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AIDS Education and the Tale of Two Cities
| Article
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16840 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
5,839 Words |
| Author
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Richard Bishirijan
Richard Bishirjian is president of CMP International, Inc. He
was associate director of Boson University's Institute for
Democratic Communications. |
In many ways, the current dispute over Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) education--and dispute is a mild word--grows out of a profound disagreement among Americans over what kind of society we will inhabit in the twenty-first century. This disagreement is only in part concerned with sexual morality. What lies at its heart is a conflict endemic to the modern era: Those who believe in community and the commonly held truths that bind community together versus those who view society as pluralistic in nature, with government's primarily role being the protection of minorities as competitors in the free market of ideas.
Of course, for the first 175 years of the nation's history, Americans had a strong commitment to the idea that by definition the community was entitled to establish rules governing individual conduct in a number of areas. These rules were not all codified in the statute books; some were simply a matter of inviolable custom. Thus, homosexual behavior was specifically outlawed in all fifty states, but propriety alone ruled that unmarried young people of different sexes did not take long trips together and share the same hotel room.
Selective Use Of Data
In the past twenty-five years, the consensus that allowed society to establish such rules has all but collapsed. Fewer than half the states now outlaw homosexual relations between consenting adults, and younger people of the opposite sex frequently share overnight lodgings--without any presumption that sexual intercourse necessarily takes place. The same kind of relaxation has taken place in a number of other areas (e.g., doing business on Sunday), and some advocates of greater individual freedom are pressing for still more changes, including decriminalizing "recreational" drug use and even sex between adults and children.
AIDS first made its appearance in 1981 during this period of profound social change, and the ongoing debate over public health policy has since mirrored the divided nature of American society. Indeed, this debate may foreshadow a coming crisis in which one of the two opposing forces will predominate. At least this outcome seems likely, given the current determination of activists on both sides of this question to prevail at all costs.
On the surface, the debate seems to turn on whether young people should be taught to abstain from sex as a means of avoiding the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or whether they should be taught to have sex in
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