Making strides in kids' AIDS awareness
by Rodolpho Carrasco
Saturday, September 26, 1998 in San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
(Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif. and a columnist for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. Check out more articles by Rodolpho Carrasco here.)
The White House Intern Scandal has occupied an inordinate amount of mindshare, bandwidth, and regularly scheduled programming in recent months. Obscured in all the muck and yuck, buried in the back of newspapers and at the end of news broacasts, are important developments in the areas of teen sexuality and the AIDS epidemic.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) this summer reported a substantial drop in the percentage of teens engaging in sex. In 1991, 54.1% of students in grades 9 thru 12 were sexually active. But in 1997 the figure dropped to 48.4%, the first time since the early 1970s that the rate of sexual intercourse among teens decreased.
On the AIDS front, the CDC's most recent data indicates that the yearly number of AIDS deaths and incidences has dropped for the first time since the epidemic began to be charted. These results are attributed primarily to advancements in medical treatments. These hopeful reports about teen sexuality and AIDS are due in great part to educational crusades targeting these concerns. Both safe sex proponents and abstinence advocates put voluminous amounts of time and money into educating teens about the downside of the sexual revolution.
Safe sexers now say the drop in sexually active teens proves their point that aggressive sex education does not de facto make teens more sex-crazed. Abstinence champions take heart that, for the first time in a decade, the phrase "Everybody is doing it" is a minority view. All are calling the decline good news for all, not just teens. As for AIDS, it took a lot of hollering and scratching and name-calling, but the AIDS crusaders convinced both public and private sectors to get off their collective duff and get serious about cures and prevention education. They were so successful that a friend of mine now claims AIDS fatigue. "Don't get me wrong," she says. "I'm down with the cause. I'm just sick of hearing about it." I'll refrain from calling her callous, because there are millions of people in Africa, which as a continent claims a disproportionately large share of the world's AIDS cases, who would give anything to share her sentiment.
I am thankful for the teen sexuality and AIDS crusades. I'm even more grateful that I live in a society that values the idea of the public crusade, that even relies on such methods to get things done. This country was founded on a crusade for freedom. Our wheels of commerce turn on a crusade for capitalist free enterprise. Our religious character is to crusade for our souls, and our protests against the establishment are conducted as crusades. In our nation of crusaders some stand out more than others. Lynn Chamberlain literally embodies both the teen sexuality and AIDS crusades. Earlier this month this beautiful, young African-American woman stood before a throng of teens at a back-to-school rally at Pasadena Church of God and poured out her heart.
In 1991, as a senior at Tuskegee University in Alabama, Lynn came down with an illness so strong that she came home to Los Angeles for a medical check-up. The results were catastrophic: a full-blown AIDS diagnosis.
She didn't contract HIV from intravenous drug use or promiscuous sexual behaviors. Her boyfriend had been HIV-positive for two years and never bothered to tell her. All of us in the audience, a packed Sunday-evening house of hormonally-charged teens and concerned parents and clergy, stared bewildered at this healthy-looking woman as she pitched her crusade: "I thought it couldn't happen to me, and I bet you don't think it could happen to you."
With story after story, she assaulted the spirit of ignorance that has enveloped our young people - indeed, our whole society - regarding the broad reach of the AIDS epidemic. Lynn's voice is critically needed at a time when new HIV incidence rises ominously among heterosexual African American and Latina women. In particular, in some states, heterosexual Black women are accounting for an astonishing 63% of new HIV incidences, according to the CDC's "Trends in the HIV and AIDS Epidemic, 1998."
A Los Angeles Times article this summer postulated that many women are being infected by furtively bisexual partners. An additional concern centers around a reluctance in both the African American and Latino communities to explore the question of male-to-male contact in prison, where AIDS incidence is 8 times higher than in the general population.
Ongoing CDC studies are exploring the theory that high numbers of Black female HIV infection can be traced to male-to-male sexual contact among prisoners, who, upon release, resume sexual relations with women, not bothering to disclose what they consider aberrational sexual activity.
Lynn's message of "it can happen to you, too" is so timely that it frustrates her. "I'm bothered most when I see young girls walking down the street pregnant. Most 14-year-old girls are having sex with men who are older. Most likely these girls don't know anything about their partner's past," she says.
That night as I listened to Lynn give her testimony, a recitation of facts, then an altar call, I wondered how anyone could ignore her message. But some people do. Whether out of disbelief, an overwhelming need for love and attention, or sheer stubborn selfishness, some people will do what they will regardless of the consequences.
Men like Lynn's HIV-infected boyfriend will continue to have sex with women without disclosing their health status. Nothing the Lynn Chamberlains of the world say will stop them. But each one of us - especially, at this time, African American and Latina women - can choose to heed Lynn's message. Her voice is not new, bur rather a present incarnation of an ancient voice: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts," says the Old Testament.
Lynn and the crusaders in the successful teen sexuality and AIDS crusades call out for our benefit. Receive what they are saying. Don't harden your heart.
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