Apparently Lucerne, and some of its Catholic members, are not up-to-date on the medical protocols for safe-sex in an era of AIDS. They should have read the history. In the '80’s and '90’s, the protocol, before you decided to risk fate with an untried sexual partner, was to get simultaneously tested, with official (viewed) verification for each other’s test results.
Condoms, oh people of Lucerne, have never been the most effective frontline of defense against AIDS contraction for any population. You don’t even consider sex a possibility with anyone not cleared within clearance time-frames. If they’re cleared (ie., you are both cleared, together), condoms become a second-level defense, in the unlikely but possible event of a testing or documentation error.
Naturally I’m just speaking of the medical facts and outcomes here, historically, not the morality implications. However, one could also argue that what is medically unsafe is also morally unjustified. Thus, responsible people in the gay community in the '80’s, for example, also argued for testing as the primary defense. However, there were other voices in the community which supported a continuation of Sex as Usual on the grounds that (1) promiscuity was widely accepted within that community, and (2) promiscuity, accepted or not, was a reality: therefore, it would be less likely than not that your potential partner would be non-HIV. (So “why bother”?) If this is the state of sexual statistics (and/or the level of intravenous drug use) in Lucerne, then that’s a sorry comment on the lifestyles of their youth.
This is somewhat tangential to the central arguments being raised here, but the point still holds that even if those claiming to speak for Catholic positions are also claiming moral justification (i.e., saving lives), their strategy of condoms as the first line of defense is a faulty one.
