Catholics Force NPR Listeners to Have Babies, Get AIDS

January 5, 2008 4:17pm

WDUQ is the main NPR affiliate here in Pittsburgh, PA. That’s right, good ol’ leftist, liberal, stinky hippy, treehugging NPR, and the DUQ in WDUQ comes from Duquesne University, the Catholic run college. So Catholics call the shots on NPR here in PGH.

And in October they declared that Planned Parenthood ads shall not run on NPR. From the Post Gazette, City Paper and Planned Parenthood themselves. I think the City Paper, sarcastic as ever, tells the story best, but feel free to get a more rounded opinion.

I don’t want to bash Catholicism in general. Sure, they transformed a happy little Eastern religion based on doing good and being nice into the longest running business ever. And yeah, they’ve killed, burned and imprisoned (not to mention damned) millions upon billions of people over the centuries. And okay, so they practice the strange custom of only allowing their priests to have sex with little boys instead of women. But surely they’re not all bad. I mean, at least they’re sticking to good, Godly morals and allowing teenage boys and girls to have unprotected sex and make babies before they’re old enough to drive cars.

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Discussion

nykki 6 Jan 2008

Planned parenthood is an amazing organization for teenage kids to get help and talk to someone other than their parents about safe sex practices.

It is also one of the places that a lot of college students go to as well for testing, birth control, child care services, etc. It offers more good than bad.

Many PPH facilities do offer abortion services though, which i can see as a major issue for Catholics. Because they are so against the idea of women having abortions, priest get ’em while their young so they don’t have to worry about going through it themselves. And then when they get on the iffy side of possibly hitting puberty the go for the boys.

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nathan 6 Jan 2008

Agreed, Nyk.

I still think I side with letting people get abortions if they want. Sure, it could be considered murder in a way, but it’s not the same as murdering something that was already alive, and if you don’t want something, why bring it into the world without loving parents anyway?

Though, that’s all beside the point. Catholics, or any other private institution, shouldn’t be telling a public radio station what it can or cannot do.

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nykki 6 Jan 2008

since DUQ funds NPR then they will tell them what to air and what not to air. Until NPR in Pittsburgh becomes an entire seperate entity then it will have to do whatever DUQ says. I know that it sucks because i know how much you like NPR but without DUQ there would be lack of $$$ which means lack of program. I agree with what you are saying but PPH which is a non-profit org isn’t going to have the funding to advertise on NPR. It would probably be a similar situtaion for other non-profit organizations to advertise.

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nathan 7 Jan 2008

Well, actually DUQ is the radio station. Duquesne University is the organization which hold DUQ’s license. I have no idea how much money Duquesne puts into DUQ, though it would stand to reason that some amount of funding comes from Duquesne into DUQ, though I suppose the other way around might make sense as well. I would imagine a Catholic college would have bigger coffers than a public radio station.

Planned Parenthood did pony up $5000 to “advertise” on DUQ, and many other stations across the state and in Jersey & Delaware. Only DUQ refused them, actually, DUQ took their money, aired the spots for 2 days or so, then told them they couldn’t accept the money, refunded it and pulled the spots.

So PPH did have the cash, it was accepted, then rejected and returned.

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