Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - Tuesday, December 1, 1998
Stone was followed at a U.N. AIDS Day symposium today by a young Brooklyn man who has lived with AIDS for 16 years. He tearfully recounted the deaths of his mother, an uncle, two cousins and 60 friends to AIDS, then pleaded with young people to "protect yourself."
"You have to get to a point of tough love," Stone said, adding that parenting, spirituality and ethics are all "based on love." She added, "How ever we guide, we are not stronger than the power of sexuality" to a teenager.
Stone, who said she helped raise $2 million at a benefit for the campaign she chairs for AmFAR the night before, spoke before the symposium in the Economic and Social Council Chamber of the United Nations.
"If you truly, truly love your children you need to supply condoms at a place in your home at a quantity that makes it a non-judgmental situation for them to have them. I mean put 200 condoms in a box in some place in the house, where somebody isn't all the time, so that your kids can take them."
The young man, Candido Gonzalez said: "I ask the youth of today to open your hearts and minds. You must learn to listen and listen to learn. There is a vaccine for AIDS it is called education. Please, if you're having sex, protect yourself, wear a condemn, get tested regularly."
Between sobs he said, "I may not have fancy titles or letters after my name, but after watching my mother die and disappear slowly before my eyes, I learned the word pain. After watching 60 of my friends die slow, agonizing deaths, I learned sorrow. But it's after living 16 years with the virus that I earned my Ph.D. and learned how to cry."
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