For those of us who remember the early years of AIDS, the disease’s devastating range and reach, the fear and paranoia that surrounded it, and the bombardment of warnings about precautions, it’s shocking to discover that safer sex messages still aren’t getting through to those who most need to hear them.

Maybe you had to witness the suffering, or actually know people who died to take the threat of transmission seriously. How else can one explain the persistently high rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases among young people?

While HIV infection is on the rise again in young gay men, a report released last week in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality also found that after a decline in the early 1990s, the adolescent rates of the five most prevalent sexually transmitted diseases are also soaring, on a steep increase since 1997. People aged 15 to 19 have the highest infection rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and human papilloma virus. For chlamydia, the infection rate among youth is six times the rate in the general population; for gonorrhea, it’s triple the rate. While both these diseases are curable, when untreated chlamydia causes infertility in women. And herpes is incurable.

As well, these growing rates of STDs indicate a pattern of high-risk sexual behaviour that could lead to infections or something more serious, like HIV.

Since STD rates tend to be higher among receptive sexual partners, girls and gay and bisexual boys face an even higher risk of infection. And in this same 15 to 19 age group, 42,000 teenaged girls become pregnant each year in Canada.

Researchers cite complacency and ignorance as two of the causes for the increase in infection, as well as the very basic difficulty of getting anyone, young or old, to change their unhealthy behaviour, whether it’s smoking, drinking and driving, or having unprotected sex. At the same time, government funding has been cut for public health education and sexual education in schools.

When educators attempt to teach young people about sexuality, they are increasingly met with resistance from religious parents. Witness how the Toronto school board has been harassed by Christian and Islamic parent groups over curriculum that is in any way gay-positive or sexually frank.

To address this, some school boards have adopted a religion-based abstinence programs. While comforting to parents, abstinence programs have proven to be as effective as any other education campaign that simply tells youth to “just say no,” which is to say not at all. While promoters of abstinence like to argue that chastity is the only 100 per cent effective form of birth control, even abstinence fails once in a while. When they do “slip up,” people who have chosen abstinence often neglect to use condoms or other forms of contraception, out of denial, guilt, or inexperience.

In Calgary, the anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-abstinence group Calgary Pregnancy Care Centre (CPCC) has been offering sexual education classes in public schools, much to the aggravation of parents who’d like to have their children armed with more useful advice than, and I quote: “Don’t touch anything you weren’t born with.”

A group calling itself Mad Moms Against Bad Sex Ed formed in opposition and one mad mom, Laura Wershler, was asked to sit in on a CPCC presentation to a Grade 11 class. Writing about the experience in the Calgary Herald, she said CPCC offered inaccurate statistics about sexually transmitted diseases, biased information about birth control, stereotypes about gender, and no information for gay or bisexual youth.

“This issue,” Wershler wrote, “is not about a Christian versus secular view of sexuality. I am a parent who wants nothing more than to raise a sexually healthy and well-adjusted son.”

Ironically, it appears that the more comprehensive, explicit and holistic the sex-ed message, the more likely that teenagers will be cautious in their sexual choices.

Research done by the U.S. Center for AIDS Prevention Studies found that the most successful programs are those that result in both a delaying of first sexual intercourse and an increase of contraception use among youth who were sexually active; they started as early as Grade 6 or 7, provided unbiased, non-judgmental information about contraception, focused on reducing specific high-risk behaviour, and promoted frank peer discussion about sex and sexual choices.

Another indicator for success in preventing high-risk activity among youth is access to contraception. Study after study has shown that making condoms available to youth does not increase sexual activity; what it does do is significantly increase condom use among youth who are already sexually active.

Laura Wershler is right. This isn’t about Christian versus secular views about sex. It’s about promoting sexual health and saving lives, versus watching them be destroyed.