It's for Condoms4Life, a group affiliated with Catholics for a Free Choice. The group's purpose is to get Benedict XVI to overturn the Church's ban on condoms for disease prevention.
This is a worthy thing. Most Catholics in this country are in favor of both contraception and disease prophylaxis; a growing number of Catholics in the countries hardest-hit by the AIDS epidemic are pro-condom. In areas where women have very little power, either politically or in personal relationships, condoms (both the male and female sort) offer another option a woman has to try to protect herself from contracting HIV.
What would be lovely would be an HIV-specific vaginal microbicide. Lovelier still would be a vaccine. Best of all would be a sea-change in societies where women don't have the power to refuse sex, prostitution is a means of survival (a very dangerous one) and education efforts on HIV have fallen woefully short.
Condoms are at least a start. We can't do a whole lot about the asinine policies of the present national leaders, but we can support private groups that work to prevent the spread of a disease that's knocking out an entire generation of folks.
Maybe the upcoming election will be the beginning of changes in narrow-minded policy. We can always hope.
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