First
Unitarian Church Honolulu
Receives Planned Parenthood Award
Planned Parenthood of Hawaii (PPH) presented its 2008 Bette Takahashi Service Award to the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu during its annual gala fundraising event Jan. 25, at The Royal Hawaiian.
The Bette Takahashi Award is given each year to an individual or organization that has provided longstanding service in the areas of reproductive health care and rights. This is the first time it has been given to a religious group.
"The Unitarian Church has been extremely supportive of the Planned Parenthood program and has been a strong advocate of reproductive health for women and teens and womens' right to choose," said PPH Director of Development Sheila O'Keefe.
The church also uses the comprehensive, medically accurate curriculum on reproductive health entitled "Our Whole Lives," and has trained educators such as Crossroads United Church of Christ, Catholic Charities and the Boys and Girls Clubs to teach the course.
In accepting the award on behalf of the church Charlotte Huszcza, President of First Unitarian Church, said, “I am so proud that I am part of a faith community—The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu—that has been there – assisting with the mission of this desperately needed organization. These are the folks who have earned the Bette Takahashi award. These are the committed individuals who have supported Planned Parenthood.
“In 1987 our Church passed a resolution in support of reproductive choice and information and we are the only Church in Hawaii to do so.
“Our members have served on the Board and committees of Planned Parenthood –made generous financial contributions and the Church with several grants to establish the loan fund of Wahine Choice. Money was also given by the Church to help kick off the Cervical Cancer Screening Fund.
“Our OWL course, developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, spearheaded by our Director of Religious Education, Nan Kleiber, has provided medically accurate instruction on sexuality and reproductive health which Planned Parenthood has had much success in teaching this course in Hawaii’s public schools.
“I am so grateful and honored to be part of a faith community which supports such a needed and noble mission as that of Planned Parenthood.
“Thank you Planned Parenthood of Hawaii for all you do and thank you for acknowledging all that the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu does.”
Commenting especially on a religious community being given the award, Rev. Mike Young, minister of the church, said, “It is unusual—perhaps even unique—for a church to be given this kind of an award for support of reproductive rights.
“From the very outset of Planned Parenthood of Hawaii, we have been enthusiastic supporters. One of our most basic principles has been the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. From the earliest days of the Protestant Reformation, those who came to be called Unitarians and Universalists have resisted every form of coercion. People have a right to the best possible information about their lives and the choices that they must make.
“From the early days of the last century when effective contraception began to become available, Unitarians and Universalists have supported the full availability of reproductive information and the techniques to make it effective.
“In the 1960's, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ jointly developed a full information sex education curriculum (now revised, called OWL—Our Whole Lives). The box that contained the books, tapes and visuals could not be mailed because it was held to be pornographic material. That’s how controversial the issue of sex education was in the mid-1960’s.
“I would love to be able to say that this is long past; that we have now as a nation decided that this is the kind of information that our young people ought to have to make intelligent, good, moral, healthy, constructive decisions about their own sexuality. Unfortunately, the truth is we are still scared to death over the issue.
“There are those who insist that the only kind of sexuality education that kids need is to have somebody stand before them and yell, “No!” There are those who insist that this is something that must only happen at the hands of one’s parents.
“Others say, this is not a religious issue. Churches shouldn’t touch it.
“Sexuality is a religious issue. It is the most powerful human motivator after air and water for the human species. The dynamics of sexuality touch every aspect of the life we share together. For that reason, priests have been trying to forbid it, control it or co-opt it from as early as there were priests.
“Our culture has inherited the full ambiguity of that history.
“One reason to attempt to separate sexuality from religion is that religion has so muddied it up. The attitudes historically too often taught by religion have yielded both bad sex AND bad religion. It is time, many have argued, to kick the priests out of our bedrooms in the name of both sexuality and religion.
“To insist that sex is religious is to insist that it is at the core of who we are as embodied consciousness. The fact that we are sexual is a part of the major shaping of our relationships, of our civilization, of what we see as beautiful, what we appreciate as of value, and the judgments that we make about the breaching of human relationships.
“If sex is not religious, then nothing else is. Nothing reaches so deeply into every corner of what it feels like to be a human being.
“So it is appropriate that you should honor a church for working to make reproductive freedom effectively available in our community, as we have honored and supported Planned Parenthood in what we consider to be a joint endeavor.
“May we delight in our differences, and use them in ways that build and enhance joyous persons and joyous relationships. And may we continue to try to find the ways to share that knowledge, that wisdom, that joyousness as widely as possible in our society.”