I recently noted a Washington bus stop where the “public service” announcement that asked about “cheating” recommended one get tested for venereal diseases.

Looking at what’s being hawked in your neighborhood tells a lot about what Pope Benedict XVI called the “human ecology” of a given environment. The neighborhood in which I work is an overlay of two institutions: a number of governmental headquarters and the urban campus of George Washington University.

Firmly plastered to a power box on 20^th Street NW were six sheets from “GW [George Washington] Rage” with signs of kisses and hugs (XOXO) declaring love for

• Medication Abortion
• Regular and Free STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) Testing
• Emergency Contraception like Plan B [which can harm a post-fertilization child]
• Junk mail providing free sexual health supplies
• Abortion Providers and Patients
• Medication Abortion

You can’t get a clearer expression of the culture of death than that one power box.

GWU is a prestigious university in the sense that its graduates frequently win policy and power jobs in government, and this is the toxic thought to which they are exposed. (This is also a university where Palestinian advocacy is rife).

What I found particularly disturbing about the display was the diabolical (and I mean that) spirit behind it. Aborting your baby is not seen as a “regrettably necessary choice.” It is something to be embraced joyfully, with kisses and hugs.

Venereal diseases are not usually valued consequences of promiscuity, which has nothing in common with “love,” but they are embraced with “kisses and hugs.”

Amidst all the hot air contributing to intellectual climate warming coming out of the “common home” obsession of some in the Church, perhaps we might focus on our job as Church and speak to the moral pollution highly condensed on a Washington street power box.

[My previous post from the streets of DC is here.]