I will be voting for Tom Brown for DC Council At-Large in the special election on Tuesday, April 26th. I am collaborating with Tom to assist youth with HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy prevention, and relationship education at some of the job training sites that his nonprofit, Training Grounds, Inc. runs. I see his sincere concern for youth in our city. He is a concerned father, and I see that he is extending that concern to all of the youth in Washington, DC.

Tom is the only candidate who supports funding abstinence-centered HIV prevention programs. These programs give parents a genuine choice if they do not want the same old ineffective programs that push condoms taught to their children.
Furthermore, Tom is the only At-Large candidate who believes that marriage is between a man and a woman only. He also believes that parents need to be informed before minor children can receive an abortion, and that abortions should not be publically funded. Please see the links below for more information and videos about Tom's positions. [More]

The Georgetown Dish reports that a graphic test about sex was administered to 7th grade youth at Hardy Middle School. As I have recently reported, Michelle Rhee kicked out the popular ULTRA Teen Choice abstinence centered HIV and pregnancy prevention program, which was being provided at no charge to several DC public schools. Instead, she has now paid Metro Teen Aids at least $95,000 to bring in graphic programs that do not promote abstinence but rather promote accepting all kinds of sexual behavior (gay, straight, transgender, etc) and using condoms. Unfortunately, programs like this do not increase the rate of consistent condom use, and they undermine the values that the great majority of parents want to communicate to their children: The Georgetown dish article says: [More]

The District of Columbia Department of Health is now distributing Trojan condoms as well as Durex condoms, including the super-size Magnum variety. So one can conclude, according to the DC HIV/AIDS administration, that the problem is not that youth are having sex, but that they are not using condoms enough. However, there is no data to support this approach. No program anywhere in the world has ever succeeded in increasing the rate of condom use throughout the general population. Researcher Ed Green has done important work in this area . Condom distribution in the District increased from 600,0000 in 2007 to 3.2 million in 2009. Yet at the same time, the rate of HIV infection increased by 9.2 per cent. [More]

Mary Cheh and the other co-sponsors of a bill to mandate what food DC School youth will eat are taking the wrong approach to health. In tight economic times, Cheh proposes a $6 million per year bill that mandates that kids in DC Public Schools eat more health, locally grown food. While eating more fruits and veggies is a great idea, I don’t thing that it should cost tax payers 6 million dollars. Ms. Cheh’s bill tries to mandate solutions for problems that are not the core problems that DC youth face. Ms. Cheh and the rest of the city council, who all voted for this bill, are out of touch with the real needs of DC youth and families. [More]

While there are no simple solutions to stop violence, such as the multiple murders that were committed in southwest Washington last Tuesday, we can take concrete steps to create an environment that will make it less likely to happen. One important factor is to find out why youth in the juvenile detention system that have repeated offenses are not properly detained to prevent recurrences of violent behavior. [More]