The University of Wisconsin’s main campus in Madison has relished, at least since the anti-war movement of the 1960’s, its image as one of the most radical and leftist colleges in America. In order to cement that status well into the next century, the university is now selling and nationally distributing a package of “Health-Line” audio cassettes “addressing concerns of the body, emotions and intellect.” Warning: these tapes are definitely hazardous to your health.

One of the purchasers of the Health-Line series is Switchboard of Miami, Inc., which describes itself as “a private, non-profit, multi-service agency” serving South Florida “since 1968” by offering “a 24-hour telephone crisis counseling, suicide prevention, information and referral hotline, as well as counseling and prevention programs.” The centerpiece of this switchboard “counseling” is the University of Wisconsin-Madison tapes, purchased in January 1990 for $1,800 by money donated by the Dade County United Way; the program was renamed “Link Line.” The Dade County school system, the nation’s fourth largest, has officially approved the Health-Line tapes and encouraged, through posters and information cards, its teen and preteen students to call Link Line for “healthy” views on sex, drugs, and other subjects of keen interest. The local ABC television affiliate, WPLG, is promoting Link Line, as is BellSouth in its telephone books.

Switchboard of Miami proudly crows that nearly a half million free-of-charge phone calls have already been placed to Link Line tapes. The Dade County School System has placed speaker phones right in the classrooms and, under teacher supervision, incorporated the tapes directly into the sex education and drug education curricula. The Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services even contributes taxpayer dollars to fund Link Line’s operating costs.

George McKinney, associate executive director of Switchboard of Miami, is so impressed with what his United Way-and state-funded agency has accomplished that he recently journeyed to a national gathering called the “Alliance of Information Referral Systems” to promote Link Line as a model for schools and counseling service organizations around the country. As a result of this sales pitch, Ann Whitaker, R.N., program manager of Health-Line at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reports that her office has been deluged with orders from around the country for the Link Line tape package.

Leaving aside for a moment the moral worthiness of the tapes, the problem with promoting and playing Link Line in the schools is that the messages thereon just happen to violate state and federal laws. For example, the tape on “Alcohol & Other Drugs” is “value-neutral” about illegal drug use. Neutrality on this subject violates United States Public Law 101-226, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 1989. Called the “Drug Free Schools Law,” any public school system that receives federal funds may lose all of those federal funds if its drug education curriculum does not teach that drug use is illegal, harmful, and wrong. Contrast that federal statutory requirement with the Link Line claim that the legality of marijuana use “still remains to be answered.” The tape on “Alcohol & Other Drugs” tells teens simply not to mix alcohol with other drugs. No message that buying alcohol under the age of 21 is illegal in every state in the Union. Teens can’t legally drink, period, but they won’t hear that on Link Line. The tape on “crack” sounds like a cross between a Head Shop manual on how to consume the stuff safely and a physician’s tome on the pharmaceutical effects of doing so. No urging not to use cocaine is anywhere to be found.

The Dade School Board, Switchboard of Miami, United Way, and University of Wisconsin-Madison all ignored eight months of parent complaints about these tapes and a passionate plea to stop using the tapes from Edward McCarthy, Archbishop of Miami, the spiritual leader to 40 percent of Dade’s residents. Only when I, acting as legal counsel for a group of concerned Dade County parents, wrote the U.S. Department of Education (with a copy of the letter going to the school board) complaining about the drug tapes did the tape on marijuana get pulled. The school board, however, has refused to pull any of the other drug tapes while it reviews them for content and—please note—submits any revisions to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for its final approval. In light of the non-response of the Dade school system, of Florida Governor Chiles, and of Florida Health and Rehabilitative Services Secretary Robert Williams, the United States Department of Education last July 17 issued a letter to the Florida Department of Education asking for an explanation.

In addition to tapes on “Health & Abuse,” “Sexuality,” and “Birth Control & Pregnancy,” there is even one on masturbation. By simply dialing toll-free and punching up tape #313 our children can learn that masturbation is perfectly healthy, normal, and natural, and that the only thing you have to do is stop feeling “guilty” about doing it. In fact, punch up any of the tapes that deal with teenage sex, and you will hear that such activity is fine as long as the partners are careful and know the risks. Parents and religion are portrayed as enemies and the source of sexual “myths.”

Again, as with the messages on drugs, these tapes violate the law, specifically Florida Statutes 233.067 and 233.0672, which mandate:

. . . the schools are uniquely situated to effectively promote the establishment of sound health habits among our youth, including prevention of substance abuse and an awareness of the benefits of sexual abstinence and the consequences of teenage pregnancy. . . . Each district schoolboard . . . shall . . . teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children while teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage . . . emphasize that abstinence from sexual activity is a certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome . . . teach that each student has the power to control personal behavior Curriculum frameworks for AIDS education shall not interfere with the local determination of appropriate curriculum which reflects local values and concerns.

The above is the law in Florida. Consider now the following excerpt from the tape on homosexuality:

Whatever you heard about homosexuality, chances are it wasn’t very accurate. There’s so much misunderstanding about this minority group. Yes, that’s what it is—a non-ethnic, non-racial minority group.

 

Maybe you hear other kids using words like queer, faggot, or dyke. Or perhaps you’re afraid of your own sexual feelings. If these issues are troubling you, we’re glad you called. . . .

For some members of the human race, the pull towards their own sex is just as strong as the majority of humans are pulled towards the opposite sex. Many teenagers have same-sex experiences while they are exploring who they are sexually, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re homosexuals. . . .

You may be feeling very alone right now, as you search for your true sexual identity. You may be wondering if other people can tell, or may be frightened by what you are feeling or experiencing. But remember: There are other kids who are feeling just like you do.

If you’d like more information, there are excellent resources to learn more about homosexuality. The National Gay/Lesbian Crisis Line at . . . can get you in touch with resources in your area. That number again is. . . .

Thank you.

On June 10, 1991, I called Ms. Ann Whitaker and had a news reporter listening on the line. Characterizing myself as one sympathetic to the homosexual agenda, I encouraged Ms. Whitaker to “open up.” And gush forth she did, admitting that “a group of progressive Quakers from the Madison area wrote the tape on homosexuality, and of all the tapes, we are proudest of that one, because we worked so hard on it.”

Nurse Whitaker said that the purpose of that tape “is to tell kids they should experiment with homosexual acts in order to discover their true sexual identities. We don’t come across with any value judgments here about that sort of thing. We leave it up to the kids.” When I told her that I thought such open-mindedness was particularly important in light of societal attitudes toward homosexuality, Ms. Whitaker stated: “What we do, when we put a tape package into place in a local community, is first we put the non-controversial tapes into place, and then when the vocal minority—the fundamentalists—are not watching, we slip the controversial tapes, like the one on homosexuality, into place.”

One wonders if anyone anywhere has ever revealed more fully the deception and hidden agenda of the radical gay lobby whose new epicenter is Madison. And note how tragically ironic it is that a “suicide prevention counseling service”—as the Switchboard of Miami markets itself and Link Line—sings the praises of teenaged homosexuality. As the University of Minnesota reported last May 30 in its joint study with the University of Washington, 30 percent of gay or bisexual teenaged males attempt suicide. Teenaged male homosexuality increases suicide in “an alarming proportion,” the study concluded.

Dennis Byrne, member of the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times, recently wrote of the ACLU’s litigative assault upon the school system of East Troy, Wisconsin, which has dared to opt for an abstinence-based sex educational curriculum called “Sex Respect,” such as is mandated by ignored Florida law. Not surprisingly—but definitely revealingly—the ACLU has hired its own sex experts; these are, in the words of Byrne, “two University of Wisconsin-Madison profs who criticize the curriculum for everything from its supposed lack of balance (insensitivity to the concerns of buddy gay kids) to its ‘linguistic bias’ as demonstrated by the test’s ‘consistent use of generic “he” and sex-biased words (something, it strikes me, as pretty hard to avoid in a sex manual).” The Wall Street Journal on June 13, 1991, editorialized against the ACLU on this matter unmindful that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is literally selling this pro-promiscuity, pro-homosexuality not just in East Troy but around the nation.

A group of concerned citizens in Dade County, Florida, has seen (and heard) enough. After being ignored by the state, by local school officials, and by the local and national United Way, parents formed an ad hoc group called “Parents Opposing Propaganda in Schools” (POPS). On July 15, 1991, POPS announced to a huge gathering of local print and electronic media a countywide boycott of United Way of Dade County, which bought the tapes, which funds Switchboard of Miami, and which refuses, after its board addressed the question, to do anything about this illegal sex and drug curricula. The idea of the boycott was to hit United Way with a public relations nightmare in the midst of their annual plea for donations.

It is fascinating to note that the chairman of the board of Dade’s United Way, Tony Burns, who also happens to be chairman, CEO, and president of the Ryder truck company, told me face-to-face, in a meeting on July 2, that “I am personally appalled at the contents of the tapes.” However, Mr. Burns’ disgust is not matched by his persuasiveness, for on the next day he was told by his United Way board that it would do nothing to distance itself from the Link Line tapes it paid for.

By the time this article is published, a Dade County rally will have been held to further recruit from the community parents and others who are unwilling to have their United Way charitable donations and their taxpayer dollars go to a deceptive, illegal, perverted assault upon their children. A lawsuit against the State of Florida, the State of Wisconsin, United Way, Switchboard of Miami, and the Dade County School Board seems inevitable unless the illegal activity stops. I contacted the governor of Wisconsin’s office last summer, after which the governor’s chief-of-staff wrote to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s vice chancellor of health sciences, saying: “Senior staff in our office have reviewed transcripts of the tapes in question, and we are concerned about the content of some of the tapes. We request that you review the content of the tapes and advise of what changes you believe are appropriate.”

One final point: Link Line is not a local aberration. It is the latest creature of an organization called the Committee for Economic Development, headquartered on Madison Avenue. The CED has, by its own admission, an “interlocking board” with the Council on Foreign Relations. Both the CED and CFR are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Consider: the CED’s vice chairman of the board of trustees is CFR member John L. Clendenin, chairman of the board and CEO of BellSouth Corporation. BellSouth advertises Link Line free of charge in its phone books and refuses to pull the ads. An official “advisor” to the CED is William Aramony, National Chairman of United Way of America. Vice chairman of the CED’s Research and Policy Committee is none other than Donna E. Shalala, radical feminist chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, source of Link Line.

The CED’s manual, entitled Unfinished Agenda, states that “profound changes in family structure and stability coupled with the necessity for educating all children are forcing society to assume greater responsibility for the successful development and education of children. As a first step, every community should conduct a formal assessment of how it is addressing the needs of children, paying particular attention to the barriers that prevent change.” In other words, “society” is being “forced” to impose its values and its agenda on children, and the family and the church are the “barriers” to such “change.” United Way is ceaselessly praised in Unfinished Agenda as a primary vehicle for accomplishing this goal.

I spent much of 1990 leading the successful national fight against 2 Live Crew’s obscene album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. Success was secured not because of lawyering skill, but because the truth is relentless in exposing and conquering evil. All who value the safety and health of children would do well to ascertain if the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s assault upon your local community has yet begun. And a complaint to United Way wouldn’t hurt.