Condoms OK for Ladies, Too: Pope

OK, OK, everyone can use condoms—but only if you’re trying to prevent HIV. That’s the new word from the Vatican, which today declared that giving HIV to your sexual partner was a greater evil than preventing a possible pregnancy, the AP reports. The statement clarifies the assertion Pope Benedict makes in his new book saying that prostitutes should use condoms to protect their partners from HIV.

The original German version of the book used the masculine word for prostitutes, implying that Benedict might be OK with condoms only for homosexual acts in which they were not being used as contraception. But an Italian translation used the feminine for prostitute. A Vatican spokesman today clarified that the gender wasn’t important. “I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine,” the spokesman said. “He told me no.”