The Casanova Controversy

NINE months ago, Britain's 16-member Health Education Council launched a drive against unwanted pregnancies by distributing a controversial poster showing a melancholy male with one hand resting on his bulging abdomen. The caption read: WOULD YOU BE MORE CAREFUL IF IT WAS YOU THAT GOT PREGNANT? Now the Council has outdone itself. On the cover of 200,000 pamphlets that will be distributed to British high school and college students and local medical clinics later this month is a posed reconstruction of a 200-year-old engraving of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, the 18th century courtier whose name is a byword for sexual adventurism. It shows the world's most famous seducer kneeling before a bare-breasted and obviously willing maiden. The moral of the scene, says the caption: CASANOVA NEVER GOT ANYBODY INTO TROUBLE.

Pink Ribbon. The council points out that, even in this permissive age, some bizarre misconceptions about contraception persist. "One woman thought she'd avoid getting pregnant by jumping up and down after intercourse," the leaflet notes. "Others believe that they won't get pregnant if they stand up during intercourse." As a result, 120,000 unwanted babies are born each year in Britain; in 1969, one bride in five was pregnant at the time of her marriage. That point is amply illustrated in the leaflet by a picture showing a very pregnant young woman in a white wedding gown, taking nuptial vows and saying to the preacher: "I did."

By contrast, says the pamphlet, Casanova "knew how to make love without making his women pregnant." His secret: a primitive form of "French letter," a century-old British slang term for condom. "Instead of being made out of synthetic rubber, as they are nowadays, it was made out of sheep's gut," explains the council. "To keep it in place, he tied it on with a tasteful pink ribbon."

No Model. The British press was quick to raise some questions about the council's own taste--and the accuracy of its claims. Citing Novelist John Masters' 1969 biography, Casanova, editorial writers pointed out that, far from being a model sexual citizen, Casanova practiced bisexuality and was a voyeur and even an abortionist. Moreover, while he may not have got anyone else into trouble, he certainly got into enough himself, suffering frequent bouts of venereal disease--including syphilis. Furthermore, Masters notes, Casanova sometimes refused to use condoms. After one of his mistresses, identified in his autobiography only as "M.M.," placed some in her boudoir as a hint, he brushed them aside, says Masters, "with a well-turned extemporaneous French verse."

The council's director, Dr. William Jones, was unmoved by the controversy. Casanova will remain on the cover, because, says Jones, "in an ignorant and permissive age, he took reasonable precautions when making love." But to placate the Church of England, which objected to the wedding scene, the bride's condition will be made "a little less obvious" in future printings.

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