By Monday morning, Christina Okarmus realized she had a problem with her hands. She’s certainly a really, really silly, made-up problem, but it’s still a problem.

Ocalmus is executive director of a small non-profit organization known as the Alabama Campaign for Adolescent Sexual Health. If you haven’t heard of the campaign, it’s largely due to the design of very conservative state leaders.

It started years ago as a campaign to prevent teenage pregnancies, but its goals and ambitions are focused on the people who interact with school-age children and teens on a daily basis, and the challenges facing young people today. It has changed with the times to include being able to better deal with a wide variety of sexual health issues.

The campaign does not interact with children. We do not sponsor school programs or work directly with schools. Fundamentally, it exists to provide resources that teachers, counselors, coaches, parents, and mentors can use. It’s kind of like a resource hub.

The campaign’s board of directors is made up of some of the brightest minds in the state, including dozens of doctors and prominent nonprofit leaders. Alabama Superintendent of Education Eric McKee and State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris are considered ex-officio members in their capacity.

It’s the last part of Mackie and Harris being included that caused the Ocalmus problem.

Nothing clicks on a right-wing propaganda website like an article declaring that public school administrators are somehow discussing sex with young children. And second on his outrage list is a story that could attack people who were in favor of COVID mitigation measures (i.e. doctors with working brains).

Unfortunately, Alabama lacks a lot, but it does have an abundance of right-wing propaganda websites.

One of them took a long time to follow a link from the campaign’s resource page to one of our partner websites, a group called Amaze (the campaign’s website has dozens of links). There you can find hundreds of videos. Almost all of them are short animations covering various topics that every 12-year-old doesn’t want to discuss with their parents.

Of course, the selected videos, which spoke of the dangers of young people seeking information about sex using porn as a guide of some sort, used depictions of nude cartoon characters.

“That sounds like a pretty good message. Kids shouldn’t take porn as reality, it’s all acting, not real life,” Ocalmus said. These videos are designed for parents to watch these videos with their children and discuss what is being said, which so many people struggle with. It’s a resource for solving complex and sensitive problems.”

That’s right.

But on the other hand, taking that video, embedding it in the story, and slapping the words “extreme” and “sexual” in the headline, well, Occalmus had a problem.

Two campaign board members, including McKee, resigned before the end of Monday. And she said late Tuesday that more groups could follow suit, or that one group with an agenda had misrepresented almost everything about her organization and its activities, leading to a reduction in campaign work. I was worried about being

“If the person who wrote the article or someone on this website had bothered to call me and members of the board, none of this would have happened,” Ocalmus said.

And spoil a perfectly good hit with the fact? Pfft.

Both Mackie and Harris were a little surprised to find their names and photos on the campaign website. Neither had any real involvement with the group, nor was they truly aware that their position put them on the campaign’s board.

McKee resigned because it seems everyone is running a run in Alabama public education right now. It pains me to see Alabama’s most powerful voting bloc consistently and reliably run away from battle because for whatever reason they don’t come together and fight for a profession that can save this state. At some point someone will have to stand up. Because right-wing greedy people are not going to stop coming after the huge piles of money controlled by public education.

But that’s another column for another day.

Scott Harris famously took shots and never looked up. he has not resigned He told APR he can’t comment on the story because the propaganda website responsible for the story is maintained by the group suing Harris for the COVID issue.

However, sources close to the Alabama Department of Public Health say Harris was unaware that he was on the campaign’s board of directors, but a review of the organization’s materials found no issues.

Because Harris is a rational person. He lives in one of the states with the highest teenage pregnancy rates in America. He is one of the states with the highest rates of STDs among teens.

One thing we don’t get enough of right now is quality, fact-based sex education. But sadly it’s almost zero at our school. The main reason is that our conservative Congress insists on an abstinence-first mandate for sex education, with the idea that old people know better.

It works very well, with the 5th lowest teenage pregnancy rate, the 5th lowest rate of sexually active teens, and the 4th highest rate of sexually transmitted infections among teens. the second highest percentage of teens and young adults who watch porn regularly. .

This is what is called extremism.