Brazil seems to have an effective anti-AIDS program. In 1992 experts forecast that 1,200,000 Brazilians would have AIDS in ten years. They were twice as wrong, as the actual number in 2002 was close to 600,000. They did it with a combination of measures including both the encouraging of abstinence and sexual fidelity and education and distribution of condoms. Prostitutes have been very active in this campaign. Yet, a condition of receiving anti-AIDS funds from the US is the signing of a pledge condemning prostitution. This Brazil refused to do and turned their back on $40,000,000 in AIDS grants. Accepting this aid would force out of their campaign perhaps their most effective resources – the prostitutes.
The refusal of this aid was made by a commission that included church representatives. Yet, we want to impose our religious beliefs – I should say the religious beliefs of those in charge of our AIDS grants – on a sovereign nation that is succeeding in the battle against a plague killing people of all faiths and of no faith. Not only do these grants require a pledge condemning prostitution but they also oppose clean needle exchanges.
Didn’t Christ say something about the lives of the lowest among us?
1 comment:
He most certainly did, Al, but Christ doesn't seem to figure very strongly in the thinking of the church these days. They're into politics now, and politics is more important to them.
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