iWliam F. Buckley Jr.

Y

Reservations About Dr. Ihop's Advice . . .

When Dr. C. Everett Koop, who is the
surgeon general of the United States, issues a
report on sex education, taking the position
normally associated with the permissivists,
one draws back from the conventional posi-
tion and reflects. Is there something to rec-
ommend ".sex education"?

counsels of angelism. We are talking, to use a
phrase, about how the world works.

for the sex education, but Dr. Koop does not
appear to be saying the equivalent thing in
respect of AIDS. He says that if the sex
education he favors were undertaken, one
might save 14,000 lives by 1991.

It pays to remember that Dr. Koop is not
merely an M.D. He is very much the moralist.
Well before he became the surgeon general,
he teamed up with the Rev. Francis Schaef-
fer, the late theologian, and produced a six-
hour documentary on the subject of abortion,
which in Dr. Koop's judgment is out-and-out
murder. He is a practicing Christian and an
evangelical, and now he comes out for sex
education of the kind generally opposed by
moralists of I)r. Koop's persuasion. What are
his arguments?

On the matter of intravenous infection,
protection is as simple as using a needle that
isn't infected, and that isn't all that difficult to
do provided the needle-user breaks out of the
hypnotic allure of needle-sharing and insists
on using a hygienic vehicle for his poison. In
the matter of sex, "the best protection against
infection right now, barring abstinence,"
writes Dr. Koop, "is use of a condom." So
therefore? Teach children to use condoms.

The 34-page report issued by the surgeon
general's office is the first that addresses
directly the problem of AIDS. It begins by
telling us something every newspaper reader
knows, namely that the disease continues to
spread, and that the figures are very discour-
aging. Fifteen thousand people are dead of
the disease already, and 12 times that number
will be dead of it within five years.

We got that right? No no no: teach children
NOT to have sex, Dr. Koop the moralist
would say; but then teach them that should
they fall into the temptation of doing so, they
should use a condom. What Dr. Koop opposes
is "silence" on the subject. `This silence must
end. We can no longer afford to sidestep
frank, open discussion about sexual prac-
tices-homosexual and heterosexual. Educn-
tion about AIDS should start at an early age
so that children can grow up knowing +he
behaviors to avoid to protect themselves from
exposure to the AIDS virus."

Surely there is something to be said for the
stimulation of a national habit. I can think of
one that is gradually taking hold, homely the
use of the seat belt. In some states it is now
compulsory, though my own experience is
that some people use a seat belt and others do
not, and there is little correspondence be-
tween the use of it where it is required and
where it is not required. If children were
taught that, all other considerations to one
side, the condom should always be associated
with sex even as the safety belt should always
be associated with driving, some progress of
the kind Dr. Koop seeks could be expected.
There is abundant evidence that the mature
homosexual community is, so to speak, seat-
belt oriented nowadays in a sense that it was
most ,tlefinitely not even a year or so back.

Now Dr. Koop did not need to tell any
infnrmed American how to slow down the
spread of the &ease to protect the uncon-
taminated. Thnt's easy: don't use a needle for
drugs, and don't have sex except with uncon-
taminated people. But the trouble with advice
that simple, Dr. Koop (and, of course, others)
is saying now is that we are not talking about

One greets such advice, so apparently rea-
soned and compelling, with residual reserva-
tions. To begin with, we know that there
seems to be a correlation between sex educa-
tion and pregnancies. The great Scandinavian
experiment, which is now over a generation
old, has brought to that part of the world not
only sex education, but an increase in preg-
nancies among children. It might be argued
that there would be still more pregnancies but

But to teach ahout the condom, and to go
the logical step further of supplying the con-
dom (for the sake of the young inflamed who
have not thought to bring along their own), is
arguably to induce an atmosphere in which
the Scandinavian analogy becomes directly
relevant. If the utilitarian emphasis is
stressed, it may well be at the expense of the
ethical emphasis-which returns us to the
question of which of the two should take
precedence, among teachers and parents.