A New York nonprofit called Community Health Network had a novel idea to educate inner-city teenagers about safe sex, sexually transmitted infections, and respect for people's sexual boundaries: Have inner-city teens create public-service announcements, then post the resulting videos on Vimeo. "Teens talk with slang," says Anthony Murray, 17, who stars in the clip The Importance of Condoms! (watch below). "We don't want to sound phony using too much medical terms." The taxpayer-funded "More Than Just Sex" videos certainly "capture the realities of what is happening in inner-city neighborhoods," says state Assemblyman Rafael Espinal (D-Brooklyn). But with colorful phrases like "raw dogging" (condom-less sex), are the videos, as Espinal argues, "too raw" for young viewers?
This campaign is a terrible idea: Having teenagers speaking frankly about abandoning condoms "has the potential to confuse our youth and encourage to them to actually engage in unsafe sex," state Sen. Marty Golden (R-Brooklyn) tells the New York Daily News. The "unintended consequences" of more teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections are bad enough. But there's simply no way "such an improper advertisement, paid for by the New York taxpayers," should be available to all viewers on the internet.
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