The Institute on Religion & Democracy is blasting the religious denomination of President Barack Obama for its recent stance on condom distribution inside houses of worship.

Recently, the HIV and AIDS Network of the United Church of Christ (UCC) said condoms should be handed out at places of worship. The statement was issued during a presentation to the denomination's Wider Church Ministries Board and also advocated making condoms available at faith-based educational settings.

A UCC executive said that condom distribution is a matter of life and death and that condoms should be made available to save the lives of young people.

Calling it the denomination's "moral responsibility" to make condoms available, the UCC's executive for health and wellness advocacy said "people of faith make condoms available because we have chosen life so that we and our children may live."

Alan Wisdom, with the Institute on Religion & Democracy, believes the UCC's statement is dangerous. "It sends a message to youth particularly, the kids who meet in their Alan Wisdom (IRD)Sunday schools, that the church really has no expectation of them in terms of sexuality, that it expects them to enter into multiple sexual relationships in the same way the world does, and that its only concern is they not pick up diseases," he notes.

The UCC's condom distribution is the latest step in the denomination's departure from its Puritan roots, Wisdom concludes.

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Posted by Craig