[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 59 (Thursday, March 30, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4025-H4026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H4025]]
              THE SANCTITY OF LIFE AND OTHER REMEMBRANCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, a few important items by way of a kind of a 
weekend or the end of week on the getaway Thursday cleanup of some 
things that I think bear mentioning for us all to think about over the 
weekend.
  If I were going to put a title for our Official Reporters of Debates 
on this, I think I would call it The Sanctity of Life and Other 
Remembrances.
  Under the other remembrances, today, it is moved on the wire services 
that San Francisco is going to establish sister city status with Ho Chi 
Minh City. Some day, Ho Chi Minh City under a free Vietnam will be 
renamed Saigon, its traditional name.
  Just a Stalingrad, the scene of Russia's great turnaround battle, the 
U.S.S.R.'s great battle, in spite of the history attached to the siege 
of Stalingrad and their victory, which began the rollback of Nazism but 
the continued growth of communism, in spite of that traditional city's 
title, it was changed after communism fell back to Volgograd.
  The greatest change of all, since there are still American professors 
in our colleges apologizing for Karl Marx and still for Lenin, 
Leningrad is changed back to its traditional title, was a particularly 
joyful day, because now we refer to it with a Christian title, 
Petrograd or St. Petersburg.
  Actually, St. Petersburg is what used to be called Leningrad, the 
second largest city in Russia, and was the second largest city when it 
was 15 so-called states under the USSR.
  I think San Francisco still has a lot to learn. I do not know if they 
are still a nuclear-free zone, but it is tragic to take the city named 
after the gentle Saint Francis of Assisi and have sisterhood with a 
communist regime still run out of Hanoi that caused the death of 
700,000 boat people on the high seas, that executed by death lists 
68,000 people at a minimum, including secretaries who had trusted us 
and merely worked for us in that decade that we were trying to do for 
South Vietnam, south of the 17th parallel, what we had done for Korea 
south of the 38th parallel. And that was to give it, however imperfect, 
a free system, certainly freer than the communist tyranny that is still 
there.
  After the Hanoi government, the conquerors of Saigon, the renamers of 
Ho Chi Minh City, after the way they have psychologically tortured our 
POW's and missing-in-action families over the last three decades, it is 
incomprehensible that San Francisco would do this.
  But they picked a great day to do it all right. Not great. Today is 
the 23rd anniversary of an invasion across the DMZ on March 30, 1972, 
with Russian-supplied PT-76 amphibious tanks, armored vehicles.
  They came across the DMZ. They were smashed back, but it was a 
precursor for the roll-up of the whole of South Vietnam that started 20 
years ago this month and ended with the fall in the adjoining country 
of Phnom Penh, which at the time had a U.N. seat, still does, the fall 
of Phnom Penh on the eve of the 230th anniversary of our Paul Revere 
Ride to freedom on the 17th of April. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, fell with 
great loss of life, and the killing fields and the Khmer Rouge 
communist holocaust began.
  Vietnam ended 20 years ago on the 30th of April. That 20th 
anniversary is coming up. The next day, we have the tragic vote in this 
Chamber. It was a year and a half before I got here or I would have 
weighed in on the debate. We turned our back on the evacuation money to 
save those people in South Vietnam who were not corrupt and that was 
the majority who didn't understand what communism was and what freedom 
was.

                              {time}  1645

  So San Francisco continues to insult the 48,000 plus names on the 
wall, 47,600 that died in combat, and as one of the soldiers of that 
period said, the beat goes on. As a matter of fact, that was 
Congressman Sonny Bono's written song.
  Then there are two other items on front page stories in the great 
Washington Times yesterday and today, today's story quoted me. Listen 
to this, Mr. Speaker, and the 1.3 million people watching this Chamber 
on C-SPAN.
  Yesterday in a breakthrough story, it was uncovered that the training 
programs for Federal employees on AIDS were really a masking of pro-
homosexual programs.
  I will submit those two headlines and I will also submit an AP story, 
Mr. Speaker, on what I had predicted night before last, that the Pope's 
encyclical on the sanctity of life called Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel 
of Life, is as powerful as I thought. It is the hammer coming down on 
politicians who think they can escape voting conscience on all issues 
that involve abortion, euthanasia or this Frankenstein testing on 
embryos, and fetal
 experimentation.

  The articles referred to are as follows:

               [From the Washington Times, Mar. 30, 1995]

    Classes on AIDS Under Fire--Hill Probe Sought of `Pro-gay' Slant

                         (By Rowan Scarborough)

       At least two congressional panels plan to investigate the 
     Clinton administration's mandatory AIDS education for federal 
     employees in light of reports that the curriculum promotes 
     the homosexual lifestyle.
       Rep. Robert K. Dornan, California Republican and chairman 
     of the House National Security subcommittee on personnel, 
     said he will hold hearings later this year.
       ``I'm going to go on the House floor to beg federal workers 
     of courage to come to me anonymously and help me build a case 
     file,'' Mr. Dornan said. ``It's not AIDS education. It is 
     advancing the homosexual agenda. The homosexual has cleverly 
     used a venereal disease, and they used it brilliantly to 
     their advantage to promote the homosexual cause.''
       The House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee on 
     civil service has begun a preliminary inquiry, a staffer 
     said.
       ``These are things that really don't belong as mandatory 
     training and have nothing to do with AIDS in the workplace,'' 
     the staffer said.
       House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia may take a look at 
     the program after the ``Contract with America'' is completed, 
     said his spokesman, Tony Blankley.
       ``It sounds like the typical hideous things that liberals 
     do,'' Mr. Blankley said.
       But the White House defended the program, which was 
     targeted to reach 2 million federal employees and is due to 
     end in the coming days. President Clinton signed an executive 
     order creating the program in September 1993.
       ``It went very well and was very positively received,'' 
     said Richard Sorian, spokesman for the White House National 
     AIDS Policy office, which coordinated the far-reaching 
     network of ``training-the-trainer'' sessions and education. 
     ``There's been very good feedback from employees. We're very 
     pleased.''
       He said he could not defend the conduct of every trainer 
     but believes the education will be effective in preventing 
     AIDS.
       Mr. Sorian said there is no program cost for the ``Federal 
     Workplace AIDS Education Initiative'' because the training 
     was bankrolled from each department's existing budget for 
     worker education.
       Conservative groups have criticized the initiative as 
     ``pro-gay.''
       The Washington Times yesterday published excerpts from 
     government training manuals that tell instructors to break 
     down any resistance to the teaching based on religious 
     beliefs.
       The documents portray people opposed to condom distribution 
     in schools as ``partisans.'' They tell teachers to use 
     nonjudgmental words such as ``sex partners'' instead of 
     ``husband and wife,'' and ``injecting drug user'' instead of 
     ``addict.''
       Trainer candidates had to discuss their views on 
     ``homosexuality for my child'' as part of a scoring system to 
     see if they were suitable.
       Critics claim the test was designed to exclude all but pro-
     gay trainers.
       Some federal workers--who, for fear of reprisal, spoke only 
     on the condition that they not be identified--complained of 
     being subjected to graphic talk about sex practices.
       A Defense Department worker said her class included a slide 
     on ``sex toys'' and flavored condoms.
       A second department employee said he walked out of his 
     session, offended by what he considered a too-initimate 
     discussion for a mixed group.
       Another worker said her instructor told participants it was 
     likely that their grandmothers had engaged in anal sex as a 
     form of birth control.
       Concerned Women for America, with 600,000 members 
     nationwide, is urging the Republican-controlled Congress to 
     investigate the program.
       ``This initiative has proved to be little more than a 
     thinly veiled effort at re-educating and reorienting people's 
     views and values,'' the group said.
       Grace Paranzino, a nurse with the U.S. Public Health 
     Service who has conducted federal AIDS training in 
     Pennsylvania, said come trainers do devote too much of the 
     discussion to homosexual sex practices. She said she avoids 
     going over the line.
       ``We strictly discuss AIDS transmission, prevention and 
     risk reduction as well as federal workplace policy as they 
     relate to HIV 
     [[Page H4026]] and AIDS,'' she said. ``You must also keep in 
     mind when we talk about HIV and AIDS, it is a sexually 
     transmitted disease, and therefore you cannot ignore it is 
     sexually transmitted.''
                                                                    ____

        Abortion, Euthanasia, Embryo Experiments Always Immoral

                         (By Frances D'Emilio)

       Vatican City.--Ruling out dissent, Pope John Paul II 
     delivered the Catholic Church's most forceful condemnation of 
     abortion, euthanasia and experimentation on human embryos.
       The pope, in an encyclical released today, condemned what 
     he called a spreading ``culture of death.'' He also refined 
     the Church's stand on the death penalty, saying its 
     justification is ``very rare,'' if not ``practically non-
     existent.''
       Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's guardian of 
     orthodoxy, said the encyclical goes beyond the 1992 revision 
     of the Catechism in hardening the stance against capital 
     punishment.
       As for abortion and euthanasia, encyclical is not a 
     pronouncement of new doctrine, because the Church already 
     condemned those practices, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo 
     noted, but an important ``systematic defense, broader and 
     stronger,'' of the fundamental right to life.
       In ``Evangelium vitae,'' or ``Gospel of Life,'' the 11th 
     encyclical of his 16-year papacy, John Paul also restated the 
     Vatican's ban on birth control. He noted he was well aware of 
     the assertion that ``contraception, if made safe and 
     available to all, is the most effective remedy against 
     abortion.''
       But he said a ``contraceptive mentality'' could lead to the 
     ``temptation'' for abortion.
       ``Indeed, the pro-abortion culture is especially strong 
     precisely where the Church's teaching on contraception is 
     rejected,'' the pope said, in a possible reference to liberal 
     wings of the Catholic Church, such as in western Europe or in 
     the United States.
       John Paul, addressing himself to politicians, declared that 
     abortion and euthanasia are ``crimes which no human law can 
     claim to legitimize.''
       However, he said it was permissible for lawmakers to back 
     legislation allowing abortion under restrictions if the 
     alternative was letting a law stand that was even more 
     liberal.
       Cardinal Adam Maida of the Archdiocese of Detroit praised 
     the document and called on U.S. Lawmakers and voters ``to 
     work together to develop'' legislation with ``a new moral 
     conscience.''
       Opposing abortion is surely the most serious criterion in 
     making political judgments,'' Maida said.
       The pope expressed understanding for women who live through 
     the often ``painful and even shattering'' experience of 
     abortion. But he said no reason, ``however serious and 
     tragic,'' justifies abortion--including a woman's ``desire to 
     protect certain important values such as her own health or a 
     decent standard of living'' for the rest of her family.
       ``I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed 
     as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral 
     disorder since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent 
     human being,'' the pope wrote in the Church's strongest 
     expression yet on the practice.
       He affirmed the Holy See's penalty of automatic 
     excommunication for anyone ``who actually procures an 
     abortion.''
       But he appeared intent on injecting a note of mercy in his 
     overall harsh pronouncement, offering a ``special word to 
     women who have had an abortion.''
       ``Certainly what has happened was and remains terribly 
     wrong,'' the pope wrote. ``But do not give in to 
     discouragement and do not lose hope.''
       He extended ``moral condemnation'' to ``procedures that 
     exploit living human embryos and fetuses--sometimes 
     specifically `produced' for this purpose by in vitro 
     fertilization--either to be used as `biological material' or 
     as providers of organs or tissue for transplants in the 
     treatment of certain diseases.''
       But he did say that prenatal diagnostic techniques, such as 
     aminocentesis, which carry a risk for the fetus or mother, 
     are allowed as medical measures to help the unborn or to 
     allow the mother ``a serene and informed acceptance.''
       The pope reiterated Church teaching that the dying or their 
     families can forego extraordinary measures ``when death is 
     clearly imminent and inevitable.''
       The pope praised movements ``in defense of life'' that 
     ``act resolutely, but without resorting to violence.'' He did 
     not specifically address the anti-abortion advocates who have 
     killed doctors involved in abortion.
       Encyclicals address matters are reserved for the most 
     important papal declarations.
     

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