The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has proposed a new set of rules that will guard the content of HIV/AIDS education resources, and contraception educators and promiscuity promoters are worried. In essence, they are concerned that the ineffectiveness of condoms will be revealed.
Under the proposed guidelines, as published in the June 16 Federal Register, the CDC would demand that all HIV/AIDS prevention resources funded by the CDC must be approved by a review panel for medically accurate information regarding the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of condoms in preventing the sexually transmitted disease the materials are designed to address.
The truth that condoms do not offer complete protection against dangerous sexually transmitted diseases is not a message that large contraception-pushing educators, such as Planned Parenthood and Gay Mens Health Crisis, like. Groups like GMHC have called the proposed guidelines equivalent to moralizing. By the same logic, it would be moralizing to put a warning label on cigarettes.
The CDC is accepting public comment on the proposed guidelines until August 16, 2004. Final guidelines are expected to be issued four months after that. [Gay City News, 06/30/04; Jessemyn Pekari, National Abstinence Clearinghouse E-mail Update 7Jul04]