Countywide : AIDS Group Offers New Education Plan

Youth educators at the AIDS Response Program have developed “rubberwear” parties for college-aged students where safer-sex techniques and products will be demonstrated.

The programs will be offered by the AIDS Response Program, run by the Garden Grove-based Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center.

Leigh Richards, coordinator of youth programs, said the “rubberwear” concept, which involves games and prizes, like a Tupperware party, was created to make it more comfortable for young people to learn about safer sex.

People attending “rubberwear” parties will get free condoms.

The center developed special programs in September for people between the ages of 18 and 24, Richards said. More than 5,000 people have attended the classes at college campuses and community service events, Richards said.

Not everyone agrees that frank demonstration of safer-sex products is the way to protect people from AIDS and other diseases.

A group called Choices/Teen Awareness Inc. in Anaheim teaches about AIDS at public schools but advocates abstinence, not safer sex.

Choices director Priscilla Hurley has said she does not teach about condoms because she believes it weakens the abstinence message. Because condoms are not 100% effective, it’s not a good idea to teach young people to use them, she said.

Richards also talked about abstinence at a recent demonstration of the “rubberwear” program.

“It’s obviously the best way not to get a sexually transmitted disease,” she said, but she noted that studies show that some young people call themselves abstinent although they engage in sexual behavior--including oral sex--that could transmit disease.

She also said that people who do not prepare themselves for safer sex may end up having very risky sex under the influences of drugs or alcohol.