On October 9, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council on the Family, said that condoms don’t protect against AIDS. There was an immediate uproar from some quarters of the scientific community. The next day, Dr. William Donohue debated this issue on the “Today” show with Dr. Desmond Johns, Director of the Joint U.N. program on HIV/AIDS. Here is a sample of what Donohue said:

      • “If condoms work so well, then we should see a decrease in STDs [Sexually Transmitted Diseases], right? After all, there’s been an increase in condom use over the last 10 years throughout the world, and yet we’ve had an explosion of STDs. You take the case of Uganda. The only success story in all of Africa is Uganda. And guess what? On the advice of the pope, they took the Catholic Church’s position and they have an abstinence program.”

      • “Did you ever read what the CDC [Center for Disease Control] says about the 15 steps [of correct condom use]? Now look, we don’t live in the world of the laboratory, we live in the world of a back seat of a Chevy with some 15-year-old kid who’s drunk out of his mind and he’s going to go through the 15 steps? The same kid who can’t even do his homework, who’s probably illiterate, but he’s going to go through 15 steps and say, ‘Is there enough air at the tip of the condom, honey? Did you make sure that you cut your fingernails this morning so you don’t have another hole in the condom?’ I mean, it’s about time the scientific community caught up with the morality of the Catholic Church because not only is it morally right to preach abstinence, it works.”

      • “The primary reason why Uganda’s a success and stands out, along with Senegal and Zambia, is because they emphasize abstinence. Look, we don’t say to kids, ‘Don’t drink and drive, but in the event you do, make sure you have some coffee and wear that seat belt.’ We tell them not to do it. We tell them not to smoke, we tell them not to drink we tell them not to take drugs.”

      • “Why don’t we have warning labels on condoms? There’s a 30 percent failure rate. We have labels on cigarettes and beer, why not on condoms?”

         

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