In an article today in The Washington Post, Exodus board member and Ohio antigay activist Phil Burress argues that drugstores should lock up condoms.

Citizens for Community Values — which promotes abstinence as the answer to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies — applauds adding steps to buying condoms.

“I’d rather see them locked up,” said Phil Burress, president of the organization. “It’s a lie that condoms prevent all sexually transmitted diseases anyway. People should be educated about that and practice abstinence.” But there is little impartial evidence of measurable benefits from abstinence-only policies, say scientists.

Burress pointed to a 2001 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases report showing that condoms aren’t effective in preventing the spread of the human papillomavirus (HPV). But, according to the NIAID report, condoms are considered effective against unwanted pregnancy (86 to 97 percent), HIV/AIDS (85 percent) and gonorrhea in men (49 to 74 percent).

Burress’ political agenda is to make sex dangerous. While responsible sex educators promote abstinence, monogamy, and prophylaxis in that order, Burress promotes two extremes: Abstinence — or sickness and death. Burress shows little mercy toward those who are drawn to have sex prior to marriage or spouses whose partners are HIV-positive.

CCV’s web site says the organization is “associated with Focus on the Family as a Family Policy Council in Ohio.” The web site does not reflect a broad concern for community values. The site’s choice of topics suggest a morally selective and relativist fixation on homosexuality and pornography.

Given the organization’s opposition to safeguards for those who either struggle with sexual compulsion or who choose not to abide by fundamentalist Christian sexual mores, it would appear that CCV does not uphold community values; it upholds a merciless culture of disease and death.

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