From The Ashes ...

No Condoms Please, We're American
by Gus Cairns -via Planetout.com

Young people in America have a low level of knowledge about STDs, a survey has found. It also found that fewer use condoms for anal sex than vaginal sex.

Meanwhile, George Bush's Presidential Council on AIDS has heard an impassioned plea that if it adopts abstinence and monogamy as the main thrust of its HIV-prevention strategy, it must include gay men in it and welcome gay marriage.

The survey by the American Social Health Association was aimed at assessing sexual attitudes, behaviors and knowledge among U.S. citizens between the ages of 18 and 35. In a climate currently hostile to federally funded sexual research, the survey was funded by pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline.

The survey looked at a "snapshot" of the sex lives of 1,155 adults between March 3 and 8. It found that there was a big difference between "precautions people claim to take and their actual behavior."

Nineteen out of 20 participants said they believed their current partners did not have an STD, and 63 percent considered themselves "well informed" about them, despite the fact that 28 percent were unaware that some STDs could be asymptomatic. Nearly 85 percent of the sample said they took "necessary" steps to protect themselves against STDs, but a third had never discussed the subject with their partner.

But the most startling finding was that only just over half (53 percent) of young Americans use condoms or any other form of protection during vaginal sex, and only a third (36 percent) use condoms during anal sex when they have it. Two weeks ago -- see "Research into microbicides" -- the Microbicides conference heard that between 25 and 50 percent of young U.S. heterosexuals have unprotected anal sex.

Although most participants had heard of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, only just over half knew hepatitis B was primarily transmitted sexually.

In the meantime, spurred on by an article in the British Medical Journal that says reducing one's number of sexual partners is the key to HIV reduction (see "Fewer sexual partners should be focus of HIV fight"), the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS (PACHA) has urged U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson to assess whether the "ABC" campaign used in Africa -- Abstain, B faithful, Condom -- should be adopted by the U.S.

One presenter to the Council, Dr. Mark Thrun, head of the HIV prevention office in Denver, said that 62 percent of AIDS cases in male youth were among gay men, but that HIV prevention efforts in schools and churches "completely ignore" this group.

He "startled" some council members when he said that laws against same-sex marriage would exclude gay men from the possibility of exactly the kind of stable, monogamous relationships the president wanted to promote.

Reported in Positive Nation, April 2004