Walking in downtown Washington recently, I came upon one of those “public service” announcements that are plastered or projected on the side of bus stops. It had a one-word question: “Cheating?” If you silently answered yes, its advice: get yourself checked for a venereal disease!

My one-word answer to the question might have been: “Don’t!”

In the ancient Church, the big three sins that required public penance were murder, apostasy, and adultery. The ancient Church did not beg off on adultery as a “sin of the flesh” with diminished responsibility (though, perhaps in individual cases, that might have been true). And in a Church that valued chastity (in contrast to the pagan world in which it lived), nobody was making excuses for fornication.

Adultery mattered not just because of what it meant in itself but also because of the Biblical world’s view of marriage. In the Old Testament, God presented a revolutionary insight through Hosea: God was not just the transcendent Lord of Israel but His bond to His people was akin to marriage, and their sinful infidelities were adultery. Sin, then, is not an abstract legal infraction; it is the violation of a relationship. The same themes are accentuated and elevated in the New Testament when marriage is presented as a sacramentum of Christ’s Union to His Church (Eph 5:25-32).

A modern world whose primary norm for secular sexual ethics is consent can therefore even countenance adultery, as long as the relationship is defined as “open.” The truth is, however, that these relationships are almost always hidden, the concern of the public service ad not being the behavior but its consequences. We non-judgmentally leave aside the morality of “cheating.” We merely suggest the utilitarian value of one taking cognizance of some of its more deleterious consequences, like sexually transmitted diseases.

The ad doesn’t even tell the viewer what to do with his free check-up. Self-interest would suggest he at least get treated himself, if possible. It doesn’t say anything about sharing the news.

“Well, if he’s responsible, he knows that!” some might say. If he were “responsible,” we wouldn’t need this “public service ad.”

The truth is the ad shows us just how much modern “ethical” thinking is really just utilitarianism: address the immediate problem in the most technically proficient way possible while wringing hands about the underlying mindset that brought that problem about in the first place. It’s the same mentality that has parents giving their kids contraceptives, or public schools often without parental knowledge or consent distributing condoms. Handle the “problem” in its most immediate and troublesome manifestation; “respect” ethical relativism otherwise.

Except the problem here is not something just penicillin or antiretrovirals can cure.

It was interesting that, when I photographed the bus stop in question, the transparent panel also showed something else down the street indicative of the ad’s mentality: a green light.