a missed opportunity?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jul 29, 2007

Enlightened Australia has decided it's more concerned than the Church for the well-being of her youth. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Catholic Church says it will not co-operate with any safe-sex campaign to educate 500,000 young pilgrims expected to flock to Sydney for Australia's biggest religious event.

The NSW Department of Health will have to go it alone if it wants to develop and disseminate any messages about safe sex, including information on HIV and sexually transmittable diseases, which it provided for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Gay Games and the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. ...

The church's "head in the sand approach" has drawn criticism from the Greens MP Lee Rhiannon, who described its position as dangerous and said it missed an important opportunity to send a message of lifelong safe practices to young participants.

If your child abides by Church teaching on sexuality, he's statistically more likely to be elected President-for-Life of Botswana than incommoded by STDs. Yet the bogus "we are all at risk" campaign is indispensable to the project of rebranding moral recklessness as responsible sexuality. By treating World Youth Day on a par with the Gay Games and the Gay-Lesbian Mardi Gras, and by scolding the Church for negligence, the public health syndicate betrays the rank insincerity of its motives, but also encroaches ever closer onto the Church's independence. It won't have a pretty ending.