Gloucester Cheerleader follow-up
So Ben and I are hanging out in my grandmothers’ basement this weekend when he says, “Matt, I don’t get what’s so funny about the Gloucester cheerleader picture. Why do we keep getting emails about that?”
It then occurred to me that there are people out there more retarded than myself. That’s why I’m glad I took on this project with Ben. He gives me the perspective of a man like “Joe The Plumber”. (Ben, if you ask me who Joe The Plumber is, I quit.) So to Ben and all of you other people living under a rock, here you go (Long but worth it and just so you know, I didn’t touch the article or highlight anything. It’s all the guy from the link.)…
Seventeen pregnant girls at Gloucester High: SOS, Texas CPS!
Where’s CPS when we really need ‘em? This from Time:
As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason . . .
By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, “some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse.
Huh? How could it get any worse?
“We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.
Oh, really! So it’s the homeless guy that’s the problem. Silly me. Drunk teen fathers are vastly preferred in Gloucester, I guess. Does the principal have something against homeless men? Aren’t they entitled to a little happiness, too?
But it gets better. Turns out the Gloucester High School encourages teens to get pregnant. It’s what Texas CPS “investigator” Angie Voss would call a “pervasive environment of sexual abuse.” Oh, what was it that the FLDS were accused of in Texas? Hmm. I’m wracking my brain, here:
The girls who made the pregnancy pact—some of whom, according to Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers—declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. “They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,” Ireland says. . .
The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. “We’re proud to help the mothers stay in school,” says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.
Isn’t this sweet! High fives and baby showers. A largely Catholic community in Massachusetts encourages all their teens to have babies out of wedlock and they get fawning, sympathetic coverage in Time. An FLDS community encourages a few of theirs to have babies within a lasting family relationship and the government of Texas steals their brood to the thunderous applause of media left, right and center. What a country!
From http://iperceive.net/seventeen-pregnant-girls-at-gloucester-high-sos-texas-cps/