About AIDS

The Ohio legislature has established a new record for short-sighted stupidity by instructing the state to turn down a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that included funds for AIDS education. Conservative lawmakers opposed to the grant want abstinence-only sex ed for students, without discussion of alternatives, and the proposal to be funded did not satisfy them. (Of course, such programs are always also hetero-sexist, excluding any contemplation that more than one sexual orientation validly exists.)

A state has never turned down CDC disease prevention funding before, and some people are concerned that this uncooperative attitude will preclude Ohio from receiving future grants. About a third of the $855,000 grant was for HIV/AIDS education, and the remainder for tobacco use prevention, dental hygiene, and other health issues.

We have always enthusiatically supported abstinence as the guarantee, the ideal. At the same time, however, abstinence-only language already excludes 1/2 to 3/4 of any body of high-school students (depending on age) because they have already left abstinence behind. We have never been willing to write these kids off just because they aren't virgins anymore. Apparently, the Ohio legislature is willing to do so, and in the process, toss everyone else out, too.