Articles of the Month

HIV in young adults

The number one recommendation by the UN to prevent further occurrences of HIV infections among youth is to "end the silence, stigma and shame."

While Canada follows the world trend of youth who are becoming sexualized at increasingly younger ages, young Canadians have the advantage of being exposed to modern ideas about and methods of birth control, sex and STD's.

Elsewhere in the world, this is not the case. Religions of all types, steeped in logic taken from more ancient times, are often the guiding forces in nations where the phrase "separation of church and state" has little meaning.

To these countries, pre-marital sex is a sin and effective forms of birth control are often not readily available.

While there is no question that abstinence is the most effective form of protection against the HIV virus, it is not realistic for governments or religious leaders to rely on the hope that youth will practice it. Young people will have sex, whether or not birth control is available and whether or not it is accepted within their communities.

Toronto's eye Magazine recently reported that Washington-based Catholics for Free Choice teamed up with Challenge the Church to issue hundreds of thousands of free condoms during the city's World Youth Day celebration. The condoms, donated by Durex, reportedly bore the slogan "if abstinence isn't working for you?don't leave it up to your guardian angel."

It's a message the leaders of the world would do well to pass on to the youth of their nations. Whether or not sex before marriage is morally right is not the issue. The issue is that youth are having sex, contracting AIDS and dying from it. It should not take thousands more deaths before realistic and open sexual education and access to birth control is available to youth all over the world.