In other news, HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE ARE STILL HAVING THIS ARGUMENT

Facts are stubborn things.

For instance, it's a fact that with proper condom use, pregnancy or transmission of HIV (even assuming that the person in question is HIV positive) in a single instance of intercourse is a statistical anomaly. Over a year the failure rate with proper use is 2%.

Condoms are a pretty fucking important invention. They are, in fact the answer to the question "what was the best thing to come before sliced bread?" Their utility in preventing pregnancy and the spread of STDs has been a matter of public record since the sixteenth century, when precursors to the condom made of chemical-treated linens and affixed with ribbon were discovered to be the best defence against syphilis.

So why are has our society been so fucking ambiguous about them? When I was in school, the failure rate of condom use over a one-year period was cited as 15%

This figure is, you may notice, in conflict with the one I cited at the beginning. It doesn't assume correct use, nor does it assume use upon every sexual encounter.

Let me repeat that: The figure for condom failure rate cited to demonstrate to kids that condoms don't always work? Includes pregnancies caused by non-use of condoms as instances of failure. As it happens, this is what was taught to me when I was in school, and I wasn't the recipient of abstinence-only (sic) sex ed. I mention this because we were taught how to make use of them. Not everyone is.

The fifteen percent number is used egregiously by the people who support abstinence-only indoctrination (as it will be henceforth called in this space and all others over which I have editorial control). Their tactics make this statistic self-sustaining. It's been demonstrated that the recipients of abstinence-only indoctrination make less frequent use of condoms, and simple logic would have it that those not taught how to use condoms will be less likely to know how to use them. Both of these are factors incorporated into the statistic, making its citation an argument against sex ed an exercise in circular logic.

Schools and politicians and religious organizations are being consciously misleading about condoms.

Two recent news items highlight what has come of it all.

The teen birth rate rose for the second year in a row in 2007. Condom use has fallen concurrently. The numbers during the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush the First saw a more pronounced increase. Under Clinton, there was a marked decline in teen pregnancy.

There is a pattern here.

Meanwhile, the Pope is in Africa claiming that he doesn't see condoms as a solution for AIDS. In fact, he says that they aggravate the problems

Really?

REALLY‽

There is no room for equivocation here. A rational human being, when seeking advice in regards to sexual practice, does not look to the an eighty year old man who has never had sex in his life. A rational human being does not take seriously the opinions (vis a vis sex, or in fact anything at all) of a man who as a Cardinal decried the media for reporting on the child abuse scandal in the church. Especially given that he probably had a hand in the Vatican's policy of shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish.

Nor does a rational human being continue social policy that has been demonstrated to be ineffective.

Hopefully, we may one day soon be able to honestly call ourselves a country of rational people.

Hopefully.

Our President is due to announce whether or not he'll be continuing the Bush policy of denying federal money to the schools with the gall to educate their students on matters of health and safety.

It shouldn't be a tough call.