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Web Site - www.vennontstore.com

Route 100, Waitsfield, Vermont
(802) 496-4465 FAX (802) 496-7719
. Est. 1965 '
Open 10-6 Daily

 

Are you: A Healthy,
Non-Smoking Woman
between The ages of

21 and 35? Interested
in participating in Cl
research study?

‘ Iunuauuuunun

 

Participate in a ciinical research study to
determine the effect of ovarian hormones
on metabolism and cardiovascular
disease risk. Monetary compensation

will be provided for yoor participation.

 

Cor " E

  
   

ritly I watched the daytime

Rink show, The Other Half, co-
-’ . , osted by three men apparently

' .  exclusively for their all-

’A'merican?,~4‘iriulti-cnlniral 

"  and itsname am.Diclc'
~ " tgvlhe View, Barbara
‘ _Walter’s.. .

  
  
 

_ creation and vehicle for
'women’s_p'e_rspeetives. ‘_;_~.;, 2
i V.‘ »  I ‘ gtme first halfioflhe

 

 osts made arlblescent

.fifieen-minutely V
I 3 made it all the 
 \  nieeting to the}'iionclu-
‘sion of tlleir’niarriage vows witliout
once engaging one another in{;'s'ex, kiss-

   

‘mg each other,-or being physical

together in any way. The couple left out
any mention of previous relationships
and their interviewers didn’t  While
the hosts and audience gushed and
applauded, I sat wondering why anyone
would want to know. I

Then it hit me. This couple
was not merely advocating sexual absti-
nence but, by omission, condemning
safe sex. A few minutes into the con-
versation my suspicions were con-
firmed. _

One host drilled the couple
with a series of questions that finally
convinced him of the impossible - that
the couple really, truly had not been
physical with each other in any way.
Then a co-host, who made it plain he
viewed the couple’s brush with inno-
cence as an insurmountable ordeal,
asked them if they had, at any time,
considered safe sex. The couple assured
him that they had not because they
believed so deeply in abstinence, at
which point all three interviewers were
suddenly transfonned from facetious
skeptics into beaming admirers. “That’s
wonderful!” one cooed. The audience
clapped on cue. And safe sex was not
mentioned again. ’

Next an interviewer
approached the audience, where he
spoke, one by one, with three‘ young
women who also claimed to have cho-
sen sexual abstinence. I wouldn’t exact-
ly call them scantily clad but their
clothes were certainly tight fitting.
Each testified to her purity and as she
spoke, her first name was emblazoned
across the bottom of the TV screen
accompanied by the salacious caption
“Sixteen Year Old Virgin.” I couldn’t
help wondering if any of them had been
reared in religious fundamentalism.

And I thought about some-
thing a coworker who provides HIV
prevention services to women told me.

She saidlshe has women who con-
virgins even though

occasionalora
er themselve H __ __ _
male hustlers li siibmit to every kind
of sex with '0 _, _ en later tell law
enforcemen officers and social workers
they have.Inever_had sex with a man.
Because they did it for money and the
acts were not reciprocal, they reason, it
wasn’t sex.

My purpose is not to punch
more holes in abstinence than are there
already. In fact, I believe abstinence has
merit. But I object strongly to its imbal-
anced and incomplete handling in this
TV show. Mostly, though, I object to
the way in which those who espouse
abstinence (mainly religious fundamen-
talists and reactionary politicians) use it
to contrive a polarized, and therefore
irreconcilable, argument between absti-
nence and safe sex service providers.

Most of us agree that com-
mercial television and the movies have
created a sexually charged environment
into which not only children, but also
adults, are often irresistibly drawn.
Everything from automobiles to sham-
poo to chewing gum is advertised by
way of some association with sex, and
one question on everybody’s mind is
what do we do about that. Regulating
TV commercials would be complicated
and it’s an unlikely solution.

For those who advocate for
the strictly-abstinence-based model
then, the solution seems simple: “Just
say no.” But'that’s not all they’re say-
ing. They’re also continuously perpetu-
ating the myth that those of us who
advocate for the safe-sex HIV-preven-
tion model promote promiscuity, espe-
cially to the young. In the last ten years
I have met and talked with many safe-
sex-based AIDS service providers and
not one of them has ever told me they
handed out condoms because they

 
  
 

‘believed their clients ought to have

been having more sex.

The problem with the strict-
ly-abstinence-based model is its horse-
blind moral vision. To view sexual
behavior morally is, I believe, appropri-

Whatever

 
 

 

ate, but to make that the only consider- ‘

ation, to deny that we are also involved ' i

in a life and death struggle is naive, and
in the case of the current administra-
tion, cynical and disastrously irrespon-
sible. In a sexually charged environ-
ment, such as both sides agree exists,

handing out condoms isn’t providing a

license for promiscuity. It is, rather,
more like throwing lifepreservers to '

drowning individuals. And, given the ' ‘ ‘ '

magnitude of the pandemic, what
informed AIDS service provider gen-
uinely dedicated to the preservation of
life would not want to at least do that?
I But while we do our work,
the. -voice of strict abstinence gets loud-

~. er,a'nd the Bush administration’s sus-

ceptibility to its influence means that

’ everyyear more people are misled, and . ~

viable safe‘ sex programs forced to
compete morevigorously for less fund-
ing. That is apparently not daytime tele-

. vision’s problem, however, but ours.

Handing otit
condoms isn’t

providing a- 

license for
promiscuity;
It is, rather,
more like
throwing

life preservers
to drowning
individuals.

As ABC’s The Other Half
ended, the credits shot upward on the
television screen. The audience clapped

_ and cheered, not for the program’s

superficial content, which had already
been forgotten, but at the show’s three,
dimple-faced dimwits whose grins were
broad and sly as they snatched pillows
off of the studio sofa and hurled them
at one another. V

Thomas Ziniti lives in Warwick
Massachusetts and works as a special
education paraprofessional. He also
works part-time as Newsletrer and
Events Coordinator for THE. Men}?
Program of The AIDS Project of
Southern Vermont.