TIME, Ecosex & Me

In late September, I got an email forward from my former boss that a staff writer for TIME found my Go Organic brochure, and wanted to interview me for a piece on the green movement and eco-birth control. She wanted “to discuss what inspired the Madison Diocese to market NFP this way and what about this approach appeals to the young couples with whom you speak.” Great! I was curious what the catch was, but was interested in doing the interview nevertheless.

We arranged a time and day in early October, and talked for around thirty minutes. Turns out she’s Catholic, just got married in the Church, and had heard about Natural Family Planning through the marriage prep program in NY. She didn’t exactly concede that she was on board with the whole Catholic Church teaching thing, but she conceded that she never was a huge fan of birth control, and could understand why more and more people were turning to Fertility Awareness/ NFP. We finished our conversation, and she said she’d send the link to the article.

The link never came.

Over two weeks later when I found a link to the article I was interviewed for, I found out why. It went from NFP as part of the green movement as a submitted draft to an article largely about the sex toy business’ new eco-alternatives, with a *brief* mention of NFP. Uggh. After some venting and commentary, I took the advice of a PR friend, and got in touch with the journalist I interviewed with to giver her the benefit of the doubt and see what happened.

Sure enough, the original article was twice as long, but the editor wanted bigger, flashier art for the piece, and cut it nearly by half. Enter co-worker who moonlights at a sex-toy retailer stage left, and the editorial drama unfolded. This is big box journalism at it’s usual best, I suppose.

In the end, I asked her if she would be open to doing a piece on NFP again. She said yes, with the catch that it wouldn’t be for TIME.

A couple weeks after the article was published, I got a call from a freelancer for Swedish Publishers, which supposedly is the NPR of Sweden, and they did a piece on the “Go Organic” side of NFP, and how that plays into how the Church promotes NFP, and who are the NFP users of the US. The result? “Green is Good–In Bed” by Katarina Andersson (original is in Swedish; this is a Google translation).

Again, they make it sound like people of faith are using the green factor as a ruse to “get” people to use it, and that it’s the only approach. Yes, it’s one way of marketing NFP  (to non-religious people mostly), but it’s not the only way we get the message out.

While it might not be the primary motive for natural methods of family planning for for people of faith, the environmental factor is still extremely important as well. Stay tuned for more “eco-family planning pieces.” I hope to be making my Go Organic brochures available to buy soon, so stay tuned!