https://soundcloud.com/mhsmentoronline/november-19-editorial-hiv-and-safe-sex-practices

This editorial is a compilation from a discussion held by the editorial board.

White, heterosexual male Charlie Sheen’s going public about having HIV introduced some of the first media coverage of the disease in a positive light. With decades of negative and homophobic stigma surrounding HIV, the fact that all it took was a rich white heterosexual male seems to raise quite a few problems in regards to American sex education and awareness.

First, there is an obvious problem when the majority of Americans simply  sweep an issue as large as HIV under the rug, dismissing it as simply a “gay issue.” The Mentor editorial board believes there should be greater measures take to bring awareness to the topic so that people realize that it’s not a “gay issue” it’s a “people who have sex issue.”

Likewise, looking at the larger topic of awareness of sex-related issue in America, it seems there is a pretty big problem with the current sex education curriculum. In only promoting abstinence and never fully addressing the topics of safe sex, we actively further the issues of sexually transmitted diseases. Instead of simply screaming about how sex will make you die, we should work to actively teach students about how to have safe sex. While in school we are simply told to abstain the world we live in is constantly romanticizing and commercializing sexual desires, making it all the more impossible for students to just “not do it.”

Around the country, teachers can provide sex education courses that are biased against specific races or ethnicities, that are inappropriate for students’ ages and that promote specific religious agendas, according to a recent Guttmacher Institute analysis. Furthermore, 37 states reportedly allow for medically inaccurate sex education, and only 18 states require teachers to provide information about contraception. Given these figures, it is hardly surprising that the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any other developed country.

It’s about time that America stops trying to avoid the “embarrassing” and “scandalous” topic of sex in schools and instead embraces the possibility that with proper education people can have sex, enjoy it and be safe too.

And, as ridiculous as it is that a famous white guy had to announce having HIV for us to even recognize it as an issue, perhaps this will be the publicity boost the American sex educators need revamp the whole system.