Better Safe Than Sorry?

By Susan Tifft

Angry parents, politicians and clergy gathered on the steps of New York's city hall last week amid placards that demanded STOP FERNANDEZ FROM TEACHING OUR KIDS GAY SEX and DUMP KING CONDOM FERNANDEZ. What schools chancellor Joseph Fernandez is doing, warned Monsignor John Woolsey of New York's Roman Catholic Archdiocese, amounts to a "ratification of sexual promiscuity." Said outraged parent John Murnane: "Fernandez is insulting our children by telling them they cannot be educated as to what is right."

The indignant rally was a dress rehearsal for a bigger confrontation this week, when the New York City board of education is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Fernandez's proposal to make condoms freely available in the city's 120 public high schools as part of the battle against AIDS. If the plan is approved, New York City's will become the first school system in the nation to provide condoms on an unrestricted basis -- without fees, parental consent or counseling requirements. Fernandez's own family is divided over the issue. "My wife doesn't agree with me," he says.

New York City is the biggest battlefront, but the war over condom distribution in schools is spreading across the country. One high school in Cambridge, Mass., three in Chicago, three in Los Angeles and one in Miami already dispense the devices to students through in-school health clinics, if parents give their consent. Sharon Pratt Dixon, the newly inaugurated mayor of Washington, backed school-based condom programs during her election campaign, provided students receive instruction in human reproduction and safe-sex practices.

But in most places, the idea has met with anger, outrage -- and defeat. Last fall a proposal in rural Talbot County, Md., to make condoms available in high schools failed to pass the school board by just one vote. In prosperous Marin County, Calif., Tamalpais High School abandoned a plan for condom distribution after a coalition of pro-life supporters and parents filed suit to stop it. Los Angeles' pilot reproductive-health project overcame vigorous opposition only when the city agreed to a parental-consent feature; about 75% of parents at the three participating schools have acceded.

The current debate is the result of a grim trend: the increasing incidence of AIDS among adolescents. Of the 157,525 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control through November 1990, 615 involve 13- to 19-year-olds -- 154 more than 11 months earlier. That total understates the gravity of the problem. Since more than a fifth of all AIDS victims in the U.S. are in their 20s and the incubation period for the disease can be as long as 10 years, most of the older age group probably became infected as teenagers.

Nowhere is the challenge more grave than in New York City, which accounts for just 3% of the nation's 13- to 21-year-olds, but harbors 20% of all reported AIDS cases in that age group. It was the sheer size of the problem that prompted Fernandez to suggest the free-condom idea as part of an expanded AIDS-education program for the city's 261,000 high school students. Under the plan, staff volunteers at each school would hand out condoms, along with a booklet explaining their use, to every student who wants them. Sex counseling would be available but would not be required, for fear it would deter students from seeking protection.

One of the standard objections raised is that the ready availability of condoms will only encourage teenagers to have sex. "This gives a stamp of approval to something we feel is immoral and unhealthy," says Rabbi Abraham Hecht, president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. Some parents resent the loss of control over their child's decision; others think the sagging school system could put its dollars to better use. "The chancellor's primary mission is education," insists John Hale, a former member of the New York State board of social welfare. "He's not the health department."

Critics also argue that condoms, which can have a failure rate of between 10% and 15%, are not the best protection against AIDS. Human Life International, a Maryland-based Christian sexuality-education group, has vowed to sue the New York City board of education if any student gets pregnant or contracts a sexually transmitted disease while using a school-supplied condom. The alternative that schools should be promoting, critics argue, is chastity.

There is little evidence, however, that sexual abstinence is an attractive option for students. Almost all existing sex- and AIDS-education classes stress chastity, yet half the nation's high school girls are sexually active; 16% have had four or more partners. In New York City 80% of all youngsters have had sex by age 19. "To call abstinence a fantasy is to stretch even the idea of fantasy," says Steve Anderson, an English teacher at Manhattan's Seward Park High School, who last year taught a student who had lost both her parents and a brother to AIDS. Agrees Debra Haffner, executive director of the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S.: "It's immoral to say 'Just say no or die.' "

Supporters of the Fernandez plan argue that although condoms are available in drugstores, many teenagers do not use them properly or consistently. That makes it necessary for schools to step in to safeguard the public's health and that of their charges. Parental consent, boosters say, is desirable but * unrealistic. "I don't know anyone whose children consulted with them before they had sex," says Caesar Previdi, principal of Manhattan's Martin Luther King Jr. High School. At Jordan High School in the Watts section of Los Angeles, teens are trained to counsel one another on sexual issues, precisely because adult advice is so often shunned.

In fact, many parents seem relieved to have the issue taken out of their hands. A Gallup poll for the daily New York Newsday found that 54% of parents with children in the New York City public schools approve of the condom plan. There is little opposition from students. "This isn't telling us to be sexually active," argues Mike Hurdle, 17, a senior at Queens' Andrew Jackson High School. "It's just saying, if you are, you should be protected."

The New York City condom initiative will go before the board of education for a vote on Jan. 23. So far, only two of seven members have said they firmly oppose the plan. But as the commotion concerning high schools spreads across the country, another, even more controversial battle may be shaping up. According to many experts, there is a growing need to make condoms available in junior high schools, where student sexual activity is on the rise.

With reporting by Katherine L. Mihok/New York and James Willwerth/Los Angeles