Patheos Hosting Ads For Contraceptives

When I was over at Mark Shea's Patheos page updating that last link, I noticed that there was a link in the "Around the Web" section entitled Female Condoms: Will women wear them? near the bottom. It was right next to an ad for Mark Shea's book This is My Body about the Eucharist. I noticed that you can also get to it from the Elizabeth Scalia's blog posts, as in this example where she talks about going to meet the "inventors" of Patheos. I don't want to provide the link to the offending ad, but you can go to their pages and verify this and click on it their. Basically it goes to a site called "LifeScript" with a big infomercial disguised as a news article on so-called "female condoms". The page is also covered with ads for Essure, another contraceptive described as "permanent and non-surgical". Here's some text from the infomercial:

Prophylactics aren’t expected to be particularly pretty, but no one wants to have sex looking like they’re wearing their grandmother’s rain slicker. That may be why the female condom, available since the late 1990s, has never caught on in the U.S. The fact that it is visible may be a turn-off for some. But women may want to reconsider: after all, the rain-gear look trumps facing unwanted pregnancies or STDs...

The female condom — marketed as the FC — may not be alluring, but it puts protection directly into the hands of women. Produced by the Female Health Company, the FC is one of four barrier birth control methods, the other three being the cervical cap, the diaphragm and the sponge. Of these, only the FC can prevent both sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and pregnancy when properly used.

The page also contains links with text such as The Morning After Pill, Top 5 Birth Control Methods, etc. You get the idea. Here's what it looks like on Mark Shea's blog.

Here's what it looks like on the Anchoress's blog.

What do I make of all this? Well, one thing I did right away was to remove the Google AdSense ads from my blog. I realized that anything can be advertised there, and if I write the word "contraception" in a post, chances are pretty good that Adsense will throw in an ad for the morning after pill, rubbers, etc. I cut the one on the side and the one at the bottom. I'm working on the one at the top, but I forget how to access that one. I think I need to go into the template code, fun stuff — dusting off the HTML book....

I know that Mark and Ms. Scalia do not want to promote using contraceptives. And they never had to worry about accidentally doing so on their old blogs where they were their own masters. But this is what happens when you abandon you own little garden and start "working for the man" to make more money. You end up sacrificing control for a steady paycheck from the factory farm managers.

If Patheos ever extends an offer to me to blog there, I'll have to decline the offer based on this. Not that they'll ever ask me now.

There — got that pesky top ad out of there. Ad-free now. Maybe I'll advertise coffee made by monks now. Or something.