Another option
January 31, 1991
The Student Wellness Resource Center has adopted a closed-minded stance on the issue of preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
Their banner, “YOU DECIDE: STDs or Condoms,” does not acknowledge abstinence as a viable (not to mention the safest) alternative for preventing STDs.
Their “Question of the Day” was: Which of these is the best way to prevent STDs? The choices were: a) use condoms; b) stay out of the hot tub; c) limit your number of sexual partners.
When I tried to answer c) with the qualifier “limit to zero” they refused to accept my answer and would not enter me in their movie ticket contest.
This action demonstrates a blatant bias against those students and faculty who enjoy the benefits of living by Christian morality.
Why would they not accept my answer? Is it because they expect people to have sex so why fight it? Is it because they can’t acknowledge abstinence because of its “religious” implications (God forbid we take the safest route!)?
Or do they have an agenda to degrade God’s beautiful gift of sexual expression into a recreational activity?
Whatever their reasoning, their action is clearly discriminatory and shows a severe lack of judgment. Presumably, the correct answer to their question was a) use condoms. Yet the best condoms are only ninety percent effective.
Would you drive a car on which the brakes worked nine out of ten times, never knowing when that one-in-ten chance would come up? Would you fly with an airline on which ten percent of their flights crashed?
The center is asking the students to play passion roulette with their bodies. If we are to be a campus that honors diversity, then abstinence should be promoted as a viable and the safest alternative to preventing STDs.
Scott Stocking
Campus Minister