A controversy has erupted at a global conference over the tactics used to battle the AIDS crisis. In an address at the event, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni offered that abstinence is a superior choice to condoms. President Museveni remarked that the goal should be "optimal relationships based on love and trust instead of institutionalized mistrust which is what the condom is all about."
U.S. Representative Barbara Lee responded to the abstinence message by claiming, "women and girls too often do not have the choice to abstain, an abstinence until marriage program is not only irresponsible, it's really inhumane." But in those rare instances when woman and girls aren't able to choose abstinence, do they really have a choice to choose condoms? Implicit in Lee's remarks is the idea that people are not responsible for their own behavior--that choices made are really "choices" imposed. There are rare cases when this is so--like rape--but in most instances sex or chastity is a choice.
In Museveni's Uganda, AIDS cases have declined from thirty percent of the country's population in the 1980s to six percent today. Barbara Lee represents a district in the Bay Area of California. Which approach, and which area, is having greater success at curtailing AIDS?
The conference is being held in Thailand, where many a tourist has been known to double-bag it. The condom advocates definitely have home-field advantage there. In fairness, the abstinence proponents should demand the next such meeting be held in Vatican City.
What's lost in the abstinence versus condoms debate is that for many people it really isn't an either/or proposition. All actions have risks. Promiscuity poses a certain risk level for contracting HIV. Still greater risks are taken by the intravenous drug user, who in an altered state of consciousness can't be expected to always avoid sharing needles. Gay sex, especially certain varieties of it, present enormous risks too.
If you want to avoid AIDS, abstinence until marriage is your safest bet. If abstinence isn't for you, avoiding promiscuity, gay sex, and injecting drugs will increase the likelihood that you will steer clear of the virus that causes AIDS. But even this path holds risks. The only way to completely stay safe is to obey God and not Larry Kramer.
More than 500,000 Americans have died of AIDS since its outbreak in the early '80s. Abstinence didn't kill them.
Aids is not a gay disease!
"Male-to-male sexual contact = 420,790 cases"
Silence=Death
Sound=Life
Schilling=A.L. Pennant
Poor Bob. You sound like a bitter man who contracted a healthy case of syphilis brought on by years and years of visit's to Frisco's finest male meeting place the "bread pudding factory". Your are know the the worst kind of fruit........bruised.
