Safe Sex For the Catholic Student in a Public High School

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Recommended: Safe sexual education is important at an early age

Safe Sex For the Catholic Student in a Public High School

The teachings of the Catholic Church regarding sex are unequivocal: Catholics should abstain from sex until marriage and then practice monogamy in marriage until they are separated by death. It is the Catholic Church's understanding that all sex in this context is "safe". Hence, in the sexual ideology of Catholic dogma "safe sex" means abstinence and nothing else. And yet despite this, every Catholic in the United States knows what is popularly meant by safe sex. American popular culture is inundated with references to safe sex on television, in popular literature, and in schools, which promote the use of condoms as a way for those who are "sexually active" to reduce the risk of the transmission of STDs, including HIV. Although the sexual ideologies underlying these sexual references vary, most of them tacitly approve of, or at least condone, sex outside of wedlock. As a Catholic student growing up in a suburban public high school, these competing safe sex messages created a tension in my understanding of safe sex: they were mutually inconsistent and yet also individually inadequate. Ultimately, my understanding of safe sex has developed as an amalgamation of these competing ideologies.

In her book, Fatal Advice, Cindy Patton describes how white, middle-class society in the 1908s sought to preserve the sexual integrity and innocence of their youth by labeling their HIV-positive adolescents as Others, i.e. as members of some deviant subculture or group. The Catholic Church approaches safe sex and the transmission of STDs, particularly HIV, in an analogous manner. The Catholic Church reasons that those who need to practice safe sex in order to protect themselves again...

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...ed for our more promiscuous peers.

Left with two conflicting messages about what safe sex was and how sexual activity was defined, I had little understanding of the concept of "safe sex" throughout most of high school. Once a "college student", I finally recognized myself as a member of an "at risk" population, and a clear understanding of safe sex seemed to become more critical for my maintenance of personal health. This was a key breakthrough for me, because I had never seen myself as a candidate for abstinence under the Catholic sexual ideology or as a candidate for condom-use under the public high school sexual ideology -- I did not identify myself with the target audience of either safe sex message. In the end, I realized that safe sex practices aren't restricted to any particular "target audience". Safe sex is for all of us, and we should embrace all of it.

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