SATURDAY LETTERS : MEDIA’S SEX MESSAGES

Three articles were splashed across Calendar’s front-page dealing with the issue of TV’s handling of programs and advertising about contraception and condoms, specifically (“Television Confronts the Condom Issue,” by Judith Michaelson, Lee Margulies and Nancy Mills, Feb. 3).

All three writers were on the same wavelength--a one-sided presentation if ever there was one: teach children to be “responsible” about sex (“use condoms”) and youthful pregnancies will diminish and disappear.

The essence of this fallacy is naively stated by Nancy Mills, when she quotes Heidi Frey: “We’re not saying ‘have sex and use a condom.’ ” Oh yes you are.

Oh yes the media have encouraged ever younger audiences to have sex, for years. Our culture, pressured by the media explosion, keeps saying, “have sex--it’s wonderful for you, married or not; if you don’t, you’re rigid or even frigid, and your life is not full. Have sex whenever the feeling arises.”

No one is suggesting we “ignore that kids have hormones and are interested in sex.” But what are we expecting them to do about their interest, if not act it out? The simplistic attitude that “they’ll do it anyway” ignores placing any responsibility for that where it belongs--squarely on the shoulders of adults in the media who are out for greater profits through more and more sensational sleaze.

ROSE MARIE SANFILIPPO

San Luis Obispo