Those animated condoms beginning to show up on TV may make slick advertising. The frank and clever commercials may let the Clinton administration claim credit for doing more about AIDS.
But the government’s commercials aren’t completely truthful. They aren’t aimed at the groups at highest risk for AIDS infection. The message they intend to give isn’t necessarily the message many who see them will get. They may not sell condoms as much as casual sex. And critics who say they may do less good than harm may well be right.
Some of the new commercials have an appealing, light, Madison-Avenue-at-its-best charm. In one, for example, an animated condom pops out of a drawer, scampers across a bedroom past a dozing cat and bounces under the blankets of a couple about to have sex.
The voice-over says, “It would be nice if latex condoms were automatic. But since they’re not, using them should be.”
Some stations that air the spots will add the line, “Abstinence is safest, but if you do have sex, latex condoms can protect you.”
In another commercial, a woman about to have sex with a man tells him to “forget it” when he admits he’s forgotten to bring a condom. A male announcer concludes, “A latex condom, used consistently and correctly, prevents the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. . . and may save your life.”
That is not necessarily true. And the harm such a message can do, especially when sponsored by the U.S. government, is worrisome.
Abstinence is safest. So is a heterosexual, monogamous relationship in which neither partner is infected with HIV and neither injects illegal drugs or has a transfusion with infected blood.
What’s not true are the flat-out claims that “latex condoms can protect you,” and “a latex condom . . . prevents the spread of HIV.”
Using a latex condom correctly and consistently does cut the risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in sexual encounters with an infected partner. But it doesn’t eliminate the risk absolutely, as the record of condom failures in preventing pregnancy should warn.
The AIDS virus is smaller than sperm; it can slip through tiny flaws in a condom much more easily. Women are able to become pregnant only one or two days a month; HIV can infect a sex partner at any time it has an opportunity. Condoms can accidentally come off. They are ranked as one of the least effective contraceptives.
What the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services are advocating is a game of Russian roulette. The gun won’t go off every time. Condoms will prevent most transmission of HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases. But they won’t stop the spread of AIDS completely or protect you infallibly if you have sex with an infected partner.
Surely it is irresponsible of the government-criminally irresponsible-to promise sexually active people that condoms will keep them safe from AIDS.
Apparently, those responsible for the new commercials and radio spots figure that condoms will save lives if sexually active people are persuaded to use them. And because it’s complicated to explain that this isn’t always true and there is no place for fine print in commercials, they skip the ifs and buts.
It’s easier to sell “safe sex” than “safer sex,” they must assume. Never mind truth in advertising.
They must also assume that most teen-agers and young adults, at whom the new commercials are aimed, are going to be sexually active, AIDS threat or not, married or not. (Plenty of statistics back them up.) Condoms are better than no protection at all. They will save lives. So, those responsible for the ads must calculate that it’s okay to market them with exaggerated assurances and false promises.
But such a high level of sexual activity among the young hasn’t always been true in this country, where the age at which people begin having sex has been constantly dropping and where out-of-wedlock births to young women have been increasing for years. The United States also has one of the highest rates of illegitimacy of any industrialized nation.
Our children come of age today in a sex-soaked society where the entertainment media, peers, even the government itself, is telling them that premarital sex is inevitable at an increasingly young age. The cost has been considerable-in births to single mothers and the consequent increase in welfare and dysfunctional families, in the horrendous increase in all types of sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, in the trivializing of sex and in the frequent substitution of sex for love and commitment.
Maybe condom commercials-with a nod to abstinence thrown in to pacify critics-are the realistic best we can offer vulnerable young people growing up amid such hazards today. But most of us parents want something better for our offspring, a reasonable chance to protect them with moral values and time for them to mature a little more before mistakes made in the service of sex do them grave harm.
At the very least, we want the government to be completely honest with them and not make blanket promises about the safety of condoms.
