The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (full disclosure: that's my day job) and Catholics for Choice recently ran two Spanish language radio ads in NYC, scheduled in conjunction with World AIDS Day.
You can listen to the two ads here and here, but here is a summary:
The radio ads appeal to people of faith with one of the 60-second spots noting that: "I'm Catholic and there is nothing more important to me than protecting family and love. That's why I talked to my grandson about condoms."The first ad features a grandmother speaking about her grandson, a gay man, who hears that Catholics are not supposed to use condoms. She tells her grandson, "I took care of you because I love you and if you love that man, you'll take care of him, too."
The second ad features a couple and models language that couples can use when discussing the importance of love, faith and condom use in their relationship. The ad concludes, "We are Catholics and people of faith and we know sex is sacred and that we need to take care of each other. And this means using a condom every time we have sex."
Pretty tame right? Well not according to Univision. They refused to run the ads on three of their radio stations in NYC, despite the fact that these organizations were willing to pay for them. To add insult to injury, Univision recently received an Cable Positive award for their work on HIV prevention with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Apparently HIV prevention is cool, but talking about condoms is a no go? Or maybe it was the queer theme of the first ad that caused the rejection.
Anyways, if you want to send an email to the President and COO of Univision Radio telling him he should run the ads, go here.
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I'm not surprised at Univision's reaction to these ads but I am THRILLED that someone has even attempted to bring this message to the Catholic community. Here in South Texas STD rates and infidelity run rampant yet discussion of safe sex and condoms is considered taboo. Amazing.
Actually, I doubt it was the queerness that made them reject you. It was probably tieing the organization Catholics for Dhoice with condom use. Don't want to piss off the more mainstream Catholics by possibly suggesting that the chruch as a whole believes in condom use because a small group of their members do.
Catholics for Choice would itself qualify as a small group of people, since most Catholics are not members, and the number of Catholics who agree with the group's positions is going to vary depending on the issue.
Anyway, I agree with Annie W (below). This kind of ad is definitely a job for a HEALTH-related group, and not a political group within a particular religious tradition.
I love that they can't TALK about condom use but Univision can SHOW the skirts at eye-level of women news reporters sitting at their desks. I mean you really can see up their skirts! I know it's hot in Mexico but they don't have to make the news desks open in the front. Disgusting. I'm happy they had a Catholic condom ad even produced though, I've never heard of that before.
Unless the message comes from the Pope himself, I don't think they are doing anyone any favors trying to connect condoms and Catholicism. Univision is right to not air the ads for ONLY that reason.
Approaching condom use, safer sex, etc. should definitely be promoted, but it should not be done by implying that a specific religion is promoting it, when the Catholic church definitely is not. Planned Parenthood or some other similar organization would do better messenger, unfortunately for Catholics for Choice.
Safer sex for all!!!
I have to disagree. Catholics for Choice represents a large constituency of Catholics who disagree with the Pope and the Church's positions on reproductive rights and condoms.
They have the right to express their views as Catholics (and people of faith) despite what the Church might say. If CFC didn't have a constituency that wanted their opinions represented, they wouldn't be an organization with funding to organize things like these ads.
Are you actually disagreeing with what I said about CFC being a small minority? In real numbers, the members of CFC are just a fraction of the overall membership of the Church, that's what I meant.
Univision doesn't want to run ads that will offend a majority of traditional Catholics. It's simple. If CFC wants to run ads, they should be smarter. You can have the same ad, and talk about how important family is, and how sex is sacred, but just NOT say, "I am Catholic."
Problem solved. The language will still appeal, and it will cause fewer problems.
But I still think that an ad in this vein ought ot be put out by a health organization. If CFC wants to run something saying, "We are CFC and we disagree with Church teaching," then I am all for it.
Geez I hate online writing sometimes. Rereading, it sounds like I am taking offense when I write, "Are you actually disagreeing...". But what I meant was, are you in actuality replying to my comment, rather then Annie W's.
Anyway....
This is quite ironic for me.
At my college campus we had a World AIDS Day event in which student health organizations distributed condoms, dental dams, and information as well as providing free, confidential, painless HIV testing. There was a lot of local news coverage.
Univision was here and I got interviewed because I was the only person who speaks Spanish, even though I was tabling for the Women's Center where I intern.
They had me hold up a basket full of condom roses and give them statistics about HIV and AIDS and explaining why we were there as well as asking me how people respond to the subject of AIDS and the distribution of condoms.
I tried to be as accurate as possible in my statistics and honestly answered as to why we were there and told her that unfortunately there is still shame from young people when we offer condoms to them or information and the need to take away the taboo off sex and birth control to prevent further spread of HIV and AIDS and actually save lives.
It was a quite unbiased interview where I got to say what I felt.
I do have a love-hate relationship with Univision though. While there are shows with scantly clothed women, some of their programming isn't as bad and shows true concern for the Latino community. At the same time, every time I see/hear someone talking about Spanish television programming as ridiculous, with a bunch of salsa dancers and scantly clothed women I get pretty freaking pissed because English programming in the US is not too far ahead with over the top reality shows where people humiliate themselves, softcore porn...etc.
It's always easy for people, even progressive people to often point out sexism in Spanish television (same with hip-hop) without really looking into White-dominated programming/rock/country music that also feature sexism.
And for the record, not all of Mexico is hot, please don't make assumptions based on offensive stereotypical representations of countries from the media.