The Huffington Post contends Mike Huckabee has compared “safe sex” to domestic violence:

“If we really are serious about stopping a problem, whether it’s drunk drinking…we don’t say “Don’t drive ‘as drunk’?” …This is an illogical thing that we apply to that one area that we don’t apply to any other area. And I’m open-minded to all the arguments, if someone can convince me a little reckless behavior is OK. Maybe that’s the message. But it would seem to me that if we’re consistent in saying reckless behavior is undesirable we should ask people to move their behavior to the standard and not move the standard to the behavior…We don’t say that a little domestic violence is OK, just cut it down a little, just don’t hit quite as hard. We say it’s wrong.”

To me this reads as an expression of skepticism that distributing condoms is sufficient in the fight against AIDS, and a touting of the benefits of changing behavior.

If you carpet-bombed the third world with crates of condoms, you would still have the problem of cultures that expect powerful males to take many (and often younger) sex partners with little or no expectation of fidelity. If that isn’t a formula for spreading sexually transmitted diseases, what is?

Beyond that, I’ll ask the same question I have for condoms in schools: Why am I being asked to underwrite the costs of somebody else’s sex life?