Condoms

The city Prisons Board of Trustees last night rubber-stamped Mayor Goode's order to distribute condoms in the city prisons as part of a comprehensive policy to prevent the spread of AIDS. After voting down the controversial condom policy a week ago, the board reversed itself and voted 6-1 in favor of distributing condoms. Last Wednesday, the mayor, reacting to the trustees' first decision, had threatened to remove board members who opposed his executive order directing the city health commissioner to distribute condoms on Sept.

The city school district should provide condoms to its students. Or not. That was the "consensus" of a 43-member task force formed in November to study teenage sexuality and the role of schools in preventing pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. In delivering its report to the Philadelphia Board of Education yesterday, the task force made no recommendations, but only offered options for district officials to consider. Among them, the task force suggested that the board could make condoms available to students in grades eight and above, provide condoms to high school students through vending machines, phase in the availability of condoms, or, prohibit the dispensing of condoms in schools.

Condoms and counseling have not turned 10 Philadelphia high schools into red light districts. Or nunneries, either. Four years ago, the school board decided to allow health resource centers, staffed by professionals from outside the schools, to give out condoms - but only after teens were counseled about the benefits of abstinence. Studies show that, in high schools with centers that give out condoms, students are having sex at exactly the same rate as those in high schools without access to condoms.

Only 17, Miranda Mastellone says she already has had three abortions and numerous sexually transmitted diseases - and now she's about to deliver her first baby. Groaning with the weight of her child, who is eight days overdue, Mastellone explained she got pregnant because she had taken no measures to prevent it. "Actually, I was too afraid to tell my boyfriend to use a condom," she said. "We weren't talking about it. " Mastellone and more than 100 others came to School District headquarters at 21st Street and the Parkway yesterday to talk about condoms - and sex - at the first of four public hearings on recommendations to revamp the district's sex education curriculum and, possibly, to distribute condoms in the public schools.

The country's Roman Catholic bishops will reconsider a paper that gave approval to church-sponsored teaching about condoms as a way to prevent the spread of AIDS. The 380-member United States Catholic Conference will discuss the policy paper when members meet in June, according to a statement issued yesterday by Cardinal John O'Connor, who has called the paper "a very grave mistake. " Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia and his successor, Bishop Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Pittsburgh, also have assailed the report, stating that the local archdiocese would continue to bar any instruction about condoms.

Some of the wonderful music we have been hearing during this season was first performed in Catholic churches. The church to which I belong has left the world many masterpieces; and, more important, many acts of saintly care for the poor, the stricken, the outcast. This church of mystics and great theologians has done heroic service in times of plague, war and suffering on all the continents of the earth. Its missionaries have cared for the bodies while trying to save the souls of despised or forgotten people.

Rarely does an issue come before prison policymakers that so graphically pits life and death against two centuries of standard prison practice. That's what has happened over the question of whether to distribute condoms to inmates of the Philadelphia prisons. People on both sides of the issue acknowledge that it is fraught with serious moral, medical, philosophical and administrative ramifications. For all these reasons, it is now being passionately debated by the Philadelphia Prison Board of Trustees.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Some condoms burst. Others leaked like sieves. South Africa's leading anti-AIDS group said Tuesday that the allegedly faulty condoms were among more than 1.35 million handed out at the African National Congress' 100th birthday party. Health officials confirmed that all of those condoms have been ordered to be recalled. But the Treatment Action Campaign said no warning had been issued to people that they may have carried away defective condoms that could now cause them to unsuspectingly spread or contract HIV. South Africa has the world's highest number of AIDS patients, about 5.6 million.

To get condoms, all a Philadelphia inmate has to do is ask. But, so far, none has done so. About 40 have been distributed since the program started Sept. 1, but the condoms were part of a package of educational materials given to each prisoner who was sent to AIDS-prevention workshops, said David Fair, director of the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office. The workshops are not voluntary, he said. Despite media reports, the condom-distribution program did get under way last Thursday as scheduled, Fair said.

It used to be an object of ridicule and scorn, an unmistakable sign of nerdiness and zero machismo. Now it's looked on as stylish, popular and smart. The lowly condom has, if you will, become sexy. Sex without condoms "is not a consideration anymore," said Barry Heckard, a college sophomore from Mechanicsburg, Pa. "It is an assumption that if you're going to have sex, one of the two people is going to have a condom. " Michael Kantor, a 25-year-old graduate student from Queens, N.Y., goes even further: "Most of the guys that I know, they all say, 'No condom, no sex.' " Other satisfied customers include Darnel "Nellie Nell" and Ice-T, a couple of aspiring rappers, both 19, from West Philadelphia.

A 15-year-old girl and a woman from Montgomery County were arrested on prostitution charges at a Philadelphia motel last week, police said Monday. Alexis Scott, 20, of Norristown, and the Philadelphia teen were arrested Thursday at the North American Motor Inns at 4444 City Ave. The City Wide Vice Enforcement Unit confiscated $650 in cash, 2.2 grams of marijuana, four mobile phones, wrapped condoms, an empty condom box, a container of pepper spray, and other items, police said.

Coming over the holiday break to about a third of Philadelphia high schools: clear plastic dispensers chock-full of free condoms. The dispensers will be placed in the 22 high schools whose students had the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and condoms will be available to any student - so long as their parents did not sign a form opting them out of the program. It's a pilot designed to address "an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease in adolescents in Philadelphia," said Donald F. Schwarz, the deputy mayor for health and opportunity.

I'VE BEEN in arenas where I've had to pour a drink into a cup bearing the logo of a league's official sponsor. Corporations pay big money to be the "exclusive" whatever for an event like the Olympics and they expect brand protection. So organizers of the London Games are warning athletes in the Olympic Village that if they are going to "get busy," they better use the official condom of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Following a tradition that began at the 1992 Barcelona Games and supported by the IOC, the London committee placed 150,000 free Durex condoms in dispensers for the more than 10,000 athletes.

WASHINGTON - Nearly half of high school students say they've had sex, yet progress has stalled in getting them to use condoms to protect against the AIDS virus, government researchers reported at the International AIDS Conference Tuesday. Today, four of every 10 new HIV infections occur in people younger than 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - and the teen years, just as many youths become sexually active, are key for getting across the safe-sex message.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Some condoms burst. Others leaked like sieves. South Africa's leading anti-AIDS group said Tuesday that the allegedly faulty condoms were among more than 1.35 million handed out at the African National Congress' 100th birthday party. Health officials confirmed that all of those condoms have been ordered to be recalled. But the Treatment Action Campaign said no warning had been issued to people that they may have carried away defective condoms that could now cause them to unsuspectingly spread or contract HIV. South Africa has the world's highest number of AIDS patients, about 5.6 million.

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles City Council has given preliminary approval to an ordinance that would require porn actors to wear condoms during film shoots. The 11-1 vote yesterday still requires a second vote next week to make the requirement law and avoid the need for a ballot measure. Several members of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation urged council members to approve the ordinance. The group last month said it gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the June ballot.

AN L.A. HEALTH GROUP is hoping to place a measure before the city's voters that would require porn actors to wear condoms during film shoots. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation said this week it has gathered more than enough signatures to get the measure on the June ballot. If passed, porn actors would have to use condoms in adult films shot in L.A. in order for producers to obtain permits to film in the city. Critics say that many smut moviemakers don't seek permits - just a couch, a bottle of Jack, a handful of Vicodin and a few tissues - and those who do would likely be forced underground or to cities with a more lenient rubber policy.

CHICAGO - A surprising 80 percent of teenage boys said they used condoms the first time they had sex, a government survey found, in a powerful sign that decades of efforts to change young people's sexual behavior are taking hold. But another promising trend - a drop since the 1980s in the number of teenagers having sex - has leveled off. Boys' condom use may mean they are taking more responsibility for contraception or are protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, experts say. Or, as one young man said, girls may be drawing the line.

PEOPLE IN Philadelphia had more than a million chances to have safer sex during the past four months - for free - thanks to the city's Department of Public Health. The Freedom Condom Campaign, which gives out free latex condoms in specially designed wrappers at more than 100 locations citywide, passed its 1 million mark this week. The campaign was launched April 7, after statistics showed that Philly youths between ages 11 and 19 have one of the highest sexually transmitted-disease rates among their peers in other big cities.

Q: I know this sounds weird, but I'm in a relationship with a man who's obsessed with the idea that I might get pregnant. It's not like I'm careless. We take precautions. I've been on the pill forever. At the same time, everyone else around us is having babies. Mia: I don't know what you're complaining about. He sounds like a keeper to me, especially given how people make babies out of wedlock like it's nothing these days. Your boyfriend is right to be on guard that you don't have an "oops" pregnancy.