Giveaways Are Controversial on AIDS Day

Five hours into their mission to spread AIDS awareness across Orange County, two small bands of activists marking World AIDS Day had an offer for University High School students returning to the campus from lunch Thursday.

“Do you want some condoms?” they asked surprised students who were driving into the high school parking lot.

The condom distribution was one small, but controversial, part of the seventh annual World AIDS Day, now commemorated in more than 180 countries. In Orange County, Laguna Beach decorated parking meters with red ribbons inscribed with the names of AIDS victims. A community center in Santa Ana unveiled an AIDS mural and churches held candlelight masses.

The day’s events ended with a candlelight vigil at UC Irvine, where families dedicated panels stitched for the AIDS quilt. About 350 people attended the event.

But the most controversial part of the day’s activities was created by 25 volunteers from the AIDS Response Program, part of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County, which receives state funding for AIDS education activities.

They visited about a dozen schools throughout the day in an effort to raise student awareness about the dangers of sex in the age of AIDS. The activists did not go onto school grounds.

“Too bad they don’t give instructions with these,” said a University High School student after he grabbed a handful of the prophylactics from a blue plastic bucket.

Though the activists had received permits from the 12 cities they visited, some high school principals were as surprised as their students that condoms were being distributed.

“We have a lot of underage students here and I think those are choices young people need to make with their parents,” said University High School Principal Diana Schmelzer. “We have a real concern about AIDS, but I don’t think much education can be done on street corners.”

School officials exchanged a few heated words with the AIDS activists at University High, but the group was not asked to leave the area.

This is the second consecutive year the activists have traveled to public schools and shopping centers on World AIDS Day. By early afternoon, their most heated confrontation of the day was outside a Target store in Westminster, where shopping center security officers asked them to leave.

“They didn’t want us there, even though we had permission,” said Leigh Richards, program coordinator for Youth Education Services, a division of the AIDS Response Program. “We decided there were plenty of other shopping centers.”

Richards and others passed out “Compassion Kits” tied to the strings of red balloons that included letters and artwork by children who are infected with the AIDS virus or have a family member with AIDS.

University High School student Mirit Shoham, 16, said most students at her school are sexually active but not overly concerned about AIDS. “The people who are sexually active aren’t worried about anything,” Shoham said.

But student Robert Bright, 17, said the students he knows at University High are scared they will contract AIDS. “Most of my friends who are going through a sexual relationship practice safe sex,” Bright said. “It’s mostly boyfriend-girlfriend type of stuff.”

According to a recent national survey of 11,000 high school-age youths, 54% said they were sexually active.

About one in five reported AIDS cases is diagnosed among people in their 20s, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But because the virus often has a 10-year incubation period, researchers say most who have AIDS in their 20s were infected as adolescents.

At Ocean View High School in Huntington Beach, where activists passed out condoms and AIDS literature outside school grounds, acting Principal Karen Gilden said the classroom is the best place for AIDS education.

“We try to provide an environment at our school that allows kids to find out about things that go on in the world,” Gilden said. “It’s also appropriate for parents to know when their children are given information.”

But AIDS activist Mykle Parker, who spent most of the day inflating many of the 3,000 red helium balloons passed out to students, said too many parents close their eyes to their children’s sexual activity.

“Parents are in denial to the fact that children are sexually active,” said Parker, who speaks to high school students for the AIDS Response Program. “They don’t want to acknowledge it.”