The Nation - News from Oct. 21, 1987

The House overwhelmingly accepted a Senate-approved proposal to require that federally financed educational materials about AIDS stress sexual abstinence and not promote homosexuality or illegal drug use. The House voted to instruct its conferees to agree to the provision when they negotiate a compromise $129-billion appropriations bill for the departments of labor, education and health and human services for fiscal 1988. The Senate approved the amendment last week after Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) warned of sexually explicit educational comic books distributed by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York. He said the organization had received $674,679 in federal funds, although he acknowledged that none of the money was used to finance the comics.