Valentine’s Day gets a lot of credit for romance.
But for me, Valentine’s Day has always been about something more practical—and, frankly, more honest.
For me, before heart-shaped chocolates and Instagram captions, before “sexual wellness” became a polite products category with good branding, Valentine’s Day became the unlikely anchor for a public-health idea that refused to stay quiet. That idea eventually became National Condom Week.
I didn’t invent it from a boardroom or a public health theory of change. I backed into it through a lived experience, curiosity, and a growing discomfort with how casually we treated the consequences of sex.
A Teenager, Three Cases of Condoms, and San Francisco in the ’70s
My first real exposure to condoms wasn’t theoretical. In 1976, while still in high school, I was sent—along with a few other young people from the State of California’s Venereal Disease (get it, VD) Control Unit —to San Francisco’s Annual Hooker’s Ball, a legendary masquerade party; fundraiser for COYOTE, which was a non-profit to support sex workers rights and to decriminalize prostitution. I was there to promote condom use, as epidemic rates of sexually transmitted infections were running unchecked, and increasing rates of unintended pregnancy. I was handed three full cases which was 3,000 condoms and told to distribute them.
I did exactly that.
But, I did manage to pocket a few, and so I brought them back to my high school and started placing them where students would actually see them—inside the sports trophy case. It was mischievous, sure, but it was also effective. People talked. Teachers noticed. The conversation started. Yes, I was found out and had to report to the Vice Principal…”we expect more from you….”
That moment planted a seed: disruptive/ inconsistent visual images changes the narrative, change the course of conversation, changed conversations lead questions, which lead to thinking which may lead to changes in attitudes and behavior.
Free Love, With a Footnote No One Wanted to Read
The cultural story of the 1970s was “free love.” What wasn’t free was the aftermath.
STIs were increasing. And women—especially—were bearing the long-term consequences including unintended pregnancy and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease PID, which was becoming more common, often treated too late, sometimes resulting in infertility and at times death. These weren’t abstract statistics. They were real outcomes that weren’t being talked about honestly.
Sex was being celebrated. Responsibility and consequences wasn’t.
That imbalance bothered me. It still does.
Valentine’s Day, 1977: A Different Kind of Gesture
In 1977, we took the conversation public.
On Valentine’s Day, we set up a table in Union Square, San Francisco’s commercial heart. Once again, alongside public-health workers and women members of the city’s sex worker union, COYOTE, led by Margot St. James. We handed out 1000’s of condoms. We also distributed T-shirts and posters, including, “The Pregnant Man Poster” that asked, “Would you be more careful if it were you that got pregnant”, and a T-Shirt that said, “Keep a Rubber on hand” which had a hand with 5 condoms on each finger and each finger enumerated different symptoms of an STI. We talked to strangers. We made it clear that love without protection was incomplete.
That day became the first National Condom Day.
The date wasn’t accidental. Valentine’s Day already carried emotional weight. We simply added accountability.
College Campuses, Humor, and a Pregnant Man
By 1978, I was in college, at UC Berkeley, and the idea followed me there. Campuses became testing grounds for how far you needed to push people to engage them in thinking and coversation…Trying to create education and behavior change.
The answer, it turned out, was humor.
We created events like the “Dick-athlon”—a condom decathlon featuring blindfolded condom placement, water-filled condom shot puts to show how strong condoms are, and condom blow-up races, designed to show just how large and durable condoms actually are. People laughed first. Then they listened.
We paired that irreverence with arresting visuals. The most effective? The “pregnant man” pageant….Continuing the question “Would you be more careful if it were you that got pregnant? The pageant involved men dressed posturing as pregnant men, and judged by women nurses, including interviews on what might it be like if you did get pregnant. The message cut through: responsibility isn’t gendered.
Why a Day Became a Week
Interest spread quickly. Other colleges wanted the events—but many universities couldn’t officially host them without political consequences. So I traveled, campus to campus, essentially acting as an independent operator.
Logistics did the rest.
You can’t be in Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Long Beachin one day. National Condom Day became National Condom Week out of necessity.
Then HIV Changed the Stakes
When HIV emerged, everything shifted.
The program grew and grew, and before long, hundreds of campuses and public-health organizations across the country were participating.
Condom education went from provocative to urgent. Entire communities—especially gay men who had never been encouraged to use condoms—were suddenly facing life-or-death consequences. Programs expanded fast. Resistance softened. The conversation grew up.
This was no longer about discomfort. It was about survival.
The Moment Mayer Laboratories Was Born
At one point, I wrote a business plan proposing a large-scale public-health condom campaign and took it to the three major condom companies
They passed.
They didn’t need it.
They were already profitable.
That’s when I realized something important: if public health was optional for them, it couldn’t be optional for me.
So, I started my own condom company.
That decision became Mayer Laboratories.
Why National Condom Week Still Matters
Decades later, condoms are better, the packaging more attractive, the access is better. But the fundamentals haven’t changed. STI’s, including HIV/AIDS continue to be at epidemic rates. Unintended pregnancy continues to be a problem, and the responsibility still falls chiefly on women. Sexual wellness is not a public health statistic or theory it is a lifestyle mindset.
National Condom Week was never about gimmicks. It was about telling the truth in a way people could actually hear—sometimes serious, sometimes funny, always human.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, I don’t believe in dressing this up. The real story is better than romance copy.
Love and lovers deserve protection.
Prevention is care and imagined future.
That’s why National Condom Week exists.
And that’s why, all these years later, it still belongs on the calendar.
