Tuesday, March 20, 2007

What?

Christian comedian Keith Deltano has been performing at a number of high schools in Loudon County, Virginia this year with the intent of pushing abstinence-only education through comedy. How does he do this, do you ask? By dangling a cinderblock over a male students' crotch to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV.



Via Feministing. Emphasis theirs. The words that jumped out at me were, first, "Christian comedian." These are not words I expect to see together that often. I know there are exceptions, but "Christians" lot in life seems to be to demonstrate against comedy and comedians. And assure us all anyone who takes the church to task in any way is a bad person.

And...last time I checked...condoms were very effective against HIV, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases and a little thing I like to call pregnancy. This guys going around telling high school students that they're not?

On the other hand, if this guy's doing comedy to push an agenda, it'll never work. Someone like Stephen Colbert has made his name (and gotten his name on an ice cream flavor) because he's a very funny improv comedian, not because he has an agenda.

Still, sure will be interesting to see the STD/pregnancy numbers from Virginia a few months from now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few years ago I read a piece in the New Yorker about Brad Stine, who is a Christian comedian. Some of his lines were pretty funny, actually. I was very surprised.

Ben Varkentine said...

As I say-I'm prepared to admit there are exceptions. Heck, Stephen Colbert is a practicing Catholic and a teacher of Sunday school.

Still, I just don't find the words "Christian" and "funny" too close together in my dictionary.