Parents Outraged that Boston Schools are Giving Out Rubbers With Jokes on the Wrappers
The Globe – The Boston public school system, as it prepared to make condoms available to students at all its high schools last fall, received what seemed like the perfect donation from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health: 40,000 free condoms. But now the system is pulling the donated contraceptives from its schools after some parents raised questions about whether the messages and images on the wrappers are appropriate for teenagers, even as they voiced support for the condom-distribution policy. The wrappers featured such messages as “One lucky lady,” “hump one,” and “tasty one,” which was accompanied by picture of a shark preying on a small fish.
One outraged mother took to Twitter Tuesday night, posting a picture of some of the condoms along with this request: “looking for BPS administrators to explain why this packaging is OK.” She also e-mailed the governor and the mayor. “Right idea, wrong execution,” the mother, Stephanie Bode Ward, said in an interview Wednesday, blaming the state… The state Department of Public Health said in a statement…”We support BPS’s decision to replace these condoms with neutrally packaged condoms.”… Concern over the condom wrappers started brewing a few weeks ago. Helen Dajer… who supports distributing condoms but thought they would be in plain wrappers. “As a mother of three teenagers, there was no way I wanted my kids to be given condoms with those wrappers.” Davin Wedel, president Global Protection Corp., the Boston-based company that made the condoms… said the company makes other designs that would be more appropriate for high school students. “It’s a quick thing to fix, and we would love to be part of that by donating replacements,” Wedel added. Parents said they are pleased school officials are replacing the offending condoms and that the program will continue.
The transformation is complete. We officially live in Bizarro World now. Parents, school officials, the DPH, the condom company… everyone… is so on board with their teenage girls getting porked by somebody else’s teenage boys, they’ll give them free rubbers and put them on the taxpayer’s bill. But only just so long as the wrappers don’t have jokes on them. That’s an outrage. That’s where you’re crossing a line. You can have sex, you just can’t talk about it like it’s funny. Look, in no way, shape or form am I debating the topic of condoms in schools. Just reading the article I invented 200 new ways to not give a good godamn if Stephanie Bode Ward’s daughter is getting creampied or Helen Dajer’s three precious snowflakes are getting bukkaked. I don’t have a dog in the fight. But their concern is with wacky packaging? Why? Because making jokes about sex might lead to… sex? Call me naive, but I’m pretty sure by the time your kid is grabbing a handful of Magnums out of the fishbowl in the nurse’s office, the horse is out of the barn. I seriously doubt there’s a single Boston public school kid who’s going to say “Geez, I was on the fence about this whole ‘swiping my V-card’ thing. But ‘hump one’ is pretty funny. Since it made me laugh, I guess I have no choice but to be sexually active. Newsflash: Sex is funny. It’s been funny ever since it was invented. Even back when Stephanie Bode Ward and Helen Dajer were getting knocked up in the back of some kids’ Mustang in the school parking lot. I have no idea how much 40,000 condoms cost, but you might better off keeping the supply and putting that money into… oh, I don’t know… teaching kids to read and do math, maybe. Or better yet, educating their moms to lighten the hell up and find some cause to worry about that’s not idiotic. @JerryThornton1