Up To 50 kids may be exposed to the AIDS

[Koga No Goshi]

Proper use of condoms is 99.8% effective. This doesn't take into account the monumentally retarded, human error, "other types of intercourse" and human passion. Add all of that together and anything else I've missed (condom resistant diseases and parasites, the de-sensitization and the cost) and it is not the best thing to push. I have no problem with birth control - this isn't a religious issue for me. I have practical concerns with anything that is not alluring being pushed as a surefire way not to ruin your life when in reality it is impractical and nowhere near as effective as advertised. Birth control pills and vasectomy are a great trade off in a monogamous relationship, but condoms are an all-round loser.

I'm sure that this high school has a great sexual health program. It is a public, quasi-urban black school. I don't think that lack of sex ed is the problem here.

1. Almost no teenagers apparently use condoms properly. Because I don't know a single one of my sexually active friends from h.s. (during h.s., I mean) who didn't have at least one story about breaking a condom or having it roll up/come off. I am sure the hit-or-miss presence or quality of sex education in lower income and rural school districts (and many private schools if they are Christian and minimize the topic, as was the case with my h.s.) has a good deal to do with this. As well as parent & school & church conflicts over making condoms available. And Tuff you would be surprised how quick sex ed gets cut when underbudgeting is a problem for a lower income school.

2. It is not difficult at all for an STD starting with one person to end up with a 50 person spread. It has nothing to do with white or black. Think about how many people you've had sex with. How many they've had sex with. How many those people have had sex with. With adults who are not married or monogamous for long periods of time, it can be in the hundreds when it's all added up. Combined with the fact that STD's frequently take much longer to become symptomatic in women than in men, so an infected woman can be spreading a disease for awhile before she even knows she has one. Fifty is not a shockingly high number of a "sexual encounter family tree." Not even in high school, not even in a white high school these days.

Think about the "popular crowd" at your high school. How many of those people at various points dated one another? And how many of them also dated people from other schools (or older men frequently, in the case of goodlooking h.s. girls.) Even though I went to a small school of about 1,350, it is not difficult to imagine sexual contact linking 50 of them. In addition even assuming you got regular testing (which I am sure h.s. students do not) it takes what, 3-6 months for HIV to be reliably tested? That's a long time in light of the short-lived nature of h.s. relationships for a disease to spread around before anyone even suspects they have it.