For the past several years, USAID has awarded multi-million dollar grants to promote homosexuality and promiscuity to teens throughout Central and South America, and Africa.
USAID Funding
In USAID-funded programs throughout Central America, children and teens are targeted with pamphlets and advertisements of colored and flavored condoms which depict the faces of young boys and children as young as seven years of age.1
USAID-funded condoms billboards appear in newspapers and on billboards overseas, in violation of local laws which require information about risks. In family planning clinics throughout Central America and Africa, IUDs and Depo-Provera are promoted to teens and women without adequate information about risks, in violation of informed consent provisions of US law. In Honduras, IUDs are provided to anemic women without informed consent, and massive sterilization programs are promoted in government hospitals.
In Honduras, a USAID manual titled “Speaking About Sexuality with Young People,” is aimed at getting “boys and girls” to “acknowledge the existence of homosexuality in the population.”2 According to this USAID manual, promoted in schools throughout Honduras, “Homosexuality fulfills an important role in the sexual socialization of youngsters .… Youngsters today have to recognize the existence of male and female homosexuality.” In a section of the manual titled “Talking about sexuality with youngsters,” teachers are encouraged to ask 10 year old children: “If you have never had sex with a person of the same sex, how do you know if you would prefer it?”
Homosexuals such as Oscar Wilde are promoted as heroes, and photos of transvestites are provided to children. The manual is part of USAID’s AIDSCAP program, implemented in over 30 developing countries by highly-funded population control groups including Family Health International (FHI). FHI is one of USAID’s oldest and most highly-funded population control NGOs. According to USAID, FHI “improves reproductive health… among people 10 to 24 years old.”3 FHI also promotes programs designed to provide lubricants for homosexual men.4
Most people would agree that promoting homosexuality and distributing graphic sexual material to children as young as ten years old is wrong. Most taxpayers would be alarmed to know that U.S. funds are paying for these programs. But FHI has been aggressively promoting sexual material, including material on homosexuality, to children for years.
$85 Million to Promote Sex Ed
In 2001, FHI received $85 million from USAID to promote sex education to children and teens.5 FHI’s program, titled YouthNet, provides IUDs, contraceptive pills and Depo-Provera to children as young as ten years old in developing nations. Post-abortion care (a euphemism for manual vacuum abortion) is also available to children.
USAID’s YouthNet program is designed to destroy genuine faith-based abstinence initiatives, and integrate programs for teens and children into already-existing adult HIV-AIDS/Sexual and Reproductive Health programs throughout the world. Where genuine faith-based groups strive to promote abstinence to teens, FHI seeks to “go beyond traditional children’s religious education to address sexual behaviors explicitly.”6 FHI attacks genuine faith-based abstinence programs for teens run by the Catholic and Christian churches in Africa, and seeks to infiltrate and redefine them, compliments of USAID and the American taxpayer. FHI seeks to include into genuine faith-based teen abstinence programs “issues of gender empowerment and human sexuality,” and also seeks to circumvent parents with teen-only “anti-AIDS clubs,” “camps,” “videos, and theatre and music groups.” According to FHI, “These kinds of programs can deal with the subject in a relaxed manner without stigma and provide an opportunity for children and young people to express themselves in their own way. Here too is a chance for adolescents and young adults to address HIV/AIDS issues with other young people, without the constraints that an adult facilitator would impose.”7
Today, FHI is sniffing at the federal trough for untold millions more to undermine abstinence and religion with HIV-AIDS/reproductive health programs to children. FHI’s AIDSCAP program would literally flood the developing world with condoms and sexually explicit material to exploit children.
PRI Reports Abuse
On August 5, 2003. PRI broke the bad news about U.S. taxpayer support of USAID programs which exploit children and promote homosexuality in Central America.8
Reporters contacted PRI to request copies of the material that USAID distributes overseas today, and PRI provided it. Unfortunately, USAID issued blanket denials to the press, and implied that such abuses took place under the previous administration and have now ended.9
In the face of these denials, PRI has obtained more USAID material which clearly shows that USAID continues to support abusive programs overseas.
With US taxpayer support, USAID promotes chemical contraceptives to children. In guidelines which remain in use throughout El Salvador today, USAID states that “As a first option, contraceptive pills [are to be given] one month before starting sexual activity regardless of whether she has started her period.”10
In addition, USAID’s Bureau for Global Health circumvents El Salvador’s restrictions against abortion, with chemical abortion or “emergency contraception” (EC), which can destroy a human life. In 2001, USAID together with the UNFPA (which supports forced abortion), supported shipments of abortion-inducing chemicals for earthquake victims, along guidelines on “the benefits of emergency contraception for sexual relations without protection.”11 In the aftermath of these quakes, hundreds of women and children died for lack of basic aid. Recent reports note 40% increases in child and infant pneumonia and diarrhea.12
Violating the Constitution
By providing chemical abortion, USAID is violating El Salvador’s Constitution which states that “Every human being is recognized as a human person from the moment of conception.”13
USAID also promotes homosexuality to children in El Salvador, with programs designed to prompt boys to have sex with other boys or men. “Homosexuality is not an illness,” states one USAID-funded manual on adolescent sexuality. “[S]ome adolescents experience attraction toward persons of the same sex and have fantasies, desires, sensations and physical contact .… “ This manual encourages “parents to promote their child’s acceptance [of homosexuality], not discrimination.”14
Homosexuality Promoted
USAID and UNFPA together promote homosexuality as a basic human right. “We have the task to generate a change with respect to homosexuals… a task that should begin in the home, and continue in school, and throughout life… and above all we must be conscious that, apart from our private, moral judgments and opinions, we should respect the human rights of all.”15
USAID materials promotes masturbation to boys. In this context, USAID material states “It is a moment of great intensity accompanied with a very pleasant genital response .…”16
Far from promoting genuine abstinence, USAID practically sells sex to teens and children, apparently in order to promote family planning. “It is important to know that, when we enter corporal contact… and arrive at a point of excitation, the desire to continue ahead and have sexual relations is very strong .… It is difficult ‘to brake’”… and can lead to pregnancy.” Therefore, USAID promotes condoms, IUDs, Depo-Provera and emergency contraception to children and teens.17
USAID abuses violate laws on other fronts. In 2002, USAID paid for condom ads in major markets18, but failed to note the risks and failure rates of condoms, in violation of El Salvadorian law mandating information about condom risks.19
In Guatemala, USAID guidelines for children and adolescents promote homosexuality and masturbation and remain in wide circulation today.20
These abuses must stop. USAID cannot continue to undermine families and the health of children overseas. USAID’s Bureau for Global Health cannot hide behind the previous administration for abusive programs which it continues to support today.
Endnotes
1 ‘Y, Como No se Pasa,” Fundacion Fomento en Salud, Honduras. This USAID-funded pamphlet promotes colored and flavored condoms with the faces of young boys.
2 “Speaking About Sexuality with Young People,” USAID Honduras, Pp. 68–69.
3 “HIV/AIDS Partnerships,” USAID, Global Health Bureau.
4 “HIV/AIDS Interventions With Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM),” Family Health International, 2003.
5 “USAID Award to FHI Promotes Youth Reproductive Health,” Family Health International, 2 October 2001.
6 “Faith-based Programs for Youth,” Family Health International, 2003.
7 “Strengthening the Church’s Response to HIV Prevention for Youth in Nambia: Strategic Issues for Consideration,” Family Health International, 2003.
8 “USAID Found Exploiting Children and Promoting Homosexuality,” PRI Weekly Briefing, 5 August 2003, Vol. 5/ No. 22.
9 “Taxpayers Funding Pro-Homosexual Abortion Pamphlets, Group Alleges,” CNSNews.com, 12 August 2003.
10 “Normas de Planifcacion Familiar,” USAID, El Salvador 1999.
11 “Guidelines for strategic interventions in reproductive and sexual health for emergency situations,” USAID, UNFPA, El Salvador Ministry of Health, January 2001.
12 “Neumonia y diarreas aumentan 40% en ultimas cinco semana,” El Mundo, 9 July 2003.
13 Article 1 of the Constitution of El Salvador, 1999.
14 “Of Adolescents, For Adolescents: Alternative Kinds of the Human Sexuality: Homosexuality,” USAID, UNFPA, UNICEF, El Salvador, 2001.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., “Human Sexual Responses.”
17 Ibid., “Sexual and Reproductive Health.”
18 El Diaro de Hoy, 6 April 2002.
19 Republica de El Salvador, Asamblea Legislativa, Discreto No. 588, October 2001; “Every condom ad… should contain… in a visible place a legend of warning that specifies that the condom is not perfect for protecting against AIDS.”
20 “Hablemos claro de Sexualidad: Guia para adolescents,” USAID, Guatemala, 2000.
