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September 21, 2009  National HIV/AIDS strategy town hall at UDC, Washington, DC
Comments by Richard Urban, executive director of ULTRA Teen Choice

Good evening. My name is Richard Urban.  I am the co-founder and Executive Director of ULTRA Teen Choice, a Washington DC based nonprofit that has served over 3000 at risk minority youth during the past 6 years.  Our mission is to provide education, peer counseling and accountability relationships for youth that will empower them to be successful in life by choosing abstinence from sex outside of marriage and abstinence from drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Washington DC has the highest rates of HIV infection in the nation, with 6.5 percent of Black men and 2.6 percent of black females infected with HIV and Aids that have been diagnosed.  A likely equal number are not yet diagnosed.  Therefore, Washington Dc has the worst HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United states, and rates higher than many African nations.

I am deeply concerned about the future of our youth, and I have been working in the field as a volunteer HIV/AIDS prevention educator, and later, as the co-founder and Executive Director of ULTRA Teen Choice for 12 years.

I am concerned about the obvious bias by many government agencies in promoting the only 100 percent certain way to prevent HIV and AIDS, which is sexual abstinence outside of a mutually faithful monogamous relationship.  42 percent of Washington DC high school youth have never had sexual intercourse, which is twice as many abstaining as compared to 1994.  Yet nothing is being done by the District of Columbia to encourage and expand this positive trend. 

To solve this concern, we need to institute an ABC plan, not unlike the one that was instituted in Uganda successfully in the early 1990’s.  A means abstain from all sexual relationships outside of a mutually faithful monogamous one (as in marriage).  B means be faithful to your partner,  C means use a condom if you choose to foolishly ignore the previous advice. 

Nothing less will solve this crisis.  Washington DC has promoted condom use for 25 years, and the incidence of HIV has not declined.  The fact is that no where in the world has any program ever increased the consistent rate of use of condoms among the general population, and we are talking about a generalized epidemic in Washington, DC.  Why are we so fixated on promoting condom use, while ignoring the obvious method of stopping the epidemic that has worked in other locations?

To solve this problem, we must stop stigmatizing youth who choose sexual abstinence.  Furthermore, we must stop stigmatizing organizations that promote sexual abstinence.  We must also stop stigmatizing the promotion of traditional marriage and family.  Shrill political diatribes must give way to a hard cold look at the fact that however effective condoms might be, nowhere in the world have we managed to achieve high rates of consistent condom use in any natural or general population.

Everyone, from President Obama, the Surgeon General, Director of the Department of Health and Human Services, every Governor, every Mayor must get behind this message and promote it all the time.  So called safer sex is not safe, at least not safe enough for my kids and yours, and youth need to know that.  The tired old platitudes about safe or safer sex must give way to a hard, cold look at reality.  And yes, that means that we must emphasize sexual abstinence first and condoms as a secondary alternative for those who are willing to take unacceptable risks.  Let’s stop the charade that safe sex is safe.  It is not physically safe, and it is certainly not emotionally or intellectually or spiritually safe either.  A young man just threw himself in front of a Metro train at the Columbia Heights Metro station and was killed just last week.  This young man had a broken heart over a girl whom he had a sexual relationship with.  Condoms do not protect the heart.

The consequences of not addressing this concern are continued failure to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as related concerns for those youth (and adults) who are sexually active, such as depression and higher rates of suicide.

I will know that this change has occurred when we stop stigmatizing sexual abstinence, when we fund programs that promote true sexual abstinence as the primary prevention method, not an after thought, and when President Obama and other leaders adopt the Abstain, Be faithful, or if you are unwilling to do that, use a condom, approach.