The Creation of Adam is a fresco painted on the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo some time around 1511 that depicts the story in Genesis of God breathing life into Adam. This painting in Vatican City is probably one of the most famous paintings in the world and was restored in the late 80′s early 90′s, and is now being used by the University of Georgia in the form of a flyer tacked up in the students dorms to educate and promote the use of condoms. All other issues aside, are we to think that university level students are unaware of a condom and its use?
Apparently UGA finished up Sexual Responsibility Week this past week (this is something we are now doing in higher education?) and this poster was created to promote… sexual health and created this STD(?) poster/flyer. It reads:
Condom Tip #5, Carefully open condom wrappers with your fingers – don’t use a sharp object.
I guess people will use anything now in the promotion of a product, but do we care any more, but this was an ad put out by the University of Georgia, not some marketing group. There will be no outrage for this because it is not making fun of the Koran, Islam, or the Muslim faith of any kind. If that were the case, people would be sued, fired, and apologies issued (although I do see that the University of Georgia has since apologized in some manner). There is just nothing that is out of bounds in the worldly view when ridiculing or making fun of the Christian faith, so this shouldn’t be much of a surprise to Believers.
The Catholic League is none to happy about it and apparently released this statement.
“I hasten to add that the University of Georgia would never choose a depiction of Muhammad to hawk condoms. Indeed, only a few years ago an inoffensive depiction of this Islamic figure in a Danish cartoon led to murder and churches being burned to the ground. One can only imagine what would have happened had he been portrayed pushing condoms to youth.”
Question is I guess, do we really care anyway? After all, I did find a similar likeness used by the Simpson’s, although they weren’t being portrayed promoting a form of birth control. We know this will never change until the new heaven and new earth are upon us? A quick scour of the left wing blogs give quite a flippant view, but I haven’t really found to much outcry against such use of the historical painting. Should we care?
I would hope that our hometown school of Auburn University would restrain from such use but they did feel it was necessary last year to have a gay pride day and parade for Auburn last year, so I guess I would take the flyer over promoting a lifestyle (being that there was no heterosexual pride parade but that’s a whole other set of topics all together).
Being somewhat interested in design and marketing in today’s web 2.0 world, I would love to know what department created this flyer in the first place. It looks and reads like a 1960′s ad… is this all we can come up with on a University level these days?
I would think at this point the University of Georgia has taken the flyers down from their dorms but if not, I would love to hear from a UGA dorm student or anyone that can email over a higher quality image of the flyer. If so, send it on to my email address scott.fillmer [at] gmail and I will post it here instead of the one above.
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