Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
Weird question. When I was in 4th grade, in the early 90s, we did a multi-day segment on AIDS, where they just went and scared the shit out of us.
So in my 20s any time I did something remotely risky, I'd freak out and go to the doctor. And they'd always ask if I was gay. And when I said no they seemed like they stopped taking seriously the possibility that I contracted it.
And looking back on it it finally just hit me. Was the whole program I went through in 4th grade a massive psyop aimed to stop gays from being stigmatized?
If so I feel honestly betrayed. It feels extremely wrong to use children in that way, even if the end seems like a good one.
Condoms substantially reduce the risk of transmission of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and trichomoniasis. However, since all the above are very much curable diseases, and since teenagers are infamously horny, impulsive and reckless, warning teenagers against them has little impact on condom usage.
Consider that before the HIV/AIDs pandemic, gonorrhea rates surged in the US. That was the sexual revolution and its aftermath. The only way to convince young people to use condoms was to put the fear of death into them. Accordingly, as it has become widespread knowledge that HIV is no longer a death sentence in almost all cases, STD rates (among heterosexuals) have shot up.
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