When it comes to the Clinton Administration’s new and controversial condom ads, it’s clear that this out-of-touch administration is not providing a solution to AIDS or anything else, but that government itself is part of the problem. It’s hard to say what’s the worst thing about the spots – that they are disgusting to watch, degrading to our nation, dishonest about the facts, or downright ridiculous.
AIDS Czarina Christine Gebbie said on television that the ads are targeted at young adults, age 18 to 25, not teenagers. She didn’t say how she plans to keep teenagers from seeing them.
Maybe put on a warning label that says, “Kids, don’t look!”? Actually, it’s hard to see how the animated condom jumping out of the dresser drawer could appeal to anyone other than children.
The radio ad featuring Red Hot Chili Pepper rock singer Anthony Kiedis, known for appearing naked before audiences, had to be killed when the Administration discovered that he had been convicted of sexual battery. Obviously, he was just the kind of person the Clinton Administration would select to do a radio ad advising young adults on sexual behavior. Selecting Kiedis makes as much sense as choosing Joycelyn Elders to advise children about illegal drugs.
In addition to being embarrassing and silly, the Clinton TV ads make false claims, such as Kiedis’s assurance that “You can be naked without being exposed.” And, of course, in real life, condoms don’t jump out of the dresser drawer at the strategic moment, nor do they always prevent AIDS, as promised.
Ms. Gebbie estimated that condoms reduce your chance of getting AIDS to one in 20.
Those are not very good odds for a fatal disease; you would never fly in a plane if your chances of crashing were one in 20.
The basic theme of the tax-funded ads is “It would be nice if latex condoms were automatic. But since they’re not, using them should be.” This policy implements Joycelyn Elders’ remark that every girl should carry a condom in her purse when she goes out on a date.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter launched a White House Conference on Families, supposedly to study and make recommendations to help the family. It’s a good example of how government spends money but fails to deal with social problems.
One of the Conference’s principal themes was to give official government recognition to what was called the “diversity of families.” Pontificating that the Conference was responding to “a changing world” in which “American families are pluralistic in nature,” the Commission boasted that it respected “differences in structure and lifestyles.”
It was well understood that those code words meant redefining the family to include any group of persons living together, rather than just persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The Conference’s purpose was to give social dignity to alternate lifestyles, including unmarried cohabiting and homosexual couples.
The Conference report made a passing mention of the increase in female-headed households, but certainly did not imply disapproval. In the list of concerns expressed by delegates, adolescent pregnancy came in 20th, and illegitimacy did not even rate a mention.
The recommendations produced by the White House Conference on Families all centered around liberal “solutions”: putting mandates on employers, setting up taxpayer-financed daycare, and monitoring discrimination against tenants on account of sexual preference.
With all that expenditure of taxpayer money, the salaried time of bureaucrats and so-called experts, plus massive media coverage, the Conference failed to discover the biggest single problem with families – the steady increase in illegitimate children doomed to grow up without fathers in the home. To the contrary, practically everything connected with the White House Conference was directed at legitimizing the illegitimate under the labels of “diversity” and “pluralism.”
Conscientious liberals have recently discovered (as though it were invented in the 1990s) that illegitimacy is, indeed, the major social problem that drives all other problems. This awakening first came with the publication of the Atlantic cover article “Dan Quayle Was Right” (about Murphy Brown), though, of course, the liberals wouldn’t admit it before the 1992 election.
Politicians and pundits from Bill Clinton to newspaper columnists are now opining that fatherless families are a disaster for our nation and cause many social problems. Illegitimacy has reached the depressing national rate of 30 percent (68 percent for blacks and 22 percent for whites).
It is tragic that the Clinton Administration’s tax-funded television and radio ads give further government approval to promiscuous lifestyles by preaching the message that any kind of sex is normal and safe if only you always use a condom.
Like Jimmy Carter’s White House Conference in 1980, the Clinton Administration is promoting promiscuous policies and behaviors that aggravate the problem of forming and maintaining intact families. The only difference is that the Clinton messages are more absurd.
