We pay the price either way. We pay the price of being involved with our time and resources. Or we pay the price of losing our culture to evil. Unfortunately, the second price is like the delayed payment on a credit card—one with interest and a penalty. We don't see the consequences for years and then it's ten times as hard to fix after the damage is done. Principle of sowing and reaping. Please do what you can. A little is better than nothing. The population of NM is about two million. If 80% are Christians, one phone call from each Christian means legislators would receive about 1,600,000 phone calls.

Your help is needed to defeat Senate Bill 124 (Linda Lopez, sponsor) "to fund a statewide teen pregnancy prevention program" that will promote only the condom/contraceptive approach to sexuality education. The bill requests $2,600,000 for unspecified activities that will include training children to use contraceptives. This would encourage more sex before marriage and increase the already dismal divorce statistics once youth are accustomed to sex outside of marriage. Funds will not be available to abstinence programs nor to school districts that want to teach abstinence education. The NM Dept. of Health and the NM Teen Pregnancy Coalition will be the recipients of this funding. Both promote the condom/contraceptive approach (called "comprehensive" sex education). DOH cannot be trusted to administer additional sexuality education funds. Last year DOH lost $500,000 (an entire year's appropriation) for federal abstinence education programs because it violated federal standards for the use of this money.

The only curricula that are recommended now on the DOH and NMTPC web sites are condom/contraceptive programs. Several of these curricula contain inappropriate material for students. (See Attachment) Last year's evaluation report (February 2006) for the DOH Family Planning educational programs that use only the condom/contraceptive approach reveals a failed effort: Students taught by the condom/contraceptive approach 1) increased the number of sexual partners they had and 2) had a larger increase (38%) in the amount of oral sex than students not receiving the instruction (25%). Furthermore, programs were not able to reduce the number of teens who had ever had sex. In 2005, DOH condom/contraceptive programs in NM spent almost 9 times as much per student ($400) as did abstinence programs ($45). Abstinence programs are cost effective in persuading students to refrain from sexual activity, while more expensive condom-based programs have failed to reduce teen births and STD rates.

SB 124 has already passed the Senate Public Affairs Committee and will be heard soon by the Senate Finance Committee. Please contact the members of the committee and ask them to vote against SB 124. Use the attached documents to help you give good reasons to defeat this bill. They can also be downloaded from the N M Abstinence Education Coalition website: http://www.nmaec.org.

Contact information for Senate Finance Committee ALL prefixes are 986-

* Tim Jennings (co chair and needs to be swayed) 4362

John Arthur Smith 4363

Carlos Sisneros 4863

Joseph J Carraro 4387

Sue Wilson Beffort 4395

Pete Compos 4311

Carroll Leavell 4278

Leonard Rawson 4703

Nancy Rodriguez 4264

School tax elections are being held two per year now. There is little or no accountability for runaway spending. They will ask for as much as they can get and they have been getting everything they have been asking for. School tax elections have not failed. Multiple color post cards are mailed to voters at the cost of $6,000 per mailing. Voters pay for the special election. But the advertising cost and election expenses are minuscule compared to the prize of $333,600,000. The tax election would bring them $166,800,00 and state taxes another $166,800,000. It's not "about the kids," it's about the money. No tax increase is not a good reason to vote for a tax. See school tax press release for more details. Think what private education could do with $333.6M. Educate NM and Think NM (School Reform) have better ideas. Please vote NO on school tax Tue, Feb 6. They listen only when the money stops.

School Board members will also be elected on Tue, Feb 6, in selected districts. The following is a voting recommendation from Cindy Jones.

As you know, I am running for the Albuquerque Public School Board. Candidates are running for seats in 3 Districts only and I recommend:

District 1 (Southern Albuquerque, including the South Valley) - Cecilia C De Baca

District 2 (West Side, including north & south areas) - Cynthia L Jones

District 4 (Downtown area of the city) - Charles MacQuigg

I have known Cecilia personally for many years now, a Christian and a good woman. I don't know Mr MacQuigg but I trust the person who recommended him to me.

Please vote on Tue, Feb 6. Polls are open from 7 am - 7 pm @ various locations. Use this link to locate where you vote today:

http://www.berncogov/livedepartments.asp?dept=2315&submenuid=4051

Thank you for reading this, for passing it on, for voting for me or for just being a friend.

The following is a list of high priority bills, both positive and negative. For a complete list and current status, please see http://www.rges.cc/news/legis_2007.htm. Please check committee schedules for updated hearing times. Thank you for your help.

Impact Color Code: Red=negative, Blue=unknown, Green=positive

http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/_locatorcom.asp?year=07 - list of all bills
http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/committees.asp - committee membership
http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/agecalendars.asp - committee schedules
http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/ - general legis info

Please send updates, comments, alerts to principles@integrity.com

HIGH PRIORITY - Action: Inform your congregation, contact committee members, and thank sponsors of positive bills. Sponsor and committee info is listed after each bill.

H 15 DOMESTIC PARTNER HEALTH CARE COVERAGE
Wirth [2] HCPAC/HHGAC-HCPAC Passed out of House Consumers and Public Affairs Committee and goes to House Health and Government Affairs Committee next.
H 603 DOMESTIC PARTNER RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES
Stewart [6] HCPAC/HJC-HCPAC
Domestic partnership is treated much like a marriage.
S 182 HEALTH CARE COVERAGE FOR DOMESTIC PARTNERS
McSorley [1] SPAC/SJC-SPAC
Will be heard in the Senate Public Affairs committee Thur, Feb. 1. Go to the Senate Committee calendar on the internet for details. It will be in the afternoon at 2:30 pm or 1/2 hour after the session ends in room 321.
[Consequences of homosexual behavior, namely AIDS treatment. Also rewards unmarried cohabitation. Requires health insurance companies, HMOs or Nonprofit Health Care Plans to offer health benefits to domestic partner of employee if employer wants to offer them prior to issuance, delivery or renewal. (#3 below.) However, if an employer wants to offer health insurance, HMO or Nonprofit Health Care Plan benefits to domestic partner of employee, then employer can already find them in the market place. HB 15 does not add anything except to put the definition of domestic partners into NM law as a starting point to add other rights later. Other possible 2007 domestic partners bills:
1. Legislation for registration of domestic partnerships with rights similar to marriage.
2. Legislation to allow domestic partner of state employee to maintain insurance after state employee retires.
3. Legislation to require insurance companies to offer insurance benefits to domestic partner of employee if employer wants to offer them.
4. Legislation to allow same sex couples to enter into civil marriage.
WARNING: http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/ is an anti-family website.]

H 172 STATEWIDE HOMELESSNESS PROGRAMS
Trujillo [2] HHGAC/HAFC-HHGAC
[Needs to include privately owned programs - JJ, ARM, IHN, etc.]

H 190 ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY
Chasey [3] HCPAC/HJC-HCPAC
[Justice issue, not right to life]

H 239 PARENTAL NOTIFICATION ACT
Larranaga [3] HCPAC/HJC-HCPAC
S 442 PARENTAL NOTIFICATION ACT
Cravens [2] SPAC/SJC-SPAC
[If chickens are important enough to protect (S 10) ...]

S 448 CREDIT REPORT SECURITY ACT
Feldman [3] SPAC/SJC-SPAC
[Would require a credit reporting agency, upon request by a consumer, to freeze the consumer's credit report from being issued (and, hence, bad guys could not get a credit card in your name). Once the credit report is frozen, the consumer may unfreeze it at any time, or unfreeze it so that it could be seen by a particular company for a particular amount of time. NM is one of ten states or so that has not yet passed this legislation.]

S 124 STATEWIDE TEEN PREGNANCY PREVENTION PROGRAM
Lopez [1] SPAC/SFC-SPAC
Current Location: Senate Finance Committee
[$2.6M for "statewide teen pregnancy prevention program" - no details, safer sex]

S 371 SCHOOL SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS
Komadina [2] SEC/SPAC-SEC
H 506 SCHOOL SCIENCE CONTENT STANDARDS
Williams [4] HEC/HJC-HEC
SJM 9 OBJECTIVE TEACHING OF BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS
Komadina [2] SRC/SEC-SRC
nm4ifreedom.wordpress.com provides a convenient forum for discussion and comments.

HJR 2 MARRIAGE DEFINED, CA
Vaughn [2] HCPAC/HVEC/HJC-HCPAC
H 395 MARRIAGE DEFINED
Espinoza [3] HCPAC/HJC-HCPAC

HJR 3 SCHOOL ELECTIONS WITH GENERAL ELECTIONS, CA
Zanetti [4] HCPAC/HVEC-HCPAC

H 498 USE OF BIBLE FOR HISTORY & LITERATURE
Foley [4] HEC/HJC-HEC

S 523 COMPASSIONATE USE MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACT
Robinson [3] SPAC/SJC-SPAC
[Killed this bill in previous sessions. Back door to legalize drugs. More effective ways to control pain than smoking something. Smoking is harmful and banned in public places so how can we promote smoking MJ? Who will grow it? State must regulate it. Prevent children from getting it. Keep it illegal.]

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