"“Dieters slip off their diets. Alcoholics fall off the wagon. Former smokers impulsively light up. Responsible drivers sometimes drive drunk, or fail to buckle up. Couples desperate not to have a child sometimes fail to use birth control. Failure at compliance is not a specifically “gay” problem, and although failure to be perfect can be exacerbated by contributing factors like lack of education, substance abuse, self-hatred, or survivor’s guilt, such failure is not in its deepest sense caused by those factors, at least not for most people. It seems part of many of our natures to be occasionally impulsive creatures who do not always act in our own genuine long-term best interests. In fact, from the perspective of behavior change, the amazing thing about gay men’s rate of condom use is not that it is so low, but that it is so high. Compared to campaigns that attempt to encourage people to quit smoking, or to diet and exercise, or to quit using addictive drugs, campaigns that often measure success in single percentage points, the consistent adoption of condoms by approximately half of all gay men is a remarkable success by almost any behavioral scale.”"