Posted by Condom Depot on 05/15/2005
Roger Yeomas, a football player and honor-roll student at Godby High School, is a study in self-confidence.
Despite a culture steeped in sex, he's comfortable with his choice: It's OK to be a virgin.
"There's peer pressure out there, but there's nothing wrong with what I believe," said Yeomas, 18. "I don't want to be one of these young men running around with children or a sexually transmitted disease."
By James L. Rosica DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Roger Yeomas, a football player and honor-roll student at Godby High School, is a study in self-confidence.
Despite a culture steeped in sex, he's comfortable with his choice: It's OK to be a virgin.
"There's peer pressure out there, but there's nothing wrong with what I believe," said Yeomas, 18. "I don't want to be one of these young men running around with children or a sexually transmitted disease."
And Florida health officials, with the Bush administration's backing, hope that attitude catches on among thousands of teenagers.
That's why they've organized "It's Great to Wait" rallies across the state, with motivational speakers, rappers and musicians praising abstinence. Yeomas was one of nearly 800 children and teens who attended a rally Saturday at the Civic Center.
Speakers included Lakita Garth, a former Miss Black California, and Chris Graebe, star of MTV's "Road Rules."
Organizers also held an "Abstinence Idol" talent contest, a takeoff of the hit television show "American Idol."
Fourteen-year-old Alexis Young took first place.
"I'm glad I came," said Young, a Nims Middle School student who won $250 in Governor's Square mall gift cards. "I've learned there's no such thing as safe sex."
Abstinence-only education, supported by President Bush, teaches youngsters that not having sex is the only way to stave off STDs and unwanted pregnancy. The federal government will spend $170 million for such programs this year.
Some critics of abstinence-only programs say teens also need information on birth control and access to condoms. But federally funded programs cannot advocate contraceptives or condoms.
Abstinence "is the only 100-percent guaranteed way to prevent teen pregnancy and STDs," said Lindsay Hodges, Health Department spokeswoman.
To push abstinence, the state this year is spending $281,000 in federal grants on "Great to Wait" rallies, public-service announcements, mailings and similar efforts, according to Hodges. Florida has had an abstinence-education program since 1998, reaching 350,000 youths since then.
The "Great to Wait" events, aimed at ages 9 to 18, have grown from one statewide rally in 2000 to six regional rallies this year, in Orlando, St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville, Pensacola and Tallahassee.
Most young participants at the Tallahassee rally were black, but organizers said they didn't know why. Other rallies have been more mixed, they said. About 30,000 announcements are mailed in every rally area to families with children aged 11 to 15, records show, but gender or race isn't targeted.
Rhonetria Tucker, 14, a Griffin Middle School student, came with her Tallahassee church group Saturday.
"Kids need to know about the diseases going around and what they can do to you," she said. "Kids our age aren't old enough (for sex) and the emotional consequences of it."
Although it's not clear what effect abstinence education is having in Florida, the teen birth rate has been going down. It dropped from a high of nearly 28 per 1,000 in 1991 to about 16 per 1,000 in 2003, the last year for which data is available, according to Health Department statistics.
The incidence of gonorrhea among teens 15 to 19 is falling, from about 900 reported cases per 100,000 in 1999 to 600 per 100,000 in 2003. But chlamydia is up, from 2,000 cases per 100,000 in 1998 to 2,400 per 100,000 in 2003.
Luis Galdamez, a pro-abstinence motivational speaker from Southern California, said he was a late convert, getting three women pregnant by the time he was 29.
"Hopefully, these kids don't have to go through what I went through," he said. "The message of abstinence must go on: Abstinence is hope, and there's a difference between sex and love."
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