Rotten Little Girls

So the newest craze in safe sex reforms is taking place in none other than some of our finest correctional facilities. Out in California, Solano State Prison is installing condom machines (with approximately 1,200 condoms per week for about 6,000 prisoners, so some will have to continue to rough it) so that prophylactics will be made available to inmates free and close to home.

Now this has just gotten everyone’s panties in a twist. Of course we all know sex is illegal in prisons, so providing condoms does seem like a sort of paradox, doesn’t it? But the opponents of this proposal simply gloss over the fact that sex does occur in jail – even if it’s not voluntary, and victims of prison rape would most likely appreciate the condom gesture. Not only that, but let’s not forget that we are trying to impose laws upon people who are only there because they broke laws in the first place. Like arguments about sex ed and the availability of birth control, those against safe sex methods believe that through such programs, we are condoning something sinful and wrong. Which is how we end up with pregnant teenagers who refused birth control because apparently unplanned, unsafe sex is the ticket to preserving their innocence.

But pregnancy isn’t something we have to worry about with inmates. Instead, it is the health risk of sexually transmitted diseases with a focus on the spread of AIDS. Studies show that prisoners are 3 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population. In spite of the immediate health risks, this may seem like a controllable problem to some. But these bastions of HIV won’t keep it locked away forever; while jail time can end, an HIV sentence just gets you life on the outside without parole.

Once again, the moral pole of the U.S. is getting in the way of solving a social issue. And all the reasons for not signing this bill seem to be a cover for the fact that homosexuality still makes everyone just a little more than uncomfortable. I think everyone would rather live in denial about men sodomizing each other behind bars, and having condom machines out in plain view must make this image much harder to repress. Responding to concerns over the use of condoms to hide drugs or serve as weapons, proponents emphasize that Canadian and European prisons have had virtually no security problems throughout the almost 20 years of this program. A select few penitentiaries do it in the United States, but California is such a big deal because Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already vetoed the proposal twice, and he holds the ultimate decision after the one year trial is up.

Inmates are also lobbying for the right to same-sex marriages. But until then, let them have condoms – maybe later they can have their cake and eat it too.