FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: |
CONTACT: |
Bill Barker (202) 419-3420 |
February 14, 2006 |
|
Danene Sorace (732) 445-7929 |
Advocates for Youth and Sex, Etc. Confront Censorship of Condom Education with Nationwide Contest
Respect Yourself. Protect Yourself. Contest Promotes Responsible Prevention; Second Contest Launched
WASHINGTON, DC (February 14, 2006) Marking both Valentine’s Day and Condom Awareness Week, Advocates for Youth and Sex, Etc. announced the winners of the first Respect Yourself. Protect Yourself. contest – a youth-driven, nationwide campaign promoting open, honest discussion about the vital role condom education should play in this country’s fight against unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV.
The contest, based on a highly successful campaign in Germany, asked youth to use an online ‘tool’ to create and submit design concepts, using the image of a condom as the primary visual for materials that promote responsible prevention. The winning entries can be found at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/condom/.
"We were very impressed by the creativity and number of entries we received for this contest,” said Danene Sorace, Director of the Network for Family Life Education and Sex, Etc. “The creativity and enthusiasm showed once again young people’s willingness to encourage their peers to stay safe.”
"We need creative ways to promote responsible behavior,” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. “Censoring condom education is simply misguided. ‘Just Say No’ provides little if any guidance for the 27 million sexually active young people under the age of 25. This campaign does.”
The Respect Yourself. Protect Yourself. contest comes at a critical time as conservatives in Congress and the administration promote a sexual health agenda based far more on ideology than on public health science. Among other things, these factions have:
- Spent more than one billion in public funding to promote abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that censor information about the effectiveness of condoms;
- Removed information about the health benefits of condoms from the Web sites of Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Agency for International Development (USAID);
- Censored programs receiving U.S. foreign aid for global HIV prevention (PEPFAR) from promoting condom use for youth, even in countries where one out of three people is HIV infected;
- Argued at international conferences that promoting condom use encourages teens to have sex, despite overwhelming research to the contrary;
- Named to the National Institutes of Health’s Advisory Committee on Reproductive Health social conservatives whose stance is to oppose condom use on ideological grounds; and
- Pushed the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for condom labeling that would emphasize condom ‘failure’ instead of condom effectiveness.
"Research indicates that young people who are educated about the health benefits of condoms are more likely than other young people to use condoms when they first have sex,” concluded Wagoner. “This contest isn’t about politics, it’s about educating young people about prevention, and protecting them when they do become sexually active.”
The initial contest, which ran from November through January, was such a breakout success that Advocates and Sex, Etc. have decided to run a second round, opening the site for submissions from February 14 through June 1, 2006. Prizes again will be awarded and many submissions will be posted on the contest’s online art gallery where they can be used as e-postcards to educate others.
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Advocates for Youth is a national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
Sex, Etc., the national newsletter and Web site (sexetc.org) written by teens for teens on sexual health issues, is published by the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
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