Today's World AIDS Day. It is apt to underline first word, since the problem is especially troubling in various spots outside the United States. In fact, for a long time, Haitian men were a specific risk group. [Still are, but the categories have been expanded.] Also, AIDS is especially prevalent in Africa, where dangerous sex practices and health care shortfalls clearly do make it a heterosexual disease. The same applies here, as shown by a question during the Vice Presidential Debate involving black women suffering from AIDS.
At home, you do not hear about AIDS as much any more. It is in sort of a holding pattern with various medications allowing people to live much longer and more comfortably, while the disease continues its poisonous ways. For instance, Magic Johnson was diagnosed over ten years ago, just one of many long-term sufferers.
The problem is clearly a major world health problem, but it is also a public morals issue. Now, let me be careful here, since the word "morals" is a troublingly inexact one. There are basically two strands: (1) general agreed upon moral rules that our society lives by and can be upheld by legislation [e.g., equality, duty not to harm others] and (2) greatly disputed moral rules that some feel touch upon or should be in this category, but are best left outside the law.
Much of this second category clearly has religious aspects, such as the abortion controversy, so in my view is a matter of individual belief, not state regulation per the First Amendment. These categories do touch upon the first set in various cases as well as having health or safety issues that also can be regulated by the state.
There is great debate over where morals stop and health/safety begins. For instance, the Bush Administration is a strong backer of abstinence education in schools, including not funding those programs that do not strictly limit themselves to this area. This is seen by many as a health concern as well as a morals matter because the alternative might encourage teenage sex (this is often on par with saying not having diet orange juice will encourage overeating).
The other side argues that morals, a general opposition to sexual conduct in various instances, are blinding the public policy makers. The ABC [abstinence, be faithful, and condoms] route and so forth is a more realistic strategy. This in fact is also the moral way to go because it often stops teenage pregnancy and STDs.*
But, back to the first issue of "public morals." Public education (and I mean this in a broad sense, not just as involved in schools, but society overall) in matters of sex and relationships in general should not just be a matter of let's say mechanics. This is a woefully underinclusive way to teach the subject, just as the bare stating of historical facts without discussion is an incomplete (if, sadly, typical) way to teach history.
Education includes learning how to be a good adult citizen, which includes a certain moral component. For instance, a student might learn that our forefathers did not think the "we have the power, so we can do what we want with the power we have" philosophy of government is the best one. Likewise, hopefully, things such as respect, due care, and forethought are being taught in schools today.
And, the connection to such "moral" rules to romantic and sexual relationships is not hard to gauge.
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* The W Effect: Bush's War Against Women, edited by Laura Flanders includes some hard-hitting essays on this less well-known and discussed aspect of his policies. They also include anti-abortion provisions so broad that even the discussion of the matter is liable to result in the cut of funding, even if the organization's general purpose is to provide family planning services that are unrelated to abortion.
Likewise, the administration's tendency to ignore science it doesn't agree with is shown by how it avoids studies that show abstinence only programs do not tend to work that well. As with its pushing off of people that don't agree with them from bioethics panels, this ultimately harms the efforts of public health and safety while in some real sense being a piss poor version of "public morals." And, one does not have to agree in full with Harmful to Minors author Judith Levine to see the truth of this fact.