Frontdesk by David Waggoner

If you remember who the Number One Female Singer was in the years 1957 to 1961, then you’re probably my mother’s age. As one of America’s first teen angels, Connie Francis racked up thirty-five top ten hits. She was bigger than Elvis three years in a row and was featured on every top television program, from American Bandstand to The Ed Sullivan Show. And with a new biopic soon to go into production (starring Gloria Estefan, our December 2003 cover), Connie is back and isn’t afraid to talk about one subject that has always been of supreme importance to her: HIV prevention.

As Dann Dulin suggests in his article, Connie Francis was the Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Madonna of her day. In terms of popularity, that is. Connie’s modern-day counterparts are much more sexually provocative in their songs. But that doesn’t mean Ms. Francis has not addressed sexuality off-stage. While other stars came to the HIV prevention party late, Ms. Francis was in the trenches, throwing benefits coast-to-coast and trying to get the powers that be to listen up and take action against what she knew wasn’t just a disease killing her gay show biz associates but an epidemic that affected everybody.

With more than fifty percent of all new infections now occurring in men and women not much older than Britney Spears, Francis’s interview is a timely reminder that the upsurge in HIV infections is a threat to America’s teenagers and young adults. The CDC has all but abandoned primary HIV prevention. President Bush is still promoting abstinence-only education. Prevention is certainly going on—the prevention of HIV prevention. Teenagers need to take control of the situation if their adult lawmakers, educators, and, yes, even their parents, are too afraid or too apathetic to deal with the reality of HIV and dating becoming a deadlier combination than ever before.

What teens in Queens, New York, are doing is what should be happening in every high school in the country. In Chael Needle’s groundbreaking feature about teen HIV educators, high school has become the launching pad for direct action against HIV transmission, and the environmental factors that put teenagers at risk: misinformation, peer pressure, low self-esteem, and access to condoms when abstinence, for whatever reason, is not possible. The reason why teens are becoming peer leaders is simple. The future of successful HIV education has been largely ignored over the years. Instead of letting kids help design and implement the curriculum, sex educators have been talking down to teens about the dangers of HIV for far too long. Led by peers for peers, the teen counseling programs in these Queens high schools hope to be a model for educators and students nationwide. Witness a revolution in the making as you learn about this successful HIV prevention, education, and reality-based program and conference.

While sexual activity is often an important aspect in the lives of many young men and women, the disregard for human life should never be. They are being treated in much the same way the gay community was treated early on in the HIV epidemic. The first to take their sexual health and their futures into account, gay men in this country didn’t wait around for the White House or the local health department to take action against a devastating health crisis.

The difference is, of course, that many teenagers are not adults, and shouldn’t be expected to carry the burden of their own sexual education. But with teen pregnancy rates soaring, and new HIV and STD infections doing likewise, the American teen community is looking for their own American idols. And they’re right there among them.

March 2004