Recently, The Uncredible Hallq reported that Ross Douthat was an OK guy. We here at The Uncredible Hallq regret that error. In fact, Douthat is deluded slime.

Ross Douthat recently defended the Pope’s anti-condom stance. His reasoning? Mainly, that no one has proved that opposition to condom use from religious crazies does any harm, or at any rate, no one has proved that it does all that much harm. But normally, when a health measure’s effectiveness has been proven, it’s obvious that baseless opposition to it is a bad thing. If the topic where something where people’s ideas about what an imaginary being wants weren’t an issue–say, vaccination or antibiotics–we wouldn’t have to have this discussion.

Douthat also briefly claims that the Pope’s position is scientifically supported, based on an essay in a religious magazine. The article cites an article from the prestigious medical journal Lancet, which listed “condoms are the answer” as a “myth” about the African AIDS epidemics. What the essay ignores is that the Lancet piece is pro-condom use, and mainly worried about the inability of condom-promotion to get people to use condoms consistently. Indeed, the most recent issue of the Lancet came out with an editorial opposing the Catholic Church’s stance on the issue, as well as documenting the Church’s attempts to white-wash the incident.

Partially, the Pope’s defenders want to play a game of make-believe that the evil “AIDS establishment” is handing out condoms and telling people to go have all the random sex they want, and that religious people merely see the benefit of other kinds of AIDS-prevention efforts. The reality is that secular-minded people (atheists and believers-lite) are promoting both condoms and other safe sex behaviors, while the religious crazies think condoms are always immoral and promoting condom use is promoting immorality, and are hiding behind baloney arguments about health. Another entry in the long tradition of liars for Jesus.