BURLINGTON, VERMONT - Its death was made very public, but its resurrection quite the opposite.A controversial, publicly funded website with an edgy appearance that was geared to provide sex education to young men — themanphone.org — was yanked from public view earlier this year after some visitors followed what they thought was an educational link and instead found pornography.
Officials of the Vermont Right to Life Committee first noticed the pornographic link on the website and urged members to call the governor’s office to ask that the site be taken down. The governor has insisted that those calls had nothing to do with his decision to shut down the website, but instead were based on a belief that no state-sponsored site should have a link to pornography.
After the complaints were lodged, Gov. Jim Douglas asked the Health Department, which gave $120,000 to Planned Parenthood to manage the website, to take the site offline until it was assured that the link in question, and other suspect links, would not reappear.
Once that happened, said a Douglas spokesman, the site was allowed to go back online.
“We do maintain some concerns about the name, and hope to resolve that in the near future,” said Jason Gibbs, the governor’s press secretary. “And, in the meantime, we are integrating more at-risk health behavior into the content of the website.”
Similar-sounding websites, such as manphone.com, are gay porn sites advertising that visitors can find “Mr. Right or Mr. Just Tonight.”
While a name change is being considered, state officials are also going to change part of the site’s content to include health information about other key issues, such as substance abuse and smoking, said Health Commissioner Paul Jarris.
“The site didn’t reinforce a message of responsibility and respect,” said Jarris. “As we had a chance to review more appropriate linkages and content, we saw an opportunity to broaden the content and deal with smoking and substance abuse.
“There was never an issue with … taking an edgy approach with a high-risk population,” he added. In fact, Jarris said he hopes adding information about smoking and substance abuse on the site will benefit this same at-risk group.
The site will no longer be maintained by Planned Parenthood, but instead by the Burlington-based marketing firm Marketing Partners, said Jarris.
Allies of Planned Parenthood question Douglas’ move, especially since by the time he called for the site to be taken offline, the suspect link had been removed and policies were in place to ensure that such links would not find their way onto the site again.
Lawmakers who were critical of Douglas’ response, and felt he was caving to pressure from extremists, aren’t sure that the site being back up is a victory.
“The public health of Vermonters was put at risk so Gov. Douglas could appease the far right wing of his party,” said Rep. Ann Seibert, D-Norwich, who was one of 70 lawmakers who urged Douglas to reinstate the site. “While it’s good that it’s back up, it was appalling that it was down for three months and for no other reason than the far right wanted it down. And they wanted it down to begin with from the get-go.”
Douglas “doesn’t want to make much ado about it because he didn’t want the voting public to know that he was waltzing with the far right, when in an election year he wants to fill his dance card with some pro-choice votes,” said Seibert.
That kind of rhetoric is plain silly, said Mary Hahn Beerworth, Vermont Right to Life executive director. She said the site was selling sex, not educating about sex.
“The message here is that it’s OK to sexualize a population at risk for abortion, and that’s a problem,” said Beerworth. “And the fact they are using federal dollars to do it and they had a link to pornography we believe violates federal guidelines for family planning money.”
Beerworth said she is glad that Planned Parenthood is no longer in charge of the site, and hopes the state will use the $120,000 to better inform young men about sexual behavior.
Planned Parenthood officials said they are just glad the site is back up and running.
“I think the important thing is that the site is back up,” said Catriona McHardy, vice president for education and training at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “Despite the controversy that happened, we still think it’s a win for Planned Parenthood because the reason we were doing this whole project was so that young men could get information about sexual health.”
Though Planned Parenthood will not receive money to manage the website, the group will still receive family planning money to fund two outreach workers — one each in Chittenden and Windham counties — to reach out to 18-24 year-old men.
“We are reaching out to them … and talking to them about their issues. What we want to do is increase the use of condoms among sexually active young men,” McHardy said.
Planned Parenthood is also maintaining the toll-free hotline also called the Man Phone. Officials said about 75 people a day visited the website or called the phone line.
from The Vermont Guardian
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