A Horned Devil Has Left The Building

With The Administration for Children and Families head Wade Horn's resignation effective Sunday, groups like the Abstinence Clearinghouse and the Family Research Council are sad to say their goodbyes.

“We would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Horn,” said Leslee Unruh, Founder of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. “He has spent his time proving himself a true friend of abstinence education, and has shown a real understanding of the importance of marriage and responsible fatherhood in particular.”

Horn has indeed been cozy with hardline social conservatives. His achievements include:

• overseeing multi-million-dollar funding increases for abstinence-only education programs and crisis-pregnancy centers
  
• promoting abstinence-only programs for not just teens, but for adults, too
  
• running the National Fatherhood Initiative before he became a government employee, and then funding his organization with millions of federal dollars
  
• shunting federal dollars toward various other religious groups and right-wing organizations he is personally affiliated with, such as Marriage Savers
  
• deciding that low-income women need a husband more than they need job training, and funding "marriage promotion" programs with welfare dollars
  
• once argued that Head Start programs should only admit children of married couples
  

And don't overlook this doozy: Most of society's problems, according to a 1997 interview of Horn, are caused by feminists.

(See Talk2Action for the complete lowdown.)

Horn's temporary replacement, Daniel Schneider, seems to be ideologically in step with him. At a recent congressional hearing, Democrat Barbara Lee questioned Schneider about why the only federal sex-ed funding goes to abstinence-only programs.