Tuesday, October 9, 2007

What I Wouldn't Do With My Spare Millions

(WIWDWMSM for those of you who prefer acronyms)

When I was in MD recently, messages like these were a noticeable presence. They piqued my curiosity.Marriage works? Heck, bank robbery “works” if your aim is to get sacks of cash. Lots of things work, but I don’t see them floating around the city on the sides of buses.

Oh, right, it’s a message about talking about sex, and relationships. I was confused.

It turns out this ad campaign is all about ending teen pregnancy. Which promoting marriage will do, of course. If kids know magical marriage is they will forget about sex, and wait around dreamily for prince charming to propose. Unless they are guys---wouldn’t want them turning out homos--- the guys will stop thinking about sex and start acting responsibly virile. I am so happy I was exposed to this effective, hard hitting campaign. Can’t wait to go get that marriage license.

*****End Sarcasm*****

This is the oddest abstinence until marriage campaign I have ever seen. If you think sex should be reserved for husband-wife procreative uses, just come out and say it. If you care about preventing teen pregnancy, skip the abstinence only message. It doesn’t work. Instead, give kids actual information about sexual health, birth control, and building healthy relationships. If you care about ending poverty, building health families, which the adds certainly hint at, work for better education, day care, health care, anything. Stop wasting money on inane billboards.

It is tempting to poke holes in the message for pages: does marriage alone cause the promised goodies, or are the two just correlated? What if the baby’s dad is a lying sack of sh—t abuser? Does marriage work then? What about same-sex couples who want to get married, but can’t? Instead I will assume the campaign’s shortcomings are obvious and stop now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of the moose, abortion is murder.

Oh wait, is that NOT what we were talking about? Sorry. Sometimes I get confused which illogical rhetoric I'm supposed to be spewing forth judgement about morals around.

What I MEANT to say is that sex is only good for procreation. And the single most morally upright thing any of us can do--especially us women--is attach ourselves to a kind and loving man (or, well, he doesn't have to be kind or loving, just so long as he is, in fact, a man) and fill this overpopulated planet with more babies.

- B

p.s.
especially since OUR overabundance of babies will do better in school than the immoral bastard babies of homosexuals or other sinning, unmarried folks.