When I decided to search for #SexEd on Twitter, looking for coverage of sex education, I wasn’t expecting to see activity from Live Action, Lila Rose’s anti-choice organization. But I quickly realized the tweets related to the slew of emails from Live Action this month—the latest attention-grabbing headline, “I can’t even degrade animals that way.”
“SexEd: Planned Parenthood’s Dangerous Sex Advice for Kids,” is the first in a new Live Action series of videos “exposing” Planned Parenthood. The video features a counselor answering questions from what is identified as a 15-year-old girl. The girl requests information on concepts such as role-playing and kink, which she claims interest in attempting with her 17 year old boyfriend. The Planned Parenthood counselor explains BDSM as the girl thanks her—the staffer also suggests making use of the internet, saying anything they’re interested in trying, someone else has already thought of.
Indeed, the staffer provides basic information easily available to any teenager with internet access. The staffer also emphasizes the need for consent, an important element misunderstood by those who see BDSM as abuse. But rather than recognizing the advice as basic counseling driven by the teen’s persistent questions, Live Action’s video seeks to cast it as titillating and encouraging of youth sexuality—fundraising for their anti-choice agenda with multiple appeals for donations by playing up a sex-panic to their followers.
Live Action also uses its videos to push a petition telling Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, denouncing its receipt of taxpayer money (which is already prohibited from being used for abortions, and is used to fund comprehensive sex education and family planning).
This isn’t a first for Live Action’s films, which have been criticized for manipulative editing to promote their agenda, and have been used to accuse Planned Parenthood of covering for sex-traffickers, endangering women’s lives, and ignoring child sexual abuse. The latest video accompanies a 60-page report drawn from this background, Lies, Corruption, and Scandal: Six Years of Exposing Planned Parenthood, which Rose distributed to members of Congress a few weeks ago. While largely unsuccessful in triggering the government investigations Live Action calls for, given the lack of substantive evidence of criminal behavior by Planned Parenthood, the videos catapulted founder Lila Rose into a prominent position on the anti-abortion circuit. On the Roe v. Wade anniversary this year, CNN’s Crossfire program pitted Rose against NARAL president Ilyse Hogue.
As it happens, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England already produced its own video explaining BDSM to young people, as part of their series “A Naked Notion,” hosted by Laci Green. This video covers the same themes Live Action elicited from staff in its undercover video. In fact, it’s unclear whether Live Action “uncovered” anything that Planned Parenthood hadn’t already made public.
BDSM has gained widespread acceptance in mainstream American culture. Fifty Shades of Grey, and its depictions of BDSM, sold its 100 millionth copy this February. Mainstream films like Secretary and Nine ½ Weeks openly (and vividly) discuss BDSM themes (and the movie version of Fifty Shades will join them next year). Why shield teens from accurate information when books and movies on the topic have received so much hype? In fact, it could be the very acceptance of BDSM and the success of books like Fifty Shades that inspired Live Action’s latest exposé—part of what makes regulating sex such an attention-grabber for right-wing mobilizing is that conservatives can be simultaneously outraged and tantalized.
Elsewhere in the world of anti-choice activism, on June 16 the Georgia and Cleveland Right to Life organizations issued a press release announcing the formation of a National Personhood Alliance. Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) lost its affiliate status in the National Right to Life in March, after refusing to support federal legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks—the Georgia group refused to support the exceptions for rape and incest.
The formation of a new personhood alliance means more support for the stance of organizations like Personhood USA, which so far has been seen as outside the mainstream of the anti-choice rights movement. While other mainstream “pro-life” organizations support the goals of Personhood, which advocates banning abortion in all cases from the moment of conception, they pragmatically are unwilling to sacrifice the opportunity to pass partial-bans and their image as a “moderate” player. GRTL and its new compatriots, like Personhood USA, are unwilling to compromise, hardening the fringe of the anti-choice movement.
“Compromise is not possible,” the press release reads. “This is not like roads or highways or agricultural subsidies; when we compromise – someone dies.” GRTL president Daniel Becker claims that the founding of the group answers “an overwhelming call from many within the movement” to represent personhood and pursue “a fresh strategy.”
The new coalition’s website includes quotes made by various anti-abortion leaders in support of personhood, including Lila Rose, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, American Life League president Judie Brown, and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The official formation will be at a national convention on October 10 and 11 in Atlanta, Georgia.