Microsoft founder Bill Gates has offered a $1 million reward to anyone who can create the ‘next generation condom’.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are offering to pay $100,000 in start-up costs to an inventor who modernizes the “life-saving tool”, while promising to provide further funding of up to $1 million. Condoms have been proven effective as preventers of disease, including AIDS. Men are not using them for a number of reasons, one of the most prominent ones being that they reduce the pleasure of sex. Gates thinks that if a condom can be developed that prevents disease and increases the sexual experience, it will more likely be used. I think that’s a great idea in the effort of bringing down epidemics, particularly in Africa.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Catholics, who, due to the recent change of popes, have gotten a lot of press. The Catholic Church has its own millennia-old hangups with anything sexual, as long as it’s the sex of other people, Catholics or not.  Here are some hilarious statements by men of power in the Catholic Church:

Bishop Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, secretary-general of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, stated that the use of condoms “always” occurs “within a context of immorality” and “can never be recommended. [Catholic News Agency, “Pope did not legitimize condom use, affirms Spanish bishop,” November 29, 2010.]

Oh my, an old man, sworn to unnatural celibacy, lecturing us on the use of condoms and how they always relate to immorality. How does he know? God must have told him.

On his flight to Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI stated in response to a reporter’s question on the HIV/AIDS epidemic: “It is my belief that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. … The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, it worsens the problem.” [“Pope replies to questions from journalists.” Vatican Information Service, March 17, 2009.]

Another old cleric, telling us that the best presence and defense against AIDS is the Catholic Church. This is the same church that systematically harbors admitted child molesters and unleashes them on new parishes for a new harvest of young, innocent, gullible victims.

Cardinal Egan chided the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for its plan to distribute 18 million condoms to the public for free in an effort to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. According to Egan, the city’s initiative and encourages “inappropriate sexual activity.” [National Catholic Reporter, “Condom Giveaway,” March 2, 2007.]

Ok, I am getting very tired of clerics who supposedly have no experience in matters sexual, at least that’s what they proclaim, telling millions of young, impressionable people that sexual activity is inappropriate. Who are they, to misinform, to load guilt and shame on young people and to mislead them so they are more exposed to disease?

If that’s what God tells them to do, God really must hate condoms.