Children playing in the centre of Phnom Penh. Prohibitive school fees are one of the reasons children do not attend school, notwithstanding the bribe requested by corrupt teachers to let pupils in.
Photo (c) peripheries

Prostitution and sex work are particularly difficult subjects to comment on. They are heavily loaded with emotional and often irrational charge especially when trafficking and children are taken into consideration. I would usually leave these topics to more qualified commentators such as Laura Agustin, but I’ll make an exception when HIV is involved.
What prompted this posting is …

The pontifical position on condom, based on ignorance, fallacy and a struggle of the Church to survive, as well as the response of the scientific community and activists are well known and documented (search this blog for some examples of both). But in a “Reflection” to be published in The lancet Samuel Ponce de Leon and colleagues add more weight to the argument that condoms are an essential tool in the fight against HIV in the future: evolution.

Now evolution is something the Church is also in denial about despite the …

“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?
India, the world’s largest democracy decriminalised homosexuality

Stonewall Celebrates 40th birthday
Photo (c) peripheries
London Celebrates Pride 2009

Photo (c) peripheries

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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 …

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 …