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National Condom Week: ‘Where did you wear it?’

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The week of February 14 is not just a boon for flower and greeting card companies: It’s also apparently a week to recognize the importance of condoms.

National Condom Week, celebrated by Planned Parenthood affiliates and colleges across the country, began at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s and has expanded into a nationwide effort to promote safer sex.

“I certainly do believe that sex education is extremely important, especially with the growing number of drug resistant sexually transmitted diseases and that hooking up National Condom Week with Valentine’s day is a great way to get that message across,” NationalCondomWeek.com administrator Jeffrey Strain explained to The Daily Caller in an email.

Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest has also gotten into the Condom Week spirit, tweeting out a new website — called “WhereDidYouWearIt.com” — offering condom users a chance to report the location of their most recent sexual encounter, the reasons they used a condom and how good the sex was.

“Some fun news: We launched http://www.wheredidyouwearit.com. Tell us where you’re having safer #sex! #condomweek,” they tweeted Friday.

Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma will be offering condom jar estimating contests and working with local radio stations to get out the word.

“Since 1978, the week of Valentine’s Day has been marked as National Condom Week,” Terry Dennison, director of education for Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma told The City Sentinel. “It is a terrific opportunity to educate people about the importance of prevention and responsible condom use, and to address the misinformation about condoms that might discourage their use.”

“We want people to feel that it’s okay to talk about condoms, and that condom use can be the norm rather than the exception,” added Dennison. “The more comfortable people become, the better equipped they will be to make safer decisions about their sexual health and behavior.”

In New York, the Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood will be sponsoring four pub crawls throughout the week to get out the word, and condom paraphernalia.

Of course this week has not been entirely condom loving. With the recent contraception mandate from the Obama administration, requiring all employees to have access to free contraceptives, the social issues crowd is ready to pounce at further encroachments on cultural piety.

The American Life League released a video Monday to coincide with Condom Week, accusing Planned Parenthood of having an “obsession with sex” and trying to turn children into “sex addicts.”

According to a recent tweet from Lifestyles Condoms, about 87 condoms are used every second in America on Valentine’s Day, or as they termed it, “National Condom Day.”

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Caroline May