Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Committee for Children — Executive Director, Mark W. Crawford

Committee for Children letter to Girls and Boys Town” “The staff and Board of Committee for Children are outstanding professionals dedicating their lives to the safety and well being of children everywhere. The article on your Web site is inappropriate, inaccurate, and in direct conflict with my impression of your organization—an organization that I valued and held in high esteem. Please take the appropriate action and remove this erroneous and damaging article from your Web site.”

To be completely honest, I almost certainly wouldn’t be bothering to mention this web site and the controversy over CFC’s “Talking About Touching” program were it not for the fact that I’m about 99% certain that the Mark W. Crawford who wrote this letter is the same Mark W. Crawford that I knew rather well at Orono High School. I mean….how many Mark W. Crawfords who graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota and were into theater can there be? Not that many, I’d wager. At any rate, assuming it IS the same Mark Crawford and you knew him too, you’ll be delighted to hear that he’s apparently doing well–married and with a couple of kids and living in Seattle from what I gather. (Google is truly the work of the devil. )

A couple of comments on the “Talking About Touching” program are warranted. The Roman Catholic diocese in Boston has adopted this program as a mandatory thing for kids enrolled in their schools–if I’m understanding the situation correctly. (Boston, as you may recall, is the home of Cardinal Law and ex-priest John Geoghan so they’re a little extra-sensitive about the whole child abuse thing.) There are some people (a vocal minority, I suspect) who object to the program. The two primary sources of offense appear to be:

1. People think the program is too explicit. There are a couple of quotes from videos(?) in the program that almost every critical article uses and they’re both excerpts to the effect of ‘ …if someone–even someone who seems really cool!–wants to put their hands down your pants or touch your private parts or have you touch their private parts….’ Now, I may not have any children of my own, but I’ve spent enough time around other people’s young children to know that you have to be direct with them. Little kids don’t understand veiled references. If you don’t specifically say what you mean, they’re not going to understand. So…I think this criticism is nuts. It’s not like they’re showing the kids porn videos, for Pete’s sake!

2. The other big objection you see in pretty much every article is that Committee for Children is linked to COYOTE–the old ‘prostitution decriminalization’ group formed by Margo St. James. [gasp !] First of all, from what I’ve been able glean, the link between CFC and COYOTE is old and tangled. CFC sprang from a committee that sprang from a study that sprang from some other committee that sprang from a sub-group of COYOTE. So-fucking-what! People who object to CFC on these grounds are idiots engaging in one of the more blatant logical fallacies around. Whether CFC is linked to COYOTE or–al Quaida–is entirely irrelevant. Either CFC’s message and their methods are sound or they’re not. The source of the message–and the pedigree of that source–really do not matter.

There’s a third criticism that’s showing up too. This one’s sort of amusing. Apparently CFC advertised for a new web developer in a gay newspaper. I can certainly understand the concern. You know how those homos are–they can exert their evil influence even through the seemingly transparent medium of the internet. Jeez…I’m surprised the critics of CFC haven’t latched onto Mark Crawford’s past involvement with theater people!

Anyway. This Committee for Children organization appears to be a pretty decent group. So…there.