Condoms

Teachers and counselors in the New York City school system begin handing out condoms on demand today. In Baltimore, students in five high school and two middle school clinics can receive condoms and oral contraceptives.The Evening Sun wants to know what you think about the condom giveaway program.Call SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information system, on a Touch-Tone phone. The call is local, and answers will be registered between 10 a.m. and midnight. The SUNDIAL phone number is 783-1800 or, in Anne Arundel County, 268-7736.

A female condom program was highly effective in preventing HIV infections, according to a new economic analysis by researchers in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . The analysis, published in the journal AIDS and Behavior , found the DC Females Condom program, a public-private partnership to provide and promote a type of female condom, prevent enough infections in one year to save more than $8 million in future medical...

I was amazed and appalled that nowhere in your article on the rise in HIV infection among African-American women do you mention the need to use condoms to prevent the spread of the disease ("Black women in city infected with HIV at higher rate than national average," March 8). The idea that women should ensure their partners have been tested is good, but between the time of the test and intercourse, the individual could have been exposed. The idea of being "particular" about the type of man you date is nice but not safe.

I was amazed and appalled that nowhere in your article on the rise in HIV infection among African-American women do you mention the need to use condoms to prevent the spread of the disease ("Black women in city infected with HIV at higher rate than national average," March 8). The idea that women should ensure their partners have been tested is good, but between the time of the test and intercourse, the individual could have been exposed. The idea of being "particular" about the type of man you date is nice but not safe.

The idea of a giant gum ball machine to dispense condoms in little plastic eggs is dead.The Carroll County Department of Social Services (DSS) still plans to make condoms available, free, to clients interested in preventing pregnancy or disease.Instead of the original idea of a machine in the DSS restroom, however, the agency is planning to package the condoms in discreet envelopes in a basket in the waiting room, said Director M. Alexander Jones. He said the program could be in operation this fall.

The proposed distribution of free condoms by the Carroll County Department of Social Services should not be seen as a dramatic change but as an extension of current county policy to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.For the past four years, the county Health Department has successfully operated its "Three for Free" condom program, allowing people to obtain free condoms at its Washington Road office.It makes sense for the Department of Social Services to do the same.

Q: My husband is HIV positive, but he has told me that it is safe for us to have intercourse as long as he uses a condom. I would like to believe him, but a friend of mine became infected even though she said that her husband used condoms. How effective are condoms in preventing the spread of HIV infection?A: Totally abstaining from sexual intercourse is, of course, the most certain way to avoid an HIV infection, and this obvious fact is behind the "Just say no!" advice trumpeted to unmarried young people.

The following is adapted from a letter to Joseph A. Fernandez, chancellor of New York City public schools. The author, a lawyer and former member of the New York State Board of Social Welfare who frequently does legal work for the New York Archdiocese, questions the chancellor's proposal to distribute condoms in the high schools and junior high schools. The Board of Education, which debated the proposal on Dec. 6, has yet to vote on the plan.DEAR Dr. Fernandez:Your records show that during the 1988-1989 school year you had 184,989 students in the junior high schools and 261,097 in the senior high schools, for a total of 446,086.

NEW YORK City Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez has proposed distribution of condoms to any public-school student who wants them.The proposal is another white flag of surrender to the sex industry. It follows a decision by Massachusetts to begin one of the most aggressive condom-promotion campaigns of any state. The campaign will feature billboards, posters on buses and subways, and public- service announcements on television and radio.The excuse given by those who promote condoms in schools and elsewhere is that too many young people are getting pregnant or infected with venereal diseases, and widely available condoms are the best way to combat both.

Police in Anne Arundel county arrested an Arizona woman last week for prostitution after they found her in a Linthicum hotel room with condoms and over $1,000 in cash while executing a search warrant. The woman, a 29-year-old from Phoenix, is scheduled to face trial on a charge of prostitution in December. Officers in the county's vice unit searched the hotel on Nov. 18, around 9:30 p.m. after receiving numerous complaints of prostitution taking place at the hotel, according to a statement released by police Monday morning.

It should be one of the most popular spots on the Web. Instead, sex.com's mish-mash of blah links and boring essays (paired with a design our 10-year-old cousin could improve upon), makes it a what-could-have-been wasteland. That could change, though. Cnet.com reports that the site, originally registered by the founder of match.com, will be put up for auction next month as part of a foreclosure (which, apparently, happens even in the Web world). The domain name was reportedly last sold to a company called Escom LLC, which was apparently so troubled that there was a book written about the legal proceedings, "Sex.

Prosecutors dropped human trafficking and prostitution charges Monday against Carlos Silot, who was accused last year of running a brothel that catered to Hispanic men from a rented rowhome in the Patterson Park area. "The evidence was insufficient to proceed with the charges," said Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer McAllister. Silot, who was free on $15,000 bail, could not be reached Monday, nor could his attorney, listed in court records as Assistant Public Defender Arvaham Stone.

Prosecutors dropped human trafficking and prostitution charges Monday against Carlos Silot, who was accused last year of running a brothel that catered to Hispanic men from a rented rowhome in the Patterson Park area. "The evidence was insufficient to proceed with the charges," said Assistant State's Attorney Jennifer McAllister. Silot, who was free on $15,000 bail, could not be reached Monday, nor could his attorney, listed in court records as Assistant Public Defender Arvaham Stone.

It's a paradox worthy of the federal government: Abstinence-only education inhibits the effective promotion of abstinence. It is possible to keep teens abstinent, at least temporarily. More than a dozen programs have been shown, in peer-reviewed studies, to delay teen sex. For example, the Becoming a Responsible Teen program helped low-income African-American teenagers in Mississippi both to delay sex and to have safer sex, and its effects were visible one year later: Only 12 percent of sexually inexperienced participants became sexually active, compared with 31 percent in the comparison group.

Under glowing neon signs, amid strippers, barkers and a nervous parade of humanity, something unprecedented is happening on The Block in Baltimore. It's called public health. Maria Slechter, 22, totes a bag of clean hypodermic needles she provides to dancers and patrons, who turn in used ones. "They're shooting heroin and cocaine, I guarantee they are," says Slechter, wearing a black off-the-shoulder dress that helps her blend into the crowd. She is part of a group of outreach workers who since early May have descended on the region's densest concentration of nude dance clubs.

Two pigs walk into a bar ... No, wait. Let me start again. I can never tell a joke. Two chicks walk into a bar. And it is full of pigs. That's the premise of a new advertising campaign for Trojan condoms. The bar is full of cell-phone-flipping, beer-sipping, animatronic pigs. And they are trying to sidle up to the beautiful chicks, neither of whom will give them the time of day. Then one of the pigs saunters into the men's room, presses the lever on a Trojan dispenser, collects his condom and, miraculously, turns into a hot guy (albeit one wearing an unfortunate shirt.

Making his first public statements about the case against him, the Baltimore police officer on trial for rape took the witness stand yesterday and told jurors that "nothing sexual happened" during what he said was a routine nighttime arrest of a 22-year-old woman. "I never had sexual intercourse with that woman," Jemini Jones said, looking directly at the mostly female jury that is scheduled to begin deliberating Monday. "The whole evening was strictly professional." The woman, now 23, has testified that on Dec. 27, 2005, inside a Southwest Baltimore police station house, Jones coerced her into having sex with him to avoid drug charges.