(CNSNews.com) – The Miss Universe pageant and an AIDS prevention group are under fire for staging a “Condom Olympics” for contestants just three days prior to last Sunday’s competition in the Bahamas.
Population Services International (PSI) created the “competition,” which was held in Nassau, and included games where the beauty queens “tested the limits of condom breakage by filling condoms with water and blowing them with air until they burst.”
Alyssa Cordova of the Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute, a conservative women’s organization, slammed the event.
“These ‘Condom Olympics’ seem quite counterproductive to raising awareness of the seriousness of HIV,” Cordova told CNSNews.com. “Instead of emphasizing the severity of the AIDS pandemic, the Miss Universe organization has instead chosen to make a game out of it.”
Marshall Stowell, director of communications at PSI, defended the program, noting that the pageant contestants were put through the exact same training that PSI uses in countries around the world.
“Many times we use games or situations that are friendly to young people, and also friendly to people who are illiterate or of low literacy so that we can deliver life-saving messages in a way so that they understand it,” Stowell said, in and interview with CNSNews.com.
Asked about the multiple condom inflation games, he said, “The point of all of those games is to teach the participants, whether they be youth in-country or the Miss Universe contestants, the proper technique for using a condom, because part of HIV prevention is correct and consistent condom use.”
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, the largest women’s membership group in the U.S., noted the fact that PSI was founded by Phil Harvey, who is president of Adam and Eve – the largest mail-order sex toy and pornography business in the United States.
“They are using young women to promote products for PSI and for the pornography industry,” Wright said in an interview with CNSNews.com.
“They’re using women to display – publicly display – sex related objects, and in essence it becomes like a product endorsement as well,” she added.
Wright also expressed concern for the pageant contestants involved.
“I think the parents of these young women should be quite concerned,” she said, “I think many of these young women may not be mature enough yet to realize that they’re being used to promote not only a product, but also to promote an activity that will likely lead to the people that they’re trying to help becoming more vulnerable to getting HIV-AIDS.”
The “games” did include one which focused on abstinence and faithfulness to one sexual partner, but Wright told CNSNews.com she was “unconvinced” that the organizers were truly interested in promoting either of those subjects.
“By including one game that would promote abstinence among many other games that don’t, that actually encourage promiscuous sexual activity, then it’s a way for them to try and put on a good public face and perhaps even to obtain government funding that should be going to true abstinence programs,” Wright said.
Stowell, meanwhile, said that his organization teaches abstinence, but that condom use must also be taught as a way of avoiding HIV infection in certain circumstances.
“Clearly abstinence is the only way, 100 percent, to avoid HIV infection,” he said. “But if you’re dealing with women that are, for instance, sex workers, that are extremely poor, very uneducated, and have either been trafficked or drugged or in the sex industry – abstinence is not the right message for them.”
Wright, meanwhile, said that the “Condom Olympics” was “a horrible reflection” on the Miss Universe pageant – “that they would offer up the young women who in the program as, in essence, objects to promote ideology and projects that don’t have evidence of reducing HIV-AIDS, but are encouraging activity that would lead to people getting HIV-AIDS.”
Cordova said she sees the “Condom Olympics” as a reflection of larger trends within society.
“This, sadly, comes as no surprise,” she said, “because our culture is notorious for making light of sexual issues. The Left -- particularly the feminist movement -- encourages sexually promiscuous behavior among young women by condemning and ridiculing those who choose to abstain from sex until marriage and glorifying women who engage in casual sex as ‘progressive’ or ‘modern.’ It is no wonder the young women in this pageant seemed so comfortable making balloon condoms.”
The Miss Universe pageant, which is owned by Donald Trump, chose Miss Venezuela, 18-year-old Stefania Fernandez, from among 84 contestants to be the newest Miss Universe last Sunday.