Maybe a not inappropriately food-related analogy would be salt and pepper shakers on the tables at a Western-style restaurant. No chef who knows his stuff would ever deliberately underseason his food, much less “encourage” people to add seasoning. But some people insist on their thing.

“The fact that my first comment was not removed means it was valid”

No, it means MM knows how civil discourse operates.

shiko-chan, thanks for those comments, I agree with them. As for the question of “Lick and Durex” I have to smirk, as I asked an employee to take PHP1,000 to the nearest drugstore and purchase a selection of condoms. He came back with every brand and every flavor, himself amused by the wide selection now available. Needless to say, the durex were the first to go, as were the “licks” — I had never heard of the brand myself — but I am thrilled that they have such attractive packaging and are available right at the counters and easily accessible to customers.

Reish, I left your first comment up as it is a topic worthy of discussion and I understand there are differing views. I only remove comments when they are totally off the wall, offensive, unrelated to the topic at hand, libelous, etc. So yes, I think your opinion is worth reading, but as is mine worth considering. I take a very rational and logical view in most of my positions in life, so while I certainly don’t think I need to sway your views in my direction, this is WHAT I THINK ABOUT when i promote condom use:

1. My experience with hundreds of staff members in their teens and twenties is that they are highly sexually active. See this post, from where I quote these figures:

“Twenty-three percent of young people aged 15 to 24 are sexually active in a country where Catholic mores frown on premarital sex, says the 2003 State of the Philippine Population Report.

In the 1982 and 1994 surveys, the University of the Philippines established the average age of sexual initiation at 18. In 2002, the age of initial sexual activity changed slightly to 17.5. The study also found out that young people who had sex before age 15 has increased eightfold from less than two percent in 1994 to 16 percent in 2002.”

Doesn’t that surprise you? Nearly 1/4th of folks between 15 and 24 are sexually active and probably 18-20% by 2013 have had sex by the age of 15!!? And there isn’t data on the 25-30 age group, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that figure jumps to 50-70% of the population or more.

2. See this well written piece, from where I quote these interesting statistics:

– half of 3.4 million annual pregnancies are “unintended” or roughly 1.7 million pregnancies!
– as I mentioned earlier and not in this report, there are an estimated 560,000 abortions in the Philippines EACH YEAR!
– by the year 2080, the Philippines population could swell to 200 million at current growth projections!
– 82% of Filipinos say family planning is a personal decision of couples, and no one (particularly I presume, the Church) should interfere
– 68% of Filipinos feel government should fund natural and artificial means of family planning

3. And when folks do have their kids, a whopping 70-80+% are unable to provide decent nutrition, clothing, healthcare, housing and education, so that these kids live in often unconscionable conditions, deep in poverty which the Church or government is unable to stem or alleviate. Understand up to 80 million people UNABLE TO EAT A DECENT MEAL IN BASIC CLOTHING UNDER A DECENT ROOF AND HAVING ACCESS TO EDUCATION.

– Read this post and this post of mine on poverty in the Philippines
– Read this post on overpopulation, malnutrition and my support for the RH Bill
– Read this post on the state of Philippine education

So this is what drives my opinion.

1. Filipinos from age 15-30 are highly sexually active, with or without access to contraception. I don’t only believe the surveys and second hand information, I see it in hundreds of staff members I oversee from running a business in this country.
2. There are a LOT of unwanted, unplanned pregnancies in this country every year, and a shocking number of abortions as well.
3. I agree education of our population regarding family planning or abstinence is useful. But I don’t think “education” alone is sufficient to seriously curb the unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
4. The vast majority of the Philippine population is at or just above poverty levels, and are unable to feed their children properly along with all the other things that you would hope that a child is ENTITLED TO. After all, the child didn’t ask to come into this world, his parents brought him in. Children’s human rights and access to food, healthcare, etc. should be met, and foremost by their parents who brought them into this world.
5. The vast majority of children today are not getting a decent education, and only 1% or so get more than 75% on the exam from 6th grade that would allow them to go onto high school.

Hence, I believe, that contraception is one good way to help people plan their families, so that unwanted pregnancies are reduced, so that abortions are reduced or eradicated, so that there is a better chance that children who are born can be properly cared for.

Even the POPE himself has recently been quoted as saying the “church is obsessed with gays, abortion and birth control” and finally there is a pontiff who seems in stride with reality and the times. I should note that free access to condoms and other forms of contraception have been readily available in Rome as well as most other majority Catholic nations on the planet for many, many years, why should the Philippines be any different?

For the past 6 years, marketmanila has sponsored a feeding program for undernourished public school children and we have distributed perhaps over 200,000+ meals valued at PHP4 million or more at schools in Cebu and Taguig. But now I have shifted my focus to helping folks plan their families and avoid unwanted pregnancies and rapid population growth when adults don’t have the means to properly raise their kids. I have done my small part to try and help those who need it. But now, it’s time to actively promote family planning. PHP4 million would have purchased some 800,000 condoms instead of 200,000 meals… there is a part of me that says condoms would have been in several ways, more humanitarian. And Reish, as a result of your comments and this lively discussion, I will be donating another 1,000 condoms “courtesy of Reish” to staff and neighboring barangays in the months ahead. They will say “thank you Reish” the next time they have spontaneous, unplanned and unhooked sex in the office or any other wild location you can dream up for them… Thank you. :)

P.S. The paper you proivde a link to, as my wife, who attended the University of Notre Dame (where the author you link to taught for a while) points out, was written in 1994, nearly twenty years ago, and uses data as much as 3-4 decades old. Surely a newer piece is something you can use to bolster your argument. And as I point out above, the current pope is much more enlightened, it seems, than the pope quoted in your linked paper.

P.P.S. Out of curiosity, I just looked up marriage statistics in the Philippines, and the FACT is, the number of ALL registered marriages has been declining since early 2000’s (where data is readily available), despite the population increasing every single year since then. Ergo, you could conclude that the percentage of couples who choose to marry (whether in church, civilly or otherwise) is declining percentage-wise, and they are, presumably, more and more “living together in sin” as some are won’t to describe the situation. But an even more interesting factoid from this basic googling are the unexpected statistics (for me, anyway) in the national census… Of 476,000 registered marriages in 2011, 42.5% were civil marriages, 35.9% were Roman Catholic marriages, and 22% were Muslim, Tribal and Other Religious Marriages. How about that? Just over 1/3 of all marriages were done in a roman catholic setting, for a country that boasts say an 85% Roman Catholic population. In 2004, there were 582,281 registered marriages for roughly 86 million total population. In 2011, just seven years later, there were 476,000 registered marriages for roughly 100+ million people. Clearly, more couples are simply choosing to live together rather than get married, and particularly getting married in the Catholic church. Fewer people solemnizing their vows in church, fewer people joining the priesthood, the church under attack for all kinds of bizarre behavior… you would think they would have better things to do than rail on the availability of birth control and the education of the nation’s citizenry with respect to family planning and maternal health.

No, it doesn’t. Fact of the matter is, people will still engage in sexual activity with or without that bowl of condoms. For anyone to think otherwise is incredibly naive. As MM said, you may choose to have a preferred view of reality, but sadly, that isn’t the world we live in. Wake up and read the statistics.