Safe sex campaign fails
Sent to us from a UK Briefing reader:
In a BBC news report on 25 November, 2004, one of the top stories concerned the serious rise in the occurence of sexually transmitted diseases in the UK. Statistics reveal that there were over 705,000 new cases in 2003, and the BBC website says the rate of infection is “soaring”. There were the usual calls for more openness about sex in society (more? Is that possible?) to help people understand the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, but predictably nothing about the moral basis in which sex might be taught or talked about. Significantly, the news report concluded by stating that the safe sex message of the mid 1980s “had failed”.
I remember that campaign in 1986. It came as awareness of the real nastiness of HIV Aids was just beginning to grow and methods of containing it were desperately being sought. The condom was hailed as the answer—“have sex, but make sure it's safe”. Of course, this advice was given without any moral foundation for sexual relationships. One Radio One DJ even said that you couldn't expect people not to sleep around—“This is the twentieth century, after all”—and he mocked what he saw as the foolishness of a young woman who said she wouldn't carry a packet of condoms in her handbag because she had no intention of sleeping around. The inadequacy of the safe sex message was glaring, but not many people took any notice of the Christian response to the problem.
Well, the chickens have come home to roost and they are not a pretty sight. And because government policy steadfastly refuses to take any moral stance on the issue, proposed alternative solutions are likely to be equally ineffective. The report said that “a new campaign to shock is on its way”—all the gory details, I suppose, about STDs and what they do to you. But similar shock tactics concerning the effects of smoking have been singularly ineffective in the UK, so these are hardly likely to have much effect. Are we going to see another admission in fifteen years of another failure? Almost certainly. But will the nation then realise that God's way is both right and good? We can only pray.
The news item in question came be seen on the BBC website at this page—click on the ‘Watch BBC News in Video’ link at the top of the page.