider, seems to be ideologically in step with him. At a recent congressional hearing, Democrat Barbara Lee questioned Schneider about why the only federal sex-ed funding goes to abstinence-only programs:
"It seems very unbalanced to me," Lee told Daniel Schneider, deputy assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, at the March 8 hearing.Schneider said states and local governments provide ample funding for "comprehensive" sex education and that "abstinence education has been ignored in the past, to some extent."
Yeah. Except for the fact that state and local governments don't fund comprehensive sex ed, they put their money toward securing federal matching grants, which are strictly for abstinence-only. And I don't think that pouring millions of federal dollars into abstinence-only programs is "ignoring" them, by any stretch of the imagination.
Before joining ACF in 2006, Schneider was chief of staff for Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kansas), one of the most conservative members of congress. While there, Schneider got cozy with Prison Fellowship Ministries, but I could find little else about his pre-ACF days.
Horn is clearly confident in Schneider's ability to carry the right-wing, anti-woman torch. As Horn told Focus on the Family, "The good news is that the people who did the work are still going to be here. The initiatives which have been launched will continue for the rest of the time that this president is in office."
Wheee! Glad to have Horn out of the way, in the private sector at an accounting firm. But it looks like we're going to have to wait for a new presidency to see real change at ACF.
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So he gets a recess appointment with no senate confirmation? Nice.
Hmmm, maybe he was snorting crack with a male prostitute too?
Anyway, maybe I'm just immature, but did anyone else think that his last name was a bit ironic (if not plainly phallic)?
And the "Abstinence Clearinghouse"...what is that, like the Publishers' Clearinghouse for right-wing nut jobs? If you remain "pure" until your wedding night do you get a camera crew on your doorstep and a giant check for 300,000?
Why is it that the Horn dog, like almost every other homophobe who foams at the mouth about the alleged threat my marriage poses to his, looks so incredibly gay?
man, i knew clicking through the jump would just make me even grumpier...
I must link to this so my South Dakota friends can see Leslee's latest quote.
(For those who don't know, her group's been pushing the SD abortion bans.)