AIDS WORKERS TO AVOID 2 COUNTIES' PARKS

Monroe and Carbon objected after a girl, 13, was given a condom in a
playground. Officials say education can stay in health classes.

AIDS prevention workers will not return to Monroe and Carbon county parks
looking for teenagers to counsel, officials have decided after an uproar
over the furnishing of a condom to a 13-year-old girl at a playground.

"I don't want you talking to my daughter in a park at all without my
permission," Monroe County Commissioner Robert Nothstein told Carbon-
Pike-Monroe Drug and Alcohol Commission Director Richard Mroczka at a
meeting Monday.

Carbon County Commissioner Wayne Nothstein, who is not related to Robert
Nothstein, said most parents would be troubled by the idea of adults
approaching their teenagers in parks to talk about sex.

"I think we can do it without going into parks in either county," said
Mroczka, who said outreach in parks has been suspended indefinitely.

Carbon Commissioner Thomas Gerhard, who raised the issue at a meeting
several weeks ago, said he thinks money spent on the AIDS outreach program
could be better used helping people with other diseases.

"How many cancer patients do we have in Carbon?" Gerhard said at the
meeting Monday. "And we're spending this kind of money on druggos?"

The outreach program is intended to teach 13- to 18-year-olds about AIDS
and the risk of contracting HIV, the virus that causes the disease, Mroczka
said. State and federal funds pay for the program, which is run by
different groups in different counties.

The commission-run program has been in Monroe and Carbon for about three
years. Pike County, which is part of the commission, has a program run by
another group.

Mroczka said the commission's program is focused on abstinence and
avoidance of risky behavior.

"Condom distribution is a last resort, and it's very discreet," he said.

Gerhard, a self-described troublemaker who was chosen Pennsylvania's county
commissioner of the year this month, criticized the program on a number of
fronts. Initially angry about condom distribution, he also took a shot at
abstinence education.

"Churches have been preaching that for centuries. It doesn't work," he said.

"I know it doesn't work," Mroczka responded.

"Well, let's not make blanket statements," Monroe County Commissioner James
Cadue said.

Mroczka said outreach workers can do their jobs in schools and malls, but
Gerhard didn't like that idea, either.

"I thought schools were there to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, not
sex," he said. "That's what's wrong with this country."

Other commissioners at the tri-county commission's meeting were generally
supportive of the program.

"It's better that someone expose them to a frank discussion about the world
around them," Cadue said. "Quite honestly, I have no problem with you doing
it in schools. It's more organized."

Nothstein, the Monroe commissioner, said that in schools the outreach work
would essentially be "an adjunct to health class." Earlier this month, he
suggested outreach workers could meet with age-appropriate groups of Boy
Scouts and members of other organizations.