ACLU fighting the war for condoms in America

An elderly man held a cane in one hand and clutched a prepackaged dental dam in the other as… An elderly man held a cane in one hand and clutched a prepackaged dental dam in the other as he stood three feet from Justin Sane of the band Anti-Flag.

Drummer Pat Thetic stood outside the door of the auditorium in Porter Hall on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus, distributing latex contraceptives as people exited “The Secret War on Condoms” lecture last Sunday.

The day after Valentine’s Day, a four-person panel spoke to a group of roughly 40 people about the potential dangers of what they depicted as an evangelical campaign in today’s political realm to dispute the effectiveness of condoms in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The American Civil Liberties Union sponsored the event to expand on the theory espoused by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in his January 2003 article, “The War On Condoms.” He describes the push for abstinence-only education and some conservative groups’ insistence on the inadequacy of condoms as “downright weird.”

Panel speaker Brenda Green, vice president for education of Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, described the federal regulations imposed on sex education and condom distribution. She said “an obscene amount of tax dollars” are used to fund abstinence-only education programs, and she referred to several recent Supreme Court appointments of anti-abortion justices, saying that they are also opposed to the family planning her organization sponsors.

Green also described a report card published every three years by a sexual health organization in which each state is graded from A to F based on criteria such as gay rights, sex education and abortion availability. Pennsylvania has never scored higher than a D-minus, and only ranks above the 11 states that failed. She referenced the F-ranked Alabama’s policy that made the possession of a vibrator illegal. This policy existed until less than two years ago.

“If I was worried before, I’m even more worried now,” said CMU’s Student Health Services Director Anita Barkin at the end of Green’s speech. She continued to give specific examples of her personal encounters with “responsible students” who visited her office with contraception and sexually-transmitted diseases. She referred to her office as a “safe, confidential environment,” where inquiries about sexual health are encouraged.

Dr. Marian Michaels, associate professor of pediatrics and surgery at Pitt’s School of Medicine and director of the Pediatric HIV Center at Children’s Hospital, described the present threat posed by the HIV virus and the ability of condoms, when used consistently and correctly, to prevent the transmission of the disease.

“The male condom is essentially impermeable to STDs,” she said, addressing the condom strength testing performed by the Food and Drug Administration. Michaels presented statistics of AIDS rates in the United States and abroad, showing the increase of the disease in women and minorities. Twenty percent of adults in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, and 300 million venereal disease incidents are reported worldwide each year, she said.

Michaels referenced the Ugandan government’s ABC Program to target and decrease AIDS in the country by encouraging abstinence, being faithful and condom use.

“I think we should extend the Uganda program to ‘D,’ don’t put your head in the sand, and ‘E,’ educate yourself,” she concluded.

The final speaker, Dr. Stephen Thomas, director at the Center for Minority Health, called the insistence upon abstinence-only education, “morality and ideology trump[ing] science.”

He related the fight for sexual freedom to the Civil Rights Movement, and the “war on condoms” to the Red Scare and mass genocide.

The lecture was brought to a close by a question-and-answer session moderated by Sane, in which anonymous audience inquiries were addressed. When the question, “Where does abstinence-only until marriage leave you if you’re gay and can’t get married?” was read, an audience member blurted out, “Frustrated.”

Sane concluded the event by encouraging audience members to become social activists by visiting Web sites, including www.punkvoter.com.

As the listeners left the auditorium, one student remarked, “I just met the drummer from Anti-Flag. He gave me a dental dam!”