Massachusetts liberals conspiring to sleaze stalled Planned Parenthood bill in as 2009 budget item

A couple of weeks ago, MassResistance reported that the Planned Parenthood pro-homosexual bill (H597/S288) was killed in committee. The bill is part of Planned Parenthood’s 5-year plan to extend sex education, abortion counseling, and normalization of homosexuality in the public schools. This was a huge setback for Planned Parenthood and the homosexual groups. For the second time in a row, they put heavy resources into getting this passed. But MassResistance (and parents across the state) pummeled the Legislature with phone calls, emails, letters, and personal visits against this bill.”

As last year, liberal lawmakers intend to sneak the bill into law by adding to the 2009 budget bill. MassResistance notes, “[s]neaking a bill into law by making it a “budget item” is a sleazy device the homosexual lobby has used before when they knew they couldn’t get it through legitimately.”

Proof of liberals’ plan to sleaze the bill into law was confirmed by the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows, which reports:

Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge), one of the lead sponsors of House Bill 597, which would require school districts to institute health curricula, said that while the education committee sent her bill to a study committee, she and other proponents are pushing for language on health education to be included in the Fiscal Year 2009 budget, a version of which is currently being drafted in the House. Wolf, a member of the education committee, said she and committee chairwoman Rep. Patricia Haddad (D-Somerset) will press for funding for the Department of Education to study the state of health education in the state’s public schools and create a plan to expand heath education.

“Chairwoman Haddad and I had an agreement that we would try to proceed with this agenda of trying to move forward with a health education curriculum through the budget process. And whether or not that will be successful we do not know,” said Wolf.

While the bill is not explicitly LGBT-focused, anti-gay advocates including MassResistance have accused proponents of using the bill to sneak pro-LGBT content into the schools because the state’s health education frameworks include discussion of LGBT people and issues. MassResistance founder Brian Camenker and several of his supporters testified against the bill during a hearing last May.

Wolf said from her discussions with fellow committee members she does not believe they were swayed by MassResistance’s arguments in their decision to send the bill to study, but the controversy they created did hurt the bill.

“I think what it did is raise [that] there’s some controversy around this, and there’s a certain amount of resistance around here to do things that have controversy,” said Wolf.

- “Fate of two LGBT-related bills uncertain” Bay Windows 2/21/08

The problem of attaching such a bill as an item to budget legislation is that sex education law will not go through a public hearing, committee debate, or executive session, as do other laws. Once the committee approves a budget bill, the House and Senate rarely pay attention to the thousands of individual items they usually just vote everything through fairly mechanically.” The only remedy at that point is the governor’s veto. But, if there are not enough votes to sustain it, the liberals’ sex education bill and any other rotten legislation become law.

To learn more, visit the MassResistance website.