“I am not familiar with the number, but that would imply a 83% success rate.”
Numbers comparable to Russian roulette. Do you play or recommend Russian roulette?
“Given that people will have sex”
And there is the fatal flaw in your argument. There used to be much less promiscuity, and much less anal sex, than there is in America today. Your “given,” therefore, is only an unwarranted assumption that people cannot be more responsible with their sexual behavior than they have been in recent years.
“I fail to see why promoting condom use is a bad idea.”
Run the numbers. The failure rates are not for a lifetime of reckless promiscuity, but for each episode thereof. IOW, if a person continues to practice promiscuous anal sex while relying on condoms to protect him, he **will** eventually contract HIV...providing that he has the stamina to persist in such behavior until the laws of probability kick in.
On the other hand, keeping the one-eyed trouser mouse in one’s pants and out of other men’s bowels has a 100% success rate.
Which would you recommend to someone you loved?
Bad attempt at a straw man argument.
There used to be much less promiscuity, and much less anal sex, than there is in America today.
I am curious to see your research on that one.
Which would you recommend to someone you loved?
I would recommend if the person does want to have sex, a condom should be used. It is a simple logical conclusion.
Catholic researchers are going to come to conclusions to support the official Catholic position. There’s a lot more confidence in research conducted by independent researchers. The most convincing evidence of condom effectiveness comes from studies of couples in which one partner is infected with HIV and the other is not. Studies of such couples have found low risks of HIV infection among consistent condom users. For example, in three recent studies infection rates were less than 1% per year among consistent condom users. A multicountry European study of 256 HIV-discordant couples followed for an average of 20 months found that not one infection occurred among such couples using condoms during every sex act. As for the CDC, they state on their website “Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing heterosexual sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.”