Sex & Politics

This isn’t good news:

U.S. syphilis rates rose for a seventh year in 2007, driven by gay and bisexual men, while chlamydia reached record numbers and gonorrhea remained at alarming levels — especially among blacks, health officials said on Tuesday.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for about 70 percent of gonorrhea cases and almost half of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea, and gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were 19 times higher than for whites, the CDC said

I wonder what messages aren’t teens getting about STD’s and the use of condoms? Is it a financial issue? Condoms are very expensive and black youth live in poverty at a much higher rate than their whit counterparts. Also the free condoms available at clinics  and other places are rarely any good. A study on them was done a while back showing how those condoms are damaged and often past their expiration date.

I also wonder what role religion plays in all of this. Blacks are fiercely Christian and more likely to believe that sex before marriage is a sin under any circumstances. We all know that religion and sex rarely mix and when really religious teens engage in sexual behavior they are less likely to use condoms or any other sort of protection . Combine that with the high risk environment and the “man-sharing” that’s likely to occur in the Black community and you have a recipe for STD disaster.