WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (LSN) – A British condom manufacturer Durex, which made nearly $50 million in profits last year largely from the sale of condoms,has decided to fund Jane Fonda in her campaign against the American government efforts to teach children about sexual abstinence rather than contraception.
Congress voted last year to spend $50 million a year over the next five years on sexual education programmes that focus exclusively on abstinence. This action was undertaken since the simple message of saying “no” to sex is confused if children are simultaneously told about the pill, condoms, and other contraceptives.
Fonda appeared on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America touting her paid-for message, “Abstinence until marriage is based on a world that isn’t out there’‘. When asked about the condom company’s involvement she said “The company was stunned, as many Americans were, that the government . . . is giving $50 million a year for five years to states for abstinence-until -marriage programmes’‘. Finally she pontificated, “Most Americans don’t know their tax money is being used for that [and] most don’t want it.’‘
In response Senator Lauch Faircloth said: “Ms Fonda and the Durex company have . . . completely missed the point. Most programmes which promote ‘safe sex’, as does Truth for Youth (Fonda’s new venture), assume they will ‘do it anyway’ and try to minimise the damage. It’s more effective to try to prevent out-of-wedlock sexual activity in the first place. Everybody is not doing it.”