Amethyst Initiative Receives 2008 WCTU Millstone Award
On Friday, September 5, representatives from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union presented the Amethyst Initiative with the first annual WCTU Millstone Award. John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College and founder of Choose Responsibilty, accepted the award on behalf of the Amethyst Initiative. According to Bunny Galladora, National WCTU Media Relations Director, “The Millstone Award was created to bring public awareness to a person, organization, or governmental body that creates or uses their position of influence to promote unhealthy, illegal, or immoral behavior that we believe places children at risk.”
The WCTU is a non-profit organization, founded in 1874, that believes “the family is the foundation upon which this nation was built; therefore, WCTU sounds a warning against anything that poses a threat to the family.” The organization has a long history of supporting temperance, and was largely influential in bringing about national Prohibition in 1919.
The award, announced at the 135th Annual National WCTU Convention in Burlington, Vermont, is based on the Scripture verse, “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves” (Luke 17:1-2 NIV).