“We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed”, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester.
Could someone please switch off the light and close the door of the Rochester Cathedral?
Photo (c) peripheries
Photo (c) peripheries
Tags: Catholic Church, Discrimination, Gay, India, MSM, Stigma, UK
Since the papal comment about condoms and the HIV epidemic, there has been a flurry of articles written in support of the pontifical nonsense. These often call upon a comparison between “sinful” Thailand, awash with HIV and condoms, and the “holly” Philippines where there is not such thing as HIV or condoms (a bit like in Iran).
Does this sound slightly over the top? Not really. Kathleen Gilbert writing for the LifesSiteNews website quotes Yolly Eileen Gamutam, head of the Asia’s Catholic Association of Doctors, Nurses and Health Professionals (ACIM-Asia) saying that “Condoms are highly dangerous.” Gilbert added that “by the end of 2003, Thailand, with a population of 63 million, registered 570,000 HIV-positive adults and children. Gamutam compared the statistic to the Philippines, where only 9,000 Filipinos were HIV-positive out of a population of 80 million. 500 died of AIDS in the Philippines that year, while 58,000 perished in Thailand.”
peripheries has already addressed this misleading and inappropriate comparison but it is necessary to add that comparing two countries at one time point is rather meaningless. That the head of an association of doctors allows herself to be so unscientific is rather disappointing, if not telling that religion and science are definitively two nonoverlapping magisteria.
But let’s look at the figures available from UNAIDS and let’s compare the number of People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) at two time points:
In 2001 there was 660,000 adults and children living with HIV and AIDS and this figure dropped to 610,000 in 2007. In the Philippines, the number of PLWHA rose from less than 1,000 to 8300 and has been continuously on the rise since 2006.
Without fear or shame and against all evidences, Yolly Eileen Gamutam concluded that “the condom use program in Thailand is not effective.” Mechai Viravaidya, politician and leading Thai AIDS activist who introduced a 100% condoms policy in brothel where HIV was raging and henceforth contributed to a reduction of the number of PLWHA from 2% to 1.4% in 10 years (1997-2007) and the successful containment of the epidemic, will appreciate how his work and continuous efforts are being so promptly dismissed.
The rise in the number of HIV infections in the Philippines may not seem dramatic now but it may have some serious consequences later if not controlled. Conscious of the consequences of inaction, the Filipino government, who in the past adopted an approach to the epidemic that limited its progression in the general population, was considering a controversial bill on reproductive health at the end of 2008.
Another worrying concern about the rising HIV epidemic in the Philippines is that it is so far mostly observed amongst Men who have Sex with Men. The health departmental HIV/AIDS registry recorded 210 new infections among MSM in 2005, 309 in 2006 and 342 in 2007 and from January to September 2008, there were already 395 cases, up 96 percent since 2005.
And as we all know, before or next to condom, homosexuality is the next “abomination” that the Catholic church condemns with wrathful vehemence.
“The Catholic Church’s centuries-old doctrine, created by a bunch of celibate priests, on sex only for procreation leaves many people ignorant about sexual health. This is the sad reality.
Taking away people’s right to protect themselves, and their right to education and to responsibly manage their sex lives is certainly taking away some of their humanity.” write William Sparrow for the Asia Times.
But not all Catholics are dogmatic or blinded by credo and for example, Catholics for Choice an organisation initially founded to support women’s moral and legal right in a world led by Bishops, started an unprecedented worldwide public education effort to raise public awareness about the devastating effect of the bishops’ ban on condoms. In a recent press release the organisation wrote:
“According to a recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice, which interviewed Catholics in Ghana, Ireland, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States, support for condom use among Catholics is overwhelming. When asked if “using condoms is pro-life because it helps save lives by preventing the spread of AIDS,” 90% of Catholics in Mexico, 86% in Ireland, 79% in the US, 77% in the Philippines and 59% in Ghana agreed. Unfortunately, the Catholic hierarchy’s position holds the most sway in the countries least able to deal economically and medically with the disease.”
A sway leading to death. And as for the role of condoms, they certainly won’t do any harm.
Tags: Abstinence, Asia, Catholic Church, Condom, Epidemic, MSM, Philippines, Prevention, Sex, Thailand
The head of the Catholic Church in Australia has open his mouth to add primate bunk to previous pontifical nonsense.
Unsurprisingly, the Cardinal Pell from down under endorsed the papal comment made in Africa that condoms “can even increase the problem” of HIV, adding that, “The idea that you can solve a great spiritual and health crisis like AIDS with a few mechanical contraptions like condoms is ridiculous”.
HIV and AIDS have been jumbled with quite a lot of nonsense but to relate it with a great spiritual crisis is a rather interesting novelty. With the Church in charge of the spiritual (alongside our sex-life), one wonders is the Cardinal is advertising for his own business on the back of HIV infected people.
Reporting a conversation with “a non-Catholic health worker”, the Cardinal added that “people in remote areas are too poor to afford condoms and the ones that are available are often of very poor quality and weren’t used effectively.” For crying out loud, isn’t that saying that what is needed are good quality condom provided as an affordable price? What about fre condoms?
But of course not, because and without a shred of evidence Cardinal Pell added that “Condoms are encouraging promiscuity. They are encouraging irresponsibility.” How could condoms encourage promiscuity? And if they were, would it matter as long as people are using them whilst being promiscuous? There is no evidence that people who started anti HIV treatment or men who were circumcised became more promiscuous. So why the idea of using a condom or their availability would be any different? There is little hope that the Cardinal could understand what is sacerdotal vestments forbid him to know.
Adding misinformation to ignorance the prelate could not refrain harking back the old red herring of Thailand vs. the Philippines: “If you look at the Philippines you’ll see the incidence of AIDS is much lower than it is in Thailand which is awash with condoms.”
The myth was debunked here on peripheries, but it might be wise looking at more recent data from UNAIDS. For example at the estimated number of people living with HIV in 2001 vs. 2007 in the Philippines, <1000 vs. 8300 and Thailand, 660,000 vs. 610,000. Of course the number of people living with HIV is much higher in Thailand (see previous posting for an understanding of why) but it has also decreased between 2001 and 2007 whilst the figure has increased in The Philippines and is set to increase even more in the coming years if nothing is done now to ensure that the virus does not find a fertile Christian soil to multiply, like it did in Africa.
The catholic’s answer to HIV? As always, abstinence and faithfulness. But as pointed out by Don Baxter in The Australian, the pontiff’s comments about condoms could easily be misunderstood in Africa, where it is common for men and women to have several concurrent sexual partners but still see themselves as being faithful. “Calls for not using condoms and being faithful are heard by Africans to mean if they have regular partners, they don’t need to wear condoms,” said Baxter.
Abstinence is one method of preventing the transmission of HIV, condom is another one. To discourage the use of one or the other is plain stupid and irresponsible. Is it even stupider if it is done on spiritual background, because the HIV virus can be killed with a sign of the cross over someone and a few drop of holy water.
Cardinal Pell is not alien to controversy, in October 2007 he challenged the cause of climate change: “I am certainly skeptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient. Climate change has always occurred. Scientific debate is not decided by any changing consensus, even if it is endorsed by public opinion.”
It is definitively a hard time for enlightenment, especially within the Catholic Church.
Tags: Abstinence, Africa, Catholic Church, Condom, PreventionReposted from The Wisdom of Whores. Original from Patrick Boivin.
Tags: Catholic Church, Condom, Prevention, Video
From Entebbe, Uganda – “A man shocked parents on Sunday when he confessed to recruiting school children into homosexuality to promote the practice in Ugandan schools.”
Hence started the opening paragraph of a front page feature of the Ugandan daily The New Vision under a 5-cm letter header: “HOMOSEXUAL ADMITS RECRUITING STUDENTS”
New Vision’s Paul Kiwuuwa writes that George Oundo has received funding and training from “abroad” and targeted children, mostly “needy” ones, because children are “easy to initiate and they like easy things”. “Conversion” was achieved through books and compact disc showing homosexuality to young boys.
So what happened that Oundo stopped converting needy children with the support of an alleged foreign Gay and Lesbian Coalition and “confessed”?
Oundo became a Born-again Christian and “got saved at Pastor Martin Sempas’ Church, the Inter-Faith Rainbow Coalition against Homosexuality, based at Makere University Kampala”. Yes, the Ugandan Pastor who burns condom on the university campus.
The story does not stop here. George had experience a “transgender transition” in the past and wanted to be a woman and was known as Georgina, all because of international human rights organisations that “spread homosexuality”. Later, eigt more men “confessed involvement in homosexuality and gay activities, which they said they had abandoned. Speaking to journalists at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala, the youthful men described homosexuality as abnormal and anti-Christian, and declared war against it.”
When reading such caricature of reporting and nonsense one can only be left short of words. Such coverage does nothing but contributes to the spread of the epidemic by exonerating of their responsibility those who are really at the centre of the epidemic and its spreading: men and women who are having unprotected sex.
But there is worse. The daily reports that the Uganda Education Minister Manirembe Bitamazire announced last year an investigation into homosexuality in schools where the activity is “rampant”, and the Uganda AIDS Commission chief Kihumuro Apuuli, also observed that “schools had become a breeding ground for the vice”, the solution being that “parents had a big responsibility to inculcate African Values into their children.”
Conflating homosexuality and HIV in Uganda (or anywhere else for that matter) does not make sense but confirm that it is much easier to find a scapegoat than to face the truth. The denunciation of homosexuality as foreign to “African values” also reveals of a long tradition of denial and cultural relativism, not specific to Africa, which has obstructed and still obstruct the prevention efforts by stigmatising further people who are amongst those most vulnerable if not most affected yet and ignores the real cause of the epidemic. That such beliefs are supported by the head of the Uganda AIDS commission 25 years after the start of the epidemic is extremely worrying.
Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, in conjunction with pontifical nonsense.» are doing a great witch-hunting job, diverting resources and destroying successful HIV prevention. Such irresponsible and dangerous views are wiping out years, past and future, of HIV prevention.
Crime against humanity should apply to those who spread such nonsense.
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