After running out of condoms in the Olympic Village for the 2000 games at Sydney, a condom company shipped 130,000 packets of its product to Athens this summer to be freely distributed to athletes and officials. With 17,000 people living in the village for the two-week event, the manufacturer provided enough condoms for each person to help themselves to eight.
Other contraceptive companies also offered free samplings of their product, bringing the total estimated number of free condoms to somewhere in the neighborhood of a half million—shattering the previous Olympic record of 250,000 set at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake.
The marketing manager for one condom distributor boasted of her company’s gesture: “We hope this substantial donation will allow athletes to enhance their performance and go for the gold without worrying about the dangers of unprotected sex.” What she fails to mention is that having free condoms available at every corner in the Olympic Village only encourages dangerous and reckless sexual activity, which is what God considers sex outside of marriage to be. It violates His law of love. And when that happens, there is always a penalty to be paid, whether one uses a condom or not. (For much more of God’s perspective on the subject of sex, please request our free book The Missing Dimension in Sex.)
Some commentators brush aside these astronomical figures of condom distribution by pointing to the fact that many of them are hoarded by Third World athletes and taken home, where supplies are scarce or expensive.
While that might be true, it is also true that life in the Olympic Village has become a highly charged sexual atmosphere where young people from all over the world are having sex with strangers—a lot like Spring Break in Cancun or Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
“There’s a lot of sex going on,” one U.S. athlete admitted to Men’s Journal magazine. A Canadian athlete put it this way: “It’s all about safe sex and there’s a ton of that going on.” A ton of it is happening, for sure. But it isn’t safe.