Federal Debate Rages Over AIDS Sex Education

Top federal health officials, who have advocated comprehensive AIDS sex education as a critical weapon for curbing the deadly epidemic, are facing a serious challenge from officials in the Education Department who oppose their proposals as “clinically correct but morally empty,” The Times has learned.

The dispute has become so contentious that it has reached the White House Domestic Policy Council, whose members ultimately will determine the Administration’s policy on AIDS sex education, sources in both departments said.

“Is the Reagan Administration willing to go down in history as the Administration that curtailed life-saving information?” one Public Health Service official asked. “We’ve got to come out and say we’re going to protect the children of this country.”

But an Education Department source said that any form of AIDS sex education promoted by the federal government “cannot be value-free or value-neutral in its approach (because) most Americans do not expect their 13- or 14-year-olds to be engaging in sexual relations.”

Further, he said, “we do not believe such course material should be neutral between homosexual and heterosexual sex. Most Americans believe that sexuality is most appropriately expressed in a heterosexual context” and that homosexual activity “is, in fact, deviant behavior.”

In his AIDS report released to the public last fall, which was presumed to represent the Administration’s position, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called for sex education starting “at the lowest grade possible.”

Koop, noting that he too is concerned about the morals of youths, has said repeatedly that he would oppose any sex education program “which taught technique without responsibility or morality.”

Later, the Public Health Service followed with an outline of an AIDS education plan for all segments of the American public, including young people. “Pre-teens and teens need the same information as the public in general, but the information presented should be appropriate for their age,” it said. “Youth who are at an age when sexual and intravenous drug experimentation may begin are the next generation at risk.”

Sources in both departments said that the debate about the federal government’s role in AIDS sex education escalated this week during Domestic Policy Council meetings, when Koop and Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen argued that the Administration should take a strong stand supporting a plan for comprehensive AIDS sex education because it is essential “to save lives.”

“It’s difficult to provide AIDS education without raising the issue of sex,” one Public Health Service official said.

However, Gary L. Bauer, undersecretary of education who attended the meeting to represent Education Secretary William J. Bennett, contested the Public Health Service approach, telling Domestic Policy Council members that it is “clinically correct but morally empty,” an Education Department source said.

Bauer believes that “the emphasis of such courses ought to be to teach children that they should not participate in those early years in sex,” the source said.

“He doesn’t think that most Americans feel that our schools are providing a particularly helpful service when they teach sex education in such a way as to make it sound like sexual activity is acceptable for 13- or 14-year-olds.”

Further, the source said, Bauer told the Domestic Policy Council--an interagency advisory group headed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III--that sex education in the schools “should be a local decision, arrived at only after consulting with the community--particularly with parents--and the nature of the course ought to be consistent with the values of the community.”

Working With Community

But one federal health official insisted that “whatever we do, we’ll work with the local communities. We’re not going to tell anybody what to do.”

The Public Health Service document “doesn’t say how the education will be done,” he said. “The argument is over how it’s going to be done and the level of government involvement. We are working on this to resolve it. . . . I think the argument is more philosophy than practice. We’re not against talking about morality, either.

“We’ve got to consider that people’s lives are at stake. What we need to do is get out there and get the job done.”

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is caused by a virus that destroys the body’s immune system, leaving it powerless against certain cancers and otherwise rare infections. It is commonly transmitted through both anal and vaginal sexual intercourse, through the sharing of unsterilized hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy.

In this country, AIDS primarily has afflicted homosexual and bisexual men, intravenous drug users and their sexual partners. As of Monday, 29,435 Americans had contracted AIDS, of whom 16,667 had died.