CELIBACY TALK SET AT CITY HALL.

Byline: JUDY O'ROURKE Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- A faith-based group will lead a parenting workshop on teen sexuality Thursday in a program at City Hall, though city officials say no religious proselytizing will be allowed.

Parenting workshops are not uncommon, and an effort is made to match speakers with topics of concern in community services programs, a city spokeswoman said.

``We research and find the best suitable speakers, preferably local, if we can,'' said Adele Macpherson, the city's community services superintendent. ``Judy (Belty) knows she is not allowed to talk about religion.''

Belty heads the nonprofit group ATEAM -- Abstinence Through Education and Mentoring -- whose volunteers, she says, all believe in God and are Christians. The group's 12 teen ambassadors and 10 adult speakers talk to junior high and high school students, as well as community and church groups. Their target audience is 12 to 18 years old. City government will pay the group $90 for the two-hour workshop.

Belty and other speakers will lecture at City Hall on sexually transmitted diseases, pornography and the merits of abstaining from sex until marriage.

``We believe the primary educators are parents,'' Belty said. ``In a church, after parents as the primary educator, is a pastor. We enforce, hopefully, what they're already teaching.

Belty said the ATEAM's secular presentations are not ``religion-based.''

The ATEAM Web site's ``Facts about cohabitation versus marriage'' are derived from Focus on the Family, a nonprofit evangelical group that says its primary reason for existence is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

ATEAM's site calls abstinence until marriage the ``expected standard for all school-age children; a mutual faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity, and sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.''

Cohabitation without marriage is inferior because ``studies show that living together weakens your views of marriage and commitment; every month you live with someone increases your chances of having an affair, and studies show that overall, marriage relationships are more mutually fulfilling -- sexually and otherwise -- than those between live-ins,'' the site states.

``If they say they're faith-based, they clearly are a religious agency,'' said Joseph Conn, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group. ``It sounds as though this group is going to make sure its message reflects its own religious agenda. It may not be the scientific and medical approach you would expect from a city government.''

Dr. Johanna Olson of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles-AltaMed Teenage Health Clinic said she doubts the group's teachings will have beneficial effects.

Olson said she believes healthy sexuality is different from person to person, and while abstinence is the best choice for some, it is not going to be the best choice for all.

``The framework for healthy sexuality is not based on an institutional standard; it stems from self-esteem, your ability to communicate with your partner, practicing safe and contraceptive sex if you're not ready to have a baby yet,'' she said. ``It seems this (ATEAM) framework is based on a cookie-cutter design for someone who gets married in their 20s, which isn't realistic anymore ...''

The workshop is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at City Hall, 23920 Valencia Blvd.