Crazy U.S. Thinking: Rampant Sexually Spread Diseases and No Talk About Sex!

Spring fever has sprung! Just as a sobering CDC study report breaks that one in four American teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease, crime-busting Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigns for itching an eighty-grand, reportedly unsafe prostitution habit. Instantly the scandal storm blows bigger and more bizarre as New York's new governor holds an emergency press conference to confess -- also with wife by side -- to several affairs, one over several years. Meanwhile, journalists struggle for truth in the public dispute between New Jersey's former "I'm a gay American" governor and his divorcing wife about their alleged three-ways with their young male driver. News hasn't been this salacious since the Starr Report. And camera crews still have to dispatch to spring break hot spots to capture the bouncing B-roll of oiled and bronzed female flesh so news pundits can opine on America's moral decline.

Family values conservatives are spinning the current chaos to pin the blame on sexual health education and to push for more abstinence-only programming, already a $1.5 billion social engineering boondoggle that mandates the expected sexual standard for children (up to 29 years old!) be within marriage. Never mind that most of us at some point explore our sexuality outside of marriage -- even chastity champions like Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a longtime patron of prostitutes. Never mind that real life proves that a wedding ring doesn't protect you from disease and despair, even if you're not a political wife. Never mind that the United States leads developed nations in rates of HIV, other STDs, teen births and unwanted pregnancies -- purity pushers don't want to send our kids any mixed messages. "Our challenge is that the government wants to talk about preventing the spread of STDs and HIV without talking about sex," says sexuality educator Deb Levine.

In our sex-saturated consumer culture, abstinence-only-unless-married is a mixed message. How can we talk about sex in a way that makes sense to us, and to our relationships? What is healthy sexuality? And how can we teach it in such a toxic environment of extremes?

"We sell and promote sex with everything from soap to cars, but it's still for the most part a closeted discussion. It is most absent in a meaningful way in curricula geared toward our most vulnerable sexually active populations," says Lennie Green, who at John Hopkins University facilitates communication among groups of young African American men who have sex with men -- a community the CDC reports to have experienced a spike in HIV infections.

"We seem to have this Sunday morning church mentality when we discuss sexuality, but when we review societal practices there's a major dichotomy in our rhetoric and what we actually do," says Green. "The weakest link has been 'family values.' They strike out against subcultures they find amoral, and crusade to establish law and order in bed. Even in the face of disease we hang onto old archaic beliefs that sex will not happen until marriage. Our public health record has been trashing that theory for decades."

"The biggest challenge is to be open on the subject of sex," says Kylee Darcy, a freshman at UC Berkeley and winner of the Fresh Focus Sex Ed Video Contest. "In spite of all the sexy messages out there, communication about sex is still shrouded with taboo. It's pretty ridiculous to think that an abstinence program is going to be able to outweigh the hundreds of sexual suggestions I get everyday from TV, the Internet, magazines, billboards, music, fashion, etc. Sex is something everyone, whether they want to do it or not, needs to be clear about. And the only thing that can create clarity is communication."

Darcy's animated video, showcased in January at Sex::Tech: Focus on Youth, the first STD/HIV prevention conference focusing on youth and technology, illustrated pop culture's sexed-up messages crushing the scale against abstinence-only messages. "The abstinence-only program is not productive, but sex ed that just addresses the physical act of sex and contraception is also outdated," Darcy continues. "Yes, students need to know about contraception and disease, but sex ed should be as much about the interpersonal as the physical. Good sex ed can help create rapport between young people and their parents as well as young people and their partners."