Are Teen Safe Sex PSAs Too Controversial?

[The Straight Story]

A New York state funded series of web videos created for teens by teens in order to teach them about safe sex, STDs and pregnancy is causing controversy. Some feel the “racy language” is disturbing and simply not the way money for safe sex campaigns should be spent. I heard the story on the news this morning when the reporters mentioned how they could barely show many of the parts on TV, in fact. The language was just too bad for TV viewers.

The ‘ More Than Just Sex’ series posted on Vimeo.com features five public service announcements and the campaign is meant to target inner city kids. The NY Daily News reports that the non-profit Community Health Network who created the videos received more than $560,000 over five years to fund safe sex education campaigns. $15,000 was used for the video production.

Assemblyman Rafael Espinal agrees that the videos “capture the realities of what is happening in inner-city neighborhoods like the ones I represent.” But he also says some of them “shouldn’t be accessible to children under 13,” he said. “The language is too raw.”

...

In a video called “The Importance of Condoms!”, a teen boy is talking about how he chose to stop using condoms. “It just got so boring. It was all glove and no love.” Then he says how he’s so much happier now that he’s “raw dogging”. It is done in a very sarcastic manner making him appear foolish when a voice over (similar to those insane medication commercials that list side effects worse than the disease) says “Unprotected sex may not be for every one. Side effects include genital warts, green or yellow discharge, pregnancy, HIV, loss of sight, diarrhea, etc… (The list goes on.) “Other symptoms may include Baby Mama Drama, Baby Mama Mama Drama, Commitment Drama, Parental Beatdowns, Deep Lasting Regret”.

http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2012/01/05/are-teen-safe-sex-psas-too-controversial/

[Ecumenist]

1. How controversial is is HIV and death?

No argument.

[Brickbat]

2. Those ads sound exactly like how teens are getting any other information and that they would be

very effective.

[XemaSab]

3. Back in the day at AIDS Project Los Angeles

they used to make a beefcake tabloid.

You could flip through it and just think that it existed for the sole purpose of showing shirtless pictures of hot twinks, except for all the information about safe sex.

The people who already know about HIV/AIDS and who take that action seriously are not the people who are out there having unprotected hookups. It's the poor kids in the hood, it's the kids who hitchhiked out to LA 'cause their parents in Tennessee weren't cool with them being gay, it's the women turning tricks to pay rent, it's the IV drug users, and it's all the other marginal members of society who need to know this stuff, and they're certainly not reading about it in the New Yorker.

[Iggo]

4. Fuck controversy.

Let's save some lives.