Non-denominational Christians

[Carol_Coombe]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

Did you understand that many people wish to be chaste, and that this was a long and strong tradition in many African communities.

Do you understand that we are well past the missionary stage here: our Churches look just like yours, and ours has a congregation of about 2000, with another being built to hold 2000 by 2010.

The code here on HIV is generally A,B,C: abstain, and if you cannot abstain, be faithful to one partner, and if all else fails, use a condom. That makes sense to me and perhaps to you. That Catholic Churches are of course, in countries like Zambia, teaching abstention, which is by far the safest - along with an HIV test before marriage. But a couple of beers often makes for confusion - and then the condom must come into play. We do not always choose our fate - especially if we are women (see other postings on this).

Can you contemplate that in Zambia, only 10 per cent of the population is in employment, and that 70 per cent of people live on less than one US dollar per day? Job training would not help many - but better clinic training, health visits to schools, more action by churches and other nongovernment organisations on counselling and testing would all help. If you want information on this, write me a private message, and I will send you what you want to know, or direct you to a source that can help to keep you informed.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

Did you understand that many people wish to be chaste, and that this was a long and strong tradition in many African communities.

Do you understand that we are well past the missionary stage here: our Churches look just like yours, and ours has a congregation of about 2000, with another being built to hold 2000 by 2010.

The code here on HIV is generally A,B,C: abstain, and if you cannot abstain, be faithful to one partner, and if all else fails, use a condom. That makes sense to me and perhaps to you. That Catholic Churches are of course, in countries like Zambia, teaching abstention, which is by far the safest - along with an HIV test before marriage. But a couple of beers often makes for confusion - and then the condom must come into play. We do not always choose our fate - especially if we are women (see other postings on this).

Can you contemplate that in Zambia, only 10 per cent of the population is in employment, and that 70 per cent of people live on less than one US dollar per day? Job training would not help many - but better clinic training, health visits to schools, more action by churches and other nongovernment organisations on counselling and testing would all help. If you want information on this, write me a private message, and I will send you what you want to know, or direct you to a source that can help to keep you informed. I wrote two brief briefing notes for Bono when he was here a couple of years ago: the practical response, and the long-term policy response. They set out the issues pretty well.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

Did you understand that many people wish to be chaste, and that this was a long and strong tradition in many African communities.

Do you understand that we are well past the missionary stage here: our Churches look just like yours, and ours has a congregation of about 2000, with another being built to hold 2000 by 2010.

The code here on HIV is generally A,B,C: abstain, and if you cannot abstain, be faithful to one partner, and if all else fails, use a condom. That makes sense to me and perhaps to you. That Catholic Churches are of course, in countries like Zambia, teaching abstention, which is by far the safest - along with an HIV test before marriage. But a couple of beers often makes for confusion - and then the condom must come into play. We do not always choose our fate - especially if we are women (see other postings on this).

Can you contemplate that in Zambia, only 10 per cent of the population is in employment, and that 70 per cent of people live on less than one US dollar per day? Job training would not help many - but better clinic training, health visits to schools, more action by churches and other nongovernment organisations on counselling and testing would all help. If you want information on this, write me a private message, and I will send you what you want to know, or direct you to a source that can help to keep you informed. I wrote two brief briefing notes for Bono when he was here a couple of years ago: the practical response, and the long-term policy response. They set out the issues pretty well.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

Did you understand that many people wish to be chaste, and that this was a long and strong tradition in many African communities.

Do you understand that we are well past the missionary stage here: our Churches look just like yours, and ours has a congregation of about 2000, with another being built to hold 2000 by 2010.

The code here on HIV is generally A,B,C: abstain, and if you cannot abstain, be faithful to one partner, and if all else fails, use a condom. That makes sense to me and perhaps to you. That Catholic Churches are of course, in countries like Zambia, teaching abstention, which is by far the safest - along with an HIV test before marriage. But a couple of beers often makes for confusion - and then the condom must come into play. We do not always choose our fate - especially if we are women (see other postings on this).

Can you contemplate that in Zambia, only 10 per cent of the population is in employment, and that 70 per cent of people live on less than one US dollar per day? Job training would not help many - but better clinic training, health visits to schools, more action by churches and other nongovernment organisations on counselling and testing would all help. If you want information on this, write me a private message, and I will send you what you want to know, or direct you to a source that can help to keep you informed. I wrote two brief briefing notes for Bono when he was here a couple of years ago: the practical response, and the long-term policy response. They set out the issues pretty well.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

Did you understand that many people wish to be chaste, and that this was a long and strong tradition in many African communities.

Do you understand that we are well past the missionary stage here: our Churches look just like yours, and ours has a congregation of about 2000, with another being built to hold 2000 by 2010.

The code here on HIV is generally A,B,C: abstain, and if you cannot abstain, be faithful to one partner, and if all else fails, use a condom. That makes sense to me and perhaps to you. That Catholic Churches are of course, in countries like Zambia, teaching abstention, which is by far the safest - along with an HIV test before marriage. But a couple of beers often makes for confusion - and then the condom must come into play. We do not always choose our fate - especially if we are women (see other postings on this).

Can you contemplate that in Zambia, only 10 per cent of the population is in employment, and that 70 per cent of people live on less than one US dollar per day? Job training would not help many - but better clinic training, health visits to schools, more action by churches and other nongovernment organisations on counselling and testing would all help. If you want information on this, write me a private message, and I will send you what you want to know, or direct you to a source that can help to keep you informed. I wrote two brief briefing notes for Bono when he was here a couple of years ago: the practical response, and the long-term policy response. They set out the issues pretty well.

 

[Iowa_Mike]

What’s wrong with this picture is your total ignorance of the HIV scene outside your own community. I really do not know how to answer this ‘insight’ which is not an insight but a reflection of your complete lack of knowledge. I do so wish you would learn something before you put your foot in your mouth.

I have explained elsewhere, that we in Africa live in a cultural environment that is completely different from yours. Some children, because of cultural beliefs about playing pretend life copy cows and dogs and chickens all around them - and so are sexually active from the age of four (ovaHerero, ovaHimba, Namibia). Because of the male dominance theme in many African societies, gang rapes are prevalent in cities. Because many children have no parents, no money, no food, no homes, no education because they have been orphaned by AIDS, they are forced to offer their bodies - their only resource - to get money to live. Very young girls are raped because men believe they can cure themselves of AIDS this way. Women do not have the right to refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands, although they know their husbands have been with prostitutes likely to be infected. They are desperate because they must live to care for their children: a feminine condom has been invented and is being distributed, so a woman can make her own choice.

I bought my boys their first condoms in London England when they were in their teens, and we constantly discussed the spread of HIV and concomitant death of millions as I have seen it worldwide. I know that all kids worldwide need protection: the world is not a safe place any more, and that may not have anything to do with the morality of the victim, as we all know. Both my sons are in long-term partnerships - and used condoms until they were sure that they wanted to commit and then they and their partners had HIV tests. Get real: this is the choice our children in N America must make. Can you imagine at all the choices - or lack of choices - that African children and women must make?

What are catechism classes telling kids about HIV? Here in Pretoria, absolutely nothing, after 30 years of knowing about the epidemic and its consequences. Do white people get infected? Yes, of course! Anyone can get infected. And all ethnic groups are represented in our catechism classes. Is it right that these children should be ignorant about their choices? No. Would you want your child *not to know *that there is death out there, and it is completely possible that it will stalk them if they continue to be as ignorant as they are now.

From what I have told you about Africa, is their behaviour bestial? Are they homosexual monsters? How can you say these things? As I said to Janet S: come and watch our people die, and then say to me that our women are bestial, immoral, adulterous and heathen. Come and watch them die. And try not to be angry.

RCC here is slowly changing its practices on condoms, as are governments and non-government organisations. They have realised that, along with treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases, condom use can reduce infection rates by almost 50 per cent.

Please. Please. You have a good mind. Use it. You are in such a tunnel of bias and lack of compassion and religious bigotry that my heart bleeds for you.

You can see articles on HIV impact on Google: Carol Coombe or Michael J Kelly SJ and I recommend that you seek them out.

Carol,

I accept that Africans are suffering…so is India…so China…so is San Francisco…

Your view that the Catholic Church is slowly changing is not accurate. The current teach is the following:

CCC - 2370

“every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil.’

Rationalizations abound that promote euthanasia and abortion. Many of these rationalizations employ many of the circumstances used above. But, rationalizations aside, this is the official position of the Church. It is all about life, not suffering.

Do you support enthanasia and abortion?

Iowa Mike

 

[jack_hawkins]

Condoms have been shown to have manufacturing defects (holes) which are large enough for HIV to pass through.

oh dear resorting to this myth?
this has been totally debunked - this sort of misinformation makes the people who peddle look ridiculous in the eyes of the scientific world
very sad

 

[Iowa_Mike]

What’s wrong with this picture is your total ignorance of the HIV scene outside your own community. I really do not know how to answer this ‘insight’ which is not an insight but a reflection of your complete lack of knowledge. I do so wish you would learn something before you put your foot in your mouth.

I have explained elsewhere, that we in Africa live in a cultural environment that is completely different from yours. Some children, because of cultural beliefs about playing pretend life copy cows and dogs and chickens all around them - and so are sexually active from the age of four (ovaHerero, ovaHimba, Namibia). Because of the male dominance theme in many African societies, gang rapes are prevalent in cities. Because many children have no parents, no money, no food, no homes, no education because they have been orphaned by AIDS, they are forced to offer their bodies - their only resource - to get money to live. Very young girls are raped because men believe they can cure themselves of AIDS this way. Women do not have the right to refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands, although they know their husbands have been with prostitutes likely to be infected. They are desperate because they must live to care for their children: a feminine condom has been invented and is being distributed, so a woman can make her own choice.

I bought my boys their first condoms in London England when they were in their teens, and we constantly discussed the spread of HIV and concomitant death of millions as I have seen it worldwide. I know that all kids worldwide need protection: the world is not a safe place any more, and that may not have anything to do with the morality of the victim, as we all know. Both my sons are in long-term partnerships - and used condoms until they were sure that they wanted to commit and then they and their partners had HIV tests. Get real: this is the choice our children in N America must make. Can you imagine at all the choices - or lack of choices - that African children and women must make?

What are catechism classes telling kids about HIV? Here in Pretoria, absolutely nothing, after 30 years of knowing about the epidemic and its consequences. Do white people get infected? Yes, of course! Anyone can get infected. And all ethnic groups are represented in our catechism classes. Is it right that these children should be ignorant about their choices? No. Would you want your child *not to know *that there is death out there, and it is completely possible that it will stalk them if they continue to be as ignorant as they are now.

From what I have told you about Africa, is their behaviour bestial? Are they homosexual monsters? How can you say these things? As I said to Janet S: come and watch our people die, and then say to me that our women are bestial, immoral, adulterous and heathen. Come and watch them die. And try not to be angry.

RCC here is slowly changing its practices on condoms, as are governments and non-government organisations. They have realised that, along with treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases, condom use can reduce infection rates by almost 50 per cent.

Please. Please. You have a good mind. Use it. You are in such a tunnel of bias and lack of compassion and religious bigotry that my heart bleeds for you.

You can see articles on HIV impact on Google: Carol Coombe or Michael J Kelly SJ and I recommend that you seek them out.

Carol,

I accept that Africans are suffering…so is India…so is China…so is San Francisco…

Your view that the Catholic Church is slowly changing its position on contraception is simply not accurate. The current teach is the following:

CCC - 2370

“every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil.’

Rationalizations abound that promote contraception, euthanasia and abortion. Many of these rationalizations employ some of the circumstances used above. But, rationalizations aside, this is the official position of the Church. It is all about life, not suffering.

Do you aslo support enthanasia, and abortion?

Iowa Mike

 

[jmcrae]

I have explained it is not a question of chastity - read my lips. Children are hungry and sell their bodies to get food to live.

How will condoms get them jobs and a good education?

Girls are raped. Women are forced to have sex whether or not they want it.

If they can’t prevent the men from having sex with them, then how are they going to get him to wear a condom?

How will wearing a condom cause these men to learn how to see the women and girls as human beings made in the image and likeness of God?

I know many Africans, by the way; I have foster children in Africa and I participate in a prison ministry in Africa. It’s true that I haven’t met them in person; I have only exchanged letters and parcels with them, but I do not see how they are so different from us that they can’t be educated about chastity, or how methods that the Church has been using for 2,000 years should suddenly, in their case alone, be ineffective.

 

[fix]

Do you support enthanasia and abortion?

Iowa Mike

That was my next question. The reasoning used in the Africa/condom issue can be used to justify all manner of evil. It is a materialistic and utilitarian view of reality. It is not consistent with the Gospel imperative.

 

[jack_hawkins]

The long-term solution to this problem is NOT handing out condoms. If society is educated about chastity, there would be a permanent solution to the problem. Catholic missionaries need to educate families and children about chastity, as well as helping people with other things such as job training.

It’s great to know that you are thinking about long term solutions whilst people are contracting the virus daily
Do you realise how that sounds?
Basically this is about controlling people - and judging people for their disease. You’re saying they are to blame for getting HIV, whilst denying the means to limit the transmission.
The people that have these ideas are those remote from the problem who need the least about the situation - this is the saddest thing. You are happy to feel better about yourself by condemning others to death.

 

[Iowa_Mike]

I have explained it is not a question of chastity - read my lips.

We are reading yours and with all respect, maybe you should be listening to ours.

Iowa Mike

 

[eliasaph99]

Originally Posted by jmcrae View Post
Carol;

Condoms don’t prevent AIDS. Of course they do. Go back to the internet and learn.

If people are doing the sort of activities that require them to wear condoms, then they are already well outside of the Church’s teachings, long since. Why do they suddenly now care what the Church thinks? This question has no significance for rural African communities which have lived for centuries in survival mode which is very different from beautiful downtown wherever. Many many women here are the most faithful of Christians - and the African RCC is the fastest growing in the world. Are they ‘doing the sort of activities’ that would demand they die? Let’s look at your next comment!

They didn’t care what the Church thought of their adulterous affairs or their bestial and/or homosexual activities. This is a disgusting point of view, really. But now that they have AIDS, it’s suddenly this great big deal that the Church forbids condoms?

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong with this picture is your total ignorance of the HIV scene outside your own community. I really do not know how to answer this ‘insight’ which is not an insight but a reflection of your complete lack of knowledge. I do so wish you would learn something before you put your foot in your mouth.

I have explained elsewhere, that we in Africa live in a cultural environment that is completely different from yours. Some children, because of cultural beliefs about playing pretend life copy cows and dogs and chickens all around them - and so are sexually active from the age of four (ovaHerero, ovaHimba, Namibia). Because of the male dominance theme in many African societies, gang rapes are prevalent in cities. Because many children have no parents, no money, no food, no homes, no education because they have been orphaned by AIDS, they are forced to offer their bodies - their only resource - to get money to live. Very young girls are raped because men believe they can cure themselves of AIDS this way. Women do not have the right to refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands, although they know their husbands have been with prostitutes likely to be infected. They are desperate because they must live to care for their children: a feminine condom has been invented and is being distributed, so a woman can make her own choice.

I bought my boys their first condoms in London England when they were in their teens, and we constantly discussed the spread of HIV and concomitant death of millions as I have seen it worldwide. I know that all kids worldwide need protection: the world is not a safe place any more, and that may not have anything to do with the morality of the victim, as we all know. Both my sons are in long-term partnerships - and used condoms until they were sure that they wanted to commit and then they and their partners had HIV tests. Get real: this is the choice our children in N America must make. Can you imagine at all the choices - or lack of choices - that African children and women must make?

The peasants of Europe lived in a situation very similar to the situation in Africa until the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Then it got worse. It only began to be better relatively recently, say for the past 100 years. And that’s only in Western Europe.

The Church ministered to Europe through the Black Plague. A disease which, proportionally speaking, killed more of the population of Europe than AIDS has of Africa.

The Church knows how to minister to the poor and to people who live in poverty. She knows how to minister to populations being decimated from disease. She knows the reality because She has lived it before. Her teachings have stood the test of time. They shepherded Europe through all these years, and they can shepherd Africa.

I am amazed that you bought condoms for your children. Did you encourage them to be sexually active?

 

[jmcrae]

You’re saying they are to blame for getting HIV, whilst denying the means to limit the transmission.

Jack;

The means to limit transmission is chastity.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

Carol;

“Questers” don’t go on the attack against their would-be teachers.

They also don’t try to instruct their teachers, either in what to teach, or in how to teach it. They humbly receive the teachings, and focus their questions on the content of the teaching, rather than on the manner of the delivery.

You have probably learned somewhere in all that sociology and psychology that, when a large group of people seems to be on the defense, then there is an attacker in their midst.

If the people are directing their defensiveness at you, then you might think about changing your approach.

I did not ask you to be my teacher: I did not get a choice. But you have done your best with me. I am not aware of attacking anyone, but speaking with authority, and asking legitimate questions, which is what the Forum is supposed to be about.

Oh gosh, what is this about ‘humbly receiving teachings’? My whole life I have been taught to *believe nothing of what I hear, and only half of what I see. *My last paper on HIV was about the fallacies of our policies and programmes to stem the spread of HIV. Many people had assumed that African teachers would tell children about HIV, forgetting that African adults **never **talk to kids about sex, even their own. So the assumption by policy-makers and planners was totally flawed. I think it is incumbent upon learners or listeners or questers to examine the proposition to determine whether or not it is correct. In the case given, we might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if we had not made a false assumption. Do you agree? And what is this humble jazz please?

So if you do not want to feel defensive, what would you like me to do, other than being humble, gracious and accepting?

 

[Janet_S]

Then come and watch the people die. Over two million in South Africa alone, population 50 m… Watch the burials - mortuaries and cemeteries full to overflowing, families impoverished by the cost of funerals, children caring for and burying each parent, and wrapping around them the last blanket they own - just before the cold season. Come and see the children who are not in school or church, who are not being socialised, who have no one to teach them the values that we apply so easily to our lives.

I am impatient because the world out here is a fiery furnace: Nero while Rome burns; Shadrack, Mishack and Abednigo in the fiery furnace come to mind. Nice words, kindly thoughts, backing away from social justice or just plain good deeds or at least compassion for the suffering will never make a child into an full human being.

Yes I am passionate, I am confrontational. I am also speaking with authority, which is sometimes understood as confrontation. But if the Roman Church turns its back, if individuals turn their backs to the real issues - and concentrate on fripperies such as altar cloths, the minutiae of religious rites, the ins and outs of the Reformation instead of on our responsibilities *now *as Christians - real anger and frustration boil over. And I have no apology for that.

About JH and my PM to him, Jack PM’d me and I responded. He decided to post it, and that’s fine with me. I said something similar here:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=1993291&postcount=75
He said he was unemployed. I was just restating that fact. I didn’t intend to pass judgment on him. However, inappropriate you thought I was, your response to me was much more viscious than mine.

As far as condom use, teaching against artificial birth control (including condoms) is not based simply on “an arcane interpretation of Scripture” as you say. This is a long-standing teaching of all Christianity. Until the 1930’s, all Christians stood with the CC on this issue. Now the CC stands alone. Yet there are very sound reasons for this Church teaching. If anyone is interested in the reasons behind the Church’s teaching, he/she can read Janet Smith’s article “Contraception, Why Not?” or Pope JP II’s encyclicals Veritatis Splendor or Evangelion Vitae or his book Theology of the Body. Also Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Once again, it’s not my teaching, I’m not making this stuff up. This is the official teaching of the CC.

I realize you see immense suffering in Africa, but the Church is right about what it teaches, so I could never go along with anyone who decided something contrary no matter how honorable their intentions. Mother Teresa would not have handed out condoms–no doubt about that. She did, however, teach the people in Calcutta about NFP, so I don’t think you are entirely correct when you claim “sexual activities were far from their mind.” Mother Teresa just realized what most Catholics realize–to go against the CC is the same as going against Christ Himself.

I know that PopePope Benedict XVI has asked a commission of scientific and theological experts to prepare a document on condom use and AIDS prevention. I don’t believe this report has come out yet, but I doubt the long-standing teaching of the CC will change. This article is from April 2006:
catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0602330.htm

Another point, there is only one CC. Jesus Christ is our head, and Pope Benedict XVI is the only Vicar of Christ (servant of the servant of God) that I know of. The CC certainly has studied and pondered the issue of artificial birth control in its 2000 year existence. I trust the CC infinitely more than popular opinion. And, BTW, I am a health care professional too.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

How is it a “straw man argument?” If condoms don’t reliably prevent pregnancy, then how are they likely to prevent the transmission of disease any more reliably?

Please realise that the dangerous misinformation you are disseminating here will be read by other people who are not as well informed as you are.

The condoms in use now are usually 98 per cent effective, depending on the time of month, wrt transmission of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, and pregnancies.

Abstinence is best, faithfulness is advisable, and if you are in difficulty get a condom, carry one with you, pick one up for free from many public places - and use it.

 

[Carol_Coombe]

How is it a “straw man argument?” If condoms don’t reliably prevent pregnancy, then how are they likely to prevent the transmission of disease any more reliably?

Please realise that the dangerous misinformation you are disseminating here will be read by other people who are not as well informed as you are.

The condoms in use now are usually 98 per cent effective, depending on the time of month, wrt transmission of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, and pregnancies.

Abstinence is best, faithfulness is advisable, and if you are in difficulty get a condom, carry one with you, pick one up for free from many public places - and use it.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Carol, with due respect for somebody who has ‘first hand’ sight of our brothers and sisters in Africa, and obviously ‘cares’. . .

The idea that the way to treat the horrendous ills in Africa is by ‘condoms’ is a very, very ‘secular’ view.

IF the ‘worst thing to happen’ in life was death. . .which ‘is’ the secular view, then of course at all costs any thing, even if it were not 100% effective, would be touted as ‘what to do’.

But the ‘worst thing to happen in life’ is not death. . .not even a supposedly ‘preventable’ death, not even an ‘unfair’ death. (And before you wonder, I lost my father when I was 12 so I’m not sitting back in my luxurious ivory tower never having had to deal with death. . .or for that matter with poverty–not so ‘bad’ if you put it next to the poverty in Africa, but certainly ‘bad’ enough when put next to the poverty in the U.S., thank you).

No, the worst thing to happen is sin–is evil. And EVIL is what Africa’s (and our) problem is–the main evils being sexual evils, as ours are as well. The disease and the deaths are byproducts of the evil; the real evil itself is sexual sin being imposed on one group by another group. And what you’re proposing is to help, not the victims, but the oppressors.

Condoms do not always work. And that is a fact. And so long as you are not treating the root causes for the disease itself, and thinking that you can provide ‘band-aids’ with something that might be effective for this person this day–but not for the next day, or maybe 5 years later, or maybe not for her daughter, or her friend, or the woman in another village–again, all you are doing is reinforcing the conditions that led to this disease in the first place. You aren’t stopping the rapes, you aren’t stopping the poverty, you aren’t stopping all the evil. . . and you’re adding onto the evil by bringing in a condom as ‘a solution’. Because the solution to AIDS isn’t going to come about when every girl in Africa is armed with unlimited condoms, and every male pulls out one before the rape. All you’ll have is more rape, more degradation, and more disease.

I’m old enough to remember Roe, and how, once we had the magic of condoms, the pill, and then abortion, there would ‘never be another unwanted child again.’

Well, let’s see what we have. The divorce rate has skyrocketed and single mothers have tripled. Men and women are far more promiscuous. Not just HIV and AIDS but other sexually transmitted diseases have skyrocketed. More children are abused than ever, and more and more ‘unwanted’ babies are growing up and producing, in a spiral, more ‘unwanted’ babies themselves. . .despite the ‘facts’, despite the ‘availability’ of all these ‘things’ which supposedly were going to bring us a Utopian world of ‘every child a wanted child.’

Africa has some appalling problems now–what will it be when the already disordered sexual CRIMES there are stimulated by the ‘legitimization’ of that sexual behavior because, “hey, we use condoms, therefore any pregnancy or disease isn’t OUR fault.” And of course as the disease rate will skyrocket from the burst of activity done thinking that “I have a condom, I’m free, I’m safe”, and the unchecked factors that led to widespread rape are unaddressed, then more and more women will be abused (but hey, they can have a CONDOM!)–over and over and over.

It’s not as if we haven’t seen what the condom (protection) mentality has done already. . .we have. Why we would wish to inflict its failure onto people already victimized and brutalized, in order to make things WORSE for them, is beyond me.

 

[lak611]

It’s great to know that you are thinking about long term solutions whilst people are contracting the virus daily
Do you realise how that sounds?
Basically this is about controlling people - and judging people for their disease. You’re saying they are to blame for getting HIV, whilst denying the means to limit the transmission.
The people that have these ideas are those remote from the problem who need the least about the situation - this is the saddest thing. You are happy to feel better about yourself by condemning others to death.

I am not condemning anyone to death. If a person has HIV, he or she needs medicine to control the amount of virus in his/her bloodstream, which should be made available to anyone who is infected, even if he/she is poor; and persons who are infected need to be educated about chastity to prevent further spread. Chastity is the only 100% effective method to prevent this disease.