Pregnancy, Sex Education and TV

Ron Dorfman’s column (Editorial pages, Dec. 24) on the non-appearance of condom ads blames the Catholic Church for the fact that advertisements for condoms rarely appear in the print media, and never on radio or TV. I would suggest a different reason: TV producers have a vested interest in promoting a carefree, casual attitude toward sex. By advocating attitudes that portray sex as a spur-of-the moment thing, free of consequences, they can entice viewers more readily into watching their programs or buying the products that use sex as a come-on in ads.

Perhaps in the matter of condom and contraceptive ads what is needed is a test case, a landmark lawsuit that can go to the Supreme Court. By monitoring the content of TV programming, Planned Parenthood and other groups have documented that the networks present thousands of sexual scenes, many quite explicit, while rejecting everything that smacks of responsibility.

The suit would assert that this constitutes misleading advertising, for which the remedy is to require the networks to sell advertising time to the manufacturers of contraceptivs. If, as a result, American sexual attitudes then shift away from fantasy and in the direction of anticipating consequences, such a Supreme Court decision could be as significant as any in our time.

T. A. HEPPENHEIMER

Fountain Valley