A False Saviour

"Condoms are a technical, medicalised, typically Western answer to a much deeper human problem. Condoms may save the day for now, but they don't change lifestyles. And currently it is lifestyles, even more than Aids, that are destroying our people. Have faithful sex within stable partnerships and the virus would disappear." Opinion, The Witness, 6 August 2004

A False Saviour? Ronald Nicolson, The Witness, 6 August

The huge Bangkok Aids conference is now something of the past. Perhaps the millions spent on getting people to these international conferences might have made a much bigger difference if the money had actually been spent on people with Aids. But then, of course, the delegates would not have seen the delights of Bangkok! A lot of money is made by a lot of academics and researchers out of HIV/Aids these days. If you want research money, just throw in somewhere in your proposal that it has to do with Aids (or in South African research funding, mention of "indigenous knowledge" will do the trick).

At the Bangkok conference, the old issue of abstinence versus condomising arose again. The official American line, following President George W. Bush's close allegiance with the American Bible belt, was that abstinence is the only way forward. The line taken by most non-government agencies is that since young people are sexually active, only the widespread availability of condoms can save the day.

Embarrassing though it may be to side with Bush about anything in public, I think in this case he may be partly right.

Let's be clear. Wearing a condom in all sexual encounters will make it extremely unlikely that a person will contract Aids (or syphilis or herpes or any other sexually transmitted disease). All of the old wives' tales - condoms break, the virus can spread through tiny holes in the condom - are just that; old wives' tales. Standard issue condoms rarely break. There are no little holes. People who use condoms every time can be pretty confident that they won't contract the virus. Therefore, if people are going to have sex with all and sundry, it is vital that they do use condoms.

But and here are the buts, condoms as the main solution to HIV/Aids are unlikely to make a serious difference.

You have to buy them. That's embarrassing. Also, if you are poor, that's expensive. There are free condoms available at clinics and other places, but many people facing the HIV/Aids threat are rural people. At the moment, when you have the urge to have sex, the clinic may be 15 kilometres away and its opening hours from 9 am to 3 pm. Under the urge, people can't wait that long, or walk that far (by which time the urge will have dissipated).

The clinic may give you a pack of 12, or 20, but the clinic is 15 kilometres away. How long do 20 condoms last an eager man. A week? A month? The condoms are likely to run out before you face the walk again.

To be honest, sex wearing a condom does not feel as satisfying for a man as sex without a condom. It is therefore extremely unlikely that the average man can promise to wear a condom every single time from now on in his whole life.

There are female condoms which the man may not notice so much - but have you ever seen the female condom? Would you want to have sex with one?

Of course, condoms make a difference, and, of course, people should know about them and have easy access to them. But religious people are uncomfortable with the motto: "Abstain, be faithful or condomise". They feel that the motto implies that the norm is for young unmarrieds to be sexually active and, indeed, sexually active with random partners.

The religious people are right. That is indeed the subtext to the motto. And it probably does make it even harder for religions to beat the "wait till you're married" drum.

But that's the point, say the other side. Young people are already sexually active, and not just in South Africa. A British news journal suggests that 40% of 15-year-old girls there are sexually active - the highest figure, incidentally, in the Western world except for Greenland (maybe it's very cold in Greenland, or maybe there are no movies). Since they are already active and are unlikely to heed the churches who say they should not be, they must have condoms rather than die.

And that's true. But it is also true that a society where random and promiscuous sex is the order of the day is a society which is dying, and that is the issue that needs dealing with even more urgently than Aids.

Now for some political incorrectness. It is actually quite hard to contract the Aids virus. The centres for disease control in Washington estimate that if you have unprotected sex with someone who has the virus, the odds are 100-1 that you will not contract the virus yourself (I don't know how they know, but I trust the CDC).

Now even 100-1 odds are unacceptable and someone who plays that kind of Russian roulette is foolish. Also, the odds change dramatically if you are sexually immature and therefore tissues are more likely to tear, if you have anal sex, if the woman is not aroused and sufficiently lubricated or if there are already lesions from other STDs. It is also true that poverty and malnutrition may make us more susceptible.

But the fact that Aids has become a pandemic in some parts of the world and not in others, or in some communities and not in others, gives good cause for thinking that there are very serious social and sexual issues that lie at the root. To be blunt, while the Aids virus has probably been around, unrecognised, for a long time, it only becomes a pandemic when sex with a large number of partners, or sex in circumstances where tissues are unusually likely to tear, becomes the norm.

One day, and soon, we hope, an affordable vaccine for Aids will be developed. But our troubles will not be over, until the human and social problems are dealt with. As long as men assume that sex with many partners, even unwilling partners, is their masculine due; as long as there are sugar daddies buying sex from teenagers; as long as promiscuity is an acceptable lifestyle, lives will still be destroyed.

Condoms are a technical, medicalised, typically Western answer to a much deeper human problem. Condoms may save the day for now, but they don't change lifestyles. And currently it is lifestyles, even more than Aids, that are destroying our people. Have faithful sex within stable partnerships and the virus would disappear.

Ronald Nicolson teaches in the Ethics Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and is the Rector of an Anglican parish.

Publish Date: 6 August 2004

http://www.witness.co.za/content/2004_08/26186.htm