Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COUNTY : Officials Will Provide AIDS Booklet to Schools

“Informing the public on the dangers of this dreaded disease is of vital importance,” said county Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, adding that teen-agers “are unaware of the dangers involved and need to understand clearly how this fatal disease is spread.”

Her fellow supervisors agreed and authorized distribution to county school districts of an AIDS information pamphlet partially funded by the county and produced by an arm of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Garden Grove.

Written by a registered nurse, “Teens and AIDS” urges parents to talk to their children about AIDS and sex, noting that in 1985 a third of the nation’s teen-agers and 15% of its adults did not know that the disease can be transmitted through heterosexual intercourse.

The pamphlet explains that AIDS is not spread through sharing a locker, shaking hands, use of a swimming pool or eating in cafeterias and restaurants.

It states that sexual contact with people of unknown sexual or drug-use histories increases the risk of contracting the disease. It also states that condoms form “a barrier” to the virus.

A day after the board’s vote, an Anaheim minister and his wife appeared in the board room to protest use of the pamphlet. The Rev. Louis Sheldon and his wife, Beverly, said they would write to school superintendents advising them not to use the pamphlet because it refers students to the Gay and Lesbian Community Center for further information and because it does not emphasize sexual abstinence as the best prevention for AIDS.