Bennett, Koop Settle AIDS Dispute : Education Chief Insisted Moral Values Were Being Ignored

Education Secretary William J. Bennett and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop Friday reconciled their differences over the Reagan Administration’s philosophy on AIDS sex education, ending a divisive battle that had reached the highest levels of the White House.

“Our young people deserve the best scientific information about this disease and the ways in which it is transmitted,” they said in a joint statement. “The federal government has a responsibility to provide such information to local educational authorities.”

The controversy arose several weeks ago over Bennett’s belief that federal health officials were ignoring moral values when they drew up their AIDS sex education proposals. But Education Undersecretary Gary L. Bauer, who was involved in the negotiations between the two men, said Friday that “there was more common ground here than was apparent.”

‘You Had to Be Moral’

Koop agreed that “we were always closer than the perception seemed to be.”

“I felt that, if you walked down the scientific path, you also had to be moral,” Koop said in an interview. “It gets you to the same place.”

Koop said the dispute, which reached the White House Domestic Policy Council--an interagency advisory group headed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III--had temporarily derailed his efforts to publicly speak out on AIDS sex education. He was asked by White House officials not to discuss it until a consensus was reached.

“I hated it because I wasn’t able to go out and talk to people--I want to explain to people who are worried about sex education that they don’t have to have that fear,” Koop said. “Now I feel that I can speak freely again, and we can get on with the problem of AIDS education.”

Refraining From Sex

Koop and Bennett said the content of AIDS sex education courses should be determined by states and local communities but that curricula should emphasize to youngsters that the best way to avoid AIDS is to refrain from sexual activity until “as adults they are ready to establish a mutually faithful monogamous relationship.”

AIDS education, as part of sex education in general, “should uphold monogamy in marriage as a desirable and worthy thing,” they said.

Further, they said, AIDS sex education “that accepts children’s sexual activity as inevitable and focuses only on ‘safe sex’ will be at best ineffectual, at worst itself a cause of serious harm.”

Bauer, who will assume a new job Monday as domestic policy adviser to President Reagan, said: “Our strong feeling was that one reason that sex education courses in the ‘60s and ‘70s didn’t stop teen-age pregnancies was (that) they were empty of some sense of right and wrong. So, certainly, when dealing with a deadly disease, the worst of all worlds would be to introduce ineffective materials--you’ve got to do more than talk about safe sex. It just isn’t going to work.”

‘Threat Posed by AIDS’

Koop’s report to the public on AIDS called for AIDS sex education starting “at the lowest grade possible.” He and Bennett said that, if schools decide to teach sex education, “such courses should include a discussion of the threat posed by AIDS.”

They added: “And, as with sex education courses in general, it is especially important in a sensitive area like this one that school officials consult widely with parents, local public health officials and community members to determine when and how to introduce such material into the classroom.”

Koop said the two men did not discuss how such courses should approach the discussion of homosexual activities. Initially, Bennett had said that course material should teach heterosexual sex as the appropriate behavior. “We never addressed it,” Koop said.

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 can also invade the central nervous system, causing severe neurological disorders. The disease is transmitted commonly through anal and vaginal sexual intercourse, through the sharing of unsterilized hypodermic needles, and by woman to fetus during pregnancy.

In this country, AIDS has primarily afflicted homosexual and bisexual men, intravenous drug users and their sexual partners. As of Monday, 29,582 Americans had contracted AIDS and 16,847 of them had died.