A Virginia summer camp founded to teach middle school girls about musical performance and songwriting seems to have abruptly shifted its focus from music to sex ed this summer, thanks to a partnership with Planned Parenthood.
Girls Rock Roanoke (GRR) was launched in 2012 as “part of a national and worldwide movement to educate and empower girls and gender non-binary youth through music, creativity, and collaboration,” according to the organization’s website. While the website’s home page simply notes that the camps are canceled for 2021, a local news channel reported that GRR is now promoting a Planned Parenthood virtual sex ed program called Teen Connections.
A telling statement from GRR’s Executive Director makes clear that this partnership is intentional and a direct reflection of the views of GRR administration. Lacey Levy told WDBJ, “We really get to hone in and focus on a lot of the messages that we send to them many ways in camp. It’s not masked in music this time, it’s more direct and straightforward.” (emphasis added)
Teen Connections is “the education branch of Planned Parenthood here in Roanoke and the New River Valley of Virginia” and targets girls in 6th-12th grade. Participants will receive a $100 gift card after completing the two-week program, as well as a “peer educator” designation.
While the Teen Connections website is actually just a collection of links, those links take viewers straight to the Planned Parenthood South Atlantic website, directly to an appointment scheduler for PPSA, as well as to the Planned Parenthood YouTube channel and to Amaze videos, an “at-home sex ed video series”, according to Breitbart. You’d never know it from GRR executive director Levy’s vague assurances that Teen Connections participants will feel “more self-assured, have more confidence” and be “more educated on themselves and how to interact with others,” but parents have every reason to be suspicious of any sex ed materials created or promoted by Planned Parenthood.
The Amaze website is most concerning because its content arguably grooms children, offering explicit sex education to middle schoolers and categorizing virtually any sexual activity as healthy and normal. The website’s first video, “Is it normal to watch porn?” takes a definitive stance that “yes,” watching porn is indeed normal, even though pornography consumption is linked to multiple documented detrimental impacts on users’ physical and psychological health and ability to have healthy relationships, and is also inextricably connected to sex trafficking.
Other articles on the website include “Does Penis Size Really Matter?” and “Masturbation: Totally Normal.” Videos tell kids as young as five to touch themselves, and kids as young as 13 to masturbate — multiple times a day. Amaze also has the website Amaze, Jr., aimed at children as young as age three, with one video for ages five and up zeroing in on cartoon depictions of a penis and a vagina and describing an erection.
Former Planned Parenthood sex educator Monica Cline, who has since founded the non-profit It Takes a Family encouraging parents to be their children’s primary sex educators, commented on the GRR partnership with Planned Parenthood to Breitbart, noting:
Planned Parenthood is uniquely skilled at getting the attention of future clients and attempting to step into parental roles, especially for young women. Parents need to be aware of these tactics and not only closely watch and vet what their kids are watching and who they are listening to, but step up and have those conversations with their kids about self-image, confidence, and intimacy.
Because really, if parents don’t do their jobs, Planned Parenthood is happy to take over – and that is terrifying.
READ: Parents enraged as Planned Parenthood school flyer promotes sex to 11-year-olds
GRR’s partnership with Teen Connections is simply one iteration of a disturbing and disastrous-for-children nationwide push for “comprehensive sexuality education,” starting, as this Amaze article advocates, as early as Kindergarten. Live Action News recently reported on Illinois’ move to mandate comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in all public schools, with the express support and cooperation of Planned Parenthood.
Little mention is made of Planned Parenthood’s serious conflict of interest in promoting CSE and its consequential breakdown of children’s natural inhibitions by communicating at a young age that any sexual behavior is healthy and normal. When children believe that anything goes at any age, with the murky concept of ‘consent’ serving as the ultimate arbiter of acceptability, early-onset sexual activity results. Early-onset of sexual activity predictably leads to higher rates of unintended pregnancy and thus more abortion patients for Planned Parenthood.
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