Glenn Connley: Singapore needs to get over its condom phobia

He’s too ashamed to be seen in the family planning aisle, let alone staring at or, gulp, holding a pack of condoms.

The prospect of taking them to the counter and paying is almost as daunting as having sex for the first time.

He has a tough decision to make. Does he risk the embarrassment and do the right thing or scamper out of the store?

That red-faced young man is Singapore today.

A Singaporean nightclub recently ran a campaign to mark World AIDS Day, rewarding patrons carrying condoms with free entry.

It’s the sort of thing nightclubs in London, New York and Sydney were doing 20 years ago. Now, they just give them away. 

Yet, in Singapore, 2010, the promotion was criticized. Cringingly conservative journalists labelled it controversial. And, in true Singapore style, most of the media completely missed the point.

Unnamed health counselors (who should have known better) slammed the move because it "encouraged pre-marital sex." 

Is Singapore really that backward? Is pre-marital sex really the issue here? The 100-plus people who posted comments on the story certainly seemed to think so.

How about, hmmm, let me think … the life and death issue of sexually transmitted disease?

Yes, it’s a matter of life and death. It has been for a quarter of a century.

I’ve got news for the Mums and Dads of Singapore’s youth: YOUR CHILDREN ARE HAVING SEX. Whether you like it or not. And you can’t stop them.

If they do so without a condom, they are putting their lives and health at risk.

How do I put this nicely? Let’s call it "coupling.’ Coupling is happening everywhere. Wander through Clarke Quay any night of the week and there are people arriving alone and leaving together. I’m not suggesting they’re all bolting back to bed, but that’s often where it ends.

As a teenager growing up in small town Australia in the 1980s, it was harder to avoid condoms than procure them. They were being handed out free at school and in heath centres. When I was old enough to go to bars, they were available free or three-for-a-dollar in vending machines. You could get them, without having to face a shop assistant, in railway stations, cinemas, community centers and public toilets.

In 1987 the Australian government launched what is still one of the best-known safe-sex advertising campaigns in the world.

The "Grim Reaper" series of community service announcements opened with the stark image of 10 people being lowered, as bowling pins, at the end of a bowling lane.

At the other end of the lane stood the Reaper, the universal symbol of death -- scythe in one hand, bowling ball in the other.

“At first only gays and I.V. drug users were being killed by AIDS, but now we know every one of us could be devastated by it,” said the announcer.

Cut to the ball crashing into the 10 bodies, including a terrified little girl.

“The fact is over 50,000 men, women and children now carry the AIDS virus … that in three years nearly 2,000 of us will be dead … that if not stopped it could kill more Australians than World War II.

“If you have sex, have just one safe partner or always use condoms -- always.”

It worked. The imagery (not the message) was controversial. But soon you had teachers and parents, even grandparents, talking openly about safe sex.

The time for burying heads in the sand was over.

A generation later, in Singapore, heads are still well and truly buried in the sand. It's time to wake up.

Although, thankfully, HIV infection rates in Singapore are comparatively low, they reveal we do have a problem. More alarmingly, they are growing. In many other first-world countries -- thanks, largely, to the availability of information and condoms -- the rates are falling.

According to the Ministry of Heath’s own figures, there were just 17 HIV positive people living in Singapore in 1990. By 1995 there were 111. By 2000 the number had increased to 226 and by 2005 it was 317. Last year, Singapore hit a new peak of 463.

Should we really be discussing pre-marital sex? Let me end that debate here and now -- everyone’s doing it.

It’s time to swing the focus onto the real issue: staying alive.