Don't use Valentine's Day to promote promiscuity

valentine day

Kumasi, Feb. 6, GNA - The media has been urged to be more alert and to refuse to be used by selfish business people to promote promiscuity in the name of 'Valentine's Day' celebration.

Mr Opoku Agyemang Prempeh, Chief Executive of the Centre for Moral Education (CEMED), a Kumasi-based NGO, dedicated to the preservation of sound moral values, said everything must be done to ensure that the purity of the society was not abused.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the current radio hype the occasion was enjoying, as well as the activities lined up in the metropolis for the event, Mr Prempeh said it appeared the real meaning of the Day was being missed.

It certainly is not meant to encourage people particularly the youth to engage in inappropriate sex and other forms of immorality, he said, adding that Saint Valentine, according to Catholic mythology, neither married nor was he a fornicator.

Mr Prempeh said he therefore found it difficult to rationalize why anybody would want to poison the celebration of such a pious individual by pushing others into senseless love adventures.

'It is sad that some people in the media are allowing themselves to be influenced by selfish businessmen to use their platform to associate Saint Valentine's Day on every 14th February with activities that corrupt the youth of this nation.

'The hype in the airwaves of various love activities in the night of Valentine's Day to lure the youth into fornication, alcoholism and other social vices are threatening the lives of the younger generation', he added.

He expressed the fear that it could result in many of them contracting dreadful diseases such as HIV/AIDS as well as unwanted pregnancies.

Mr Prempeh said the media should be mindful of the enormous influence it had on the youth and be guided by ethics and morality.

GNA