Smoking and sex.

ACCORDING to frequent warnings from the government health-care complex, a single unguarded act of sexual intercourse can expose a person to a deadly virus that will dismantle the body's immune system. A single cigarette, on the other hand, can do no such damage. Despite these very unequal hazards, smoking is now fiercely opposed, while sexual activity of almost any description is encouraged -- usually as an aid to mental health. This happens most sub- versively in sex-ed classes, which President Clinton's former surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, thought suitable for children in kindergarten.

Smoking is now viewed with the zealous moral disapproval once reserved for the ancient category of sexual deviance. Concern about souls has been transferred to the body, with moral indignation remaining a constant. Judith Reisman sug- gests a separate parallel: Just as the cigarette makers wanted to get the kids hooked on their product, so the sexologists want to get the kids hooked on theirs.

Is there a conflict between the rising concern about bodily health and encouragement of sexual expression? Condoms will square that circle. They "can be sexy," too, sex educators exult. And like filter-tipped cigarettes they can give a false sense of security. Condoms have a failure rate of over 15 per cent -- where failure is measured by pregnancy; twice that where sexually transmitted agents are the test. But don't expect Surgeon General's warnings any time soon. Meanwhile, boatloads of condoms are being shipped to the Third World. Foreigners whom we treat with such disdain can be forgiven for thinking us morally depraved.

Those who are trying to stamp out smoking usually disapprove of sexual abstinence. Here's the latest message on sexually transmitted disease, plastered on buses in several cities earlier this year: "Abstinence Will Not Cure AIDS. Research Will." This was paid for by Amfar, a New York - based AIDS foundation which has enjoyed much socialite support.

Leading sex educators have encouraged sexual experimentation at an age that would cause tobacco executives to blanch. The leading sex-ed organization is SIECUS, the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States. Chartered in 1964 by Dr. Mary S. Calderone, medical director of Planned Parenthood, it has promoted its agenda under the rubric of children's rights. A few years ago Dr. Calderone said that children have a fundamental right to "know about sexuality and to be sexual." (Her italics.) SIECUS today calls on the national media "to present sexuality as a positive aspect of the total human experience at all stages of the life cycle." (My italics.) Your tax dol- lars are at work. SIECUS boasted in 1994 that it was "one of the 24 national recipients of a new five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Debra Haffner, SIECUS's executive director (lately she has been on sabbatical at Yale Divinity School), wrote a few years ago that "we need to tell teens that the safest sex doesn't necessarily mean no sex." Her list of pres- sure-relieving activities for kids included "oral sex" and "mutual masturba- tion." This would "help them delay the onset of sexual intercourse and its consequences." Sex educators view kids, demeaningly, as high-pressure boilers in need of socially constructed safety valves.

Recent goings-on at the Martha Winston Elementary School in Washington, D.C., suggest that the kids have learned their lessons. A fourth-grader who "chal- lenged the authority" of a teacher was sent to an empty classroom. He coaxed several classmates into the room. According to the Washington Times, they "disrobed and practiced sexual acts on one another." The school's principal considered that no disciplinary steps could be taken because the sexual acts --between fourth-graders, ranging in age from 9 to 12 -- were "consensual."

For those parents who still don't realize what is going on, the point to grasp is that their children are viewed as prey. Perhaps the most striking feature of sex ed is its mendacity. In Slouching towards Gomorrah Robert Bork notes that it seems to operate "more as an incitement" than as a caution against sexual experimentation. Above all, the disparity between the little that we really need to know about intercourse and the lurid array of materials deployed by the sexolatrists should warn us of an undisclosed agenda. Those (numerous) cases in which parents have been kept in the dark about what is going on, and especially the cases in which children are not allowed to opt out of courses, should teach us the same lesson.

Some local-government posters displayed in classrooms could not possibly be shown in this magazine. In fact, the embarrassment of normal people in dealing with this subject has contributed to a broad news-media blackout about the horrible details. This has enabled the sex educators to take advantage of the very reticence that they are trying to break down. Judith Reisman's parents, old-line Communists, were shocked by the sexual revolution. But then, like Communists everywhere, they aspired to "build a new society." The sexologists have no such reconstruction in mind. Their goal -- conscious or not -- is merely to destroy the old.