ProWomanProForcedPregnancy Is a Total Stand-Alone (Astroturf) Organization

In a recent blogpost about March for Lies being such a good teachable moment for young women to learn slut-shaming and sanctimonious judgement, we mentioned that the original article by Amanda Watson seems to have struck a nerve with those professional female slut-shamers over at ProWomanProForcedPregnancy.

They responded with their lie protest that they are NOT affiliated with other organizations.

You be the judge. The principal is Andrea Mrozek. Here's her day job.

Andrea currently works at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada as Manager of Research and Communications.

But PWPFP is not owned or affiliated with James Dobson's loathesome Focus on the Family, they say.

Seems opinions differ on that.

Focus on the Family Canada (French: Objectif Famille) is a Canadian affiliate of the American evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family.
. . .

Focus on the Family Canada is operated and directed independently of Focus on the Family USA.[citation needed] However, some ties do exist between the two organizations. Between 2000 and 2003, the Canadian affiliate received $1.6 million in services from the larger American organization. Two members on the board of directors of Focus on the Family Canada, Tom Mason and Jim Daly, are also vice-presidents of Focus on the Family in the United States. Other than receiving financial support from Focus on the Family USA between 2000 and 2003, Focus on the Family Canada relies fully on donor support for its operations.
. . .
Focus on the Family Canada has also established the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada/Institut du Mariage et de la Famille Canada (IMFC).

It's all just a big coincidence that Mrozek moonlights as the principal of an astroturf anti-abortion website.

Make sense to you?

ADDED: In addition to Mrozek, at least four other of The Women make their livings at least in part from anti-choice activities/careers.

Faye Sonier

Faye joined The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada as Legal Counsel. She practices constitutional and human rights law, with a special focus on freedom of religion and sanctity of human life issues.

Deborah Mullan

In March she finally secured a very part-time job as the office manager for the Victoria Right to Life Society.

Natalie Hudson Sonnen

Natalie is now the executive director of LifeCanada, a national pro-life organization based out of Ottawa.

Véronique Bergeron

Currently employed as an assistant to a federal Member of Parliament, Véronique Bergeron is also teaches biomedical ethics to Masters students at St-Paul University in Ottawa.

That MP would be anti-choice Pierre Lemieux and St-Paul University is the pontifical arm of the University of Ottawa.

While bloggers at DAMMIT JANET! are not 'anonymous' as charged, but rather pseudonymous with long-established online personae, not a single one of us makes a nickel from our pro-choice writing and activism.

About that so-called *public* outcry against SEXhibit ...

Radio-Canada's Brigitte Bureau, who has done excellent work for Enquête regarding the influence that rightwing fundamentalist evangelical lobby groups exert on the Harper government, spoke to staff at the Museum of Science and Technology.

They stopped counting the emails that savaged "Sex: a Tell-All Exhibition" when they noted the overwhelming majority were template messages provided by religious institutions and many were duplicates from similar email addresses. This tactic is not all that different from the habitual RWNJ freeping campaigns and astroturfing.

Fundamentalist religious groups lobbying against the Sexhibit have been identified: Christian Gouvernance led by Timothy Bloedow (assistant to CON MP Maurice Vellacott), the Catholic Civil Rights League, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, Canada Family Action and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

In addition the vice-president and legal counsel for that last group claims the photographs of naked minors (as above) is child pornography and has filed a complaint with the RCMP. I imagine that Don Hutchinson's next target will be all those "pornographic" text books used by pediatricians and medical students.

These groups are demanding that the federal government stop funding the Museum.

And yet, we learned from a few tweets that Summum, a privately published soft-porn magazine receives subsidies from Heritage and Culture. One wonders if CON MP Dean Del Mastro served on the committee that awarded this periodical federal monies.

Original Radio-Canada exposé about Summum, en français ici.

There are been positive reactions to the exhibit, from taxpayers affronted by the sexphobic outcry from the religious reactionaries.

Here are excerpts from letters to the Ottawa Citizen: here, here, here, here and here.

"A tell-all exhibit may be controversial, but it is certainly no insult to taxpayers.

What is insulting is how little teenagers know about sex and the responsibility that comes with it.

Being a teenager myself, I can see how easily we can fall through the cracks of the current sex-ed curriculum. Just among my peer group, very few know what IUDs are or what they do, nor do they know the facts about STIs: basic information that is supposed to be available to all teenagers, but is obviously lacking. [...]

For the more conservative Canadian, this exhibit may seem pornographic, but kids are exposed to sex everywhere, and we face a lot of pressure to engage in it. The aforementioned exhibit touches on such subjects as consent and when one is "ready" - subjects that seem to get missed in many a classroom."

"I am not sure whether to be surprised that the sex exhibit at the Science and Technology Museum raised the concerns of Minister James Moore. My lack of surprise notwithstanding, I would hope that he would have more pressing concerns than this.

Local, somewhat reactionary talk radio has lambasted the museum and those responsible for this exhibit. Do they not realize that this is not the 1950s, the time of mom and dad and 2.4 children and of no sex outside of marriage, as if that really ever existed. Sex is everywhere.

Check the Internet lately? And teens think about sex. A lot. And they think about it at 12 and 13 years of age."

"As any parent of teenagers will tell you, the amount of sex hormones raging through teen minds and bodies is inversely proportional to how much they want to talk to their parents about it.

As a parent of two teens, I welcome the opportunity for them to get factual information about human sexuality in an impersonal environment. I'd rather they get their facts from the Canada Science and Technology Museum, instead of the locker room or the Internet. And I'll go with them because you never know when opportunities for dialogue may arise."

For a more balanced response to the Museum's exhibit which is RWNJ-free, check out these tweets.

By the way, the Museum of Science and Technology was in the news recently for this exhibit. Interestingly enough, the *radical* groups that raised questions about this one-sided promotion of the Tar Sands were critical of the use of taxpayer-funded facilities to promote a corporate marketing strategy.

Pity the poor Reverend Vellacott ...

Poor Maurice was blindsided by a MASSIVE fundamentalist christian furor against the SEX exhibit that exploded in dozens of phone and email messages (templates provided by churches, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, and possibly by the Heritage and Culture Minister himself).

And yet, his plan was simple: steal "borrow" the language of the anti-bullying campaign designed to protect GLBQT kids in schools and "re-purpose" it to suit his fetus lobby.

His thunder was stolen: Waaaah!

The Radical Handmaids did take note, however and posted this.

And JJ delivers le coup de grâce to the 'nads. This is the winning comment, surely.

More blog posts inspired by Maurice Vellacott, CON idjit.

Illustration source, here.

Once more, Mrozek misses the point.

It should come as no surprise that anti-choice scold Andrea Mrozek is also anti-science and anti-communication about human sexuality.

In her opinion piece, she inveighs against SEX: a Tell-All exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology. She parrots the talking points stated by communications staff for Heritage and Culture Minister Moore and shrieeeks that the exhibit leaves out "true connection, intimacy and community".

Um, Andrea? The Museum's mandate "is to foster scientific and technological literacy throughout Canada," according to a statement from Moore's office.

In spite of all the metaphorical pearl-clutching expressed in Mrozek's piece, it appears that the scientific and technological aspects of human sexuality are very well displayed in the exhibit.

Given the very *special* fundamentalist religious *interests* she represents, one might assume that Mrozek would ferociously defend the gawd-given right of parents and communities to educate children with regard to sexual connection and intimacy. Why would she want the government to do that?

Oh. Wait.

Comically, Mrozek openly reveals her revulsions:

White plastic naked models of a life-size man and a woman recline, facing each other. Black light causes the models — and the white page I took notes on — to really pop. The instructions are to “locate 10 male and female erogenous zones by delicately touching each mannequin.” In case youth need help, the nipples of the woman are lit up with a purple hue.

Delicately touch each mannequin? Really? I call over a member of our research team, a medical doctor, to see if I’d understood correctly. Then we call over the public relations director of the museum. “Touching the mannequin” seems like a perverse dare for all of us. I furtively reach out to do what I’ve been told. Nothing happens. Perhaps my caress of the plastic model wasn’t delicate enough.

Right. Or perhaps anxiety-clenched fingers, sweaty with fear, aren't a "turn-on" for plastic mannequins. One wonders if Mrozek caressed the male or the female model. That's one "Tell-all" detail she clearly left out.

Added: What great inadvertent publicity for this exhibit! I expect there will be MASSIVE crowds that will turn out to see it, including adolescents under the age of 16 trying to sneak into the museum.

UPDATE: The local Radio-Canada investigation at the Museum on the provenance of the attacks against the exhibition confirms that 1) most are form letters and email messages and 2) most, if not all of them were sent by members of fundamentalist christian groups.

Anti-Quebec *study* from Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: FAIL

The Institute of Marriage and Family Canada just released a biased and unscientific 28 page report about the province of Québec. From QMI, the Quebecor (owner of SunMedia) *information* clearing house for Rightwing Nutjob propaganda.

"A Quebec family portrait," also suggests the preponderance of single-parent and common-law households will be less equipped to handle the possible dismantling of big government in La Belle Province.

Some studies suggest married men have more motivation to work harder and earn more money for their families than boyfriends, but numbers show husbands are in short supply.

Quebec has the highest percentage of unmarried couples in the world, according to the study. The 2006 census indicates that 34.6% of Quebec couples were in common-law relationships, compared with 13.4% in the rest of Canada.

Quebec also has the highest rate of children in daycare, noted study author Andrea Mrozek, which strains the province's much-vaunted $7-a-day daycare system.

"These things feed into one another in a bit of a circle," said Mrozek. "You have an expensive program, it increases the taxes, then you have to work to support the lifestyle to make money to make ends meet."

Huh? Andrea Mrozek .... gotcha. No wonder that sentence was pure bafflegab.

Mrozek is just a R.E.A.L. pro at cranking such retrograde *septic-tank* stuff out. "Marriage tames men ..."? Snort. Yeah, that's why the license bureau issues tranq guns and cattle prods to new brides.

Grand merci to @censoredversion for the tweet.

The Shrieeeeek Watch!

I got this idea from JJ, who today directs her readers to Slap Upside the Head.

Slap reports on one of Canada's shriieeeekiest outfits thus:

David Quist, the executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada lobby group, has said that Ottawa should reject a UN declaration opposing the criminalization of homosexuality.

I have two additions to today's Shrieeeek Watch.

First, from the gang who took over 400 years to take Galileo off their shit-list, lightning speed from the Catlicks, who are only six months en retard on this.

A Roman Catholic group is returning Orders of Canada bestowed on two priests to protest a decision to award the honour to Dr. Henry Morgentaler.

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate says it is returning the honours given to Father Anthony Sylla of Edmonton in 1971 and to Father Michael Smith of Toronto in 1979.

How many returned Orders is that now? Even including those from the post-dead?

Second, from The Department of Tenuous Connections That Only Rabid Fetus Fetishists Can Make, LifeShite has this shrieeek:

An attorney who won an award for representing Terri Schiavo’s husband Michael in his efforts to kill his disabled wife is now an advisor to the transition team of incoming president Barack Obama.

Thomas Perrelli, who raised over $500,000 for the pro-abortion presidential candidate and is the managing partner of a Washington law firm, Jenner & Block LLP, is helping advise Obama on putting together a Justice Department team.

Oh no! A lawyer! With former clients! One of whom was married to a vegetable! Advising the most abortion-lovingest president evah!