I was thinking about the “Friends, Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign, which lead to the thought of creating a safe sex campaign with that same idea called “Friends Don’t Let Friends have Unprotected Sex” campaign. Now I know realistically most of the time, friends will not be in the room to prevent the unprotected sex from happening, but friends do have a large influence on some decisions, like drunk driving, unprotected sex, and other dos and don’ts in their social networks.
Now this is just an idea in my head. I’m actually having a hard time writing this in a way that doesn’t make it seem as though I’m promoting the sex acts to teenagers, but also do want to take the pleasure, and trust out for some adult sexual relationships. And as I think about this, I do recognize that there may be some backlash to this idea. I do believe that this would be a great nation wide campaign that would put the idea in the back of people’s minds, to protect them selves when having sex, but I also know that this could be taken in different directions and looked at in different ways. I can hear certain groups saying “well they should not have any sex until their married, and then they would have to worry about protection” and I could hear other individual couples saying “well my partner and I are monogamous so there is no need for protection.” But my though is, if you put it out there, they will think about it. Both teens and adults, may think twice about their own protection, as well as question their friends about it. I think it would be a great thought to have in the back of your mind, although I don’t know how effective action wise it would be. But I believe the first step to promoting safe sex would be putting the thoughts of using protection, during sex, in the back of people’s minds.
