My friend Luis says there’s no such thing as safe sex—and he is living proof. Check this out:
I was born in El Salvador and the thing I remember most is that I didn’t have a father. My parents got divorced when I was two. All my life I looked up to my older brother as my mentor in life. I was always trying to imitate my brother. He got involved in drugs, sex, alcohol and violence at a very young age. At the age of 12, I started having sex. My first time was with a prostitute. My brother’s older friends promised to make me a man through the experience, but instead, I just became a sex addict.
When the prostitute asked if I was ready, I said yes and when we were finished she said, “Next.” So I started treating every girl I slept with that way. That went on until I was 16, when I got my girlfriend pregnant. By the time I found out, she had already had an abortion. We started dating again, and she became pregnant again. This time we got married and moved to the States. I didn’t have an education, so I started working cleaning tables. By the time I was 18, we divorced. I started paying $400 a month in child support.
At 22, I did it again. We were married and within two years, we decided to divorce. There was no love; it was all about the sex. Right when we were deciding to get separated, we found out she was pregnant again. My friend encouraged me to ask my wife to get an abortion because if I didn’t I would have to pay more money. She agreed.
I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but at 29 I did it again. So I had three kids with three different women, killed two babies and was paying child support. It turns out that I wasn’t too different from my brother: He had three kids with three different women.
“Luis says he has five reasons why condoms aren’t safe: his three living kids and two aborted babies, all conceived while he was using condoms.”
One of my deep convictions about American culture is that we are deeply immersed in what I call “the Matrix.” This might sound familiar to you unless you were one of the two people who didn’t see the science fiction cult classic film The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves. The film depicts a futuristic world where human bodies have been suspended in a comatose state while their minds are imprisoned in a world of unreality.
A small resistance group dedicates itself to freeing the human race from captivity. The first episode in the trilogy is my favorite, not just because its themes are analogous to the story of Christ, but also because I believe it’s a pretty fair depiction of our culture on many levels, including our beliefs about sex. Every lie in truth’s clothing that we believe attests to how deeply we are entrenched in the Matrix, and every Naked Truth that is revealed frees us from the lies that keep us trapped in unreality—an unreality that ultimately leads to death and destruction.
If the truth can set you free, how much more will a lie keep you in bondage?
Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying, “The truth shall set you free,” but it was Jesus Christ who said it first. Most people actually misquote this line, because He actually said, “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, NKJV, emphasis added). You can be set free and choose to stay in the cage, but truth makes you free—my job is to turn your cage upside down and shake it until you fall out!
I like to ask my audiences who it was that said, “If you tell a big enough lie, tell it over and over again, over a long enough period of time, the masses of people will begin to believe that it is the truth.”
Needless to say, I get a wide variety of responses including Albert Einstein, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., past and present presidents, as well as an occasional Michael Jackson. But there is usually one extremely bright student who provides an answer that shocks and dismays his fellow classmates: Adolph Hitler.
Though Hitler is credited with this quote, it was actually said by his chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels—but “Hitler” is close enough for me to applaud any student who comes up with this answer!
We have been brainwashed, just like Adolph Hitler brainwashed his own people. Have you ever seen the TV show The Dog Whisperer? This guy, Cesar Millan, is a dog-training expert, and I swear … it seems like he actually knows how to speak Dog (Dog-lish? Dog-ese?). The Dog Whisperer specializes in retraining “bad” older dogs. Do you know why those older dogs are “bad”? Because they weren’t trained properly when they were young!
The best time to train a dog is when he’s young, before he learns bad habits. How do you train him? You tell him what you want to do and then you give him a demonstration of what you want him to do. Over a period of time, given the correct stimulus, he’ll respond exactly the way you’ve programmed him to respond. When you tell the animal to sit, he will sit. When you tell the dog to bark, he will bark. And when you tell him to roll over, he’ll roll over. The Dog Whisperer knows that what you train is what you get.
The naked Truth is that there is no such thing as safe sex. That’s a lie in truth’s clothing.
The way you’re trained is the way you’ll behave. In America, if you’re young, you’re expected to act like an animal, so you have been trained to practice something called safe_____ (fill in the blank). That’s right. They encourage us to practice safe sex— but The Naked Truth is that there is no such thing as safe sex. That is a lie in truth’s clothing. It’s true that condoms are safer than no protection at all, but the safest sex is abstinence, or what some people call “saved sex.”
“Policymakers should be talking about ‘safer sex,’ not safe sex, when speaking of condoms.—Norman Hearst, professor at the University of California at San Francisco1”
A while back, I had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman who is one of the world’s leading authorities on condoms. His name is Dr. Thomas Fitch, also known as The Condom King. Dr. Fitch challenged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and demanded that they release information about condoms to the general public. The information revealed showed that there was no evidence that condoms reduced the risk of HPV infection.2 In other words, condoms were ruled ineffective in preventing the transmission of the most common viral STD.
If you don’t get nothin’ else, I need you to get this: If you decide you are going to start or to continue having sex outside of marriage, there is a 50/50 chance that you will get at least one STD in your lifetime. Odds are that it’s going to be one of the most common STDs, and if it’s a virus, chances are it will be human papillomavirus, or genital warts. It’s the most common viral STD and it is nasty, to say the least. If you get genital warts, you’re going to start growing warts in your genital area. Yeah, and I don’t mean one or two little warts. They grow on top of each other, and they’ll begin to form nodules and clusters that look like broccoli. They’re called condyloma. They make it painful to sit and painful to walk. And they’re most painful when they’re being removed.
A good friend of mine served as a doctor on a naval ship in Southern California. On Fridays, the doctor dedicated the entire day to wart removal for the 20 or so gentlemen who lined up outside his door. Mind you, these were not the same 20 gentlemen every week—it was a revolving door: a different group coming to get their warts removed each week! If you were one of those unlucky men, you’d go into the doc’s office, take off all your clothes and put on that little paper gown with your butt hanging out the back.
Then you’d have to choose which way you want your genital warts removed. First, you could have them burned off with a laser. Or if you prefer, you could have the doctor take an eyedropper and burn each wart off one by one with acid. (If you think that area is sensitive now, just wait till you got acid and laser burns on it. Uh-huh. Remember when you were little and you fell down and you got a booboo? And Momma used to kiss it? Well, she ain’t kissing this one!)
But even after all that pain and misery, you wouldn’t be done. As those burned spots began to heal, scabs would form on top of each one. When the skin heals up, the scab falls off and you’d have perfectly normal-looking skin. But guess what happens over time? The warts grow back. They never die. They just multiply.
The naked Truth is that you can’t tell if you’re going to get genital warts just by looking, and condoms can’t always protect you from getting them.
You may think everything looks all right down there. And maybe, if you’re a guy, you think you’ll just strap on some extra protection—you’ll wear a coupla condoms instead of just one (which isn’t recommended, by the way). But sex is messy, and a condom can’t protect from all the fluids being exchanged. Even if you put on a hundred condoms and none of them happens to tear, leak, break or slip off, and the person that you’re with has the virus … guess what? You can still get genital warts. Everything can look alright down there when a person is between their acid and laser treatments and the skin is healed up, but they can be growing warts on the inside where you can’t see them! Now does that sound like safe sex? I don’t think so. That’s why you’ve got to start making some decisions now about abstinence.
Genital warts aren’t the only reason sex outside of marriage isn’t safe. HIV/AIDS is a pandemic (a disease that is literally devastating whole populations around the world). In the U.S., AIDS gets most of the press, but other STDs are far more contagious. A cut or an abrasion has to be accessible for HIV to get in, but with HPV and a few of the others, skin-to-skin contact is enough to pass on the infection. People think, “Well, it’s all about safe sex, so I’ll put a condom on and everything will be okay.” That is a lie in truth’s clothing. You may be safer, but there are some fatal and deadly STDs that a condom just can’t protect you from.
I was walking to the store the other day and I heard the two girls who work behind the counter talking about what kind of birth control to get—whether an IUD, a Depo-Provera injection or the patch. They were just going on and on and finally I said, “Okay, and what happens when you get AIDS? How is the patch gonna help you?”
The chances of getting an STD are greater than the chances of pregnancy. You can do the patch, the pill, the shot or some other form of birth control, but guess what? None of them are a 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy, and none of them are 100 percent effective in preventing STDs. The only way to guarantee that you will not get pregnant or an STD is abstinence.
One-third of teens in America and two-thirds of all young adults have admitted to having oral sex.
You may be thinking that there are ways around STDs and pregnancy with alternatives like oral sex. Some people try to say that oral sex isn’t sex, but what’s the noun in “oral sex”? Sex! Lots of people think that oral sex is not a big deal. As a matter of fact, one-third of teens in America and two-thirds of all young adults have admitted to having oral sex. But if it’s not a big deal, why is it that every single sexually transmitted disease can be caught by engaging in oral sex?
There is no such thing as safe sex—that’s just a lie in latex clothing. There is such a thing as safer sex, but the only safe sex is to abstain from sex until marriage and marry someone else who has done the same. This notion is not obvious to everyone. It certainly wasn’t obvious the first time I went to testify in Washington, D.C., before a Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Orin Hatch.
I was the director of Athletes for Abstinence, which was a part of A.C. Green’s youth foundation in Los Angeles. (Green played basketball for the L.A. Lakers at the time.) We were preparing to embark on the “It Ain’t Worth It” campaign with a few pro-athlete friends of ours, including NBA All-Star David Robinson (San Antonio Spurs) and All-Pro Darryl Greene (Washington Redskins), the fastest man in the NFL. We received an invitation to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the topic of teen pregnancy. I was sent as the representative and I had no idea what I was in for.
I was the last person to speak in a long line of MDs, PhDs and the former Surgeon General herself, Joycelyn Elders. I was definitely the new kid on the block and everyone’s junior by at least 20 years—I could recognize a token gesture when I saw one. I thought I would be nervous, but on the contrary, I couldn’t wait to sit before our nation’s elected leaders to testify. I had no reason to be fearful or nervous. I had no tenure at a university to lose, I wasn’t the recipient of any government grants that were in jeopardy, and furthermore, I had the truth.
I was not impressed by the testimonies of most of the witnesses. When they were questioned by a few senators, they gave some of the weakest and most contradictory answers I had ever heard. It became quite apparent that this entire day was just a formality … but then my turn came.
My first statement addressed the obvious: The issue is not teens getting pregnant, but teens having sex! Anytime you start with the wrong question, you inevitably get the wrong answer. Because the Senate committee asked the wrong question, “How do we reduce teen pregnancy?” they ended up with the wrong answer: “Let’s teach them how not to get pregnant.”
The former Surgeon General suggested that Norplant (birth control implants) and Depo-Provera should be introduced to inner-city girls, to which I responded, “AIDS doesn’t care about Norplant.” I wasn’t surprised by Dr. Elders’s suggestion, because she was the same person who proposed we teach young people what to do in the backseat of a car, since we teach them what to do in the front seat in driver’s education. Hello! Has she forgotten—or maybe it was not required in her day—that you must be a licensed driver to get behind the wheel of a car? Although she appeared to be an advocate of abstinence, Dr. Elders was actually a strong proponent of “outercourse.”
This may be confusing to some of you. It certainly was to the senators that day, so I took it upon myself to clarify it for them. From Dr. Elders’s office, I acquired a list of about 20 things that she qualified as “outercourse” (an alternative to intercourse). I read all 20 activities aloud to the senators and many turned red from embarrassment. The activities included taking showers together, mutual masturbation and dry humping.3
If you think these few items are offensive—good. These were the least offensive outercourse activities on the list, and Dr. Elders suggested that they should be taught to kids in grades K through 12!
It’s likely that her statements that day were just a few in a long line of comments that ultimately led to her removal from the office of Surgeon General a few weeks later. Many of you may have never heard of Joycelyn Elders, and she is a long-forgotten thought to a few, but trust me—she hasn’t faded away. Just recently she wrote the foreword to a book that suggests that intergenerational sex is acceptable. If you haven’t figured out what this phrase “intergenerational” means, let’s just say Dr. Elders and R. Kelly might get along really well. Or maybe not—I think she is way over his age preference.
Eventually that day in the Senate committee hearing, the elephant under the rug was addressed—the issue of condoms came up. I had to ask the obvious: Why aren’t young people being told the truth about safe sex? I don’t know about you, but when I look up “safe” in Webster’s Dictionary, I read, “free from harm, injury, risk or danger.” If you put the word “safe” next to the word “sex,” the message is that you can engage in sex that is safe from harm, sex that is free from injury, sex that is free from risk, and sex that is free from danger.
Someday soon I’ll turn this point into its own pamphlet. It will be called Oh, Snap!
When asked about the best way to prevent pregnancy and STDs, most people will say condoms. But have you ever read a condom package? Manufacturers won’t say that their product prevents anything. The best you get from one popular brand is “If used properly, latex condoms will help to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV infection (AIDS) and many other sexually transmitted diseases. Also highly effective against pregnancy. Caution: this product contains natural rubber latex which may cause allergic reactions” (emphasis added).
You don’t have to be an English major to note that “help” means assist and “reduce” means lower. Put together, “assist in lowering” doesn’t sound anything like “prevent,” which means stop! It seems to me that the caution warning should go at the beginning of the label, considering the chance of contracting a deadly virus is far greater than having an allergic reaction to rubber latex.
When asked about the safety success rate for condoms, most people will give a 97 to 99.9 percent figure, but from what I understand, this rate is accurate for a laboratory setting. If any of the randomly selected 100 condoms springs a leak when filled with water, it is assumed that the other 98 or 99 are okay. I don’t know of anybody who makes water balloons out of condoms. In the real world, condoms fail anywhere between 8 and 14 percent of the time. The result is usually pregnancy. The younger the user, the higher the failure rate.4
The label on the back of a condom says that it’s effective against “many other STDs,” but they forget to tell you that among the “many,” there are deadly STDs other than HIV/AIDS against which condoms give virtually no protection. Even President Clinton recognized the importance of condom safety. He directed the FDA to ensure that condom labels were medically accurate regarding their overall effectiveness or lack of effectiveness in preventing infection with STDs, including HPV.5
Although certain cosmetics, food, and over-the-counter drugs must be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), condoms—which are the top-recommended barrier between life and death—have yet to see the words “FDA approved” on the packaging.
Does any of this sound safe to you? It may sound safer than nothing at all—but playing Russian roulette with only one bullet instead of a fully-loaded revolver is safer, too. It’s just a matter of time before—Oh, snap!—the condom breaks.
Until recently I would say, “Human papillomavirus, or HPV” and most people would say “HP-huh?” It is a mouthful, but it is far more prevalent in the United States than HIV/AIDS. HPV claims thousands of lives every year.6 In fact, HPV has been detected in virtually all invasive cervical cancers and has been confirmed as the major cause of this cancer.7
The National Cervical Cancer Public Education Campaign asserts that HPV is one of the most common STDs in the United States. An estimated 24 million Americans are infected, with the frequency of infection and disease appearing to increase.8 The CDC notes that “The most reliable means of preventing sexual transmission of genital HPV infection is likely to be abstinence, although non-sexual routes of transmission are possible.”9 In many studies, condoms have been found ineffective to prevent the transmission of HPV.10
You don’t ever hear this on the new HPV commercial: “You can get cancer from a virus? Gee, I didn’t know that.” Of course you didn’t know, because no one is talking about it. They never mention how you get the virus or how you can prevent acquiring the virus.
The U.S. House of Representatives drafted a bill several years ago with a provision mandating that all condoms include a warning label instructing that they are unable to effectively prevent the spread of the human papillomavirus (HPV), which leads to virtually all cases of cervical cancer. These labels would be much like those on cigarette packages warning smokers about lung cancer. Similarly, these warning labels on condom packages would increase the awareness of HPV and cervical cancer, and inform the purchaser that condom use does not protect against HPV infection. But wouldn’t you know it? The bill was opposed by some policymakers who argued such language would create unfounded hysteria and would discourage the use of condoms, which are effective in reducing incidents of “many other STDs.”
Well, what do you know … there’s that phrase “many other STDs” again. Wouldn’t you think that the most common viral STD—which is more contagious than HIV/AIDS—would get a little more respect and maybe some preferential treatment? Not a chance: The Senate passed the bill, but it didn’t include the mandated warning label.11
Every true abstinence educator that I have met takes painstaking efforts to use the same research sources the condom people do: CDC (Center for Disease Control), NIH (National Institute for Health), DHHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), etc. Yet condoms, which have been pushed as “safe sex” for years, are the most medically inaccurate and deceptive notion presented to the American public—particularly its youth, who think of the condom as the silver bullet, the panacea, or what they unwittingly refer to as “protection.”
“If you can’t suppress the truth, destroy evidence of the truth.—Unknown”
All of us in the States have heard about the AIDS pandemic on the continent of Africa, but most of us have never heard of the success story in Uganda: It has experienced the greatest decline in HIV prevalence of any country in the world.12
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Ugandan government, working closely with community and faith-based organizations, delivered a consistent AIDS-prevention message to the Ugandan people: Abstain from sex until marriage, Be faithful to your partner, or use condoms (note the little c) if abstinence and fidelity are not practiced.
I was recently asked by the Ambassador of Uganda to speak at a reception honoring their president, Yoweri Museveni, for his work in AIDS. Hearing him explain the ABc model was vastly different than hearing the pro-condom faction encourage the abC model. To hear them tell it, A, B and C are three equally valid choices, with C being the most logical and effective.
President Musevini explained that ABC is actually ABc, with condoms given the least attention and emphasis. Abstinence until marriage is the main message, then Be faithful in marriage, and last, use condoms for two segments of society: a) married couples who know one is HIV-positive and do not want to risk infecting the uninfected spouse, and b) those who are unlikely to change their behavior, such as prostitutes. Musevini went on to explain that although prostitution was not an acceptable career choice, prostitutes were highly encouraged to use condoms in order that they may survive long enough to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ to change their lives.
Whether or not you agree with his view of condoms as a stopgap measure, all reports agree on one central fact: Abstinence and faithfulness—not condoms—were by far the most important factors in the decline of HIV in Uganda.13 Edward C. Green, a senior research scientist at Harvard and author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention, said, “The Ugandan model has the most to teach the rest of the world.”14
Not long after meeting President Musevini, I had a private dinner with his ambassador to the U.S. at the Ugandan Embassy. I was further astounded by the testimony of Ambassador Ssempala about her nation’s turnaround, and how the youth are the ones who are now leading the way. It blows me away that I have not heard any of this in the main-stream press! All the coverage about the solution to AIDS in Africa has been about condoms.
The Washington Post recently quoted enthusiastic health care workers when they talked about condoms but omitted testimony from government officials about the emphasis on sexual abstinence and faithfulness.15 It seems that it’s popular to ignore the success of the safest sex program in the world, even though there have been numerous independent studies from medical journals and data from such organizations as the Harvard Center for Population and Developmental Studies, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the Ugandan government itself—all documenting the ABc program’s achievements. The effectiveness of this approach has all but been ignored in the U.S. The question is, Why?
“We are being told that only a thin piece of rubber stands between us and the death of our continent.—Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda”
The back of a condom package only offers words of uncertainty: “If used properly, latex condoms will help to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV infection (AIDS) and many other sexually transmitted diseases” (emphasis added). God’s Word, in contrast, offers certainty: “If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed … And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32, NKJV, emphasis added).
If you’re having sex—protected or not—outside of marriage, then you aren’t abiding in His Word, because He is the Word and His Word is the truth. Being a disciple means that you not only mentally assent to what His Word says, but that you live it as well. After all, “discipline” is derived from the word disciple.
The Bible says, “the truth shall make you free.” But there may be a few of you who are still saying, “Well you’ve told me the truth about condoms, and I still don’t think any differently.” If that’s you, think about this: The New Testament was originally written in Greek and has been translated so that we can read it in our own language. The Greek word for “know” in this passage means to have intimate fellowship with—fellowship so intimate, in fact, that it is the same word for intercourse, as in “Adam knew Eve.” To “know” the Truth intimately (that is, the Word of God, Jesus) requires you to be intimate with Him in a way that demands exclusivity—that you don’t know anybody else (besides your spouse after marriage). If you are in bondage to sex, you aren’t free to know the Truth.
If you are an unmarried professing Christian and you are having sex, there is some bondage breaking that needs to happen, because Jesus not only came to forgive our sins but to also set the captives free. Many people know that “Thou shall not commit adultery” is the seventh commandment—but are you living it?
• Is there such a thing as safe sex? Why or why not?
• Why do you think people believe the lie that sex can be safe? What would you say to someone who believes in safe sex?
• List two facts about STDs that you didn’t know before you read this chapter. How do those facts affect your attitudes toward abstinence?
• Why isn’t oral sex safe? What would you say to someone who believes oral sex is safe?
• What changes do you need to make in your life to make abstinence part of your lifestyle?
Prominently Display “Clank!”
When you subscribe to “Clank!” Security it should be apparent to your friends, to your family and to those you date, and evident in your walk, talk, dress, attitude and actions in public and behind closed doors that you are on “Clank!”
Keep Doors Closed
This means zip your pants and keep them zipped. If you prefer your doors to sag, at least pull them up over your jewels where the lock cannot be picked. Shorts and skirts should be longer than a belt, and we should not be able to read the year printed on a quarter in your back pocket. Furthermore, button up your not-see-through, correct-sized blouse over your cleavage. In other words, cover up your stuff!
Protect Yourself Against Sticky Fingers
People who own valuable possessions don’t put them out for just anyone to handle with unclean hands or other parts of their body. If you don’t want a disease, don’t have sex with someone who has a disease. Just because they say “Hey, it’s all good” and everything looks okay, don’t believe them—they might be lying or they may not even know they are infected. Those who subscribe to “Clank!” require blood tests before they get married and have sex.
Limit Entrance to Those in Possession of Key
Entrance = legal marriage. Key = wedding ring. No ringy, no dingy! Until you say, “I do,” zip it up, lock it down, clank-clank! All other protection systems or devices are less than 100% guaranteed!
Clank! is the only family jewel security system that insures 100% protection against Americas’ Most Unwanted STDs and pregnancy.
itchy pus-filled scabs, bumps, warts, frothy yellow-green burning discharges, painful legions, rashes, sores, swollen testicles, infertility and maybe even death, we recommend the “Clank!” Security System.
WARNING: If you violate any of these security measures, you may deactivate “Clank!” Such breach may compromise the security system, leaving you vulnerable to any of the physical consequences of sex outside of marriage.