ABSTINENCE MESSAGE RESTRICTED DISTRICTS CANCEL PROGRAMS BECAUSE OF STATE-LAW BAN.

Byline: CONNIE LLANOS Staff Writer

Karen Kropf's voice vibrated inside the teal and pink walled multipurpose room of St. Didacus Church in Sylmar on a recent Wednesday afternoon.

``Your sexuality is like a piece of sticky tape ...'' Kropf said as she explained psychological repercussions of sexual experiences to her young crowd.

Her high-pitched tone and energetic mannerisms seemed to captivate the young crowd of Catholic teens preparing for Confirmation.

``Every time you are with someone you are sticking that tape in some place of your body,'' she said. ``You try so hard to avoid ripping it off but it happens and you never get another clean fresh piece of tape.''

Using endless metaphors and intimate details of their own sexual experiences, Karen Kropf and her husband, Jim, have been preaching abstinence to kids for nearly a decade. Urging teenage girls to save themselves for marriage because their future husbands deserve more than used goods and teenage boys to ``protect'' the girls they love, the couple say it is what they feel they must do after contraception failed to protect them.

Now, their message is limited to church groups after the William S. Hart Union High School District and Los Angeles public schools canceled appearances by Positively Waiting because state law prohibits abstinence-only sex education. This after the American Civil Liberties Union notified Santa Clarita's high school system that it was breaking the law.

Kropf was working as a full-time office manager before she started volunteering at a pregnancy center. In that role, Kropf established a program dedicated to telling young teens to remain abstinent until marriage. After four years of presenting in front of classrooms and church groups, Kropf began her nonprofit organization -- dedicated to ``promoting sexual self-control'' -- Positively Waiting in 2001.

As the spiky blond-haired Kropf begins her presentation, she tells the youngsters how a meeting with a friend years ago led her to becoming a renewed virgin. She tells them about how having sex with a long-term boyfriend led to a pregnancy that she terminated. She tells them about getting post-abortion syndrome and about contracting chlamydia and becoming infertile.

``I am trying to paint a picture of my life, using it as a visual aid,'' Kropf said in a phone interview.

``My job is to show teens what is the safest behavior physically, emotionally, sexually and relationally and then they decide what to do with that information.''

Jim Kropf, Karen's husband, also participates in the presentation. Reluctant at first, the 6-foot, 4-inch gray-haired Kropf says if he can just prevent one teen from making his same mistakes, overcoming his stage fright is worth it.

``I used condoms 100 percent of the time and I still got infected with herpes,'' Jim said.

For this couple, now married five years, it is about telling kids how premarital sex affected them.

It also makes them key players in a nationwide struggle over how to explain the birds and the bees.

Since 1996, the federal government has approved nearly $1 billion in funding for abstinence education programs.

Recently, a federal grant announcement also contained a new definition of abstinence in which it defines sexual activity as ``any type of genital contact or stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.''

These changes have created a whole new arena for discussion between those in favor of abstinence only and those looking to push comprehensive sex education.

A bill before Congress, HR 2553, the ``Responsible Education about Life Act'' was recently introduced to provide funding for comprehensive sexual-education programs. Currently, the Title X program provides federal funding for family planning services for the poor and minors. Sometimes organizations that provide these types of services will provide some education programs but no federal money is specifically dedicated to providing sex education to teens.

``People have tried to evaluate abstinence-only programs but no one has been able to show that they are effective in delaying sex,'' said Jennifer Nadeau, communications director for the Guttmacher Institute, an independent sex research program.

``What has been proven is that 86 percent of the nationwide decline in teen pregnancy is attributable to an increase in contraceptive use and better methods of contraception,'' Nadeau said, citing a recent Guttmacher study.

Another study, performed by professors from Yale and Columbia universities, said virginity pledges -- cards or rings symbolizing a commitment to abstinence -- delayed sexual activity for 18 months, but discouraged the use of condoms, Nadeau said.

Kropf addresses the issue of abortion in her presentations, warning young girls about the dangers of post-abortion syndrome.

She cites a 1980 study from the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that says 75 percent of women who have abortions suffer post-abortion syndrome.

Nadeau said this message is contradictory to an abstinence-only approach.

``If you believe that abortions are damaging, then why would you not want young people to learn how to use contraception,'' Nadeau said.

Still, many young adults have nothing but praise for Kropf.

Shaun Thomson, an 18-year-old business-management major at the University of Arizona, said Kropf's Positively Waiting presentation changed his outlook.

``My first reaction after I sat through it was kind of like `yeah, right.' I didn't believe any of it,'' Thomson said.

Now, the abstinent Thomson says he thinks about the couple's message frequently and feels that other sex-education presentations are too impersonal.

The future of the Kropfs' program is uncertain. All of her public school presentations in the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Hart district have been canceled since the ACLU pointed at her program, and others like it, and highlighted a violation of the law.

State law in California strictly prohibits abstinence-only education in public classrooms. While Kropf assures that most of the teachers whose classrooms she visited used her talk as a supplement to their sex-education curricula, district investigations have yet to prove that.

As she sits in her office, Kropf can't hold back her tears as she thinks about the future.

``I am just hoping that I will still be allowed to share my story as a concerned member of the community. As someone who lives near these kids and who will work with these kids, I hope I will be able to talk to young people who are being deceived. I hope my life serves as an example.''

[e-mail]

[phone]