Why still so few use condoms

With the "next-generation condom" initiative, Bill Gates is acknowledging that the practical reasons people don't use condoms warrant honest conversation.

If we're honest, many of us do see condoms as robbing us of pleasure, stealing some excitement and spontaneity from intimacy, and dulling the intensity of sexuality. It's okay to say that. These factors are the primary reasons that still only 60 percent of teenagers claim to use condoms. These factors warrant acknowledging. From there, condom usage declines as people grow older. The number one reason we have seen given time and again for refusal to wear condoms is the reduction of pleasure.

It is politically incorrect to acknowledge the truth and simplicity of the condom's inadequacy. Criticism of the condom opens one to righteous demonization and condemnation. Condom defenders often stifle honest and helpful discussion about sexuality, unplanned pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections.

Bill Gates has a foundation that works in Africa to treat AIDS and prevent HIV infection. His research demonstrates that most Africans -- like most Americans -- don't wear condoms because the primitive contraption, which has not appreciably changed in 50 years, steals their pleasure. Gates is a practical businessman and a creative inventor. He has proceeded with plans to make a better product after learning that there is widespread dissatisfaction with an existing product. His foundation will give a $100,000 grant to anyone with credible plans to make a condom that "is felt to enhance pleasure."

The foundation promises that such an innovation would "lead to substantial benefits for global health, both in terms of reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and in prevention of infection with HIV."

Following the announcement, Gates came under ideological fire. Gawker called the argument that condoms reduce sensitivity one for "creeps" and "pervs," while Popular Science reacted by concluding "men are idiots." Salon likened any criticism of the condom's detrimental effect on sexuality to "whining."

Gates is working to open the conversation to the introduction of factual evidence and looking at what really drives behavior.

It is natural for anyone of any sexual orientation to not only preserve, but maximize pleasure during sex. Bill Gates is one of the few public figures addressing "safe sex" in such a way that prioritizes pleasure, and his foundation appears alone in its work to honestly wrestle with the real reasons people don't like or use condoms. That makes Gates one of the only committed and serious people fighting the HIV/AIDS crisis -- in America and abroad.

If the Gates initiative, for what his foundation calls the "next generation condom" succeeds, it will spark a new conversation on sexual issues -- one that acknowledges that the truth is always necessary to solve any social problem. No "progress" that uses a lie as an usher is worth welcoming. More importantly, if Gates succeeds, he will have also significantly increased people's chances of protecting themselves against the horror of AIDS, while empowering them to feel good in the process.