AIDS and “Technical Solutions.” First Change Sexual Behavior by Matthew Hanley
AIDS and the Ideological Barrier. The Threat to “Sexual Liberation” by Douglas A. Sylva, Ph.D.
A quote from the article by Sylva:
AIDS is unique because, as a deadly pandemic spread mainly through promiscuous sexual activity, it threatens some of the most cherished modern norms concerning sexual liberation. So to promote the most obvious response to such a pandemic—do not engage in promiscuous sexual activity—would in essence be a capitulation, an admission that the dream of consequence-free sexual activity was not only impossible, but perhaps at least partly responsible for the scourge.Hanley points out that the secondary risk-reduction strategies: use of condoms, voluntary counseling and testing, and treatment of other sexually transmitted infections, have had far less impact than strategies that promote abstinence and fidelity. As he says:
It is thus difficult to avoid concluding that these interventions maintain their privileged status not because of empirically observed scientific excellence, but at least in part because of the desire of their proponents to advance their particular vision of the human person, freedom, and sexuality. To the extent that this has been the case, one might with reason suspect that much of the international response to AIDS has amounted to a fairly wholesale abdication of sound public health principles in favor of ideologically based advocacy.
2 comments:
The early 1980's is when I started hearing condemnations of anyone who would cite Saint Paul's famous chapter one, verse 27, of his epistle to the Romans: "The men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (RSV).
The "strategies", it must be noted, are not meant to reduce incidence of AIDS. People are not so nice as all that. Let's be clear, shall we?
Condoms: It's demographically clear, always, across cultures and age groups, etc., that nobody uses condoms consistently, but they do become promiscuous. Result? Also, condoms break, frequently. Also, the AIDS virus is so small that it goes right through a condom. Pushing condoms only encourages people to have more sex. More get AIDS. More die. At that point, they couldn't care less about life anymore, and abort any children conceived. Statistically, that's the way it is. This is known.
Voluntary counseling: For what? To know how to use a condom? See above.
Testing: For what? To prove to the next "score" that you are ready to go? See above.
Dumping condoms on Africa, for instance, doesn't help. It's known that it hurts. It's a kind of genocide. That's why it is done, isn't it so?
We should take note that this is also done in our schools, also our Catholic schools. Caritas / Catholic Charities are sometimes the biggest offenders. We can name numerous Cardinals, not to mention bishops and priests who encourage people to use condoms. Result? See above.
Hopefully, people will be able to distinguish those who betray the teaching of the Church from the Church Herself. The Church has many saints. Let's look to them.
Father George bloggingLOURDES
Certain people might consider applying some journalistic or scientific objectivity to the question of where in Africa the condom use relentlessly promoted by Western NGOs and compliant governments has ever arrested, never mind reversed, the rate of HIV infection. There is nowhere.
However, such a reversal is under way in Uganda, where the government's message is the same as the Catholic Church's: "Change Your Behaviour". Huge numbers of condoms have been distributed in Botswana, and the result has been for President Festus Mogae to declare, "Abstain or die".
Who, exactly, is incapable of fidelity within a monogamous marriage and abstinence outside such a marriage? Women? Black people? Poor people? Developing-world people? Or just poor black women in the developing world?
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