Have you seen the condom advertisements on television? In one ad, a handsome 26-year-old man says he only dates nice women but wants to be “safe.” The camera dissolves to the condom package. In another ad, an attractive young woman says she wants to love but is not willing to die for it.
The networks were initially hesitant. They spoke of “bad taste,” saying the public was “not ready.” Their critics said this reflects “an appalling indifference” to public-health needs, AIDS is spreading rapidly.
Indeed it is, but advertising condoms on television is the wrong way to fight this alarming epidemic. Two arguments against the ads come to mind: (1) the rationale for the ads contains a significant inconsistency; and (2) a crucial assumption of the rationale is false.
Promoting The Cause Of Aids
The rationale for advertising condoms sounds noble enough. One way to slow the spread of AIDS is to inform the public how condoms can prevent this disease. But who needs to be informed about condoms and about the dangers of extramarital intercourse and homosexual activity? Novices do! Mainly, that means adolescent youngsters who are just beginning to discover their sexuality. At a time when they are forming attitudes about their new-found desires, along comes a direct message from the most powerful medium of our culture: “As long as you use a condom you’ll be safe.” To provide further motivation, the ads picture handsome, articulate men or women who talk about condoms without looking stupid or embarrassed. But by glamorizing the use of condoms, the ads inevitably glamorize the act in which they are used. They make it appear that sex is just another recreational activity, no different than tennis or skiing.
So here is the inconsistency: In an effort to promote safe sex, condom ads indirectly condone and promote behavior that makes AIDS spread: sexual promiscuity.
The Myth Of Safe Sex
But there is another problem with the condom ads. The basic assumption of “safe sex” contradicts both biblical teaching and the moral judgment of centuries of Western culture. It is naïve to consider an act safe just because there is only a remote possibility it will make you sick. Human personhood is much deeper and more significant than what is merely physical. Only a superficial view of human life says a person will be safe if he avoids a physical disease while pursuing acts that civilization has overwhelmingly called immoral and that the Bible indicts as dishonoring our Creator.
Perhaps without knowing it, the proponents of condom ads have expressed the theological conviction that God, if he exists, is at best affirming, and at worst indifferent, toward sexual promiscuity. This conviction flies in the face of biblical teaching that says extramarital sexual intercourse and homosexual activity are not only immoral, but are also destructive to personhood. It violates the beautiful purpose of God for sexual relations, which is to deepen and gladden the union of man and woman in marriage.
Treating Humans With Respect
Suppose teenagers suddenly turned to “electric dancing” as a form of new-wave recreation. Kids scramble over barbed-wire fences in order to climb on high-powered transformers and do their thing. Then imagine a handsome young man or woman appearing on a television ad urging the kids to wear rubber gloves and Hushpuppies so they will not get electrocuted. Is this really different from advertising condoms to promote “irresponsible” sexual promiscuity?
How can Christians endorse advertising that treats people like jellyfish carried helplessly along on the tide of their sexual drives? Should we not cultivate nobler principles to govern our appetites and channel our desires in appropriate relationships of commitment and loyalty, trust and permanence?
Ironically, the national networks have used this same approach with another social problem. Antidrug campaigns appeal to youngsters as morally accountable human beings who can choose to say no to self-destruction. Why not take this higher view of personhood and apply it to the case of condom ads? Why not start a nationwide campaign urging people to say no to sexual promiscuity and making plain the penalties for saying yes?
And the penalties are worse than the ad makers realize. The young woman says she wants to love but is not willing to die for it. Really? Then let the ads also show not only the penalties that nature is beginning to exact for immorality in this life, but also the penalties that God will impose in the age to come (1 Cor. 6:9).
By John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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