FreeThought

The Pope? Right? Never!

Back in March, I posted about a hot news item about the Pope positing that condoms were actually making the AIDS situation in Africa worse, not helping it. I condemned the church for wanting to take away what little family planning already exists in Africa.

A couple weeks ago (yes, I’m sorry this is old news, but no one else covered it!) the Washington Post ran an article called “The Pope May Be Right“, written by Edward C. Green, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. He said:

One reason is “risk compensation.” That is, when people think they’re made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.

Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it’s possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it’s those ongoing relationships that drive Africa’s worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world’s highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.

These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.

He said that because of these factors, 1) Africans don’t use condoms because it implies a lack of trust in a steady relationship, and 2) they have steady relationships with more than one partner (men and women both), then this would create an overlapping matrix of unprotected sex across a wide geography, and if one of those people gets AIDS or another STD, well, then it can spread really fast.

So, how exactly does this mean that the pope is right for condemning condoms? Green has this disclaimer on his post:

Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 “consensus statement” published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity. Moreover, liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.

Ah hah. So it wasn’t the Pope’s anti-condom stance Green was speaking of. It was the Pope’s call for less sex with less people.

Well, duh. You can’t just get a bunch of Trojans, throw them to the masses, and yell “Here, use these!”. There has to be some amount of education that goes along with it. Those providing the condoms should be telling them WHY they should be using them, that if you use condoms with a committed partner, it ISN’T implying a lack of trust, etc. I don’t think that Green is saying that, but, er, the Pope is.

The Pope and the Catholic church bans condoms unequivocally and promotes abstinence-only education, which never works. (And luckily, Obama is eliminating 2010 funding for abstinence-only education.) This is what I was railing about, and what the European Union was against the Pope about. And I think even Green can note that when you are crusading against birth control, you are crusading against civil liberties regarding your own bodies. You are denying people a right to their own sexuality.

For more information about condoms and Green’s research, check out this interesting article.

What do you think about Green’s Post editorial? Let’s hear it in the comments below.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed by an individual contributor to this blog are not necessarily shared by all members of FreeThought Fort Wayne. That is what makes this organization so interesting. Commenters on the FreeThought Fort Wayne blog are expected to abide by our comment policy. About the author:  Andy Welfle is a marketing professional in a non-profit arts organization by day, and a net junkie, an Apple fanboy, and a freethinker by night. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/awelfle. | Read more from this author

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