Being a swinger does not make catching an STI more likely. There are no public health concerns associated with swinging.

None of the countries that have large numbers of legal swingers clubs (there are 50 in the Netherlands alone and 400 in the USA) report any increase in sexually transmitted infections in the vicinity of swinging premises or in relation to swinging generally.

This is because swingers use condoms for penetrative sex. All swingers clubs have rules about condom use (ours is here) and the irresponsible are excluded. 
 

Surprisingly even before AIDS, when sex in swinging clubs (and everywhere else) was often unprotected, swinging clubs were not high risk areas for STI transmission. The type of people who swung were responsible middle-class couples, usually married and middle-aged, and therefore in the lowest risk groups for having STIs in the first place.

Some other sex scenes have been associated with high STI transmission. In particular, of course, the gay scene has been associated with HIV/AIDS through ‘barebacking’ (unprotected anal sex).

In 2003 speculation began about why sexually transmitted infections were rising among the middle-aged. One of the suggested reasons was swinging and that inevitably grabbed some media attention despite being the least credible of the  probable causes.

The hypothesis – for there has been no research – was that older people have never learned to use condoms because any pre-martital sex in their their past was before the AIDS scare. Unfortunately this contradicts the research that actually has been done on swingers.

Swinging has always been mainly middle-aged, so a further explanation is required as to why this condom-shyness has struck now rather than in previous decades. As we related above, US research suggests not only that middle aged swingers tend to be of a social type that makes them very responsible when it comes to sexual health. It also shows them to be the strata of the population – married and middle class with families - least likely to have STIs to pass on in the first place. There has been no research in the UK.

It is true that swinging has grown at an exponential rate over the last decade in the UK, to between 0.5m and 1m participants. However even if it had grown by 1000%, 1000% of zero infections is still zero. If there had been a previously undetected one or two percent of infections due to swinging, an extrapolation of the same magnitude from this would still not account for the leap in infections.

One form of sexual escapade in particular is being fingered. It is the unfortunately named ‘dogging’ – the practice of couples, especially the female partner, having sex with strangers in car parks at night. Alarmingly, with no proper study and on the basis on anecdotal evidence, the BBC has reported moves afoot to redesign certain carparks in Kent to make dogging more difficult. Instead of ascertaining the truth and if necessary educating people, as was done with gays over AIDS, the knee-jerk instinct is to repress. (Click here to read the BBC's coverage on its website and here to read The Guardian's coverage on its).

When gays and their lifestyle were closely associated with HIV/AIDS, the Government in the 1980s never purged gay culture. It did not close gay clubs or put razor wire around the West Heath in London's Hampstead or Calton Hill in Edinburgh. It improved the situation through a sucessful education campaign. Why should swingers be treated any differently? In France the government runs a permanent, low-level campaign specifically targetted at swingers to remind them to use safe sex at all times.

In fact perfectly adequate explanations for the whole problem were included in the reports, they were just sidelined by the sensationalism of blaming swingers. A survey of Good Housekeeping in April 2003 found that 200 of 500 women over 40 had been unfaithful to their partner – a whopping 40%! The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles shows not only a relatively high turnover of relationships among 35-44s (15% of men and 11% of women had acquired a new partner in the previous 12 months) but that 10% of men and 7% of women in the same age group have been sleeping with more than one partner at the same time. (Click here to read The Times coverage of this as an Adobe Acrobat PDF).

The facts are that the true cause of the rise in STIs is the decay and breakdown of long term monogamous relationships of people in middle age. Swingers’ hands, as it were, are clean. Nevertheless moral authoritarians on the right and sectarian feminists on the left are capable of using the flimsiest pretext to demand action against swingers. Swingers need to be vigilant that misunderstandings, distortions and downright lies about our lifestyle do not get out of hand.